The Beast of Gévaudan: Mass murdering Wolf or Werewolf?

The First Throat

June 30, 1764, is a warm, lazy summer afternoon in the high pastures of the Margeride mountains. Fourteen-year-old Jeanne Boulet is alone with her sheep near the tiny hamlet of Les Hubacs, a cluster of stone houses perched on the edge of nowhere in the old province of Gévaudan. The air smells of wild thyme and sun-baked pine. The only sounds are the bleating of lambs and the distant tinkle of a cowbell. Jeanne, barefoot in her rough linen dress, sits on a rock singing softly to herself while she watches the flock graze. A lovely day by all accounts. But then...

Something enormous crashes through the undergrowth faster than any creature should move. Jeanne barely has time to stand before it is on her. Survivors who hear the single, cut-off scream say it sounds like a knife dragged across a violin string. When neighbors finally reach the pasture an hour later, drawn by the panicked scattering of the sheep, they find what is left of Jeanne Boulet strewn across the grass.

The head is almost severed, the throat torn out in one savage bite. Chunks of flesh are missing from the shoulders and chest. Blood has soaked the earth black. The parish priest, arriving with shaking hands, writes the cause of death in the register as “La Bête.” The Beast.

No one yet understands that those two words are about to become the most feared in all of France.

A Monster That Should Not Exist

Over the next three years the Gévaudan region (modern Lozère) becomes a slaughterhouse. The creature attacks in daylight, always going for the head and neck, often decapitating its victims with a single bite. It prefers women and children. It ignores cattle entirely with not a single report of it attacking farm animals during its rampage.

The few survivors that live to tell their tale describe the same thing over and over: The Beast is bigger than any wolf they've ever seen, it had reddish-brown fur with a black stripe down the spine, and a mouth that opens impossibly wide, teeth like a lion’s, and a chest so big a man could hide behind it.

There were also reports that musket balls bounced off its hide when people tried to shoot it, and it was also reported that packs of normal wolves would flee the area when The Beast appears on the scene.

The King Declares War

By spring 1765 the death toll is over 60. King Louis XV, clearly being dumber than a box of rocks, offers a bounty equal to a year’s wages for every normal wolf killed. Entire villages turn out with pitchforks, pikes, and antique arquebuses. Professional wolf-hunters Captain Duhamel and his dragoons arrive with 57,000 livres in rewards on the table. They slaughter hundreds of wolves. The attacks never slow.

September 21, 1765: two elite hunters, Antoine de Beauterne and his son, track and shoot an enormous wolf weighing 130 pounds (European wolves normally weigh 38.5 kg (85 lb). The King declares the Beast dead. Corpses are paraded through Paris. The killings stop for six weeks… then start again worse than ever.

“It was not a wolf… it was the size of a calf, with a head wider than any wolf, and talons instead of claws.”
– Survivor Jacques Portefaix, age 12, who fought the Beast off with a stick in 1765

The Girl Who Stabbed the Beast

August 11, 1765. Nineteen-year-old Marie-Jeanne Valet and her younger sister are crossing a river when the creature charges. Marie-Jeanne plants a homemade bayonet (a sharpened spindle on a stick) straight into its chest. The Beast roars, staggers, and flees bleeding heavily. The weapon is preserved to this day in the town of Auvers as “the spear that wounded the Beast.” She becomes a national hero; statues of her still stand.

The Silver Bullet

June 19, 1767. Local hunter Jean Chastel is attending Mass at Notre-Dame-de-Beaulieu when the priest reads the day’s Gospel about driving out demons. Chastel quietly opens his hunting pouch, melts down a blessed silver medallion of the Virgin Mary, and casts two bullets. That same afternoon, near Mount Mouchet, the Beast charges a group of peasants. Chastel raises his double-barreled gun and fires. The creature drops dead on the spot.

The autopsy, performed in front of dozens of witnesses and recorded by royal notary Marin, is chilling:

• Weight: 130+ pounds
• Length: over six feet from nose to tail
• Teeth: oversized canines and strange crushing molars not found in normal wolves
• Stomach contents: human shoulder blade and female human hair

The corpse is stuffed and sent to Versailles. However, it stinks so badly on the journey that it is buried in an unmarked grave, but drawings and the official report survive. Buried in an unmarked gra....FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU

Aftermath and Theories

Official death toll: 113 killed, 49 injured, 98 partially eaten. The terror ends the instant Chastel’s silver bullet hits. No similar attacks ever again.

Modern theories range from:

• Escaped striped hyena (matches size, reddish fur, non-retractable claws, mane, crushing bite)
• Trained man-killing hybrid wolf-dog owned by a sadistic noble (explains human-focused attacks)
• Actual surviving relic dire wolf or prehistoric hyena species
• Straight-up werewolf (still the local belief!)

Detailed Timeline

Sources

1. Royal notary Marin’s official 1767 autopsy report (preserved in French national archives)
2. Letters of Captain Duhamel to the king (1765)
3. Jay Michael Smith, “Monsters of the Gévaudan” (Harvard, 2011)
4. Contemporary engravings and the preserved spear of Marie-Jeanne Valet

Final Verdict

THE ONLY TIME A FAIRY-TALE MONSTER WAS KILLED WITH A SILVER BULLET. Whatever it was, hyena, hybrid, or literal demon, the Beast of Gévaudan was real enough to empty villages, make the King of France lose sleep, and turn an entire province into a war zone for three straight years. It killed 113 people during its reign of terror and at some points seemed to be very intelligent. And when the smoke cleared, the only thing that worked was the oldest monster-killing trick in the book.. a legit silver bullet. Makes you think.