When Julia Pastrana was born, in the mountains of Western
Mexico in 1834, her mother worried that her looks were the result
of supernatural interference. The local native tribes often blamed
the naualli, a breed of shape-shifting werewolves, for stillbirths
and deformities, and after seeing her daughter for the first time,
Julia’s mother is said to have whispered their name. She fled her
tribe — or was cast out — not long after.
Two years later, Mexican herders searching for a missing cow
found Julia and her mother hiding in a mountain cave. They took
them to the nearest city, where Julia was placed in an orphanage.
Sweet, intelligent, and almost totally covered in black hair, she
became a local celebrity. After hearing of her unusual looks and
charming disposition, the state governor adopted Julia to serve
as a live-in amusement and maid. She stayed with the governor
until she was twenty, when she decided to return to her own tribe.
But she never completed the trip home: an American showman
known as M. Rates met her somewhere on her journey back to
the mountains, and persuaded her to take up a life onstage.
Julia would go on to become one of the most famous human
curiosities of the nineteenth century, variously known as “the Ape
Woman,” “the Bear Woman,” or “the B