Tl;dr? You can listen to me talk about this here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KSCg9lm9kCw



The Rake

Most of my knowledge is about older monsters, so, while I’m not an expert on the creepy stories that circulate on the internet today, I do find them fascinating. After all, the spread and development of these new stories is instantly saved by the internet. You can track them back, almost to their origins sometimes. However, while most people seem enthralled with The Slender man, I am more interested in The Rake.

The ‘original’ stories are easy to find. They describe a strange beast, resembling a naked man, or some strange, hairless dog, with wet hands and black eyes. It seems perfectly capable of communicating with humans, and can invade a home easily. In ways similar to phantom black dogs, such as the church grimm or gytrash, it seems to foretell impending ill fortune, but while it inspires dread, it, in some, it inspires childlike playfulness and curiosity.

It wasn’t until later that I realized that perhaps the reason why The Rake caught my interest more than any of the other internet legends is because I recognized it. No, not from a personal encounter --that’d be far too outrageous-- but from my research on another subject: werewolves.

It’s easy to see the few similarities… both are half human, half canine creatures. But The Rake isn’t some furry beast… it’s a malformed, naked thing. Not terribly werewolfish… until you read some accounts published a century ago. In 1912, Elliot O’Donell published the encounter experienced by Miss St. Denis of Merionethshire in his book Werewolves. On her way home one evening, she spotted a strange figure, which she mistook for a man. She called out to it, asking the time, but it did not reply. The figure stalked her, until she was able to see it for what it was—a nude, grey thing, with a body like a man’s but the head was like a wolf. It had pawlike hands… but, strangely, it slowly vanished when her flashlight shone upon it. The one thing that seems contradictory to the current rake stories is that its eyes were described as being light, and ablaze with ferocity. But who is to say the Rake’s eyes are always dark? In the same book is another tale from Cumberland, in which the Anderson Family was plagued by a similar naked, grey, wolf-headed beast, which only showed itself once, but before that, had been heard wandering around the house.

However, in addition to the stories on the internet, there is more. Linda Godfrey’s Hunting the American Werewolf tells another story of a werewolf specter in someone’s home, this time in Eau Claire. In 2003, Chad Lewis was startled to find himself face-to-face with a dark creature with oily, furless skin that resembled a man, with the head of a snarling wolf, though it was missing the ears. In this instance, the eyes once again, were not black 9this time they were yellow), but in addition its hands were very large, and sported long, jagged claws. When the man grabbed for his baseball bat and looked to swing at the creature, it had vanished into thin air.

It could easily be coincidence… after all, there are other encounters with demonic, werewolflike specters, ranging from a tale of a nude, but luminous werewolf figure, to the famous hexham heads, which are associated with poltergeist-like activity and a dark furred, werewolf-like apparition. Besides, these monsters aren't real... they're made up by folks on internet forums for their own entertainment.

But really… who knows?