Folklore / history Posillipo, Naples, Italy
Naples: The 'Lupa Mannara' of Posillipo, a 'Mal di Luna' Story Retold (Aug 29, 2016)
On August 29, 2016, the Naples culture site Vesuvio Live retold the story of a woman it says was born in Rome in 1921 and became known as the "Lupa Mannara" (female werewolf) of Posillipo. The site frames it as a story "according to legend."
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On August 29, 2016, the Naples culture site Vesuvio Live retold the story of a woman it says was born in Rome in 1921 and became known as the "Lupa Mannara" (female werewolf) of Posillipo. The site frames it as a story "according to legend."
Vesuvio Live says she developed "mal di luna" (moon sickness) at age 12 and that, around the 1940s, the press took an interest. She described nightly attacks of excitement and a burning throat that forced her to keep drinking and made her moan in a way that sounded like howling; the site adds that the transformation was only internal. It says she fled to Posillipo hoping the sea would soothe her, was arrested during a crisis in a venue, and was shut in the Incurabili hospital, then escaped and disappeared. The article closes with a note on clinical lycanthropy as a psychiatric condition.
The page cites no 1940s newspaper, hospital record or date for any of this. It is a local legend about a person who may have had a medical condition, not a record of an incident, and her name is withheld here.
Sources
Original typographic cover — Monstrum Athenaeum.