What he saw TERRIFIED him

[00:00:00]The man who told this story was really nervous, not just because he'd had a frightening experience, but because he didn't think anyone would believe him.

[00:00:08]And in the end, he was kind of surprised that actually a lot of people did. So, at the end of this video, I'm going to share a piece of real historical evidence, and you'll have to decide for yourself whether you believe him or not.

[00:00:24]Hi, I'm Josh and welcome to Blue Thorn, an AI-free channel where we look at religious and esoteric history.

[00:00:31]If you want to immerse yourself more in the world of these videos, my historical fantasy novel is now available on Amazon. Enjoy.

[00:00:40]Niceros was a successful guy. He had been born a slave, but with a combination of luck and hard work, he managed to earn his freedom. Now, this didn't make him a normal person like everyone else. He was called a freedman, and he had a special freedman hat he was able to wear.

[00:00:59]People kind of treated him with suspicion because he'd been transformed into something else, and now he was kind of stuck between two states. One day, Niceros got an invitation, and it made him really happy because this invite came from a close friend, Trimalchio.

[00:01:17]Now, Trimalchio was just like Niceros.

[00:01:18]He had also once been a slave, but had managed to earn his freedom. But unlike Niceros, Trimalchio had become fantastically wealthy because of his business planning. The feast was fantastical. There were little whole eggs in their shells, which when you cracked them open, live birds flew out of them. And the 12 courses of the meal were based on the 12 star signs of the zodiac.

[00:01:45]But as the feasting started to come to an end, Niceros started to feel a little bit uncomfortable because the guests began to tell stories. He could only think of one story to tell. It was something that had really happened to him and it had left him feeling really scared.

[00:02:02]So, Nisyrus got up and he looked at the guests and many of them seemed to be quite relaxed and were happy and even some of the educated philosophers and aristocrats weren't looking at him with as much suspicion as they normally did and he decided to tell his frightening story.

[00:02:19]So, a long time ago before I became free, I was still living as a slave and I was having an affair with the wife of a local innkeeper, but don't think that this was just a temporary thing. We actually got on really well together and she helped me out when I didn't have enough money and told me what to invest my money in and it was actually partly thanks to her that I gained my freedom.

[00:02:42]But, one night while I was still a slave, I suddenly got the news that her husband, the innkeeper, had passed away and I immediately wanted to go there and be there for her as a friend, but there was just one big problem. When I got this news, it was night. Now, Nisyrus lived on the other side of the city to this innkeeper, so he started looking around for someone to accompany him on this dangerous journey in the night.

[00:03:09]Luckily, one of his master's guests was in the house. Now, his master wasn't there, but this guest was staying in a really nice room and it actually turned out he was a really famous soldier, a very brave man, muscled like an ox, very strong and not very talkative. And so, Nisyrus went to this soldier and he begged him. He said, "Please, you've got to come with me. Someone I know is having a really difficult time. I need to go and talk to her now. Won't you just accompany me across the city? I know with someone like you, I'm going to be safe."

[00:03:41]And eventually, the soldier agreed after a lot of convincing. He said, "Fine, I'll come with you, but just to the 5-mi mark. After that, you're going on your own way. I'm going on my own way." And Nisyrus was really happy about this because he knew at the five-mile mark was the most dangerous part of the walk, the part through the town cemetery. So, in Nisyrus's town, the cemetery was just on the outskirts of the city and had a really bad reputation. And this wasn't just because of rumors of ghosts and witches and other things like that, but it was actually known to be a place where robbers lived and made their evil plans. It was a place where political conspirators went to discuss things in secret. If you're going to have an affair in secret, you might go to the cemetery to meet up. Basically, it was a place outside the law. Anything could happen there, and you definitely needed someone to protect you if you're going to walk through it at night. But Nisyrus, of course, had this really big soldier to accompany him, so he was feeling really confident. And they set off. There was a bright moon outside, and for the first couple of miles, everything went pretty well. When they did get to the cemetery, the soldier didn't seem scared at all, and that made Nisyrus quite confident. But once they started walking through the path between the gravestones, suddenly, without speaking, the soldier just turned off the path and disappeared amongst some of the stones in the cemetery, and Nisyrus couldn't see him.

[00:05:16]Now, at first, Nisyrus wasn't that worried about this because it was pretty common for people to use the cemetery also as a place to relieve themselves because there weren't any public toilets nearby. So, Nisyrus sat down on a log and started swinging his legs and looking at the moon and to keep his mind in a positive place, he tried to sing a little bit and started to count out the memorials and the gravestones.

[00:05:42]But after a while, the soldier still hadn't returned. And Nisyrus started to wonder what had happened to him. And so, Nissirus turned off the path in the same place the soldier had gone, and went to look for him.

[00:05:56]He found the soldier behind a large headstone, completely naked and urinating in a circle around his clothes. And instinctively, Nissirus turned away, and he thought, "I have not given this guy enough time.

[00:06:11]For some reason, he's taking ages to do his business." Then he had a second thought, and he wondered, "Why is he completely naked? Something really strange is going on here."

[00:06:22]And so, he was about to turn back around and talk to his companion, when suddenly he heard a really loud howl from very nearby. He realized it must be a wolf.

[00:06:32]So, he turned around really fast, and he saw that his companion had disappeared.

[00:06:37]And there was just this enormous gray wolf with glowing eyes staring back at him. Nissius started to panic at this point. He thought, "Well, are the wolves attacking this soldier?

[00:06:50]How did this wolf get here? Is it going to attack me as well?" And although he had a sword on him, he was almost paralyzed with shock on seeing this animal so close to him.

[00:07:00]But, to his surprise, the creature didn't attack him. It just turned away and bounded off onto the edge of the cemetery and then into a forest that was nearby, leaving Nissirus alone and frozen to the spot in fear.

[00:07:15]So, for a few minutes, Nissirus just stood there in silence, trying to calm his mind, trying to focus on what he should do, because now he was alone in the cemetery, there were wolves around, and his bodyguard had disappeared. And so, he thought, "Well, the best thing I can do is to take my companion's clothes back to the road, so they're not stolen by any robbers, and then I'll just wait for him there." So, he stooped down to pick up the clothes in the middle of this strange circle of urine and he tried to lift them but he really couldn't. They were They were really heavy. He gave it another go and eventually lifted them up but they were so heavy he had to drop them and when he dropped them they went clunk.

[00:07:57]It was at that point he realized the clothes had turned to stone.

[00:08:03]Well, now Nessus was really confused and really frightened and he started to wonder if a witch had put him under a spell or some kind of ghost was trying to haunt him. So, he quickly pulled his sword out of the scabbard and he started waving it around and slashing at the shadows and shouting and he sprinted back to the road and once he got on that road he ran through the rest of the cemetery slashing around with his sword and shouting until he got out of it and eventually got to the house of the innkeeper.

[00:08:33]Well, when he got to the innkeeper's house he was a real mess. His eyes were bulging and great drops of sweat were running down his face and arms and he was completely pale. And Nessus was so shocked and confused by what he had experienced in the cemetery they couldn't actually tell her what had happened. So, she sat him down next to the fire and he watched the warm glow of the candles flickering against the walls and he had a glass of warm wine and after a while he started to calm down.

[00:09:02]As he was sitting there the innkeeper's wife sat down next to him and she said, "Let me tell you a story to take your mind off whatever's worrying you.

[00:09:11]Actually, before you arrived here I could have really done with your help because we had a giant wolf get into the sheep pen in the barn and it started to attack my animals and it wasn't eating them it was just going around tearing at their throats and there was wool and blood everywhere and the sheep were bleating but eventually one of my farmhands managed to stab it in the neck with a spear >> [music] >> straight through the neck and surprisingly the animal didn't die there, but it did run away with this big wound.

[00:09:42]And when Nisroch heard this, this was just the worst story he could have been told at this moment, cuz he was still thinking about the wolf from the cemetery. He started to get really paranoid and wonder, "Was that the same wolf which I saw in the cemetery? Maybe it was a magical wolf. Maybe it was a ghost wolf. Is it haunting me? Is it going to come back here?" And because of these things, he wasn't able to sleep at all that night. So, as soon as the dawn broke, Nisroch got up. He said goodbye to the innkeeper's [music] wife, and he took the same route back. It was the only route he could take back to his house.

[00:10:17]But as he started to walk and he saw the dawn light and he heard the birds in the trees and saw the dew in the grass, he started to calm down and relax.

[00:10:26]>> [music] >> And he thought, "Maybe everything that's happened to me is just uh unfortunate coincidences and some weird things at night." And so, he was walking through the cemetery, and he started to get more and more confident as he saw it in the light of day. And he suddenly got this idea in his head. He thought, "Maybe I should just go and check on those clothes again."

[00:10:49]Last night I thought they'd turned to stone somehow magically. Maybe I was just confused. [music] Maybe I thought I was picking up the clothes, I was actually picking up a rock. So, he turned off the path and went to look at the clothes. And what he saw really shocked him.

[00:11:05]So, when Nisroch got to the site where he'd seen the wolf the night before and where his companion, the soldier, had disappeared, he couldn't find the clothes. There was just a huge splatter and smear of blood.

[00:11:19]He thought, "Maybe my companion, the soldier, returned to get his clothes and then was attacked by some robbers.

[00:11:26]And that means I'm going to be in a lot of trouble, because it's not good for a slave to put the guest of their master in danger. What if the soldier's been killed or kidnapped? I could be in a lot of trouble. So, he started walking briskly back out of the cemetery, back to his house, and worrying about this and trying to think of a good story to explain what had happened and why he wasn't responsible for the soldier's disappearance. But, when he got back to his master's house, he was in for a really big shock. The soldier was there, and he got back before Nicerus.

[00:12:04]Now, apparently, the soldier had returned in the early hours of the morning, and he was lying in bed, and he was just as strong and quiet as ever, but he did have a huge wound in his neck, and he was being treated by a doctor.

[00:12:20]And the doctor said, "This man has suffered a really bad wound, but he's he's so strong that, actually, he's going to be completely fine."

[00:12:29]>> [music] >> And the soldier was sitting there, sort of smiling, and Nicerus got really scared.

[00:12:36]When he came to this part of the story at Trimalchio's [music] dinner party, Nicerus looked at all the guests around him, and he was quite surprised to see that they were taking him seriously.

[00:12:47][music] Most of the former slaves and the uneducated people were listening, and they believed what he was saying. He could see that. But, even some of the philosophers and aristocrats were looking at him with a kind of respect.

[00:13:01]That really shocked Nicerus. And so, because of that, he had the confidence at the end of his story to tell everyone his theory about what had happened. And so, he looked at the guests, and he said, "You know, I believe that soldier was a shapeshifter.

[00:13:18]That soldier [music] was a werewolf."

[00:13:21]When Nicerus said this, no one laughed or shouted at him, but there was just [music] a creepy silence. And when Nisyrus sat down, Trimalchio got up and he said, "Nisyrus has been my friend for a really long time, and I know he doesn't lie or make up gossip.

[00:13:39]Everything he says to me is always true, and that's why the hairs on my arms are standing on end, because I know Nisyrus' story is the truth."

[00:13:49]So, there's two things I want to tell you about this story to help you decide whether there's any truth to this tale.

[00:13:56]And the first one will make you doubt it a lot, and the second one might make you reconsider it.

[00:14:03]So, the first reason to believe or not believe the story is that as far as we know, Nisyrus, Trimalchio, and everyone else in the tale are not real people.

[00:14:14]They're made up, they're literary characters written in a book by a Roman writer around 100 AD. But the second piece of information might change how you see things, because around the same time this story was being written, a real doctor who actually existed, Marcellus of Sida, was writing a medical textbook describing how to cure people with a very specific illness. That was a sickness that turned them into werewolves.

[00:14:45]And so, Marcellus, this ancient Roman doctor, wasn't relying on superstitious stories [music] when he wrote this textbook. He believed this was a real problem in a city. In fact, he knew it was. Everyone did, because people were going out at night and howling and barking and behaving like wolves and dogs, especially in the local cemetery.

[00:15:07]And Marcellus actually developed a treatment plan for his patients. He used to bleed them because he believed they might have too much blood, and then he gave them sedatives at night so they didn't wander off into the cemetery and go on a rampage. He even made a list of symptoms which he believed would help him recognize werewolves during the day.

[00:15:28]And so, this is why the guests, even the educated guests and philosophers, didn't make fun of Niceros's story at Trimalchio's feast because they knew this was a real problem in their city.

[00:15:42]This was actually happening. People went out to the cemetery and behave like wolves and dogs.

[00:15:48]And the question we're left with is did they just act like them, or did they actually turn into them? So far, I've talked about Niceros's story as if he was telling us what happened to him, but what if he's meant to be an unreliable narrator? What if he was the werewolf?

[00:16:06]There were no witnesses to the events in the cemetery, and the wolf escaped before he arrived at the inn. When Niceros turned up, he looked very sick.

[00:16:16]Remember, Niceros was a man desperately trying to transform himself to move his social status from that of a slave to a free man.

[00:16:25]And yet, he wasn't free. Educated people, or just anyone born free, looked down on him. He was constantly trying to prove his status, trapped in a web of social hierarchy.

[00:16:38]Unlike him, a werewolf was liberated and powerful, able to move between states and fulfill its fantasies. Niceros, on the other hand, was desperately trying to justify his secret affair.

[00:16:53]Perhaps it was this feeling of being trapped in a rigid social order which drove Marcellus of Sidon's patients out on their nightly prowl among the gravestones. But, how do you think we should explain werewolf behavior in the ancient world? Let me know what you think in the comments.