Yesterday morning, I tried to post a few of my own ideas on Shape-shifters and what I think the beast with orange eyes might have been.
Though, for some strange reason, the little smiley face in the box talk longer to appear and I clicked on another topic and lost the whole thing. The post was pretty long and I couldn't be bothered retyping the whole thing. So I just left it.
Anyway, So I took a small piece of what I wrote and applied it to both stories you have submitted.
You weren't drunk or under the influence of drugs at the time, were you? The most common explanation, whether you have been mixing pain killers with alcohol or eating red and white polka dotted mushrooms.( I'm not suggesting you do this by the way as it can be fatal.) With particular regards to werewolves, were-cats and elements, ghosts etc. During the dark-ages in Europe, the peasants who were forced to farm in the lowlands where the ground was more damp.
Quite often having to make do with eating black fungus encrusted wheat. Which would have hallucinogenic effects on them.
Now one misconception about Wolves in general was that they were more active on nights of the half, three-quarter and full moon nights because these people only ever went outside on these nights because of the extra light. When it's probably true that wolves were active just about every night. Because they weren't effected one way or the other by the fuller face of the bright moon. Hunting as they had a far superior sense of smell and hearing. They would be out every-night and howling at the moon when it was full.
Combining these two ideas. Now these peasant farmers who having just eaten their fill of hallucinogens will go outside to gaze at the Fuller moon and in it's half light, as the drugs kick in. They would notice the wolf shapes on the edge of the forest appearing much larger than normal and perhaps more manlike. The sounds forest would seem much louder as another side effect.
There it is, one or two of my many explanations.
another much simpler one would be that somebody with enough special effects know-how is following you around with their bag of tricks.
The person you said you saw in the woods who was dressed like they came from another time period could very well have been a goth-punk ( This would explain the pale complexion.) walking through the woods on their way to fancy dress ( This would explain the weird dress sense.) party.
You said he appeared almost out of nowhere like
a phantom or apparition. Perhaps they're a professional burglar practicing subdefuge.
I always like to imagine all the mundane and
boring reasons for something strange before excepting more the bizarre ones.
I actually have a pet theory about the proven existence of ghost sightings. But only if they are true sightings and are not of people or were identified as somebody who existed. Particular the balls and whirls of lights responsible for poltergeist activity.
I think this is evidence of time-travel. The ghosts and similar phenomenon are the disembodied form of other people time-travelling back and forth. This why it is necessary that these ghost aren't the real ghost of people that were well known such as Elvis or a person that was just known by you. It would spoil my theory.
I had originally arrived at this whilst reading Michael Crichton's 'Time-Line' While the movie was in circulation. His idea was a machine that can break a object/living thing down to their atomic particles ( Or whatever is the lowest common denominator.) so small that they fell though the fabric of time. A wormhole to medieval Europe. ( I'm assuming they moved through space by the earths rotation without leaving the ground.) Those scientists were only trying to make a teleporter. So that they could speed up shipment of goods. The time-travel thing was very big side-effect.
This is where I thought that if this is Michael Crichton's idea of plausible fiction then why not this. If a body needed to be broken-down or physically obliterated to allow this to happen then what would be left of the person who's bodies been destroyed without killing them. A soul like what we believe a ghost to be or coded information the remains of a broken down living thing floating on the ether, barely perceived as opaque shade of their former self.
Another thing that I had read in one of the first Terry Pratchett Disc-world Novels ( some more plausible fiction.) that his idea of ghost was that they were spirits who are only
connected to time they were born through their physical body. Once they die, their spirit unhinges with the physical world and they begin to exist in every moment. To quote from ' Lure of the Wyrm'
'The Colour of Magic' The undead ruler of the Wyrmberg was saying to Two-Flower 'You see, one of the advantages of being dead is that one is released, as it were, from the normal bonds of time.' 'I can see everything that has happened or will happen, all at the same time. 'Imagine every moment being at one and the same time a distant memory and a nasty surprise.'.
This way a dis-embodied person can fly or float through the ages tuning in at a earlier time or in the future. The time-travelling spirit might appear as one of those balls of light. It may take the form of as it's own ghost when it is landing or has stopped time-traveling.
One of the things I didn't quite get from the 'Time-line' novel was that how did the people who time-jumped regain their physical bodies if they were destroyed when they left. They could take their physical selves with them because when the the machine zapped them they were reduced to code which would fall through the wyrm hole reappearing at the other end. In the movie they came out in the middle of a river. So I think their code wrote itself on to volumes of water remaking their physical bodies. It's like, isn't a large percentage of our bodies already made from water. I've heard that somewhere, but it doesn't sound right to me. I would like to think that out bodies are made from the other elements as well. That would be Earth, Air and Fire or as the Far Eastern Mystics would have it Wood, Fire, Earth and Metal. As well as Water. Still doesn't sound right. Though it does sound better. This is what I call plausible fiction.
Sorry if it doesn't make sense to you.
It could be assumed that these disembodied spirits who have time-traveled very far or have tuned into another time will need to find a body or vessel to possess to stay anchored there. This could also explain demonic possession as well as time travel.
What if they were only able to take hold of the body of a animal, such as a wild cat or wolf.
Think about that.
I think this whole thing here has swung back to the legends of Werewolves and other shape-shifters.
They are really disembodied time-travellers reassuming some of their substantial form by merging with what ever predatory animal is available nearby.
Suddenly animals with a disembodied humans code being written on them may almost assume the form of that person or go halfway looking like a human-animal hybrid.
But this is only fiction.
Link: I wouldn't tr this with a real werewolf.
