The Real Wolfman: The Beast of Gévaudan

No One Knows What "Wolfman" Really Killed Over 100 People

In July of 1764, a fourteen-year-old girl in the south of France made sad history by being the first human victim of a mysterious creature (or creatures) that came to be known as the Beast of Gévaudan. To this day, no one knows what killed or wounded over a hundred people in southern France across the next three years.

Note: Although the stories of the Beast of Gévaudan sometimes contradict each other, and the Beast is more the subject of cryptozoology than of serious history, something happened in the forests of southern France two centuries ago, and no one yet knows what.

The Beast of Gévaudan: The Terror Begins

From the first attack through September of 1764, about one death a week was attributed to the Beast throughout the forests of Gévaudan. Rumors spread, doors were locked, and people huddled by their fires at night.

The beast was a wolf; of that everyone was sure. Particularly unnerving, however, was that unlike other wolves, it preferred human prey to cattle, as if the mysterious carnivore had a distinct taste for human flesh.

It was a wolf, but it was large as a bull. It had a wolf's claws and teeth, but it also had a devil's horns. There were all manner of distinct markings in the fur, although it seems unlikely that one could have mistaken the Beast of Gévaudan for anything else.

There was just one problem: no one who had had a close encounter with the Beast had lived to tell about it. Of course, everyone knew someone whose uncle had been talking with a soldier in tavern in the next town, oh, some town, whose sister had definitely seen the Beast, this creature from some other world, this demon.

The military patrolled the woods, and toward the end of September, all was quiet. But on the first day of October, the killings resumed. Since most of the victims had been women and children, the provincial governor prohibited unaccompanied women and children from working in the fields.

A serious wolf hunt was undertaken, and wolves were killed, but the Beast of Gévaudan continued in its bloody ways. There were victims of whom so little remained that priests refused to conduct a funeral.