True Crime Campfire - Prey: The Story of the Beast of Gevaudan

Episode Date: September 27, 2024

Like a lot of fairy tales, early versions of “Little Red Riding Hood” were quite a bit different from the story most of us heard growing up. There was no heroic huntsman with an axe, there was no tricking the wolf into a well. At the end of the tale, girl and grandmother were both devoured, and the only happy-ever-after was for the wolf. For most of human history, wolves have been a source of real darkness and fear—and for most of human history, that reputation had been entirely undeserved. But not always. Every now and again, growling, sharp-fanged beasts have wreaked havoc throughout the land, a grim reminder of primordial times when mankind was just another target to fill an empty stomach…and at least part of the origin of the werewolf stories we still love telling today. Join us for the perfect start to the Halloween season, a true story straight out of the Grimm Brothers. Free shipping and 365-day returns from Quince: https://quince.com/happycamperSources:Beast by S.R Schwalb and Gustavo Sanchez RomeroSmithsonian Magazine: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/beast-gevaudan-terrorized-france-countryside-180963820/Scientific American: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-has-a-group-of-orcas-suddenly-started-attacking-boats/Follow us, campers!Patreon (join to get all episodes ad-free, at least a day early, an extra episode a month, and a free sticker!): https://patreon.com/TrueCrimeCampfirehttps://www.truecrimecampfirepod.com/Facebook: True Crime CampfireInstagram: https://gramha.net/profile/truecrimecampfire/19093397079Twitter: @TCCampfire https://twitter.com/TCCampfireEmail: [e-mail]! https://true-crime-campfire.myspreadshop.comBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/true-crime-campfire--4251960/support.

Hello, campers. Grab your marshmallows and gather around the true crime campfire. We're your camp counselors. I'm Katie. And I'm Whitney. And we're here to tell you a true story that is way stranger than fiction. We're roasting murderers and marshmallows around the true crime campfire. Like a lot of fairy tales, early versions of Little Red Riding Hood were quite a bit different from the story most of us heard growing up. There was no heroic huntsman with an axe. There was no tricking the wolf into a well. At the end of the tale, girl and grandmother were both devoured,

and the only happy ever after was for the wolf. For most of human history, wolves have been a source of real darkness and fear, and for most of human history, that reputation has been entirely undeserved. But not always. Every now and again, growling, sharp-fanged beasts have wreaked havoc throughout the land, a grim reminder of primordial times when mankind was just another target to fill an empty stomach, and at least part of the origin of the werewolf stories we still love telling today. This is Prey, the story of the Beast of Jevodon.

So, Campers, we're starting this one in the tiny, mountain village of Les Ubac, down in the rugged woods and hills of south central France. June 30th, 1764, just before sunset. A girl's screams echoed down from one of the pastures further up in the hills, startling the village folk. This was a tough land, where children started working not long after they started walking, often as herders who guided sheep and cattle to their pastures in the morning, then back again at night. Fourteen-year-old Jean-Boulet had taken some sheep up to where the screams had come from. Men from the village hurried up the thickly wooded slopes, shouting.

The screams had stopped, but they could hear the terrified bleeding of sheep. Jean had not only been killed, but savaged. Her throat was crushed, her frock shredded, and the skin of her torso torn open. A large chunk of flesh was missing from her shoulder, the wound fresh and raw. It looked like her attacker had heard the men from the village approaching and had taken one last huge bite before slinking out into the darkening shadows of the approaching night. The people of Les Ubac were about as country as it gets, and they recognized what had happened to Jean Boulet. She'd been killed by a wolf. Wolves are endurance predators, so when they hunt

large prey, they usually try to avoid direct confrontation until the very end, chasing a creature for miles and miles until it's too exhausted to put up much of a fight. And that's smart, because Apex Predator or not, a hard kick from a 500-pound elk is going to ruin your day. But with less intimidating prey, like a sheep or a smaller human, wolves are often more direct, leaping to grab the throat in a bite that will either suffocate or catch an important artery. What had happened to poor Jean-Boulet looked just like that. This is a case that happened long ago in probably the most remote part of France, and it almost immediately transmuted at least partially into myth.

So it's tough to be precise about exactly what happened and when it started, but Jean is usually considered the first victim of the infamous Beast of Jevudan, which would go on to claim approximately 100 more victims. She wasn't the first to be attacked, though. A couple months before, and about seven miles north, a young woman was bringing cattle back from pasture when a ferocious creature leapt on her, ignoring the cows. Luckily for her, unlike poor Jean's sheep, cattle often charge at predators that attack their herders,

in the same way they'd charge at one attacking a calf. They chased the creature off, leaving the young woman mostly unharmed, although her clothes were torn and she was scratched up and terrified. She described the creature that attacked her as, like a wolf, yet not a wolf, which was the first step in establishing the beast of Jebedon as not just a ferocious animal, but something strange and otherworldly. The Gévedon region sat at the southern edge of France's central mountains, a misty, sparsely populated land of tiny villages and farmsteads

connected by trails through the tall, dark woods. This was a long way from the royal glitz of Paris and Versailles. They were barely even connected by language, with the people this far south speaking their own dialect that was pretty much incomprehensible to Parisians. So this was an old, insular, land, the perfect breeding ground for creepy tales about mysterious creatures in the dark. Might as well have pulled it from one of the old Grim Brothers fairy tales.

And there was no shortage of fresh material for those kinds of stories. In early August, 1764, just a few miles from where Jean had been killed, a village girl named Marianne Hebrard went missing in the middle of the day. Her remains were found soon after, along with her torn clothes, in several locations. The report into her death described her as having been throttled and half-eaten. That description is from the book Beast by Esar Schwab and Gustavo Sanchez-R. Romero, which was our main source for this story, and you should definitely check it out. It's fascinating.

Two days later, and six miles away, another girl, just 15 years old, was killed and partially devoured. At the end of August, the bellows of cattle brought villagers up to a pasture where they found the bloody, savage remains of the boy who, who had been looking after the herd. So in two months, four young people had been killed by wild animals, most likely wolves, within about a 15-mile radius. The regional administrator of the Jevoudon was 45-year-old Etienne Lafant, a local boy who'd left home to learn and practice law in the Toulouse Parliament before coming back home. The reports of these attacks disturbed him greatly, of course. Were they committed by wolves plural or by one lone savage beast? That seemed like a real possibility, given how closely grouped the attacks were.

Although wolf attacks weren't unknown in the empty spaces of 18th century Europe, they were rare, and they were usually the work of starving animals in the middle of winter. So many attacks close together in the summer were unheard of. Lafant reported to his immediate superior, Bishop Gabriel. Due to an ancient legal quirk, this guy was both a count and a bishop. He was pushing 80 years old, and he had very definite ideas about the ultimate source of all bad news. Wars, disease, bad weather, enormous creatures eating children in the woods. They were all scourges sent by God to remind people to obey the commandments.

It is an agent of divine wrath, he said, of the predatory beast, which sounds very ominous and also kind of metal. Didn't do much to help the situation. I know, it's like, thanks, bish. It's a little helpful. He, it's just, it's like, well, God's trying to kill us again. Nothing we can do. It's just our lot in life, I guess. Levant turned to two local noblemen, the father and son team of Pierre Charles and Jean-François Moranji. Both were veterans of the recent seven years war against the British, in which they each had radically different experiences. Pierre Charles had been a general

during the catastrophic French defeat at the Battle of Minden, and King Louis had exiled him in disgrace back to the Gévedon. But his son Jean-François went from one success to another, got promoted several times, and was awarded a knighthood at the end of the war. He also drove his family into massive debt because in France at the time, you had to pay for the privilege of being an officer,

you know, to make sure only the right sort of people were in charge. Yeah, the French Revolution was only about 25 years. in the future at this point, and it's not real hard to see why, is it? And it's so funny because logically, it's like, yeah, obviously pay to play is a terrible terrible way to like pick your leaders,

right? Yeah. Jean-François was a widower with two young sons. They all lived in an old chateau in St. Albán, two single men, two boys, and a pack of hunting dogs. You could have smelled the place from Spain. They agreed

to help Lafant pursue the beast, and he and Jean-François started planning huge hunts with both peasants and nobles. There was a clock ticking. Harvest time was in September, and if people were too scared to go outside for fear of being eaten, it could tank the local economy and people might starve to death. So far, the beast had only attacked children. They were easily overpowered, and because of the way the local economy worked, they were often outside by themselves tending to animals.

But that didn't mean the adults were safe. In the village of Le Estre, there was a 36-year-old woman. woman who was known locally as a witch, not in a Hail Satan kind of way, but as someone who with a lot of knowledge about herbal remedies. She grew them, along with vegetables in the garden behind her house, on the outskirts of the village. And that was where her neighbors found her on the evening of September 6th, lying dead and partially consumed in her herb garden. Ten days later, a boy named Claude took his family's cattle to graze not far from the village he lived in. Like most people in the region, he'd heard about the beast. There was a hefty

reward for killing it. I doubt Claude was ambitious enough to think he could do that, but he had taken a weapon with him. A knife lashed to the end of a long stick to make a simple spear. The villagers found the stick on the ground, bitten in half. Close by, in the undergrowth, they found what little was left of Claude. All of this was very weird. As we mentioned earlier, wolf attacks were a real danger, but usually only when they were hungry and desperate. Wolves who got near people tended to very quickly become dead wolves. And if you listen to our episode on the New Jersey shark attacks, you might remember that people are just not real good to eat. The woods of the Jevoudon were teeming with deer, boar, and wild sheep, all of which were way better to eat than a scrawny young human. They were

also better at running and harder to catch, though. The New Jersey shark turned out to be a comparatively small juvenile that was likely incapable of catching its regular prey, but every sighting of the beast of Jeboudon was of a startlingly large creature. It didn't seem wounded or have any other malady that would force it to take easier prey than usual. So why was it so committed to eating people? On September 20th, people from the village of Pradel killed an impressively large wolf. They got the normal reward of 18 pounds and would get more if it turned out they'd killed the man-eater. To determine that, they, along with Administrator LaFont, had to wait and see if there were any more attacks.

Nine days later, 12-year-old Magdalene Morris went to check on her family's cattle in their pasture. She was attacked, killed, and when the villagers found her, her heart and lungs had been eaten, and one arm torn completely off. The beast was still out there. In October, as the chilly, damp fall settled onto the hills and woods of the Jeboudon, things got even worse. Lafant had arranged a colossal reward, 200 pounds. a year's salary for a farm worker. He pushed through emergency legislation to allow the peasantry to arm themselves, which made a lot of people nervous. Peasants with guns tend to start having thoughts like, hmm, wouldn't the king look a lot better if he was shorter by about a head?

But among the many things that 18th century peasants didn't have was a whole lot of free time. Their lives were already filled with hard work from dawn to dusk, and there really wasn't room for traipsing through the woods. The mass hunts that stood some chance of flushing out the beast happened only rarely. They may have upset the beast enough that it moved miles to the north and west, which I guess the locals would count as a win, but all the ruckus did nothing to dissuaded from Killen. On October 5th, the beast menaced a young herdsman, but the cattle he was watching charged at the creature and drove it off. Hero cows, I love it. Two days later, a young woman's mauled body was found near the village of Prunier. Just her body. Her head wasn't found

till the next day. As we mentioned earlier, when wolves attack people, they often try to get a hard bite in the throat. A big, powerful animal could do so much damage that when they try to drag the dead body off into the undergrowth, there's not enough left to hold the head and body together. This kind of decapitation was a reasonably common occurrence in the beast's kills and only served to heighten its aura of eerie horror and mystery. The next day, the beast was spotted stalking another young herdsman, but this time there were hunters nearby. A line of beaters moved shouting through the scrubby woods, trying to flush any game out into the open, and it worked. The beast charged out into open ground, an

enormous wolf with fur-tinged blood-red. The hunters took aim with their long muskets and fired. They hit it, and it fell. And then it got right back up and kept running. They shot again, and again the beast fell. But through the cloud of gunpowder smoke, they saw it get on its feet again and run into the woods before they could reload their guns. They chased it through the woods until nightfall,

and the next day 200 men joined the search for what they assumed was a dead or wounded animal. They found nothing. Two days later, a trio of siblings were attacked. two boys aged 12 and 6 and a 10-year-old girl. The beast just grabbed the girl and started running off with her between its jaws, but the boys stabbed at it with knives fixed to sticks, and when it jerked away in pain, they pulled their sister free of its jaws.

The beast fled. Two more women were killed in the next week. Jean-Pierre Porche was working in a barn in dusk when the beast stalked out of the woods. Like a lot of people in the area who had the resources to do so, Jean-Pierre kept a loaded musket nearby. He fired at the beast, and it fell. Then, as Jean-Pier frantically reloaded, the monster got to its feet and started toward him again. He fired again, and the same thing happened. The beast fell, then got right back up, although this time it slunk off into the woods. Jean-Pierre said that as it left, it made like an annoyed little noise, the kind of

frustrated sound you might make as you storm out of an argument. An oddly human sound. Whoa. And if you ever met a husky, you probably know that sound. Hey, we're trying to create some werewolf suspense here, bitch. It's not a husky. It's a werewolf. If you've ever heard a husky scream, it sounds scarily human. It does sound scary. Obviously, the terrible legend of the beast grew. Not only was it a deadly predator, It was an unkillable monster that tore off the heads of its victims. As Lafant feared, the local economy took a hit. People were scared to work in the fields or walk the narrow paths between villages.

He contacted the regional military commanders and a eager young captain named Jean-Peptis Duomel volunteered to be the state's official Beast Hunter. He'd lead a force of 50 dragoons must get armed soldiers on horseback. Duomel himself carried a shotgun, which he kept a gun. triple-loaded with three slugs and three times the powder. When he pulled the trigger, it would either deliver a devastating blast or just explode and take half his face off. Sounds like a plan. What's the worst that can happen? He could blow his own face off. I just told you. Oh, yeah. The dragoons got a mixed reception when they arrived in the Jevudan. The locals wanted the beast gone for sure, but like a lot of rural folks, they were deeply suspicious of armed agents of the

state. Earlier in the century, Louis XIV had housed soldiers with local Protestant families to persuade them to convert to Catholicism, and the locals definitely remembered that. Duamel and the dragoons arrived on the last day of October, but the hunt that day was canceled due to heavy snow. The warm beaches of the Mediterranean were just 75 miles south, but winters up in the hills could get pretty brutal. Jean-Françé thought the winter might actually kill the beast because he thought it was from Africa, a leopard or a lion. Okay. Huh, that's an interesting theory. A leopard or a lion. Yeah, this was just the start of people, usually a long way from the Javidon trying to determine what the beast actually was, a process that's continued right up to

today. People are still at it. The fact that plenty of people in the Javudan had actually seen the beast and described it as a wolf, just an unusually large and strangely colored one, didn't matter much. I'm guessing not many of the locals had seen a leopard, but I'm also guessing that they knew what a cat looked like. That also applied to another theory, that it was a man-eating lynx. The biggest Eurasian lynxes top out at about 70 pounds and can hunt reindeer and red deer. That's a creature that's definitely capable of killing a person, but there's no record of them ever doing so. And the people of the Jevoudon knew their own wildlife. They'd know a lynx if they saw it. Links, leopard, even a hyena. These were actually the least insane guesses about the

beast's identity. Oh yeah. See, this was before we had like Wi-Fi and stuff, so people didn't really have much else to do for excitement, and they just let their imaginations go buck wild. It was a gorilla. It was the Marquis de Saad. That's my favorite one. But it was the Marquis de Saude. Okay, so maybe it wasn't the Marquis de Saad, but it was a man dressed in wolfskin. Moranji was actually a weird sadist who trained dogs to kill people and covered them in armor. There's lots of fiction about the beast of Jeboudon, and Moranji is sometimes a creepy villain in them. This doesn't have any basis in reality, and comes from the way his life fell apart after the whole incident. Get a load of this.

He was imprisoned for debt and fled France in disgrace. Then he was taken in by a con artist who tricked him into marrying her. She was already married, and ultimately, murder. murdered him. The book describes it like this, and I absolutely love this, he became involved with an adventurous and died in 1801 after the woman hit him with a fireplace shovel. Alrighty then. That's succinct. Sure, Shayla Fem, am I right? So, a very messy life, but a long way from training armored dogs to hunt and devour the peasantry. In a little while, we'll hear about Antoine Shastel, a local hunter. Another story had it that Antoine was captured by pirates in the

Mediterranean, who castrated him and forced him to work on their menagerie on the island of Monorca. Yeah, these pirates apparently had themselves a little zoo. Why not? When he escaped and returned to the Jeboudon, Shastel lived alone, deep in the woods with a pack of wolves trained to obey his every bloody command. Damn, people were creative, though, like, man, y'all should all write books all of you you're very creative okay parish records show that antoine chastel was married with many kids but come on are you going to let a little thing like verifiable truth get in the way of a juicy story hell no it was probably all just a cover-up anyway i bet if you look deeper you'd find his kids were called fido and rex and this here is my wolf son spot i'm sorry did i say wolf son i meant regular son these are all pretty silly obviously but it's the nature of conspiracy theories isn't it the easiest most obvious answer in this case that the beast was one or several enormous aggressive wolves is viewed as suspicion simply because it's the easiest most obvious answer there always has to be a secret truth a wheel within the wheel and like blaming nature is scary we're humans we've tamed the natural world that's our whole thing that's that's our whole raison Detra. What do you mean we're not safe from it? What do you mean? It's easier to think that there's like a giant furry roaming around in a wolf suit than it is to believe that like a regular old wolf

might not respect the fences we've built. Yeah, we really love to think that we've escaped the food chain, but sometimes it just comes roaring back to grandma's. France may have been at the forefront of the Age of Enlightenment, but if you have a huge, apparently immortal creature tearing innocence apart, then people are going to start looking beyond the natural world for answers. Maybe the beast was actually a lukaru, a werewolf. In one respect, they were probably kind of right, at least in English tales, where a war wolf was originally a wolf that had tasted human blood once and now couldn't get enough of it. Of course, thanks to a century or so of books, movies, comics, and games, we have a pretty solid idea of what a werewolf is.

The full moon, silver bullets, the infectious bite. But previously, the lore was a lot more lucy-gloose. Goosey. In the 12th century, the poet Marie de France wrote about a werewolf baron, who was a wolf three days out of every week, and who could only turn back to a human in complete privacy with clothes available to hide his shameful nudity. And he was a noble and friendly wolf, except to his bitch of a cheat and wife whose nosey bit off, which, you know, fair. Sounds like a stand-up guy. Yeah. Witches were often blamed for were werewolves, either through curses, or by providing magical ointments or belts that would let someone transform at will.

Others believed that being excommunicated turned you into a werewolf. In some parts of France, right up to the time of the beast, people believed that if you didn't go to confession for 10 years, you'd become a werewolf. Wild. Obviously, most stories about werewolves are just fanciful tales, but the stories that have at least some connection to reality show why stories about werewolves and vampires were so popular. They helped explain the horrific crimes committed by real people.

We're a true crime podcast, so we're going to go ahead and assume you know how shocking and awful the crimes of serial killers can be. I mean, just look at our episodes about Willie Pigman Picton over the last few weeks. And there's no reason to think that that kind of psychopathology is a new thing. It's just that modern media and modern police work mean we find out more about them. What we're thinking about specifically here is Peter Stump, a late 16th, century German farmer and serial killer who murdered, sexually assaulted, and ate an unknown number of people, including killing his own son and eating his brains. He described the hearts of children as dainty morsels. Actually, it's worse than that. It's worse than that. It's really

dark. So content warning for something dark here. If you don't want something like incredibly dark. Yeah, if you've ever like even like glanced sideways at a story about Albert Fish, it's It's that level of, like, horrific. It's bad, yeah. So what he was actually talking about there was how he would kill pregnant women and take the fetuses out and eat their hearts. That's what he called the dainty morsels. And the way he described it is the grossest thing I've ever heard in my life.

Like, in this book, it's just beware. Yeah, I went down this rabbit hole when I was probably way too young to go down that rabbit hole because I got really interested in, like, real werewolf stories, and it's bad. Yeah. When he was captured and tortured, Stump claimed that the devil had given him a magic belt, which led him change into the likeness of a greedy devouring wolf, strong and mighty, with eyes great and large, which in the night sparkled like fire, a mouth great and wide, and with most sharp and cruel teeth, a huge body and mighty paws. Oh, I bet it was hell. This was the confit. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

this was the confession his torturers were looking for one that shifted the blame to Satan and weird magic rather than facing up to the awful things that human beings can do to each other we're still doing it we're still doing it we're still shifting the blame to Satan it's just wild this is a 1700s yeah yeah look at them look at the nice still do this shit the night stalker is one Dahmer Bundy we do it all we do it all satanic panic I mean it happens all, and we still do it. Yeah. Pamphlets about stump and other supposed were werewolf killings were widely distributed, and people didn't question them much. Even a couple hundred years later, at the time of the Beast of Jevodon, were widely considered to be real.

But whether it was a wolf or a werewolf, the Beast of Jevodon needed to be stopped. Throughout October and November, the newly arrived dragoons swept the country on hunts alongside peasants and local nobility, like Moranji, with big mastiffs wearing spiked, leather collars to protect their throats from bites. They had no success at all. In late November, 66-year-old widow, Catherine Valley, was killed. Against the wishes of the locals, Captain Duomel left her body out as bait, assuming the beast would return to finish eating her, but it never did. By the end of 1764, the beast had killed seven more people and unsuccessfully attacked even more. As more people died, Lafant's boss, Bishop Gabriel, put out a letter to make sure

the people of Jevidan knew exactly where to place the blame for the creature's terrible predations on themselves. You can easily conclude that your misfortunes can only come from your sins, he wrote. Prayer was the answer and the only answer. And also, maybe you should donate more to the church. That's nice. Hey, Wolf, I got one for you over here. Nice to know the clergy were there for their people in this time of fear and heartache, right? Yeah, I could just see him. Like he's in his like nice warm like abbey or wherever it is bishops live and and like drinking like wine and cheese and he's like you know what those you know what those poor people need to give me more money yeah that'll that'll show the wolf nothing much changed in the new year on january 2nd

a group of villagers came upon a scene right out of a horror story the beast hunched over the headless body of a 16-year-old boy. Startled, it ran off with the boy's severed arm in its jaw. Over 20 attacks and at least nine more deaths followed throughout January, but the beast didn't get everything it wanted. On January 12th, seven children, boys and girls, were watching cattle in La Vieire, keeping close to the animals to stay warm. As the new norm, they were armed with knives tied to sticks.

As they chatted and played as kids do, one of them glanced down the trail and saw a terrible creature prowling towards them. One of the children would describe the beast as being the size of a year-old calf, and if you grew up on or near a farm, you'll know how huge that is, even allowing for understandable exaggeration. The beast had reddish fur and a long tail with a thick black stripe down its back. Groups of kids often have a leader, and in this case, it was a 12-year-old boy named Jacques. Circle! he yelled.

The children raised their tiny spears together as the beast docked them bless him one boy joseph ran for the cattle thinking he'd be safer among them the beast leapt and grabbed him by the throat jacques led the other kids charging forward stabbing with their spears so brave and this is a group of kids it's just so brave the beast dropped joseph but tore off his cheek as it did and ate it immediately then it rushed in grabbing an eight-year-old jean by the lips and then the arm dragging him away. Again, the children charged in, stabbing and stabbing until the beast let their friend go and disappeared into the woods. For his courage, the king rewarded young Jacques by paying for his education and military career. And, you know, good for him, but I got to say I'd be a little bit

pissed off if I was one of the other kids. Like, hello, we were all there. Some of us got their lips bit off. I guess the king only considers you a hero if you didn't get some of your face eaten. Jacques's story cemented the Beast of Jevudan as a media sensation in the nascent newspaper industry where stories were often read communally out loud in cafes or village squares. King Louis offered a 6,000-pound reward for its hide. Now remember, we said earlier that 200 was considered a normal yearly salary at the time. This was a fortune. Moranji, Captain Du Emel and the Dragoons chased down every siding but never managed

to corner the beast. It was once shot right after it crossed a freezing river. Again, it fell, then stood right back up and ran off as if completely unharmed. It certainly wasn't scared off. Two days later, a local man saw it trotting along with a young woman's head in its jaws. God, that's gnarly. Can you fucking imagine seeing a thing like that. Like, you're just going about your day and you look over and you see this massive blood-red colored wolf with a head. head in its teeth. So, like, I don't know, my dog, he trots like that when he's proud of, like, catching a ball. That's so creepy to me.

It's just like, he's just like, hell yeah, I got this head. No wonder they thought it was a werewolf. I mean, I kind of suspect it was a were. Jeez. As the killings continued and the beast's fame grew, so did the pressure for action. La Font was flooded with letters suggesting ways to destroy. the beast. One writer, noting that most of the beast victims were women, suggested setting up artificial ladies on posts throughout the region. Three pig ladders filled with poisoned meat

would stand in for the head and the boobies. Add clothes, put a wig on it, paint on a little lady-like face, and there you go. Instant, irresistible wolf paint. It's a scared old. That's all we are. A head and two boobies. That's all. all you need. And I like that the writer insinuated that that's all that the wolf would go for. The head and the boobies. No other meas. Another writer suggested dressing up a lamb in a little girl's dress and bonnet and having

hunters lie in wait for the beast to strike. Poor little thing. The king didn't go for either of these suggestions, but he did decide that Captain Du Amel had failed and replaced him with. Jean-Charles Deneval, a renowned and taciturn wolf hunter from Normandy on the other side of the country. I like to think they dressed the lamb up anyway just because they thought it was kind of a cute idea. Yeah, I think so. That's like pre-who's that photographer that does the children, the Anne. And Gettys. And Gettys. It's like they didn't have that, so they

had to do it themselves. Before he even arrived in the Jeboudon, De Nerval boasted that it would at most take him and his son a couple weeks to kill the beast. It kept on killing. On March 13th, it snatched away Jean-Jou's six-year-old son. She chased after it, leaping onto the beast's back and bashing its head with a rock till it dropped her son and fled. But his injuries were awful, and he died three days later. The beast, frustrated, killed and ate another boy just hours after this failed attack.

And, might I add, by the way, that King Louis didn't give this brave lady, lady shit. So I'd really love to understand his process here. Yeah, you gotta have testicles for a reward. That's the French way. Evidently, she leapt on its back and beat it in the head. Yeah, that's crazy.

Like, damn, sis. When the dinner balls and their hunting dogs got to the Jeboudon, they quickly backtracked on that whole couple of weeks thing. They'd had no idea how rough the country would be, all ravines and marshes and dense woods.

When they hunted, people suspected them of holding their dogs back after one, who'd been missing, came back with its collar damaged like something had tried to bite through it. They had no more luck than do a mel. The beast kept on killing, at the rate of about one death a week. In June, a boy was killed while out with his little sister. She was assumed to also be dead, but was found three days later, hidden tight among some rocks and scared out of her wits.

The Denervales had had their chance. and King Louis replaced them with his own lieutenant of the hunt. 71-year-old, wow, Francois Antoine, along with his son and nephew and a crowd of royal gamekeepers. Summer in the Jeboudon was better than winter, but no picnic. In mists and rain, Francois chased down leads and followed tracks, but to no avail. On August 11th, 19-year-old Marie-Jean Valet was crossing a river with her sister Therese to get to the farm where they worked.

Marijon carried a spear And just as well As the girls reached the banks of the river The beast charged out and leapted her Marijon spun around and lifted her spear The beast fell on it Then yelped and fell into the water Where it rolled a few times and ran away

The shaft of Marijon's spear was bloody It seemed like it might have been a lethal wound But yet again the beast seemed unkillable It was back to dealing out death within days Good God. Francois Antoine hadn't had any more success than the previous hunters, but he was more popular. He was gentlemanly and kind, contributed to local charities, and held a fireworks display. Oh my gosh, just like Gandalf.

Oh, my God. Like in the Shire. Yeah. Exactly like Gandalf. He brought the fireworks to help scare wildlife out of the undergrowth, but after somebody told him, dude, you're going to burn the whole woods down, he used them to entertain the locals instead. I also like that he listened to the locals. Like the previous ones were like, we're going to use this your friend's dead body to lure this beast out.

And he's like, oh, it's so not cool. Yeah, good point. I might burn the woods down. Instead, I'll put on a show. And we will destroy this beast. He yelled to the crowd at the end of the show. They didn't understand the northern French, but they cheered anyway. In September, a pack of wolves was spotted in the grounds of a nearby nunnery, among them,

an absolutely enormous male. On the 20th, François and his hunters scouted the grounds. Alone, he followed an animal trail. Then he happened to look up. At first, he thought it was a donkey that had wandered into the woods. But no, it was a huge wolf, stepping slowly towards him. Francois scrambled his heavy shotgun into his hands and took aim, then fired, the recoil almost knocking him down. When the smoke cleared, he saw the wolf was a down, its right eye destroyed and bloody. Francois felt the joyous surge of victory. But not for long.

The huge wolf got to its feet and ran toward him, growling furiously. Francois reached for the knife sheathed aside, then changed his mind and held the shotgun like a club. He'd tried to knock the thing down, then go for his knife. When the wolf was ten yards away, there was another huge shot. Francois's nephew, Richard, had shot the wolf from behind, and it had fallen. They watched its body nervously through the sunsmoke. And sure enough, it still managed to get onto its feet.

But turns out it wasn't an otherworldly immortal wolf. It staggered a few yards and died. The beast of Gévedon was dead. Not long after, it was stuffed and displayed in the Queen's antechamber at Versailles, where visiting dignitaries were invited to come gop at it. This case is fun because it shows you where so much of the modern ideation, of wherewolves came from. So word got around that Renshard and Antoine had used silver bullets to deal out the killing shot to the beast. So of course, you needed a silver bullet to kill a

were still talking about that today. We still do that. That's where it started. Francois Antoine spent the rest of October hunting down the remainder of the pack and then returned to the royal court in triumph to collect his reward. And it certainly seemed like Francois Antoine had gotten the right beast because November went by without any attacks. But then in December, a six-year-old boy named Vidal was grabbed by a wolf while guarding cattle. He would have been eaten if it wasn't for a nearby teenager armed with a spear, who jabbed at the wolf until it let Vidal go. On December 21st, a young woman was killed, and another one two days later.

So much the second victim was eaten that only her hands were recovered. The local prior decided there wasn't even enough to hold a funeral. But the beast was dead. The king himself had declared the beast dead, and the royal court at Versailles had little to no interest in these new killings. This time, the people of Jevudan were on their own. Without that intense official and public interest, the records on the beast's activities in 1766 are a lot sparser.

They often don't have names or details attached, and some deaths were certainly unrecorded altogether. About 20 people were killed in the first half of the year, and about 10 in the second. From November 1766 to March 1767, there were no attacks at all. Then they started up again, with 13 people dead between March and May, the beast killing at its old rate of one person a week. Two more young women were killed in June. Jean Chastel was a local innkeeper and hunter, and he and his son Antoine had

joined many of the previous hunts for the beast. Although not those of Francois Antoine, who had the pair of them briefly jailed after they guided his hunting party into a swamp as a prank. What the hell? When Jean hunted for the beast, he carried a blunderbuss loaded with special ammunition. Pellets cast from lead medallions of the Virgin Mary, which he'd had blessed by a priest. Jean and three of his sons were among 12 men talked into a midnight hunt on June 18th by the Marquis d'Apshire, an eager young nobleman who was outraged by the latest death earlier that same day. And I think we can assume there was quite a bit of wine flowing in René Shire.

Chastell's in that night because group hunting in the dark with blunderbusses seems real dumb. By 4 a.m., they'd moved on to the Tenezerr woods. Dawn came, painting the Miss Pink. Jean Chastell hung back from the main company to say his morning prayers, leaning his blunderbuss against a tree and taking his spectacles and prayer book out of a pocket. As he prayed, he heard twigs snapping and looked up to see one of the Marquise's dogs chasing an enormous wolf, the beast. Jean quickly finished his prayers and put his spectacles and prayer book back in his pocket.

The beast turned on the dog, biting its nose so it ran away. Then it saw Jean and stopped, just yards away. They stared at each other. Then Jean Chastell lifted his blunderbuss, loaded with holy ammunition, and fired. The beast stumbled, fell, rose, and fell again. It stared in helpless fury at Jean Chastel as it died. That, anyway, was how he told the story, which certainly showed him in a very cool and pious light, but we don't have anybody else's version for comparison.

One of the Marquis' servants took the enormous wolf up to Versailles, but the summer heat did him no favors and the body stanked to high heaven by the time he got there. The king had no interest in this new wolf. He already had his own stuffed beast and would prefer that that be where the story ended. A small reward was sent to Jean Chastel and his huge stinky wolf buried somewhere on the palace grounds. The attacks in the Jevodon ended. Despite immediate and continuing bizarre theories,

what seems to have happened here was that the Jevodon was for several years, home to at least two and possibly a lot more, shockingly huge and aggressive wolves. Maybe they were packmates and had all learned the same ways to hunt. It's really a fascinating look how animals learn. Orcas are another good example of this. You've probably seen memes. There's one group of orcas near Spain and Portugal that regularly attack and sink yachts. And marine biologists

believe that it could be because one orca had a bad experience with a boat and they're all taking revenge or even that it's a fad that juvenile arcas made popular. Juvenile or or orcas are known to play with the bodies of seals and dolphins for fun. And, you know, animals like corvids or whales or primates or canids are known to engage in behavior solely for fun or simply because other members of their pack or family do it too. Yeah, and this is not the norm. I mean, this is aberrant as hell. Wolves usually go out of their way to avoid people. That was true then, and it's even more true now. I love wolves. Wolves are awesome. You know, they're great animals. Wolves and their kin have been alongside human beings for as long as there have been human beings. And right

from the start, they've had more to fear from us than we've had to fear from them. In friends, In France, wolves were hunted to extinction in the first half of the 20th century and have only recently returned as a protected species. Italian wolves have crossed the Alps and spread through the sparse, mountainous lands of the south and west, including in Lozère, which approximately occupies the same area as Old Jevudan. There are now about a thousand wild wolves in France and 130 semi-wild ones at the Jevudan Wolf Park, where you can get to see these beautiful creatures up close. Just not too close. so that was a wild one right campers good one to start out Halloween season and you know we'll have another one for you next week but for now lock your doors light your lights and stay safe until we get together again around the true crime campfire and as always we want to send a grateful shout out to a few of our lovely patrons

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