Halloween may be past, but we hope that you love creepy European legends as much as we do. If so, gather round the screen in your favorite sweater and a steaming mug of tea—you’re in for a scare.
Sure, you’ve heard about European icons Jack the Ripper, Dracula, and the Loch Ness Monster. How about the half-demon, half-goat creature, Krampus, which is so popular in Bloomington, Indiana that we host the largest Krampus event in North America?
The Institute for European Studies would like to introduce you to a story you may not yet be familiar with. The Beast of Gévaudan, thought to be a wolf, once stalked and killed up to 300 people in a few years’ time in France.
Source: Wikipedia Commons
The setting of the story seems to be lifted from the pages of a fairytale.
Gévaudan is a province of Southern France where rural villagers lived the sort of life that Belle sings about in Beauty and the Beast. Picture fields of wheat and pastureland reaching from hamlets to the border of dense forestland that even Le Petit Chaperon Rouge (Little Red Riding Hood) would hesitate to enter.
There’s no need to limit your deep dive on the Beast of Gévaudan to Google. Perhaps the most disturbing thing about the creature is the amount of historical evidence proving its existence. In fact, the events surrounding it’s reign of terror have been called “one of the best-documented historical episodes of wolf predation”.
A report written by scholars Linnell et al. (2002) notes that among the various historical documents are:
- Two accounts by abbots
- Publications by several historians
- Church and parish records
- Official written reports of the events
- Death certificates
- Private letters
- And “extensive information handed down by witnesses in the 18th century.”
Though there is dispute among scholars about the exact number of attacks and victims, it is certain that at least one hundred people were killed by this man-eating carnivore in the province of Gévaudan between 1764 and 1767. There is also much debate about what—or who—the Beast of Gévaudan really was.
It began in the summer of 1764, when young Marie Jeanne Valet was tending to cattle. She observed a creature who was “like a wolf, yet not a wolf” approaching her. The bulls of the herd charged the animal and drove it away, saving her life. A short time later, 14-year-old Jeanne Boulet was killed while in the field with sheep on June 30, 1764. Residents of this rural area had long encountered wild animals, including wolves, near their homes. But this was no common wolf. Researcher Karl-Hans Taake writes that “surviving victims, other eyewitnesses, and hunters” who encountered the animal described it as a “large carnivore that had upright hair on the back of its head and neck and a dark line along its spine”. A governmental delegate of the area named Étienne Lafont described the animal as “much bigger than a wolf” in a report, saying it was like a hyena, with a “snout somewhat like a calf’s and very long hair”.
The beast preferred stalking children and women who were solitary, like those tending to livestock, but also slaughtered grown men. The beast typically targeted the head or neck of victims, often decapitating them. The animal’s unusual appearance, odd predation tactics, and sheer number of victims were the perfect recipe for theories that it was supernatural in nature. A poster printed in 1764 (below) when translated, claims that the beast “likes to attack Women and Children, it drinks their Blood, cuts off their Heads, and carries them off.”
Source: Wikipedia Commons
Lafont urged women and children to be chaperoned by an armed man when in the pastures of Gévaudan, but few people in this poor region owned a firearm. The stalking and attacks continued, and newspapers began to report on the horrific events.
Word of the beast’s slaughtering reached the Palace of Versailles, and King Louis XV assigned royal hunters to hunt it down. As time went on, reward money from various sources piled up for whomever could kill the beast. Townspeople, noblemen, and the army attempted to track and kill the creature responsible. Eventually, with no luck, the King sent his personal bodyguard and gunbearer, 71-year-old François Antoine, to destroy the threat in Gévaudan. At an abbey near Chazes, Antoine and his nephew killed an enormous wolf and sent its body to Versailles. The men were rewarded and hailed as heroes for finally bringing the nightmare to an end, and the villagers showered them with praise and gratitude.
Then the beast returned.
No assistance came from Versailles this time, as the King insisted Antoine had already killed the animal at fault for all of the deaths. For 18 months, additional fatalities accumulated in the region. Local farmer Jean Chastel is credited with finally shooting the Beast of Gévaudan on June 19, 1767. Witnesses said the animal had non-wolf characteristics, and an autopsy was performed upon it. Human remains were found inside its stomach, confirming that this was indeed the beast that had recently stalked and killed a villager, the legend that so many sought to kill. Of course, Chastel should have been applauded as a hero. Many wondered out loud (perhaps from hurt pride and emasculation) how a mere farmer could have succeeded in besting the beast, when so many highly-skilled marksmen had failed? Perhaps Chastel had trained the creature to attack humans, they said…or perhaps Chastel was the creature?
What truly was the Beast of Gévaudan? A werewolf, literal wolf, striped hyena, or demon? It is known that in the time period that the attacks took place, noblemen and aristocratic types held exotic animals from afar in menageries on their estates. Inspired by Louis XIV’s “grand menagerie” at Versailles, these collections of live animals could include hyenas, lions, ostriches, or camels. Could it be that an exotic animal escaped from a noble’s menagerie and, starving, began to feed on humans? The possibility can’t be discounted. Such animals would certainly look very odd to rural people, causing them to only be able to describe it as “wolf-like”. The descriptions of the Beast of Gévaudan by eyewitnesses certainly point out traits not common to wolves.
Karl-Hans Taake published a compelling argument in 2020 that the beast was not a member of the canine family at all, but rather, a male lion. Taake analyzed the “physique of the Beast, the descriptions of its fur, its prey selection, its predatory attack behaviour, its handling of human victims, as well as its response to the pressure imposed by hunters” in order to contradict the long-held belief that a wolf was behind these historic attacks. When reading Taake’s paper, it is difficult to disagree with the evidence that he presents. Taake points to the various eyewitness descriptions of “upright hair on the back of its head and neck…long tail with its tassel, the flat upper side of the head, the stronger front of the body as compared to the rear” which seem to directly describe a male lion. Taake notes firsthand accounts of the creature that say it “attacked by surprise, ‘laying in ambush”, stalking its prey by ‘creeping on its belly like a snake’, and rearing ‘up on its hind legs’ during the attack.” What wolf had jaw strength powerful enough to crush a human skull into two pieces “in the way a man’s mouth might crack a nut”, the author asks.
Source: Wikipedia Commons
The truth may never be known. After the autopsy was performed on the Beast of Gévaudan, its body was sent to Versailles. Upon arrival, it was completely rotten and subsequently destroyed. Two hundred fifty-four years have passed, but curiosity about the creature has never faded. Modern scholars like Karl-Hans Taake continue to try and make sense of the details surrounding the attacks that began in 1764. Cryptozoologists claim the beast was actually a hybrid or prehistoric creature of some sort, and popular podcasts like “Supernatural with Ashley Flowers” spook listeners by highlighting each gory detail.
The beast is gone; its legend lives on.
Author Sara Couch is a graduate assistant to the Institute for European Studies.
Across the Pond 