The Beast of Gévaudan

## Origin

Between the years 1764 and 1767 the inhabitants of the small French province of Gevaudan - currently part of Lozere, near the Margueride Mountains, were terrorized by a horrible lupine creature that came to be known as La Bête du Gevaudan or " The Beast of Gevaudan".

The creature was described as a wolf-like monster, but far larger than any wolf that had ever roamed the region, being nearly the size of a cow or horse. Its paws were dotted with sharp claws, its fur was dark as night, its massive mastiff-like head with small, straight ears, and an exceptionally large mouth filled with enormous tusks. More than a ghastly appearance, the creature seemed endowed with **an inherent evil that impelled it to kill for the sheer pleasure of doing so, not just to feed or defend itself.**

It is believed that until its reign of terror ends, the Beast of Gevaudan has **killed somewhere between 60 and 100 men, women and children, still leaving a balance of more than thirty wounded.** Attesting to the veracity of these numbers, of course, constitutes a task impossible, but it is known for sure that the case really happened and that the number of victims was high since it caused commotion throughout the country, becoming known in other parts of Europe.

The first reported encounter with the beast took place in May from 1764 in the forest of Mercoire near Langogne in the eastern part of Gevaudan. A young woman tending her herd of cattle noticed a dark shape lurking through the bushes. She said that the beast jumped out of the woods and attacked the animals, but the bulls managed to keep it at a distance with their horns. The creature attacked a second time fighting the bulls, unusual behavior for a wolf, but was repelled again. The animals managed to buy enough time for the terrified woman to escape and reach her village, where she told what had happened. The men of the village armed themselves and went to the place, finding some injured animals, but no sign of the wolf.

Just a month later, the wolf appeared again. This time the attack ended in tragedy, with the death of a girl who couldn't escape the beast. The child's body was found near a stream where she had gone to fill a pitcher with water. She had been horribly maimed and her heart, the stories were told, had been devoured by the beast.

In the months that followed the region plunged into an atmosphere of apprehension as the **huge black wolf went on its killing spree, seeming to have developed a special fondness for women, children and solitary men who went deep into the forest to care for their pastoral animals.** The way in which the beast attacked was also unusual for a predator, as it aimed for the head of its victims, ignoring the arms and legs, areas where wolves tend to concentrate. Victims who were not entirely devoured or disappeared without a trace were found with their heads smashed or completely removed from their bodies, something that had never been heard of before.

Due to the large number of attacks and fatalities, some began to suspect that there would be more than one beast, a pair or maybe even a pack of fearsome animals. Indeed, some witnesses reported seeing the beast at times when it was seen elsewhere. Some also claimed to have seen the huge wolf walking with other smaller animals that he seemed to lead. Reports multiplied and a strange rumor began to spread: that the beast followed the orders of a mysterious man dressed in black leather who pointed out the people the beast should kill. For some it was a fallen noble who made murder their sport, for others it was the devil himself.

**As the Beast of Gevaudan continued to systematically kill, people began to believe that behind its actions there was some component supernatural.** Hunters lost track of the beast in the middle of the forest, traps were ignored, **weapons seemed to negate fire and the foresters did not understand how such a large wolf was able to dodge all searches.** **The creature's ability to survive all attempts to eliminate it and the fact that it preferred to kill women seemed clearly supernatural. The peasants came to believe that they were not facing a simple wolf, but a loup-garou, a werewolf. its thirst for blood.**

In October 1764 two hunters found the beast in the forest and shot it from a distance of only ten paces. They hit the creature at close range and managed to bring it down, but before they could reload their muskets for a second volley, it scrambled to its feet and ran into the woods.**The hunters swore they had hit the beast, but said that the bullets were not able to kill the beast imbued with an obviously diabolical resistance.** Once they had told what had happened, a hunting party was organized who easily found the blood trails entering the forest, exactly in the place where the men had shot the creature. In view of the amount of tracks, everyone thought it would be a matter of time before they found the beast's carcass somewhere in the forest. The men entered the deepest part of the forest, where they discovered several bodies of victims who had disappeared until then, but no sign of the beast responsible for that massacre. When they were preparing to return, the wolf sneaked up, lunging at the men and causing four more fatalities. Survivors said they fired several times, hitting the target, but each time the beast was shot, it rose to attack again. Terrified, the men fled without looking back.

After that, panic settled in the region for good. Stories of the beast's exploits spread, carried by hunters, merchants, and travelers alike. Soon there wasn't a hunter in France who hadn't heard of the evil Beast of Gevaudan. Several beats formed, groups of hunters composed of several men, on foot or mounted, armed with powerful muskets, long hunting spears and scent mastiffs.

The head of the local militia, Captain Duhamel was commissioned by King Louis XV himself to find and to eliminate the threat responsible for leaving the peasants in such a state of terror that the crops were endangered. Duhamel organized a huge group of volunteers consisting of seventeen experienced hunters on horseback, a stock of over 40 preloaded muskets and a team of over thirty hounds. The group slaughtered all wolves that lived in the region. According to accounts, more than 200 animals were killed, but none of them resembled the elusive Beast of Gevaudan.

**Hunters spread traps throughout the forest, left sheep in accessible places guarded night and day, waited and even dressed some in women's clothing to try to lure the beast. But none of these strategies were successful.**

Finally in November, Duhamel's group spotted the beast and chased it through the forest, but lost it in an area where the horses were unable to enter. Following on foot, the relentless hunters did not give up and after meeting the huge wolf in a clearing, they shot at him, supposedly shooting him repeatedly. Still, the beast managed to escape into the woods. **The party believing the animal could not survive all the injuries inflicted returned to Gevaudan where they were received as heroes.**

Days passed without any news of the beast, until at the end of December, close to Christmas, another woman disappeared. The search party located his horribly mangled remains in a ravine: the nightmare would continue. Captain Duhamel's credibility plummeted and he was ousted after one of his trusted men was nearly lynched by an angry mob.

In Paris, the news was met with disapproval. **Critics of the monarchy said that the beast was making a fool of the King and that the monarch was incapable of looking out for the safety of his subjects and getting rid of a single wild animal.** Fueling the rumors, some claimed that a renegade nobleman was behind the killings, controlling a wild wolf. For others, such a noble would be the demonic wolf itself, which he transformed into on full moon nights.

A reward was promised for whoever killed the beast and presented its body. A royal emissary traveled to the Gevaudan region with the news that the hunter who killed the beast would receive a veritable fortune. The King ordered that the Beast of Gevaudan be killed and its remains displayed in Paris as a way to calm the population.

The amount offered attracted not only hunters from France, but also men from all over Europe who converged on Gevaudan avid for glory and for wealth. The hunt lasted for months, and over a hundred wolves were brought down, but not one of them was recognized as being the beast responsible for that situation. The locals were tired of the presence of so many foreigners eating their food, rummaging in the fields and trespassing on their property. Some hunters acted in bad faith trying to deceive the royal authorities. One man even presented the carcass of a strange and unusual animal, claiming that he had shot the creature after an epic hunt. The hunting master recognized the remains for what they really were, a hyena, which apparently had been brought from North Africa.

After the death of two children at an early age, the King, moved by the situation, contacted a Norman named Denneval , who had been a Marquis's Gamekeeper and who was reputed to be the greatest hunter in France. The monarch deposited his last hopes in the subject and promised him a title of nobility if he was successful in the dangerous undertaking.

In February 1765. Denneval arrived in the region of Gevaudan accompanied by five assistants of his complete confidence, one of them being a native American he had encountered on an expedition to the colony of Manitoba and who was famous for his qualities as a tracker. The entourage also had a real arsenal of 50 heavy military muskets, spears over two meters long, crossbows that fired iron arrows, explosive black powder bombs, traps and chains to capture bears and other modern equipment. The Gamekeeper's men, in black studded leather armor, were a terrifying sight, especially the New World savage with the mohawk hair and war paint. Denneval wore leather and metal armor full of spikes and is said to have killed a wolf in heat and smeared her blood all over his costume. The stench it gave off was nauseating, but he was confident it would attract prey.

The Denneval group was soon joined by young Jacques Denis, a sixteen-year-old boy who knew the forest like no one else and who proved not to be intimidated by the forest. task and not by the appearance of the flock. **Jacques explained that he wanted revenge on the beast since it had killed his older sister months earlier.** The boy had witnessed the horrific attack and watched his sister's lifeless body being dragged like a doll into the forest. from which it was never recovered. The boy was accepted into the company of hunters who scoured every corner of the forest. Denneval's plan was to force the beast closer and closer to Gevaudan in order to make the kill.

In mid-May, the Gamekeeper's plan succeeded, but not in the way he had hoped. The beast was lured to the city during the Spring Fair celebrations. During its daring attack, the beast killed several people including a young woman named Marguerite, who was in love with Jacques Denis. Furious villagers armed themselves with tools, sticks, stones and anything they could use as a weapon to kill the monster. Jacques and a group penetrated into the forest following the wolf's trail, but ended up falling into a trap. The men ended up dying and if it weren't for the providential arrival of Denneval and his men, Jacques would also have been killed by the beast. Despite surviving, legend has it that the boy's hair turned completely rancid and that he seemed to age decades from the experience. Shortly after this attack, which reportedly left more than a dozen dead, Denneval gave up the chase.

"There is nothing to be done" he would have written to the King apologizing. He continued: **"The beast has lured us into the forest in order to attack the village with impunity. Clearly we are facing something that defies reason and that acts impelled by the desire to kill. I fear that our presence here only makes it more savage and vindictive".**

**Disturbed by the withdrawal of the Gamekeeper, most of the hunters also left**. Free to act with impunity, the beast proceeded relentlessly. He killed a fourteen-year-old boy and a woman carrying a newborn. Furious at the Gamekeeper's letter, the King ordered that Denneval be brought before him, but he escaped to another country, disappearing from history. One of Louis XV's advisors appointed a man to take the place of the Gamekeeper, his name was Antoine de Beauterne, a renowned Parisian taxidermist who had hunted all manner of prey in Europe and Africa.

Beauterne arrived without fuss and did apparently little at first. He explored the forest, drew maps and marked where the beast had been seen. On one of his expeditions he met the native of Manitoba who stayed behind after leaving Denneval. The man, who came to be known as Mani, offered his skills as a tracker.

On September 21, Beauterne organized a hunting party made up of forty local hunters specially chosen for the task, and a dozen of the best bloodhounds. Uniting their knowledge of the terrain with Mani's valuable advice, the men focused on an isolated rocky area filled with ravines near the village of Pommier. It seemed logical to the taxidermist that the wolf would use this place, full of caves, as a lair because it provided a good hiding place and had drinking water. The plan was to take the hunt to a place where the beast felt safe, and where it didn't expect to be confronted.

As soon as they arrived at the location the dogs caught a scent and started barking like crazy. It didn't take long for the beast to emerge from a cave to investigate. One of the men raised the alarm and Beauterne fired his musket, hitting the beast squarely in the back. She still jumped, taking down one of the men, but immediately the others opened fire, riddling the wolf with accurate shots. One of them would have ripped out his left eye and lodged in his skull. The creature yelped and fell dead, but as the men cheered, it suddenly reared up and charged again with unearthly ferocity. A second volley of bullets was fired and finally the beast took over. The final blow was delivered by Mani. Armed with a sharp hatchet, the native jumped on the beast, his weapon described a spin in the air and landed heavily, shattering the beast's skull. Approaching cautiously, the men began to stab the carcass with bayonets and long spears until it was reduced to a grotesque and bloody thing.

The hunters tied what was left of the beast to a platform and dragged it to Pommier. Beauterne carefully examined the remains of the beast and concluded that it was a magnificent wolf measuring just over six feet and weighing in the region of two hundred pounds, with a mouth full of tusks over an inch long. Beauterne attempted to preserve the creature in order to bring it to the King, but despite his best efforts, the carcass had received extensive damage during the hunt. All he managed to save were his ears, teeth and tail, everything else was burned and buried on the outskirts of the village.

For over a year, things have been quiet in Gevaudan and life has been returning to normal. Then, in the spring of 1767, the killings resumed. Two children had disappeared and the body of a woman without her head was found in a field. Beauterne was called to return to Gevaudan, but he claimed that those deaths were not the work of a wolf, but a maniac. On June 19th of the same year, a local nobleman, the Marques d'Apcher organized the biggest beate ever seen to find the animal's trail. More than three hundred men on foot and mounted combed every inch of the woods. Nothing was found.

On June 19th of the same year, a local nobleman, the Marques d'Apcher organized the biggest beate ever seen to find the animal's trail. More than three hundred men on foot and mounted combed every inch of the woods. Nothing was found. At the time, a mysterious man named Jean Chastel was passing through the region. He was an acquaintance of Jacques Denis and offered to exterminate the beast. Unlike the others, he was not an experienced hunter, but an expert in folklore and superstition. **Chastel claimed that the person responsible for the new wave of deaths was not a simple wolf, but a bloodthirsty beast imprisoned in the body of a man. The light caused the beast inside the culprit to surface with an uncontrollable urge to kill. The spirit of the wolf of Gevaudan had infected this man, turning him into a murderer. He was a loup-garou.**

**The specialist managed to convince the people of Gevaudan to donate silver objects and when he had enough he had it melted down to produce projectiles that were blessed by the local parish priest**. Chastel's plan was to lure the werewolf to the edge of the forest. He prepared the place carefully and, accompanied by Denis, recited a series of prayers. Early in the morning, the two noticed movement in the woods and became alert. **Suddenly a wolf-shaped beast burst out of the forest and charged towards the two. Chastel fired with his pistols and the pure silver projectiles pierced the body of the beast that fell fulminated.**

In any case, the remains of the legendary Beast of Gevaudan were never recovered, causing more than two centuries of controversy regarding its real identity. In 1960, after studying Antoine de Beauterne's transcription of the process of dissection of the beast he had killed, a commission of zoologists concluded that the animal described was really a wolf. Franz Jullien, a taxidermist at the National Museum of Natural History in Paris, found samples of the teeth of the Beast of Gevaudan kept in the Museum's archives and submitted them to tests, concluding that they were indeed the fangs of a large wolf. In 1979, remains of a stuffed animal were found stored in the museum's storage in a box. According to rumors, they would be the remains of the specimen that Jean Chastel shot down with his silver bullets. The animal has apparently been identified as a hyena native to North Africa, the Middle East, Pakistan and western India.

Was the Beast of Gevaudan a huge hyena and not a wolf? The idea was considered, among others, by the novelist Henri Pourrat and the naturalist Gerard Menatorv, who proposed the hypothesis that a hyena had been brought by naimal dealers and, once rejected in a zoo, released in the forest. There is yet another hypothesis that calls into question the credibility of Jean Chastel. According to rumors, Chastel's father had a hyena in his household (a 17th-century term used for collections of animals kept in captivity). Some researchers believe in the possibility that Jean Chastel invented the story about the loup-garou and used the hyena that belonged to his father's menagerie to promote himself.

This raises the question as to who was then responsible for the deaths after Beauterne eliminated the big wolf. For some, Chastel or someone very close to him deliberately murdered innocents to create the impression that the Beast still roamed Gevaudan taking victims. For many, the mysterious Chastel was a man of dubious morals, greedy and avid for riches. One of the reasons why King Louis XV refused to receive it was precisely because he had tried to sell the remains of the slaughtered beast to the monarch for an exorbitant price. Chastel died in relative obscurity, but it is not entirely surprising that some claim that he became an executioner of the nobility and that he played the role of persecuting nobles after the Revolution.

Of course, this is all mere speculation since there is no way historically determine if there was more than one Beast of Gevaudan. What is known is that the feeling of terror that gripped the region between 1764 and 1767 was very well documented at the time. The wolf population was also drastically reduced, practically reaching extinction due to the hunting carried out in those three years.

What prompted a wolf to emerge from the forest to indiscriminately kill the inhabitants of a small province in France remains a mystery. But a stone marker was built at the site, reminding everyone of those fearful days.

## Powers and Abilities

**•Werewolf Physiology**

**•Adaptation** (is able to adapt and survive in any environment and/or external condition, being able to tolerate a wide range of temperatures and humidity levels, any quantity or quality of food, breathable medium, and other things with little or no discomfort)

**•Temperature Regulation**

**•Supernatural Condition** (a power to reach and remain in physical and mental conditions far superior to the natural level

**•Super Agility** (Agile enough to calmly dodge bullets if he doesn't even try)

**•Super Strength** (He's stronger than any regular Werewolf or "normal", that's why he's considered the father or king of werewolves)

**•Super Speed** (He's quick to disappear without even realizing it, so fast he can't be seen, and faster than most regular Werewolves)

**•Supernatural Reflexes**

**•Super Stamina** (Tough to be able to withstand bullets, which do not hurt him,(Apart from blessed silver)

**•Super Jump**

**•Heightened Senses**

**•Hearing**

**•Smell**

**•Sight**

**•Night Vision**

**•Contaminant Immunity** (is immune to all , the known poisons, toxins, poisons, viruses, bacteria, allergens, etc)

**•Lunar Empowerment**

**•Invulnerability** (are immune to conventional forms of physical damage, in addition to being immune to bleeds or loss of limbs)

**•Regeneration** (Beings with the ability to regrow lost limbs (eg arms, legs) and serious wounds, but still die from decapitation. And possibly the ability to regenerate even with the loss of their head)

**•Semi-Immortality/Longevity** (they live much longer than humans, the condition makes the host virtually immortal through the employment of life factors healing and an incredible metabolism)

**•Claw Retraction**

**•Fear Inducement** (a werewolf can make a human being feel fear, when in its eyes, becoming paralyzed with fear, even with its presence makes any human being afraid)

**•Immunity to mind control or hypnosis**

**•Weapon negation** (Has ability to negate weapons, "weapons seemed to negate fire")

## Weaknesses

**•Blessed silver**, can kill normal werewolves, such as cursed and magic ones, it is a divine and holy power.

## Associations

Werewolf

Wolf

Silver

Savagery

Devil

Beast

Gévaudan