The Animal Within > The Werewolves' Den

the beast of gevaudan

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Queen raina Loup-Garou:
He is my absolut favorite werewolf in history. Read about him and see why

One warm day in June of 1764, in a forest clearing in the Gevaudan in south - central France, a young lady who was there seeing to some cows saw a horrible creature running right for her. It was the size of a cow itself, and the beast looked for all intents and purposes to be a gigantic wolf. As the story goes her trustworthy dogs fled at the sight of this monster, but the cattle were able to drive away the creature with their horns. Compared to most later witnesses the woman proved to be quite fortunate to have survived her encounter with what would become known as " The Beast of Gevaudan." Not long after the mutilated, partially eaten corpses of men, women and especially children were turning up everywhere in the land. The first victim was a little girl who was found in July with her heart torn from her body. The killings continued through August and September and soon the fearsome beast began attacking groups of men.


          The terrified peasantry were certain that a werewolf was loose in the land, (a loup-garou), and the news gained credence when people who had shot or stabbed the monster said it was impervious to human weapons. On October 8th, two hunters shot the animal with several rifle balls from a distance of 10 paces. The creature limped away and when word of the incident spread it was widely believed that it had gone off to die. But within days the killings began again. The Paris Gazette summed up eyewitnesses descriptions of the beast: " It was much higher than a wolf, low before, and his feet are armed with talons. His hair is reddish, his head large, and the muzzle of it is shaped like that of a greyhound; his ears are small and straight; his breast is wide and gray; his back streaked with black; his large mouth is provided with sharp teeth." In the June 6th edition of the English periodical, the St. James Chronicals it remarked " it appears he is neither a wolf, tiger or hyena, but probably a mongrel, generated between the two last and forming, as it were, a new species."


          After a horrifying public attack on a couple of kids, who were bitten and torn even as older people there slashed at the brute with pitchforks and knives an appeal was sent to the Royal Court at Versailles. King Louis XV sent a troop of light cavalry under the command of Captain Duhamel to the region. Duhamel ordered that some of his men dress up like women to act as bait for the monster. The hunters spotted the beast several times and shot at it, but it always managed to escape. Finally the killings seemed to have stopped and Duhamel surmised that the creature must have died of its wounds, and left. Almost immedietely upon the troops departure, the slaughter began again in earnest. By then there was a large reward being offered for the beasts head, and this brought professional hunters and soldiers to the area. More than 100 wolves were killed, yet not a single werewolf was slain, as professed by the continued spree of slaughter. Some hunters, including a professional wolf - tracker who had been personally sent by the king reported that they had badly wounded the creature. But nothing stopped it. During the summer of 1765 the slaughter of children was particularly bad.
              As the months went on with the killings unimpeded, entire villages would be abandoned when someone would claim to have seen the beast lurking nearby. Those who ventured out into the streets were attacked. Events finally reached a peak in June of 1767, when the Marquis d' Apcher brought together hundreds of men, hunters and trackers who then fanned out in smaller bands throughout the countryside. On the evening of June 19, the beast charged a particular group of men. One man, Jean Chastel was taking no chances, and had assumed the beast was indeed a werewolf. He fired at it with a pistol loaded with a silver bullet and killed it. When the creature was gutted human bones were found in its gullet. By the time of its death, the beast of Gevaudan had killed 60 people and cost the state over 29,000 livres - a mountain of money at that time in it's efforts to kill it. The carcass was paraded about and then buried when it began to putrify.

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