The idea of the pelt was used extensively in the Norse sagas and created a form which survived into other ages. By medieval times, the item was often abridged to a belt or girdle three human finger widths wide such as the one used by Peeter Stubbe. Under Christian influence, this transmuting item became a diabolic artefact on loan from the devil. Where there are no belts, there are plenty of ointments and salves many of which can safely be assumed to have contained flora with psychoactive properties such as henbane, deadly nightshade and thorn apple. This tradition seems to have been favoured in classical stories.

In plenty of folk tradition (before the church influenced it) the devil had no role to play. The change from man to beast was effected by such varied methods as eating a wolf's brains, drinking water from the left paw print of a wolf or drinking water at a stream where three or more wolves were seen to have drunk. In Russia and the Balkans there was a certain flower which would cause the transformation if eaten; these flowers were bluish white with a phosphorescent quality, or orange with protruding black spots. They grew in the mud by the edge of still pools.

Werewolf and vampire / undead lore become inseparably intertwined in places, a topic more fully covered in vampires. Slav and Greek werewolves were damned to return as vampires after their deaths, and in Normandy a damned person would first eat the winding sheet which covered his face, and then rise. The grave would heave and moan, and amid a foul smell and a phosphorescent glow the undead would take away as a wolf. Again, the role of the wolf as grave-robbing carrion eater appears.

Some ancient writers site lycanthropy as hereditary, such as the Neuri of Herodotus. Given the hereditability of some mental disorders, it is worth wondering if this had a part to play in this belief.

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