Theory: How Long Did It Take?

Right, so I'm a few drinks in, it's two days until Halloween, and I've stumbled back across an old Tumblr post I made about An American Werewolf in London. Past-me had some thoughts about the maths of Jack's journey from the Yorkshire Moors to London, and present-me (slightly drunk, having just watched The Nightmare Before Christmas and Corpse Bride because apparently I'm in the mood for Halloween shite) has decided this needs proper revisiting.

Look, I know what you're thinking. "Ewan's gone and done it again—he's overthinking a horror film from 1981 whilst mildly intoxicated." And you'd be absolutely right. More to the point, I know this doesn't actually matter. It's a werewolf film from 24 years before I was even born. The internal logic is "man gets bitten, man becomes wolf, everyone dies." That's it. That's the whole thing.

But I'm going to do the maths anyway, because apparently that's what I do with my evenings.

The Setup (Or: Why I'm Like This)

In An American Werewolf in London (and if you haven't watched it, what are you even doing? Go watch it. I'll wait. I've seen it at least five times in the last six years, so I can confidently say it holds up.), our unfortunate protagonist David Kessler spends roughly three weeks in a coma after the werewolf attack on the Yorkshire Moors. We know this from Dr Hirsch's dialogue—three weeks, give or take. Meanwhile, his best mate Jack (now decidedly deceased and looking rather worse for wear) appears to have made quite the journey.

Jack walks from the North York Moors to London. On foot. Whilst very much dead and increasingly decomposed.

And look, I know this is a supernatural horror film. I know the logistics don't matter. Jack's a ghost or a manifestation or whatever the curse does to its victims. He probably didn't physically walk anywhere—he just appeared when the plot needed him to warn David.

But my brain doesn't care about what's sensible. My brain wants to know: hypothetically, could he have walked it?

The Calculations (Or: How I Wasted My Evening, Again)

Right, so here's where things get interesting (to me, at least—you're probably already glazing over, and I don't blame you).

Let's assume Jack—who, according to the Head Hunter's Horror House wiki , was born in 1954 and died in 1981, making him 27 years old at the time of death—could walk at a fairly standard pace. For an adult male, that's about 3.04 miles per hour. Not running, not dawdling, just walking with purpose. The sort of pace you'd maintain if you were, say, compelled by supernatural forces to deliver an urgent message to your best friend about becoming a werewolf.

(Though let's be honest, if you're already dead and rotting, walking speed probably isn't your primary concern.)

Now, the distance from the North York Moors National Park to London varies depending on which route you take. The shortest route is about 264 miles, whilst the longest could be as much as 375 miles. Splitting the difference gives us an average of 319.5 miles. (Yes, I know that's not how route planning works. No, I don't care. We're dealing with an undead American here, not Google Maps.)

So: 319.5 miles divided by 3.04 miles per hour equals... 105 hours, 5 minutes, and 55.263 seconds of walking. Which translates to approximately 4.38 days of continuous walking.

Four. Point. Three. Eight. Days.

Does this matter? No. Does the film care about this? Also no. Did I spend time calculating it anyway? Absolutely.

The Problem (That Isn't Actually a Problem)

Here's where the maths gets fun (and by "fun" I mean "completely pointless but I'm doing it anyway").

David was in a coma for three weeks—roughly 21 days. Jack's journey, even if he walked non-stop without rest (which, fair enough, he doesn't need sleep anymore), would only take about 4.4 days.

So what was Jack doing for the other 16.6 days?

Now, before you answer "Ewan, he's a supernatural manifestation, he doesn't need to account for his time"—yes, I know. I know. But humour me for a moment whilst I wildly speculate about things that don't matter.

Did he get lost? Was he delayed at a service station? Did he stop to contemplate his newfound undead status? Did he take the scenic route through the Peak District because, I don't know, even ghosts appreciate a nice view?

The actual answer, of course, is that this isn't how the curse works. Jack doesn't physically walk anywhere. He manifests when David needs warning. The three-week timeframe is about the lunar cycle, not travel time. The film never suggests Jack literally trudged down the M1 (though that image is absolutely brilliant—imagine the lorry drivers trying to explain that to their supervisors).

Though actually, here's a thought that's just occurred to me (blame the drinks): the film's canon establishes that werewolf victim ghosts are only visible to the person carrying the curse, right? So if Jack did somehow physically manifest during his "journey," he'd be completely invisible to everyone except David (who's unconscious in hospital). Which means Jack could have been accidentally appearing in people's living rooms, service stations, and possibly that one Tesco in Leicester, and absolutely nobody would have noticed. Just this progressively rotting American bloke wandering through England, completely imperceptible to the general public.

That's genuinely hilarious to me. Imagine being Jack, trying to navigate your way south, accidentally manifesting in someone's kitchen whilst they're making tea, and they just walk straight through you. The existential horror of being dead and irrelevant.

Though I suppose the exception would be anyone absolutely off their face on drugs. You know there'd be at least a few people tripping in the early 80s who'd catch a glimpse of decomposing Jack shuffling past and just think "yeah, that tracks." Some bloke outside a pub in Nottingham absolutely convinced he saw a rotting corpse walk by, trying to explain it to his mates who are just patting him on the shoulder going "sure you did, mate, sure you did." Jack's out here traumatising people who are already having a rough time of it, completely by accident.

And you know he'd have walked straight through Birmingham at some point. Probably manifested in the Bull Ring or something, absolutely terrifying someone who's already questioning their life choices. Though to be fair, if you're in Birmingham in 1981 and you see a decomposing American corpse, that's probably not even in the top five weirdest things you'd witness that week.

But my brain, in its infinite wisdom, decided this needed working out anyway.

Why This Doesn't Matter (And Why I Did It Anyway)

Here's the thing—I know this is reading far too much between the lines. I know John Landis wasn't sitting there thinking "right, how long would it take a corpse to walk from Yorkshire to London?" The film's internal logic is about the curse, the moon, the bloodline. Not walking speeds and route planning.

But this is what my brain does. This is what happens when you have a special interest in lycanthropy and a tendency to overthink absolutely everything. You watch a brilliant horror film and instead of just enjoying it like a normal person, you start doing maths about supernatural logistics.

And look, there's something quite funny about applying real-world physics and geography to a film about werewolves. It's like trying to work out the caloric intake necessary to fuel a transformation, or calculating the structural engineering required for a full moon to affect human biology. It's completely pointless, but it's also somehow... satisfying?

Maybe it's the autism. Maybe it's just my brain refusing to let things go. Maybe it's the drinks talking. Probably all three.

The Actual Point (If There Is One)

So, is it realistic that Jack walked from the North York Moors to London in the time David was comatose? Mathematically, yes—he could have made the journey several times over.

Does this matter to the film? Not even slightly.

Does it matter to me? Apparently, yes, enough that I've now written about it twice—once on Tumblr and once here, whilst slightly drunk.

The film works because it doesn't explain everything. Jack appears when he's needed. The curse does what it does. The specifics don't matter because the horror comes from the inevitability, not the logistics. David's going to transform. Jack can't rest. The bloodline needs severing. That's the important bit.

But my brain sees "three weeks" and "Yorkshire to London" and goes "right, let's work this out then." And so here we are.

Final Thoughts (Or: Why Am I Like This)

I've definitely spent far too long thinking about this—both when I originally posted it on Tumblr and now, whilst mildly drunk and deciding it deserved a proper blog post. This is what happens when you combine lycanthropy as a special interest with a tendency to read far too much between the lines of everything. And when you're Gen Z obsessing over a film that came out 24 years before you were born.

The truth is, none of this matters. An American Werewolf in London is a brilliant film regardless of whether Jack's travel time makes sense. The horror works. The comedy works. The tragedy of David's situation works. Whether Jack walked, manifested, or teleported via supernatural means is completely irrelevant to why the film is good.

But I calculated it anyway, because apparently that's just what I do now.

If you're reading this and thinking "Ewan, this is an extremely normal amount of thought to put into something that absolutely doesn't matter," then congratulations, you're probably also autistic and/or extremely into werewolf cinema. Welcome to the club. We have silver bullets, questionable walking distance calculations, and a tendency to overthink supernatural logistics whilst tipsy.

For everyone else... well, at least now you know that Jack's journey, whilst narratively and supernaturally irrelevant, is at least mathematically possible. Not that it matters. Because it doesn't.

(The film is still brilliant though. Seriously, go watch it if you haven't.)