SOURCE: "Wolfshead" (Weird Tales, April 1926) by Robert E. Howard

DESCRIPTION: "De Montour was standing, legs braced, arms thrown back, fists clenched. The muscles bulged beneath his skin, his eyes widened and narrowed, the veins stood out upon his forehead as if in great physical effort. As I looked, to my horror, out of nothing, a shapeless, nameless something took vague form! Like a shadow it moved upon de Montour. It hovered about him! Good God, it was merging, becoming one with the man!"

PLOT: A traveller to Africa visits the plantation of Dom Vicente da Lusto. A monster attacks the Dom's guests and the narrator sees the terrible creature. Later he finds out the truth from De Montour, a swordsman staying at the plantation. Witnessing the transformation, he sees that De Montour is the werewolf he calls "Wolfshead". The native tribesmen around the plantation attack and the whites must flee. In wolfman form De Montour must swim the crocdile-infested river to  reach the storehouses to ignite the dynamite to blow up the dam and save everyone. He does, and the explosion cures him of his curse.

WEREWOLF FACTS: The werewolf in "Wolfshead" is like a ghostly protoplasm that comes with the full moon, attaching itself onto the head of the victim. The werewolf doesn't take the shape of a wolf but is a "Wolf-headed man". The curse is lifted from De Montour when an explosion of dynamite splits the man from the monster, leaving the ghostly component at the bottom of an African river.

INTERESTING FACTS: Howard may have been the first writer to use the "Wolfman" idea before Henry Hull made it popular in The Werewolf of London (1933). Werewolves before this were always wolf-shaped, not the cross-species baddies that filmmakers found much easier to use. Howard may have seen something like this in a silent film but it is more likely he was inspired by the idea of the ectoplasmic werewolf used by O'Donnell or Blackwood. The racism of the story is sadly all his own.