Case file · Folklore / legend
Bloodstoppers and Bearwalkers
In 1952 folklorist Richard Dorson published Bloodstoppers and Bearwalkers, from fieldwork in Michigan's Upper Peninsula, recording Ojibwe and Odawa beliefs about the bearwalk, a sorcerer who travels at night as a bear or a ball of light to harm enemies.
1952 CE · 46.40, -86.70 · status: legend
The account
The book also collected Finnish, Cornish, French-Canadian and lumberjack lore, including healers who could stop bleeding with a verse.
The sceptical view
Dorson recorded these as living beliefs; the book is ethnography, not evidence that the bearwalk exists.