When I was a child, tales of vicious beasts
roaming the streets of Newark, New Jersey kept me up at night. The
man-imals were called, lukeroos, supposedly urban werewolves.
Oddly, when I grew up I couldn’t find any mention of them, but with the help of the internet, I began piecing together the evidence of a legend.
The word lukeroo often pops up in searches as a question... What is it?
So, I wasn’t the only one who remembered the shape-shifting
bloodthirsty creatures. I also found people searching under several
different spellings, lookeroo, lugeroo, loogaroo, ligahoo, lugaru.
Lugaro was most productive because it’s the phonetic spelling for the French word, Loup-Garou, which means werewolf.
While legends of Loup-Garous are most prominent in Louisiana as a bayou wolf-man, the term Lukeroo probably has its origins among northern Native Americans who had the most contact with French settlers and military in the north and Canada.
Shape shifters were known to Native Americans long before the French, and creatures like the popular Bigfoot were as elusive to hunting parties as they are today. Less known, but more frightening were Wendegos, people cursed by a malevolent spirit because they cannibalized another human being.
So now my childhood nightmare was coming to life.
The late 1960s and early 70s was a turbulent time in Newark and other cities around America.
Mothers and grandmothers losing their children to urban strife and a drug boom turned to what’s most likely is a gross mispronunciation of a legend passed down through generations of Native-American and Afro-American relations.
I knew Lukeroos hid among bad crowds and lured youngsters to increase their evil numbers, but most disturbing, they could change at will into vicious wolves and devour people out after dark.
Lukeroos sound a lot like the street gangs popping up back then, and they sound a lot like the Loup-Garou and Wendego legends.
My conclusion is the Lukeroo is a hybrid of legends meant to scare children from trouble makers and keep them off the street at night.
Oddly, when I grew up I couldn’t find any mention of them, but with the help of the internet, I began piecing together the evidence of a legend.
Lugaro was most productive because it’s the phonetic spelling for the French word, Loup-Garou, which means werewolf.
While legends of Loup-Garous are most prominent in Louisiana as a bayou wolf-man, the term Lukeroo probably has its origins among northern Native Americans who had the most contact with French settlers and military in the north and Canada.
Shape shifters were known to Native Americans long before the French, and creatures like the popular Bigfoot were as elusive to hunting parties as they are today. Less known, but more frightening were Wendegos, people cursed by a malevolent spirit because they cannibalized another human being.
So now my childhood nightmare was coming to life.
The late 1960s and early 70s was a turbulent time in Newark and other cities around America.
Mothers and grandmothers losing their children to urban strife and a drug boom turned to what’s most likely is a gross mispronunciation of a legend passed down through generations of Native-American and Afro-American relations.
I knew Lukeroos hid among bad crowds and lured youngsters to increase their evil numbers, but most disturbing, they could change at will into vicious wolves and devour people out after dark.
Lukeroos sound a lot like the street gangs popping up back then, and they sound a lot like the Loup-Garou and Wendego legends.
My conclusion is the Lukeroo is a hybrid of legends meant to scare children from trouble makers and keep them off the street at night.
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