Werewolves and wolves in sheep's clothing

My personal experience with werewolves involves the Twilight movie franchise and the Vampire Diaries television shows. As children, we are exposed to these myths early on and they are mentally put in the same categories as vampires and ghosts. This mental set has sort of separated the reality behind what actually happened when the myth of werewolves originated. When I hear about witches I now know the history behind what happened at the Salem witch trials, but I did not know there would be a similar history behind werewolves -- I thought of it more as a ghost story people told back when early settlers were afraid of the woods at night. What I found most interesting when reading about werewolves was that they actually may have just been pedophiles or serial killers. Just like we see today with cannibalistic serial killers, I think that there were likely similar mental illnesses throughout the history of time before anyone even knew what a mental illness was. Cannibalism does cross an interesting line between wild animal and man since humans evolved from something similarly wild but have become a more conscious/civilized species. It is interesting to learn about the history of werewolves and see the myth in a new light knowing that it was something people were prosecuted for.