Fun Fact #421 Witches' Vs Werewolves

Fun Fact #421

Witches Vs Werewolves

In 1580 rumors spread in northern Italy of a group of witches in the Friuli region who worked at night roaming the countryside. Thus Inquisitor Fra' Felice de Montefalco was dispatched, quickly discovering a formerly closed investigation into the group responsible known only as: The Benandanti (The Good Walkers). 

The Benandanti denied being witches but openly confessed to sending their spirits out while they were asleep on Thursday nights (referred to as the Witch’s Sabbath in the investigation). Supposedly, their spirits wandered until they found witches cursing crops, where their spirits would enter local wolves and attack the witches. This method of people entering animals in dreams is how most people thought of Werewolves through most of history, only changing in 1913 when The Bison Film Company made the first ever Werewolf movie. They used a man in a suit for the special effect, and it's stuck ever since.

As for the Inquisitor, the idea of Heroic Werewolves seemed to legitimately confuse him and the rest of the Roman Inquisition. Eventually they solved this by declaring that while being a werewolf isn't inherently wrong, the use of magic to project your spirit was. Thus the Benandanti were condemned as witches and the word Benandanti is now synonymous with “Stregha (Witch)” in Friulian Folklore. 

Speculative Explanation I found: 

In the modern day many people have tried to piece together what exactly happened. It has been discovered that there is an abnormally large amount of coma victims in this region (for reasons unknown). Meanwhile, the grain they grew for food at that time is known for frequent failures. These two factors may have been combined in people’s attempts to explain why crops would fail some years along with general bad luck, Thus giving rise to the myth.