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In the general horror genre monsters abound. Some are what we might call external monsters, hideous creatures who are always and instantly indentifiable as monsters. This is where we find the Abominable Snowman, Grendel, the Creature from the Black Lagoon, Doctor Frankenstein's luckless creation, and any of several variations on the living mummy.

In a sense, we could also call these monsters of circumstance. The Abominable Snowman and the Creature are not, after all, really evil. It is just in their nature to do things that people perceive as evil because they cause harm to other people. A crocodile who eats a small child is not, after all, intentionally committing murder or any other evil act. He's just being a crocodile and, from a crocodile's viewpoint, a small human being isn't an intellectually superior being—he's just food.

With Frankenstein's monster, this is even more pronounced. Mary Shelly made it quite clear that, if there is any evil involved, it was Frankenstein's desire to play God and meddle with things beyond his real capabilities. As for the monster, he seems to be not so much evil as a victim of his own size and ugliness. Perceived as a monster by all who behold him, he naturally takes on those qualities.

Mummies vary. The one in Poe's short story was a very friendly chap who simply chose mummification as a method of hanging around long enough to see the future. An early version of cryogenic preservation, so to speak, though without the liquid nitrogen. In Karloff's movie, one could question whether Imhotep was truly evil, or merely obsessed with his long-dead girl friend and willing to sacrifice her spirit's current body in order to reunit it with the original. One suspects that, had he succeeded, the two living mummies would have thereafter simply faded back into the Cairo population and minded their own business.

The more recent version of Imhotep, as portrayed by Arnold Vosloo, shows a rather nastier incarnation, though how much is a now inately evil character, and how much simply the need to show off a lot of spectacular digital effects, is hard to say.

But there is also another type of monster, an inner monster. That is, the ordinary looking person or beast from which, at times, emerges a monstrous inner creature. In real life, we find this type personified in the Ted Bundys of the world. Bundy was, after all, handsome, charming and, at the same time, an obsessive murderer of young women.

Perhaps even more so, this type of character emerges from a David Berkowitz. Bundy, it must be noted, led a fairly interesting life even without his murderous secret existence and, had he not started killing, might very well have ended up as a governor or senator. Berkowitz, on the other hand, was a complete non-entity.

Both men blamed their murders on outside causes. Berkowitz, or so he claimed, had been ordered to kill by his neighbor's dog. Bundy blamed his killings on excessive exposure to pornography. Of the two, Berkowitz's is probably more plausible, being a manifestation of his delusional behavior. Bundy was more likely offering up the cause du jour for his attentive audience, a rabid anti-porn crusader, in an effort to postpone his execution. He might just as easily have blamed half-sweet pickles had he found someone who had the same pathological hatred of pickles as his religiously-motivated interlocutor had of porn.

In fiction, literary and cinematic, this type of inner monster is found in the subtle machinations of a Hannibal Lector, who was capable of appearing perfectly normal most of the time, or in the physically manifested schizophrenia of Lon Chaney's Jr's Larry Talbot in The Wolfman. An equally compelling manifestation is found in Stevenson's The Strange Tale of Doctor Jeykll and Mister Hyde. Both Hyde and the Wolfman, one through chemistry, the other through mysticism, are able to give physical form to their suppressed primitive nature. Neither of them particularly cares for the result.

In one sense they differ. Doctor Jeykll's alternate persona is self-generated, arising from an experiment gone awry. Seeking to excise the brutish and create in himself a higher, more spiritual being, the good doctor found himself confronted by precisely the opposite, with the inner brute taking over and physically changing his body in the process.

Hyde might be thought of as a fully-grown infant, concerned only with his own physical pleasures and not really caring about anyone else beyond their usefulness in catering to his needs. He is also a moral lesson in the dangers of chemical addiction. Jekyll could, presumably, have halted his experiment after the initial attempt, when it was already clear that no good could come of it. Instead, like any other addict, he continued until the Hyde persona literally took over, becoming able to emerge even without the transformative potion.

Talbot is different. He had no desire to become a werewolf, after all. He becomes infected with the curse through his own altruism, rescuing a victim of another werewolf and being bitten in the process. At first refusing to believe, when he is transformed for the first time he would stop it at once, but knows that nothing less than his own death, accomplished by a silver bullet, can prevent the wolf returning at the next full moon. Like most normal men he cannot bring that end himself. He desires to live out the rest of his life, the normal part of it, like any other person.

If we look at the historic literature on the werewolf we find a fantastic collection of folk tales, trial evidence, and conjecture. We know that transformative lycanthropy is phyically impossible. Human beings are not shape shifters. Neither can witches fly through the air, with or without the help of a broom. Yet there is sworn court testimony to both of these things.

Closer examination of the court records shows that testimony usually came from the accused, who was admitting to his/her crimes. The fact that no one else had seen the simple-minded peasant turn into a wolf, or the old crone riding across the sky, hardly mattered. The accused was admitting it, which was certainly enough. Midæval peasants knew nothing of mental illness, nor of hallucinations, presuming that such things were the work of demons, or even the Devil himself.

After all, if someone was willing to admit to something that could be punished by death, it seemed logical enough to presume that admission was true, even though torture had been involved. There were, in fact, those who believed that people were more likely to tell the truth under torture. If nothing else, this points up the sound basis for the total prohibition of self-incrimination in Jewish law, as well as the somewhat less stringent prohibition on compelled self-incrimination in American law. People will sometimes tell tales against their own best interests. Tales which may not even be true, except in their own delusions.

This idea of an inner monster is common in fiction. Countless authors have used it over the years. We like the notion of things not being what they seem. Werewolves, at least the sort who physically change, are fascinating, for they speak to primal fears. Every man will sometimes see the brute within, and fear encountering the trigger that will release him. These stories provide a vicarious release. They frighten us, but they also help to keep our own primitive passions in check.