Today’s Milwaukee Journal Sentinel carries a very humorous column by Jim Stingl about the most unfunny stabbing of a man by two Milwaukee women. The stabber-in-chief said they were just trying to achieve a risque form of entertainment they called spirit werewolfism. Since many of my book titles include the word “werewolves,” I received a call from Stingl — of whom I am a fan — who wondered if I had any thoughts on the bizarre event.
I told him that it seemed like an eerie replay of a 1989 event where one Deborah Kazuck and a woman friend lured a man to their apartment and then ambushed him by leaping from behind the shower curtain with an ax. They chased him while shouting Redrum! (murder backwards). They explained later that they were trying to invoke the spirit of Jack the Ripper by “kacking” someone.The kackee survived, as did the werewolf spirit victim, but both suffered severe injuries. Stingl, in fact, wrote a 1996 column about Kazuck’s possible release from a mental hospital
The parallels seem amazing to me, as does the fact that both these cases are obvious instances of mental illness. In 1989 Jack the Ripper was popular as a violent power symbol, and right now it’s the werewolf. I’m not sure what the next big anti-hero fad will be, but I advise lonely single guys in Milwaukee to be very very careful of any woman’s apartment decorated with posters of, say, the devil. And for safety’s sake, they may want to consider dating upright canines or lady Bigfoot instead — at least no one I know of has been sent to the hospital by those creatures.
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