History & local legend
Philadelphia’s 1876 Centennial Exhibition displayed mounted animals among its educational exhibits. A surviving photograph of the United States Government Building shows large specimens, including a moose and bison, arranged above the visitors. A later folklore account gave some of the fair’s taxidermy a stranger role.
Neil Arnold’s 2008 telling described stuffed wolves at the Centennial whose hides served as bodies for spirits. The animals were lifeless exhibits by day but belonged to a tradition in which preserved skins could return to activity.
Folklorist Henry W. Shoemaker recorded a related Pennsylvania story in 1927 about mounted wolves leaving their resting places to hunt at night.
Sources
- Neil Arnold, Philadelphia Weirdness 3, Phillyist, February 13, 2008, Centennial wolf tradition
- Tales to Make Your Skin Crawl, quoting Henry W. Shoemaker’s 1951 New York Folklore Quarterly note about the 1927 variant
- Smithsonian Institution Archives, Centennial mammal exhibit and 1876 photograph
- Athenaeum of Philadelphia, original Centennial art gallery, Memorial Hall
