Going through some of the many folktales of Louisiana in preparation for The Originals, I came across the legend of the Loup-Garou. First mentioned in the Pilot episode by Jane-Anne Devereux, the legend of the Loup-Garou has been a part of Louisiana culture for a while. They are wolf creatures but they have more traits that make them out to be more bad spirits than physical beings. The word loup-garou is French for werewolf.
The Loup-Garou is described as a wolf humanoid creature that appears only at night (full moons are the best nights for them), they come in through the chimney and they suck the blood of humans and if they suck the human dry then the human will become a Loup-Garou (sounds vampire-ish). They can only be seen by those they haunt and if they want to be seen. They are associated with witches. Like the witches of Medieval times, the Loup-Garou like to have parties in the dark woods on full moon nights. The tales I've heard say that Loup-Garou hang along the Mississippi River.
There are ways to catch or repel a Loup-Garou. One way is to leave a sift box hanging outside your front door. For some reason the Loup-Garou can't resist counting each hole. Once it's distracted then throw salt at it; the Loup-Garou will vanish. Sounds crazy. Why would a Loup-Garou count holes in a sift box? Also if you can make a Loup-Garou bleed then it will die or just disappear.
There is a story of a man who was shadowed by a Loup-Garou. Actually 2 stories but they are very similar. The story goes like this: Some fishermen were gathering clams along the river bed. Each night they'd go to sleep and then the next morning find that the clams have been sorted with only half of the eaten. This went on for a few nights until one of the fishermen said he would stay up and see who's been sorting and eating the clams. The fisherman saw the Loup-Garou sorting and eating the clams. The creature, however, noticed him and disappeared in a howling shriek. The fisherman went home that night, terrorized out of his mind, but found no peace as he saw the terrible Loup-Garou sitting at the foot of his bed. The creature couldn't be seen by anybody else except the fisherman. Everyone thought the fisherman was mad; his friends abandoned him, his family and even his fiancé broke off the engagement. The fisherman tried to get rid of the creature but to no avail. Decades later, the fisherman was an old man with a cane, the Loup-Garou following him as he walked along the shoreline of the river. Suddenly the old man tripped and the sharp end of his cane pierced the Loup-Garou, making him bleed then the creature vanished! The old man was pretty broken up about it given that the Loup-Garou was his only friend.
That story sounds like a case of schizophrenia mixed with Stockholm Syndrome, but in Louisiana you'll find all sorts of urban legends and ghost stories and people who swear they a knew a guy who knows his brother's girlfriend's uncle went through something similar.
In the storyline of The Originals the Loup-Garou most likely will be a special kind of werewolf but not have the traits of a spirit as I have just described. Still it will be interesting to see.
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