Voting Station

Peter Stumpp

Please vote to return to collections.

Oddity

The Resume

    ( -October 31, 1589)
    Born in Germany
    Name also written as Peter Stube, Peter Stübbe or Peter Stumpf
    Rhenish farmer
    Known as 'The Werewolf of Bedburg'
    Accused of committing acts of serial murder and cannibalism
    Confessed, under torture, to 18 counts of murder and to practicing black magic; was beheaded on October 31, 1589
    Claimed to have been given a 'magical girdle' by the Devil, which enabled him to transform into 'the likeness of a greedy, devouring wolf, strong and mighty, with eyes great and large, which in the night sparkled like fire, a mouth great and wide, with most sharp and cruel teeth, a huge body, and mighty paws' until the girdle was removed

Why he might be annoying:

    Components of his story inspired a Direct-to-Video Scooby-Doo movie.
    He probably wasn't an actual werewolf; if anything he might have just been a feral cannibal.
    He was accused of killing and eating fourteen children, and two pregnant women.
    He was accused of ripping the mothers’ fetuses from their wombs and of then eating their hearts.
    He allegedly referred to the unborn babies he killed and ate as ‘dainty morsels.’
    After killing his victims, he allegedly liked to stop by the homes of his victims' families to pay social calls (before they learned of their loved ones' deaths).
    He was accused of killing his own son after luring him into the woods, and then feasting on the kid’s brain.
    He had an incestuous relationship with his young daughter, who - for some reason - was sentenced to die with him (victim blaming?).
    Court records show that he also confessed to having had intercourse with a succubus sent to him by the Devil (legend has it that he also ‘requested of the devil that he might work his malice in the shape of some beast’).

Why he might not be annoying:

    He was a widower.
    He confessed only after breaking under intense bodily torture.
    He admitted to using a 'magic garb' to transform himself into a wolf-like creature, but the fleece was never found.
    The method in which he was executed remains one of the most brutal such accounts.
    Reportedly, he was chained to a wheel, had his flesh torn from ten areas of his body, with burning-hot pincers.
    His limbs were then broken with the blunt side of an axe to ensure he wouldn’t rise from the dead; he was then beheaded and his body burned on a pyre.
    The 16-page pamphlet chronicling his murders/cannibalism, torture, confession, and execution attained widespread commercial popularity - attaining a 'pulp fiction' status of its day.
    His arrest and conviction may have been a case of 'wrong place wrong time' (a posse of hunters had been trailing a large wolf-like creature, but when they moved in for the kill they found only him; who may have just been traveling through the woods).
    It has been theorized that he was a scapegoat for the Catholic Church, seeking to make an example out of converts to the Protestant faith.

Credit: BoyWiththeGreenHair


Featured in the following Annoying Collections:

Year In Review:

    In 2023, Out of 1 Votes: 100% Annoying
    In 2022, Out of 1 Votes: 0% Annoying
    In 2021, Out of 16 Votes: 87.50% Annoying
    In 2020, Out of 10 Votes: 20.0% Annoying
    In 2019, Out of 1 Votes: 0% Annoying
    In 2018, Out of 7 Votes: 14.29% Annoying
    In 2017, Out of 18 Votes: 50.0% Annoying
    In 2016, Out of 25 Votes: 60.0% Annoying