Imagine you are an early settler of the great state of Pennsylvania. You are a very successful sheepherder who makes their living off of maintaining their flock. One day, you wake up and one of your sheep is dead; mauled to death by a predator. Soon, everyone in your neighborhood reports many of their sheep being killed or taken by wolves. You decide to put an end to this and go out hunting for these wolves. On your hunt, you see an old wolf crossing the road and shoot it. Injured, it limps off into the woods where it later succumbs to its injuries. You return the next day to locate the body of the wolf and instead you find an old man that has been shot and killed. 

According to a legend from the 1800s, out of Schwaben Valley located in Northumberland County, PA, there lived a community of sheepherders. In the community, there was a 12-year-old French girl named May Paul who looked after her family’s flock of sheep. One day she was visited by a strange old man who was known as an outsider, and had rumors swirling that he was a werewolf. This man appeared to be infatuated with May and when he was around her, the wolves that had been wreaking havoc on the community did not bother her or her family’s flock. One full moon night, one of the neighbors saw an old wolf crossing the road and shot it. The next morning, he followed the trail of blood and instead of finding a dead wolf, he found an old man who had been shot through the heart. The neighbor buried the body near the road and named it “die Woolf man’s grob” which translated to “Wolf Man’s Grave”. 

On April 8th, 2023 a group of peers and I sought out on an adventure to find this very grave. Our journey began in the early afternoon hours of a Saturday. We all met up right outside of the HUB and headed toward our designated driver Sierra’s borrowed car. We knew that our first destination was Schwaben Valley in Northumberland County and so we grabbed our maps and headed that direction. We took back roads and roads that didn’t look like a car was even supposed to be on them the whole way there, passing through Amish country. Our drive through “Amish-ville” took about an hour and a half and I remember feeling like a sightseeing tourist the whole way through. I had never seen so many goats, cows, and clothes drying outside on a clothesline. At about two hours in, we stopped by a church that looked promising. We walked around in its small graveyard, but could not find any tombstones that seemed to be related to May Paul or the old man, and so we moved on. 

A few miles ahead, we came across another church. This church had me feeling very excited because the name plastered on the side of the church was “Wolf’s Cross Road”. As we walked around the graveyard, we saw many tombstones with the name Wolf written on it. However, as the number of graves multiplied we slowly came to the assumption that it must have been a family name and decided we weren’t satisfied with the notion that we had found the Wolf Man’s Grave, and so we pushed onward. After about another 20 minutes of driving, we made it to a town called Sunbury, which appeared to be closer to Schwaben Valley and closer to a church in a town called Rebock, that I specifically had thought of as a potential location. 

Sunbury was a very old town that appeared like it had been ripped out of a colonial history book, except for the ironic, centrally placed oasis of a Burger King (where Chryztina suggested we stop for a much needed lunch break). In Sunbury, we walked around until we saw a really cool antique store that had many old oddities. Before we got sidetracked by the items in the store, we asked the local workers if they had ever heard of the Wolfman legend, and even though they hadn’t, they pointed us in the direction of a potentially fruitful location. At this point, we were four hours deep into our endeavor and we were all about ready to wrap up our trip. We made our way to our final hopeful destination at Himmel’s Church. There, we saw the alleged bridge that the Wolfman was seen crossing when he got shot and we snapped a photograph to commemorate our discovery. At that time, it was about 6 pm and because we knew we might have difficulty retracing our steps, we decided it was best to stop our search there, and head back home. 

We began to retrace our steps and looking back on it, I believe that we ended up taking one too many wrong turns. We started to think about potentially breaking the Tripping by the Rules guidelines for our safety, but we couldn’t have even if we wanted to because there was no service. On top of our phones being useless and transporting us back to the 90’s, it was as if the little boxes were laughing at us, as the top of our phones read “SOS”, which is something I had never seen before. As a result of this, we were afraid to keep driving in the wrong direction and so one of the braver members of our travel party, Catherine, stepped out of the car and asked a nearby couple if they knew how to get to Penn State from wherever the hell we were. The couple ended up being a lifesaver and pointed us in the right direction to the main road. Once we finally saw civilization in the form of a terrifyingly busy highway, we were able to figure out how to find our way back to Penn State. We ended up back home in Happy Valley after our trip had elapsed a total of 7 hours.

Upon returning to the comfort and familiarity of my dorm room I was able to reflect on the festivities of the day. Being out in an unfamiliar area with peers made me feel very accomplished. I believe the word is “trauma bonding”, but the idea of possibly getting lost in the middle of central PA with the people I was on the trip with, made me feel strangely bonded to them in a way that I have only seen in movies, like the Goonies. Traveling through Amish country was such a great experience for me as well, and it made me think that if the zombie apocalypse were to ever come, the Amish would truly rule the world. Lastly, this trip ended up making me think of my childhood life in a much different way. Being from Chicago, I had never really seen many old tombstones, churches or towns and walking through the historic area of Sunbury made me realize just how young my state is in comparison to the state of Pennsylvania.

I believe that following the rules set out by Tripping by the Rules made for a more difficult yet arguably, a more enjoyable trip experience. First and foremost, it made it much more difficult during the planning process because the legend that I had originally read only gave a vague and very large location where the events might have taken place, which caused us to really have to “guestimate” where the community of sheepherders may have even existed. The idea of getting lost was definitely aggravated by following these rules however, the fun I had for sure made up for it. Finally, the ability to go to Sunbury was a reward that would not have been possible if we knew exactly where we were headed. Getting the opportunity to talk to locals and see many tombstones from the late 1700’s was also a super neat experience that would not have occurred if we knew where we were going. 

All in all, even though following the rules was more hazardous, it made for a more adventurous and memorable excursion. And, even though we never found an exact tombstone that marked where the Wolfman drew his final breath, the area that we found was so close to the limited description provided in the legend that I believe with more time and the proper tools, we could have dug up bones that belonged to the old man.