Supernatural the book of monsters, demons, spirits and ghouls

Shapeshifters, (BEARWALKER), part 3

In northern Michigan, Chippewa legend tells of bearwalkers, usually shamans of some kind who gain the power of shapeshifting-almost always into a bear, but occasionally into an owl as well. You can spot a bearwalker because when they're on the way to work their magic, they breathe spectral fire. Anyone who gets too close to the bearwalker will be paralyzed and fall to the ground, unless they have medicine to counteract it. And if you do, and can get your arms around the bearwalker, it will revert to human form.

The bearwalker visits four times, four days apart. Around the victim's house, family members will see a light moving in the trees. After the fourth visit, the victim dies. Four days after the victim is buried, the bearwalker must visit the grave and recover part of the body-usually one finger and the tip of the tongue-or he too will die, after four months have passed.

This is another way of identifying and eliminating them, but it's not one we like. Our job is to save people, and it's definitely not cool to wait until you've already lost a loved one before joining the hunt.
Bearwalkers are vulnerable to being shot, but it takes a tough hombre to withstand the bearwalker's magic long enough to aim a gun. More often than not, you fall over and lie on the side of the road while the bearwalker strolls past you on its way to finish its charm. If you do manage to shoot it, it will disappear, heading off somewhere lonely to die. Sometimes that's how the local Indians know who was a bearwalker, when word spreads that one was shot and a sudden disappearance follows.
On a lighter note, sometimes the bearwalker uses its powers to win over a reluctant lover. Here's a story Dad overheard while he was traveling in Michigan's Upper Peninsula:
Outside L'Anse, in a roadhouse full of Indians from the lumber camp down the way:
There was a white woman named Jennie who had an Indian working for her-a shiftless, Lazy Sioux. She hated him so much that if he was at a table, she wouldn't sit down, but he bragged down around the docks that he was going to have her. All I have to do, he said, is go into the woods and find the right root, and you'll see. I'll have that Jennie. Well, all of his buddies down at the docks, they made fun of him, but pretty soon he started leaving little candies around the table, and Jennie would eat them when he wasn't around so he wouldn't know she was doing it, and wouldn't you know it, all of a sudden-wasn't but a couple of months later-she up and married him. Then, when he had her in his power, he treated her real bad, almost starved her to death. He worked his bearwalk on one of her relatives, too, and that was enough. They took care of him, and we didn't ever see him around here no more.

Well, maybe that note isn't so much lighter after all. Sounds to us like the Indians in Michigan have their own hunters. We'll have to drop by sometime, compare notes. Maybe see if there're still any bearwalkers around.