The Beast of Gévaudan

0:00Today's story is about a three-year period in France where people were going missing at an alarming rate and nobody knew why. But eventually, it was discovered why. And let me tell you, it is absolute nightmare fuel. But before we get into today's story, if you're a fan of the strange, dark, and mysterious delivered in story format, then you've come to the right podcast because that's all we do and we upload twice a week, once on Monday and once on Thursday. So if that's of interest to you, please offer to walk the Fall of Button's dog, but then just immediately go sell their dog in the parking lot of a big box store.

0:36Okay, let's get into today's story.

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1:53Early on the morning of January 12th, 1765, a 12-year-old boy named Jacques Portufi sat up suddenly in his bed, breathing hard. The room was pitch black that he was in, but he could feel he was sweating and his heart was racing, and he tried to shake his head to kind of wipe the nightmare he had just had from his mind, but he just couldn't do it. All he could think about was how in this nightmare, something had been chasing him, and he had been running for his life, and he was trying to get away, but whatever this thing was, this horrible beast that was following him, it just kept getting closer and closer and closer until it finally got him, and that's what woke him up.

2:30Jacques reached up and touched his face, and he realized he was crying, and he quickly wiped the tears away because he didn't want any of his brothers or sisters to see that he was crying. Jacques was the oldest of eight kids in his family and all of them slept in the same small room on straw-filled mattresses inside of their family's little cottage in the southern French province of Géboutin. And so, you know, Jacques, he's looking around the bedroom to make sure none of his siblings had woken up and seen him in this state and he was relieved to see that they were all still fast asleep. Everybody made fun of Jacques for being a scaredy cat, for being a coward, And to Jacques, this really hurt his feelings, because on some level, he knew it was kind of true.

3:14In fact, just a couple of months earlier, he had lost in a physical fight with a much younger boy, and afterwards, Jacques had cried. And the whole town had seen this happen, and so afterward, all the kids began calling Jacques the wet chicken, and even Jacques' brothers and sisters began joining in and calling him the wet chicken, and really making him feel totally ashamed. And it wasn't like the adults in this village were stepping up and protecting Jacques, because to them, Jacques was kind of like a liability. In this part of France, you know, the winters were brutal. People died all the time in this village from the weather.

3:50And then the summers brought all these outbreaks of disease, which wiped out even more people in this village. And so by and large, where Jacques lived, it was kind of like the survival of the fittest. and many kids didn't live that long unless they were really hardy and tough, like their parents who had managed to survive for that long. But Jacques was just not like that. He was very gentle and peaceful, yet somehow he had survived. And Jacques really was not trying to become this kind of macho guy. Instead, he really wanted to be a priest like his uncle. But his uncle lived far away, and so it was tough to see his uncle all that often, to learn about, you know, how to become a priest.

4:29But any time Jacques did get a chance to actually see his uncle, he would have a chance to read all these books and study alongside his uncle. And so for a little while, it was like Jacques was transported away from the hardships of his village to the life that in many ways he wished he had. A quiet, peaceful, very studious life. But deep down, Jacques felt like there was no chance he would ever actually escape this little village where he effectively was an outcast.

5:03Even though the sun had not risen yet, Jacques just sat on his bed and couldn't fall asleep again after waking up from this nightmare. And so just sitting there in the dark and the quiet, Jacques began to think about what he had to do later that day when the sun did come up. And like usual, Jacques started to feel afraid. And so Jacques eventually just laid down with his eyes open, and he laid there until dawn when one of his younger brothers named Jean, who was eight years old, rolled over and pushed him and said, hey, wet chicken, it's time to get up. It's our day with the sheep. Let's go. Jacques scowled at his younger brother and shoved him back, but not that hard because Jacques never really shoved anybody that hard, no matter what they did to him.

5:44And then both boys hopped out of their bed. They wolfed down some bread and cheese and then headed out the door. As soon as they were outside, Jacques noticed that the village was much quieter than it normally was. But then again, these days, villagers did not leave their homes unless they absolutely had to. And so Jacques and Jean made their way away from their cottage down the dirt road to the pen where their family kept all of their sheep. And the boys opened up the gate and then used their staffs to kind of corral the sheep out of the gate back onto the road. And as the sheep kind of bleated and bawd and bumped into each other.

6:19The boys worked hard to kind of organize them on the road, and then once the sheep understood which direction they were going, towards the forest, a very familiar walk for the sheep, they kind of fell into line and just began walking very casually like they knew exactly where to go. And once the sheep had fallen into this kind of routine rhythm, Jacques and Jean fell in behind them and just walked quietly after them. And as the boys walked, they both constantly kept looking left and right and ahead of the sheep and behind them, constantly scanning for danger, because they knew something was out here.

6:52For months now, children all across this province in France, Jéboudon, had been going missing. They'd go off into fields or pastures, like when they're moving their family's livestock around, and the kids would just vanish. And then sometimes, if they were found again, they'd be found totally mutilated far from where they should have been. The attacks on these kids across Jeboudon had begun a year earlier on June 30, 1764. On that day, a 14-year-old girl, who actually was the older sister of one of Jacques' friends, had disappeared and then been found again later that day, partially eaten in a field near her home after she had not come home with the family's cattle.

7:36Now, of course, this was very tragic, but to this point, there had not been any other attacks, so there was no pattern here, and so the assumption was she must have been attacked by a wolf, which did happen, and often two children, because kids at this time in France were often in charge of tending to their families grazing animals, the way Jacques and Jean were going out with their sheep. You know, these kids were small, they couldn't really defend themselves, and if a wolf set on to them, there was very little they could do. But five weeks after this 14-year-old girl was found dead and mutilated in the field, two more teenagers were also found mutilated and dead in a field.

8:15And really, this was only the beginning. As summer turned to fall that year, more and more kids went missing and then turned up dead in fields, partially mutilated. And the more these attacks happened across southern France, the more people thought to themselves, this can't be a wolf. Number one, wolves don't go on extended human killing sprees. That's just not a thing. And number two, if it was a wolf, they would be eating more of their victims. They wouldn't just rip their body to shreds and then leave them. They would eat the meat. And so by this early January day in 1765, as Jacques and Jean were setting out for the day with their family's sheep, the death toll from whatever was killing these kids was now well into the dozens.

9:01People in France had begun calling whatever was killing these children the Beast of Géboudon, and stories about this creature began popping up in newspapers all over France. People all across southern France began forming these huge hunting parties to go out into the forests and the wilds of Jevoudon to find this creature and kill it, but they would always come back empty-handed. And then every now and again, a hunter would be out, and they would see a huge wolf, and they would kill it, and they would declare that they had found and killed the beast of Jevoudon, but the attacks on these kids all across this province just continued.

9:39So obviously, that wolf was not it. And so as these attacks continued, all the fairs and festivals that normally would pop up all year long all across southern France. Those all stopped because people were afraid to go out in fear of this creature. And then of course, in villages like Jacques's village, people really just stopped going out unless they had to, again, because of the Beast of Chaboudon. But Jacques and Jean's family relied on their livestock, and they needed their sheep to go out and graze. And so on this day in January, Jacques and Jean had to go out because their sheep had to graze.

10:17Their family relied on the sheep, livestock was their livelihood, and so this was a mandatory thing.

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12:35And so, as Jacques and Jean continued walking behind their herd of sheep down this dirt road towards the forest, the two boys eventually came to a stop and just turned around and looked back at their village. And they saw walking on the road towards them were five more kids, along with two additional herds of sheep that these five kids were in charge of. Ever since the Beast of Jevoudon had become a thing, Jacques and Jean had begun tending their sheep along with these five kids and their sheep. They figured the bigger their group was, the safer they were from this creature. As the five kids got closer to Jacques and Jean, Jacques realized that one of the kids that was with them this day was a tall, thin redhead.

13:17It was the same younger boy who had recently beaten Jacques up in front of the village, and he had cried and everyone had made fun of him. And so Jacques sees this kid coming and immediately he can feel his face burning with embarrassment. And then the boy, he sees Jacques and he immediately smirks and begins flapping his arms like chicken wings. But once these five kids and their sheep joined Jacques and Jean and their sheep, they all kind of just went quiet because none of them wanted to be out there. They were all scared of the beast of Jevoudon. And the only reason they were together was again to be safe from this creature that was killing kids left and right.

13:53And so in relative silence, all of the kids and their sheep just slowly walked together down this dirt path. And eventually they made it into the big forest where just beyond the forest was the pasture where these sheep would graze. And as the group actually entered into the trees and it became dark and more quiet and kind of eerie, Jean actually tugged on Jacques' shoulder and said, will you please tell a story? Because Jean was scared too. The kids were all scared. and they figured, you know, if Jacques just told a story, it would take their mind off of how tense this moment was. And when Jacques heard this request, he actually smiled because this was something he loved to do.

14:31He was a great storyteller. It was like his one strength. When Jean had asked for the story, the kids and the sheep had actually made it to really the end of the forest path. And so by the time Jacques was about to start a story, all the sheep had made their way out of the forest onto this big open pasture right in the middle of the forest. And so as the sheep just kind of filtered out into this open area, Jacques stopped and all the kids kind of came up right behind him. And Jacques started his story by pointing across the pasture to this bog that was right at the base of this big hill. And he said, do you see those big rocks in that bog over there?

15:05Well, you see the biggest rock? Well, that's not really a rock. It's actually a doorway. And if you move the rock underneath it, there's a portal to another world. And so as Jacques began telling this very creative story about this kingdom that existed underneath the bog, he sat down against a rock, kind of facing out towards the sheep, and all the other kids kind of filed in around him, taking seats with Jean, his brother, sitting right behind him to his right. And Jacques, he was just really into the story to the point where he kind of forgot about what was happening with the sheep, and he wasn't scanning around for danger, and neither were any of the kids, including the redhead who had beaten Jacques up.

15:43He wanted to act like he wasn't into his story, but in reality, he totally was, and he was just as interested in what was going on with the magical kingdom below this rock. And finally, when Jacques got to the end of his story, where this evil giant that had been tormenting the kingdom under the bog had been tricked by an orphan to try to go through this magical portal into their world, and the giant had gotten stuck in the doorway because he was so big, and he never tormented the kingdom again, and they lived happily ever after, when Jacques got to that point in the story and all the kids are totally locked in and not paying attention to anything else, two things happened in rapid succession.

16:21The first was, even though Jacques is telling the story and focusing on that, in the back of his mind he registers hearing the sound of twigs breaking somewhere right behind him, almost like the sound of someone or something moving along the forest floor. And the second thing that happened was the red-headed kid who had beaten up Jacques without saying a word, just stood up and began sprinting towards the pasture. And for a moment, Jacques thought this kid, who was kind of like a bully, was doing this on purpose, to be rude to Jacques, to kind of run away at the climax of the story like he didn't care about it.

16:57But then Jacques realized that he smelled something terrible behind him. But when Jacques turned around to see what was making this smell, he saw that his brother, Jean, who had been sitting right behind him to his right was now gone, and where he had been sitting was just his staff laying on the ground. And for a second, Jacques just couldn't process what his eyes were seeing. He didn't understand how his brother could have gotten away from him without him noticing. But before Jacques could do anything, all the kids around him that were still there began screaming and pointing up towards this hill that was right behind them.

17:33And so Jacques turned around, and to his horror, he saw there was this huge 12-foot-tall creature that was covered in fur. It looked like an oversized wolf, but it was standing on two legs, and its bones seemed like they were too big for its own skin, and it made it seem very angular and jagged. And as it kind of loped grotesquely up the hillside, Jacques realized it was carrying in its front arm Jean, who was screaming and kicking, but could not get away from this creature. Jacques understood that this was the beast of Jevoudon, and it was going to go kill his brother.

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19:16And immediately Jacques is thinking, you got to run, run away, get to safety, get out of here. And all the kids around him, that's what they did. They took off running towards the pasture. They didn't care about Jean. They only cared about themselves. And so Jacques, he knows he needs to get away, save himself. But his legs just will not move. He is rooted to the spot because something inside of him told him he has to save his brother. It doesn't matter if everyone thinks he's a coward. That's his brother. He needs to do something. And so Jacques, he turns to the kids who are running away from him.

19:48And he screams at them to stop, come back. And the kids were so surprised to hear this strong, authoritative voice coming out of the wet chicken that they did stop and turned around to see what he wanted. And he said, get over here. I have a plan. And so the kids, with the exception of the redhead who had run off by himself, they came back to Jacques and Jacques began telling them his plan to save Jean. And the kids, again, were so taken with how Jacques was really owning this moment and being a leader that they all said, OK, let's do this. And so after this very quick planning meeting, all the kids turned and began running up the hillside towards the beast of Jeboudon with Jacques in the front with his staff out.

20:32And the kids gained on the beast really quickly. And the creature clearly noticed and kept turning around and kept looking at these kids getting closer and closer. But the beast did not seem interested in any of them. It just wanted Jean. And in fact, it moved Jean from its arm up into its mouth. And then the creature began kind of using the trees to pull itself faster and faster away from the kids. But Jacques, he just kept going faster and faster and pushing himself to get closer and closer. And as he did, it motivated the other kids to follow along and push it and gain on this creature. And finally, they got close enough to this beast that Jacques yelled out to the kids, Now!

21:13And they all fanned out around it and began smashing this beast with their staffs they used to shepherd their livestock. Now, none of their blows to this creature were doing any real damage, and the creature did not really seem phased that the kids were now attacking it, but they were kind of able, with their strikes to this creature, to direct it and get it to kind of turn in the direction that Jacques had told them to make the creature go. And so the kids continued to beat and poke and corral this creature. And every time they'd hit it, the beast would kind of flail out with one of its arms.

21:46But it never really did anything because, again, it's really focused, obviously, on taking Gene. But eventually, Jacques' plan worked. He had corralled the creature to the top of the hillside right over where that bog was, where those rocks in the middle were part of the story that Jacques had told about how there was this portal to another world. and once this creature was positioned where Jacques wanted it, he again yelled to the kids to do the next phase of their plan. And all the kids kind of fanned out to the top of the hill and with their staffs, they beat and poked this creature down the hill into the bog.

22:21And as they did this, Jacques kept looking to see if Jean was alive because earlier he had been screaming and kicking, but now there was blood all over his brother and he was limp in the creature's mouth and he wasn't making any sound. but Jacques didn't care he wanted to get his brother back dead or alive and so finally Jacques stepped forward from the group and he wound up and he smashed the beast as hard as he could hard enough that the beast actually kind of stumbled forward into the actual marshy bog and what Jacques knew about this bog and why he had come up with that particular story about there being a gateway to another world is weeks earlier he had actually accidentally stepped into this bog and saw it was really deep.

23:04And he had been lucky enough that he had grabbed a rock and kind of pulled himself out, because if he hadn't, the bog kind of functioned like quicksand. You could get stuck in the bog and never get out again. And this is what happened to the Beast of Jeboudon. It went feet first into the one spot of the bog that Jacques had had all the kids corral it to that was the deepest and most dangerous part. And as soon as the beast stepped into it, it sunk down to its waist. and immediately the beast reached out with its huge muscular arms and tried to pull itself out of the bog but it couldn't it was stuck and so in its panic it let go of gene from its mouth and it actually turned around and it looked at Jacques and the other kids and when it did Jacques almost lost his nerve because when he saw this thing face to face up close he saw this was not a wolf's face.