The Unidentified Monster that Terrorised 18th Century France - The Beast of Gevaudan
Vložit
- čas přidán 9. 05. 2024
- Thanks to Bespoke Post for sponsoring this video! New subscribers get 20% off their first box of awesome - go to bespokepost.com/mfe20 and enter code MFE20 at checkout.
In today's episode we take a look at the mystery behind the monster that plagued the French countryside in the 18th century, but what exactly was the beast of Gevaudan?
0:00 - Intro
1:09 - Bespoke Post (Sponsor)
2:58 - The Beast of Gevaudan
If you have enjoyed this video, please leave a like as it helps a lot.
►Join the channel and get access to exclusive perks:
/ @mythologyfictionexpla...
CHECK OUT THE PODCAST!
Listen on Spotify - open.spotify.com/show/0Iv0gj7...
Listen on Apple - podcasts.apple.com/podcast/my...
Animation by Michael Merc - / @mercenarycamp
Artwork by - Julis (www.artstation.com/sli)
Artwork by Vadym Berkutenko - j_blackwood.artstation.com/
Music by www.grahamplowman.com
www.artstation.com/elderscroller
#Gevaudan #folklore #mythology
Title: The Unidentified Monster that Terrorised 18th Century France - The Beast of Gevaudan - Zábava
New Bespoke Post subscribers get 20% off their first box of awesome - go to bespokepost.com/mfe20 and enter code MFE20 at checkout. Thanks to Bespoke Post for sponsoring!
🏴☠️☠️💎🦯WICKED😎💙☠️🏴☠️
Hats off for pronouncing Gevaudan well ! You got this Frenchman's appreciation
I am not even French and I could tell there was great effort to pronounce the city's name correctly. Well done.
@@peterkelley6344 it's a region * the closest city was Montpellier, but both were well pronounced ;)
One of the most iconic Werewolf myths. A major influence on horror movies like The Wolf Man. I highly recommend watching Brotherhood of the Wolf
Brotherhood of the Wolf was a great movie.
Le Pacte des Loups if you want it in original version, it's cheesy but real fun !
Brotherhood was HIGHLY underrated.
That was a painful watch
Thanks for the referral, I will definitely check it out 👍.
The first witness was saved by her cattle. The bulls protected her. That’s very cool!
Cue Powerwolf music
"To the Father and the Son
Came the beast of Gévaudan
Terminator, a traitor,
half wolf and half machine!"
🤘🐺
Damnit. You beat me to it
We take the church by storm
I watched a fascinating documentary years ago where there was a theory the hero of Gevaudan was actually the culprit who had a pet hyena and was siccing it on people and then later shot it to be the hero. It was an interesting theory.
It is, heard that too. Most sources said tho that he or someone had a wolfdog hybrid. But I don’t believe it after what I‘ve read & heard about him i don’t think it was him but maybe someone else or it was just a young male Lion, hyena or wolfdog hybrid that got loose somewhere
🎵To the Father and the Son
Came the Beast of Gevaudan
Terminator, a traitor, half wolf and half machine
To the prior and the nun
Came the Beast of Gevaudan
A redeemer, believer, all fatal, mad and mean
Beast of Gevaudan🎵
- Powerwolf, “Beast of Gevaudan”
I was looking for this.
Love Powerwolf ! 👍💖
lol yup as he learned it was half wolf and machine send by god the sevent of creatures. XD
POWERWOLF🤘🤘🤘
I love this story..😳 I do believe this creature had to be something unusual. These people dealt with wolves,they saw wolves,they knew wolves! This,this was something different..🤨
men killing wolf attacks happened quite often in war torn regions (human flesh lying around on the battlefields...), this was on the border with Spain.
By that time, wolves were not common around cities and towns. Millennia of hunting and human expansion had reduced the population. Town dwellers, and even farmers around the town, might never have seen even captive wolves.
Also, they were scared. Deep down, they still believed in monsters lurking just out of sight, and hearing or seeing such attacks would have terrified even the bravest---and nobody's coolly observing and noting the behavior of the animal attacking them.
hyena I bet.
@@Urusovite- Several wolves were killed, and the attacks stopped. Still wouldn't discount some nobleman owning an exotic animal that escaped and finally recapturing or killing it.
@@julietfischer5056 Roanoke Tales has a good analysis of this story too. The consensus in the comments there for the culprit was multiple hyenas and a less likely pair of lions. As a matter of fact, I vaguely remember the royals having had exotic pets imported from places. It’s a good watch with a more scientific approach given his background in microbiology.
The Brotherhood of the Wolf was a fascinating movie adaptation of this story.
i'm from finland and here it's well known that wolves will kill herds of hundreds of reindeer just to teach their puppies how to hunt. i think it's likely that something like that was going on here as well, which would explain why there would be many different wolves. it could be possible that it was a regular wolf but with gigantism or something like that to make it look bigger and scarier (which would be possibly hereditary as well)
Gevaudan back then was still safer than Paris nowadays
@Death Dealer a poor attempt to be funny
When I saw a comic book version of the Beast of Gevaudan as a child and I was hooked. I'm a real werewolf fan but this is a very unusual tale steeped in history. The movie "Brotherhood of the Wolf" is an enthralling film about the events around this monster. It's originally in French, but if you get the DVD, you can watch it in English. Thanks, great video.
I will have to look for that film.
@@littlesongbird1 You will not be disappointed.
It all points to being a lion.
Lions throughout history have had large body count numbers.
The Tsavo lions and the Rafigi maneater spring to mind.
The beast had a tuft of hair on the end of its tail, exactly like a lion. The beast attacked at the neck or head area, telltale sign of big cats method of attack. Wolves don't attack this way. The people of Gevaudan would never have seen a lion before or wouldn't of even heard of them, so when witnessing the "beast/beasts" they tried to make sense of it and that would associate it as something they're familiar with. Wolves were the large quadroped predator they were familiar with so they described it as such but not quite like a wolf, bigger and scarier.
I have no doubt in my mind this was escaped lion/lions.
The Tsavo lions and the Rafigi Maneater documentaries depicted so similarly to what occurred in Gevaudan.
One of my favorite movies, Brotherhood of the Wolf, involves this tale. Highly recommend the movie.
I think there were multiple "beasts" and that one of them was almost certainly a large cat of some sort, based on the description (long tail) and the fact that it preferred going for the throat of its victims.
**Cats are also known to hunt for sport.
Sounds like a thylacine, likely to have escaped from a circus or zoo. The descriptions make it a dead ringer.
@@Kainis80 That's a good point. Forgot they were still around at the time.
The thylacine is way too small for the descriptions.
What about tiger? they say it was orange, striped, had red glowy eyes, and was basically huge. It could've excaped from a zoo
@Jake-cy7to My thoughts exactly. A tiger, lioness, anything of that sort. Menageries were a well established thing among the upper class at the time, and well into the 1800s.
You might think, "Wouldn't news like that get around?"
Well, if a super predator escaped from MY 'exotic collection' and was potentially responsible for dozens of deaths/maimings, I sure as shit wouldn't say anything.
I can not speak for anyone else ... but ... I need MORE of this! Mythology, Fiction, AND history. Go Go Go Go!
I found it interesting that the Bulls of the cattle defended the Herds Lady from attack. This says that the heard respected the lady as one of their own (learned this from a friend some years back whom had a working farm here in Minnesota, USA).
This case is super interesting. It's like Jack the ripper of animal slayings.
Never heard of this story. It no doubt is probably the inspiration for many horror movie tales. Apparently Fenris (or Fenrir) broke the magical chains that bound him, and got loose in France. Perhaps prepping for Ragnarok.
I do remember the stories of the man- eating Lions of Tsavo in Kenya that inspired the movie "Ghost and the Darkness." It was reported that this lion pair killed more than a hundred people. Their bones are exhibited at The Field Museum in Chicago.
Listen to Powerwolf's "Beast of Gevaudan". Great song. 🤘🏻
Actually, the Maneaters of Tsavo were stuffed and put on display at the Chicago Field Museum. While they were African lions they had no manes. They also were incredibly huge. At the end of the movie THE GHOST AND THE DARKNESS (with Val Kilmer, Bernard Hill and Michael Douglas) the narrator Samuel challenges the viewer to go "Look them in the eye...and not be afraid."
@@susandolan9543 There was a drought and lions will kill animals and drink their blood for hydration so they were killing multiple humans a day to quench their thirst. Most of the workers were not african but from other colonies so they didn't know the rules of living around lions. The thorny lion traps that the africans set up to catch the lions were useless against maneless lions so the fact they could slip in and out through the traps and barricades was what made them so scary to even the people who were familiar with lions.
Bob Gymlan did an amazing video on the lions of Tsavo, highly recomend it.
There is a rather cheesy but good fun French movie about this beast called "Le Pacte Des Loups", that somehow manages to mix martial arts and a native american sidekick to the protagonist, it's a fun watch
“Brotherhood of the Wolf” 🤘🤘🤘 Marc Dacascos
“The Brotherhood of the Wolf”Great Movie about this Story
In The Night No Man Can Run From The Beast Of Gévaudan
No Escape From The Fate Of A Martyr Born In Pain
When All Prayers Said And Done, Tame The Land Of Gévaudan
And The curse Of The Beast Will Remain
It might have been a Wild Wolf suffering from Gigantism or some other rather freakish mutation.
It was more likely that it was just an American wolf. They are much larger than their European counterparts, and could easily be explained by some rich idiot brought one back.
That's what I thought too. Remember Andre the Giant and Robert Pershing Wadlow.
Bring back that old intro you used to have with the potion bottles and such. It was so cool and unique.
There's giant wolf statues in the towns of Marvejols, Auvers, Malzieu-ville and Sauges, as well as a museum that all commemorate the killing of the Beast.
I've read a French museum curator found old museum displays and a striped hyena was actually donated by Jean Chastel, the slayer of the final "Beast". It was displayed as the Beast of Gevaudan.
Really cool. Love this short story/fairy tale approach.
Great video! I have watched all the other well done videos of The Beast and I'm fascinated. I personally think it was a mix of creatures and human attacks, as huge wolfs were sometimes spotted by eye witnesses but most of the attacks had no witnesses.
The universe works in mysterious ways! My family is French and we used to visit them. They had a house exactly i Montpelier and it used to terrorise me as a child. And we discussed it this past Easter Monday and now a video on something I though no one else knew about that's crazy! Nice covering it tho!
Thank you for the video 👍🏻
Hey when’s the next book?
It was really good! Cleared lots of things up!
Hey love the channel. Im here to demand more of the dark world series or at least ask if or when another addition is coming out😂 Thank you and best wishes 😊
The identity of the beast is nobody knows this was a big wolf hyena or a lion some kind of man beat from folk lore but it's interesting to learn about this mysterious creature. 🐺🐺🐺🐺🐺🐺🐺
This was a very interesting presentation..😏 I've looked into this story quite alot,howev I'd not heard that there were simultaneous attacks,or that this beast might have had young ones!!
Fascinating 👍
Really fascinating👍!
What about an ancient animal? A cryptid? Like a Bear dog? An ancient species of mammal that was as it's name suggests a combination of bear and dog like features?
This has to be my favorite werewolf myth ever. I remind you people, European wolves are man eaters especially in the old days when guns weren't around yet. Unlike wolves from the America's because we came there with guns.
It sounds like a wolf that had some sort of defect but made it highly aggressive and large similar to how some humans are born with certain abilities. It’s an interesting mystery.
Still love your content been a sub since around 500k subs is when j found your channel glad to see the growth keep up the great content!
I first heard about this from an Adeptus Ridiculous podcast. Also really well done
I love this so much.. I was wondering if you would do more videos on Haitian African and Pacific Islander mythologies and stories?
im commenting because all your videos will captivate me. so its a bookmark for me to come back, ive subbed but yt.... i dont want to lose this channel. thanks for all the info keep it coming.
Excellent quality always… Love your great channel… I have seen a French movie (English Dubbing) called “Brotherhood of the Wolf” (2001) which is based on the “The Beast of Gévaudan” but with some deviations… Regards🇶🇦
Love this so much, I hope you will do Achiles please ❤
The movie 'Brotherhood of the Wolf' was made loosely based around this event.
'Wasn't a bad movie, on the whole.
Would love you to revisit the Cthulu mythos !!
I think the beast of gevaudan was just a really large, menacing, ravenous wolf who preyed on humans because there was nothing else to eat in the area. It just got tagged with being a werewolf because of the moon being full all the time back then.
Try getting a hold of Brotherhood of the Wolf the Directors Cut. There's a special feature from French Author about the beast that he culled from various eye witnesses. It was huge but unlike a wolf who hold their tails horizontally before they attack, the beast wagged its tail like a dog when it attacks. As Fronzac deduced in the movie, the beast of Gevaudan was a trained animal. The beast was linked to a family of witches, one in particular. When that person went to prison for a period of time the beast stopped killing. When the warlock was released the beast took up its killing spree again. The beast was a hybrid wolf- mastiff cross. See above about wolves and dogs tails.
The “werewolves at full moon” thing was invented by Hollywood- werewolves were never traditionally associated with the full moon until the Wolf Man came along and from there, it just stuck.
Additionally, the French were familiar with wolves; they were a common pest that stalked lone travelers and plundered farms. It should be worth noting that the Beast of Gevaudan NEVER went after said-farm animals, and exclusively humans, which gives two possibilities.
1) This is an animal that got too injured to hunt usual prey, so it became a man-eater. A popular example would be the Tiger of Champawat.
2) It was an animal trained to hunt people, which raises the question of a human murderer in the mix as well.
@@Pastamist you could also find the Val Kilmer, Michael Douglas, Bernard Hill movie The Ghost and The Darkness. All about the twin man eaters of Tsavo in Africa. They killed for the pleasure of it. As for The Beast of Gevaudan the historian in the extras theorized it was a trained animal. A wolf Mastiff hybrid. As it didn't act like a wolf would when it attacked and it only attacked people. In the movie, the Beast attacked only women and children who were the least likely to be able to either run away or fend it off.
That would hold up except this beast would run past live stock like sheep just to attack humans. It was avoiding other sources of food. Possibly it was a man eater got a taste for human.
@@stevenwayman4950 an extremely similar case in 1990s India conclusively showed a group of Indian wolves as culprits.
Love the story
But I've come across the legend of "the mark of cain" I see it a lot on tv shows and would love to see a video on that ☺️
Great video.
Very interesting !
Don't speak a lick of French, but I know this story as le bete du gevaudan. And never used English to say it. Always liked the way it sounds.
Which translates to ,,the beast of/from Gévaudan" ,though bête used to also mean animal in general
First heard of the Beast of Gevaudan from Powerwolf 🐺 🤘🏼 glad I stumbled across this video!!!
The song "The beast of Gevaudan" by Powerwolf is amazing.
Great video on one of my all-time favorite European monster tales! 😎⚔🐾🐺🦁🔥🙌
Lol. "Threw his men under the bus"
When I was twenty I was at the park in colville Washington. A cocker spaniel got in a fight with some sort of heeler mix. There was this little kid at their feet wile they fought. I don't know who's dogs they were i don't know who's kid it was all I know is I had to knock over 6 (literally six no exaggeration or hyperbole) to go break that dog fight up before that kid got hurt because 30 freaking adults just stood in a circle yelling and throwing crap. So when that Frenchman says that the locals were unhelpful and his men were incompetent I 100% believe that was the case.
I remember as a kid in the 70’s reading this story in the school library
They were portrayed as werewolves
Brotherhood of the Wolf was such a great movie. I had no idea it was based on an actual historical event!
Reminds me of Ralph from Rampage.
AMAZING
Really interesting story. Someone should write a song about it!
Interesting. Wolves with a deliberate distain for the crowded town
Those illustrations are nightmare fuel.
Brotherhood Of The Wolf
In the night no man can run from the beast of Gévaudan
No escape from the fate of a martyr born in pain
When all prayers said and done, tame the land of Gévaudan
And the curse of the beast will remain
Powerwolf, Beast of Gévaudan
How about Beowulf next?
It was me, I was the beast of Gevaudan
I never heard this story before. But im sure it was maybe some inspiration of hound of the baskervilles.....😊
Definitely one of the most insane killing sprees in relatively modern history. Even more insane is the fact the Beast of Gevaudan has never been identified conclusively. How did the survivors not know what attacked them? The more outlandish theories of lion or hyena don't make much sense, since the Beast survived several French winters. A small group of wolves makes the most sense. Perhaps the alpha developed a taste for humans. A similar case in India much more recently seemed to be the answer as well.
Awesome story 😁
Great video as always! Love your content and always follow along. Can you help me out with something? I'm trying to find the name of a certain ghost or demon. I'm not sure if its a knight or a headless horseman, but its was supposed to be some kind of rider. One key aspect of this creature was that it used a human spine as a whip. Any idea what I'm looking for?
I’m leaning more on it being a hyena wolf hybrid.
They did a film about it called brotherhood of the wolf really good movie
Do you think the story Beauty and the Beast is somewhat inspired by this story? Cause I can see quite a connection to it.
This one my favorite stores telling
To shreds you say?
The thing about this werewolf account was there was reason to take it as fact as animal attacks. Because the animals that were killed were taken to the palace of Versailles where they were stuffed and kept to this day. The story of a hyena came from the last animal to cause these attacks which was a spotted dog that looked very odd not like a wolf at all and when historians got to see the beast it was in fact a hyena and much like the Man Eaters of Savo carbon and other tests confirmed that this hyena had attacked and eaten humans. But led to a dark question which was how on earth did a hyena get to the French country side a question when you hear how the beast was felled leads to one dark conclusion.
I first heard about this from Atmosfear lol
Now we know where Teen Wolf got the idea from for s5. I thought it was made up.
Perhaps we shall never know exactly what was the creature. Back then they weren't exactly into preserving that sort of thing. And the drawings are always up to interpretation. I first heard of this on Teen Wolf, they did a great job with this story in the series. It's also very curious stuff.
the Marin Report confirmed it to be of wolf dog origin based on teeth and set of double dew claws.
man i rly want werewolves to be real. been scared and fascinated by them since childhood
Shapechangers are found in the myths and legends of numerous peoples. Most of them are either trickster deities or magic-working humans.
Imagine a very aggressive Caucasian Ovcharka crossed with an imported American Grey Wolf. To me that type of unholy creature even scarier than any Werewolf
There really is no telling how many lives and futures have Been cut short by an individual in the dark that was never noticed.
Neat.
I wonder if the animals responsible might not have been hybrids, wolf crossed with a large domestic dog.
Perhaps this might account for their size and lack of fear of humans.
Lack of fear could mean stray dogs, now ownerless.
i think a french shepherd or sheep dog had bred with a wolf. a bucaeron is one breed that might have been the dog parent
Loup-Garou / Dogman 👀
There was a movie a few years back called The Brotherhood of the Wolf... it was possibly based off this tale/myth
Definitely was based on the beast of Gevaudan. Cool movie.
it COULD have also been a type of werewolf known as a dogman
There's no difference, they're the same thing.
@@jamessunderland7435 internet expert?
Ι would say that there were two or three of unusually large canines that hunted humans because of lack of prey
Except for the fact that people were just being savaged and killed, but not eaten.
Think there could be a human serial killer in this mix. Using the beast as a cover.
I believe it was a couple of lions because those times the people would have never known what it was. But if it was a wolf then maybe a very large speciemen or of its a werewolf then damn missed my chance to make a wolf conclave...
Except that the Beast was around for several French winters. A captive lion in France wouldn't survive.
But lions were long since known to Europeans at the time.
Aesop, from ancient Greece, often featured lions in his popular fables.
Ancient Rome forced people to fight lions and other exotic animals, to death, in the collesseum.
Powerwolf has a song called The beast of gevaudan
When I was a young kid back in the 70s I read a book that was based on this I dont remember the name but I remember the cover showing a pig headed monster with werewolf like claws. It had pictures in it showing the monster with a human like body with a pig head pointed ears and long claws on its fingers. Ive tried looking it up but no success
Not gonna lie - Am now concocting a D&D scenario for my players based on this.
I've done something similar, but it was based on 2nd edition viking time era.
wasn’t this monster in also in the anime; The Case Study of Vanitas?
The Beast of Gevaudan reminds me of Reverend Lowe from the King book Cycle of the Werewolf
Loved silver bullet. That werewolf was fn scary.
It's funny to think a group of teenage boys made up a campfire story and got gold from the king.
There's a power metal song about the The beast of Gevaudan.
Looks like a cat hybrid with a monstrous wolf . Like the one Michael Jackson morphed into with the Thriller video .
The Beast of Gévaudan could very well have been an Alphyn.🤔
Plot twist*
The beast was actually a serial killer who raised wolves and hyenas and trained them to eat the remains of his victims,
🎵We’re not safe until he’s dead🎵
🎵He’ll come stalking us at night🎵
🎵Set to sacrifice our children to his monstrous appetite🎵
🎵He’ll wreak havoc on our village if we let him wonder free🎵
🎵So it’s time to take some action boys🎵
🎵It’s time to follow me🎵
When considering the timing of the attacks stopping with the killing of certain animals, the realistic factor of people there knowing what a wolf looked like, and the weird description of how it was supposed to look, I'd say the Beast was not one thing, but at least two different things. One part of it was certainly the unusually large wolves, which could have happened just from normal breeding, the same way men sometimes reach well over 6 feet in height and grow to be huge and giantlike compared to average men.
The wolves killed right at the same points when the attacks stopped happening so much make it obvious that some of this was done by these prodigiously sized wolves, which could have been naturally aggressive like some of them were then.
The other part of what made this story, based on the extremely unusual physical description of it, sounds to me like some kind of interbreeding between a wolf and some sort of big dog. Hunting dog breeds used by kings and nobles often had very long fur and muzzles, which fits the shape we have described here, and they said there were especially big wolves around, so the only missing component is whatever animal in the gene pool led to that fur pattern. My best guess is that somewhere in the area, a hunting dog escaped and mated with a big wolf, then after some breeding, the changes in genetics eventually led to a weird-looking animal that people would have thought was some horrifying monster, and the big wolves nearby got vicious enough to kill people a lot.
Between these things happening at the same time, and the widespread fear and panic, all these things may collectively have been lumped together to form the monster story we have now. As far standing upright like a man, it's actually very plausible. You can find videos of people's pet dogs doing that sometimes, which is pretty cute.
I think definitely more than one animal. A case from 1990s India was extremely similar, and hair dna showed the culprit was a group of Indian wolves. As unlikely as it may seem, it shows wolves will develop a taste for humans as prey.
@@robertcoggeshall3071 It seems to be more the case that while most wolves are mainly passive to humans, those that aren't go to extremes in opposite directions. The killing wolves eat as many people as they can, and wolves raised as pets tend to be very docile, cuddly, and usually safer to handle than a few domesticated breeds of dog. You can compare a wolf to a sheperd, a bulldog, or a chihuahua, and most of those will be more willing to show aggression than an actual wolf when it's raised as a pet. They still work really well as deterrents though, because a potential burglar or robber is usually unwilling to mess with a guy whose dog is as big as he is. Realistically, it might just lick them unless they become violent, but it still works to scare unsavory people if they don't know that the wolf they see is just an oversized lap dog that kisses people.
Guys I live in Africa, Namibia to be exact. And a hyena first of all is a bit smaller than a wolf, secondly a hyena is a scavenger, they would almost never attack something up front especially not when the prey is larger than itself or appears to be larger, they are cowardly little fuzzers. And thirdly they have a very distinct look and sound so wether it's a spotted or a striped hyena it couldn't be one and they described the creature to be red with a black stripe not light brown with black dots or brown with alot of black stripes. This was something entirely different, as for the theory about it being a lion again guys, lions ain't red with a black stripe they look nothing like wolves and you'd hear it has a complete different sound than a wolf or hyena and trust me you would hear it, and cmon people they would have said that its a hyena or lion cuz you'd be able to see that. Now about the size, I'm still baffled how they go from hyena or wolf to maybe it's a lion. There is a huge size difference between the size of hyenas and lions. If the thing was really large it couldn't be described as a hyena cuz a hyena is not nearly as big as a lion. Heck I dare say this thing was larger than a lion and definitely longer than a leopard. I believe that this was either a dire wolf of some kind that somehow managed to still survive and possibly be the very last of its species and therefore when it got killed it got extinct, go look up dire wolf and you will see something very similar to the beast of Gevaudan, it's big, it's a wolf, it's red with a black stripe and we never saw the likes of it again. Or this is something else.. possibly another species of wolf that we don't know about maybe that also went extinct or this thing was something like a werewolf and maybe the last one that died, or not and it's best to leave whatever that thing was as a reminder that there are still things out there that we don't know about.
Unidentified? They caught and identified it. It was a large hybrid wolf/dog that hunted humans because there was almost nothing else in the area to eat due to over hunting.
Where did you read or hear that?
I think it was speculated, not proved. It could well be the case.
Not true because it didn't eat any of its victims, just tore most of their throats out and it avoided killing the livestock of the village. None of that info tells me it was hungry