0:02

Happy Saturday, everybody. It is our favorite

0:04

month of the show and the best month of the year

0:06

in my opinion. And to kick it off,

0:08

we are going back to a previous October

0:11

episode, The Beast of Gevadon, which

0:13

came out on October. So

0:16

in the course of this episode, we make a passing

0:19

reference to a website about whether

0:21

England was at war with France. And

0:24

if you get to that point and you're like, what are

0:26

they talking about? Several years ago

0:28

we basically joked about how England and

0:30

France were at war with each other so frequently

0:32

that there should just be one of those websites where you could

0:34

put in a year and it would tell you yes or no, were

0:37

they at war. After we made

0:39

that joke, two different listeners

0:41

made one of these websites. One of those websites

0:43

is still active. We will put a link in the show

0:45

notes, so enjoy.

0:50

Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class,

0:52

a production of I Heart Radios How Stuff

0:54

Works. Hello,

1:01

and welcome to the podcast. I'm Tracy V.

1:03

Wilson and I'm Polly Frying. So

1:06

recently I asked for

1:08

Halloween episode suggestions because

1:11

I had this whole list of Halloween

1:13

episode suggestions, and really none

1:15

of them were peaking my interest at all. That

1:18

happens, Yeah, it's I

1:20

had sort of analysis paralysis about Halloween

1:22

episodes. Um, then Helene

1:25

suggested the Beast of Jeffadon, and

1:28

the second that I made sure that there was a legitimate

1:31

academic source in English that I had access

1:33

to, I stopped looking for any

1:35

other Halloween topic because this

1:37

one is frightening and

1:40

grizzly and just deeply fascinating.

1:42

So, uh, that's

1:45

your heads up if you if you

1:47

need for a warning about frightening, grizzly

1:49

things, this is frightening and grizzly. For

1:52

hundreds of years, wolf attacks

1:54

in Europe were really not all that rare.

1:57

Today, the sort of ecologists motto

2:00

is that healthy wolves don't attack humans,

2:02

but this was absolutely untrue

2:05

in early modern Europe. There were thousands

2:08

of attacks by rabid wolves and thousands

2:10

more attacks by apparently healthy

2:13

wolves. There had even been multiple

2:15

incidents in this period

2:18

in which the same wolf or a group of

2:20

wolves killed multiple

2:22

people over a period of weeks or months.

2:25

So wolves in general

2:27

were considered to be a threat, and

2:30

uh, any kind of outdoor work,

2:33

especially if it was around animals

2:35

like sheep or goats that might attract

2:37

wolves was considered to be

2:39

inherently dangerous,

2:41

but the attacks that struck the Jevadan

2:44

region in the seventeen sixties

2:46

really stand out in particular, almost

2:49

exclusively. The victims were women

2:51

and children, mostly attacked while they

2:53

were tending animals. Um.

2:56

The men were generally

2:58

left alone and when they

3:00

were doing the exact same work. The

3:02

beasts method of killing was also

3:05

horrific. In description after

3:07

description, people talked about it

3:09

dropping onto a victim in broad

3:12

daylight, ripping out its

3:14

throat, often decapitating the

3:16

person entirely. So people

3:19

were scared of wolves, but they

3:21

were terrified of this beast

3:24

um, which is why we're going to talk about it

3:26

today. Happy Halloween.

3:30

Uh So for some context, the

3:32

Javidant region in the south of France

3:35

was remote and sparsely settled at this

3:37

time, so most of its people made their livings

3:39

as farmers and shepherds. The

3:41

terrain was forested and mountainous,

3:44

There were lots of rocky outcroppings,

3:46

and all of this put it UH

3:49

kind of made it UH an area

3:51

that was sort of perfect for

3:53

or perfectly dangerous for wolf

3:56

attacks. The beasts.

3:58

First recorded victor him in the Javadon

4:01

was a fourteen year old named Jean

4:03

Boulet, who was killed while

4:06

watching over livestock at the end of June seventeen

4:08

sixty four, and then on August

4:11

eighth, a fifteen year old girl was killed,

4:13

followed by a sixteen year old boy. A couple

4:15

of weeks later, in September,

4:18

things took a deadlier turn, with four

4:20

attacks claiming the lives of a thirty

4:23

six year old woman and several more

4:25

youths. Because the wolf attacks

4:28

were already so common, and because

4:30

some of these in particular happened

4:32

more than twenty miles apart from each

4:34

other, it was only after

4:37

this particularly deadly period

4:39

in September that people realized

4:42

something different was going on. During

4:45

this time, France was divided into administrative

4:48

regions known as generality. By

4:51

October, the generality second

4:53

in command, Etienne la France, started

4:55

trying to organize a constant

4:58

series of patrols to protect people

5:00

and find this wolf. Working

5:02

with a local landowner, he tried to

5:05

keep eight or ten people on watch at all

5:07

times, but he had

5:09

a little bit of trouble recruiting people

5:12

were already pretty scared to stray far from

5:14

their homes and into their own fields.

5:17

Uh So getting them to go patrol other

5:19

people's fields was not exactly

5:22

the easiest cell. Lafon wound

5:24

up securing funds to actually pay people,

5:27

and he started talking to the higher ups in the generality

5:29

about the possibility of bringing in professional

5:32

soldiers. Dragoon

5:34

captains Jean Baptiste Duamel

5:36

was stationed nearby and was also active

5:38

in the hunt. He and his men

5:40

started scouring areas near where

5:43

the attacks had happened, hoping to find

5:45

the culprit. It was around October

5:48

that in people's minds, at least,

5:50

the culprit shifted from being an animal

5:53

to being some sort of monster. People's

5:56

letters and even news reports went

5:58

from describing a bete faro a

6:00

general, sort of generic description

6:02

of a ferocious beast, to talking

6:04

about the bet with a capital

6:07

B or lament so

6:09

the monster. People in more urban and

6:12

affluent parts of France didn't really believe

6:14

in werewolves anymore, but that

6:16

idea was still pretty entrenched in the more

6:18

rural parts of the country. The

6:21

beast decapitated a twenty year old

6:23

woman on October seven, and it took a

6:25

week for people to find her skull. Between

6:28

October seven and fifteen, six

6:31

teenagers and a ten year old boy were

6:33

attacked, with most of them sustaining

6:35

huge injuries to their heads and faces.

6:38

Only four of these victims survived.

6:41

Newspaper started describing

6:43

the beast as being deliberately bloodthirsty,

6:46

apparently drinking the victim's blood

6:48

from their next before moving on to the flesh.

6:52

Etienne la Fonte advised the

6:54

women and children tending the flox that

6:56

they be escorted at all times by armed

6:58

men, and this some fortunately

7:00

opened the door to some victim blaming. The

7:03

economy in this part of France was still

7:05

really feudial. Men and women and

7:07

children all had work to do, and all

7:09

of the work was necessary for their survival,

7:12

so men really did not have the option

7:15

of dropping what they were doing to escort

7:17

women and uh. Women

7:19

and children didn't have the option to just

7:22

stay out of the fields until they had a

7:24

man with them. They also didn't have

7:26

the option of just swapping jobs,

7:28

since all of these jobs involved being

7:31

outdoors for the most part, and

7:33

people didn't just sit around cowering. Though it's

7:35

important to note the hunting parties

7:38

and patrols that had been established, cleared

7:40

brush, and they gave chase whenever they

7:42

saw an animal that they thought might be the culprit.

7:45

They killed more than one wolf in all

7:47

of this, but the attacks went on.

7:50

By the end of October, pretty much everybody

7:53

in the Javanant region agreed

7:55

that they were not dealing with a normal

7:57

wolf. Eye witness accounts

7:59

really varied dramatically and what the beast

8:01

looked like. Some of them described it as having

8:04

talents, several described

8:06

it as having this dark stripe that ran down its

8:09

back um. The one unifying

8:11

part of all the descriptions was that it was much

8:13

bigger than a normal wolf. People

8:16

theorized that it could be a range of

8:18

animal suspects, including a wolf

8:21

of course, uh hyena

8:23

was also mentioned, some kind of wolf,

8:26

dog, hyena, hybrid, even

8:28

a monkey was brought up as a possibility.

8:30

And this last seems to have started by a report

8:33

in a newspaper called Curier, which

8:35

quoted an American woman who said her

8:37

country was full of fearsome monkeys that

8:39

did exactly this kind of thing, which

8:42

makes me go, really, I'm like quade,

8:46

really, American lady. So

8:49

the explanation for how a hyena

8:51

or a monkey could have gotten into the south of

8:54

France was that they had stowed away

8:56

aboard a ship or maybe escaped from

8:58

a menagerie. Um.

9:00

This theory was actually a source

9:02

of hope to people who thought that if this

9:04

was some kind of tropical animal, that

9:07

it would just die when the winter came.

9:10

It was probably also somewhat soothing to consider

9:13

that it could be something escaped from a menagerie

9:15

rather than an actual, uh

9:17

sort of unnatural monster, that

9:20

that would be more of an unknown slightly

9:23

less brightening yeah. Uh.

9:26

So late in October, a small group of hunters

9:28

on the search for the beast flushed a large

9:31

wolf from its den and they shot it repeatedly.

9:34

And this large wolf was slowed by the bullets,

9:37

but it could still move more quickly than the men that

9:39

were chasing it, and so it got away and they

9:41

never found the body uh

9:43

and came to the conclusion that it had somehow

9:46

survived their gunfire. This

9:48

contributed to the idea that there was something

9:51

supernatural at work. It

9:53

really shouldn't be surprising that as these

9:55

attacks went on, since they were just spectacularly

9:58

gory and horrified, ring newspapers

10:01

became increasingly sensational in

10:03

their coverage of it. Here's an account

10:06

of an event in November. Quote

10:08

on the twenty three, at five o'clock in the evening,

10:11

this cruel beast throttled a

10:13

woman in a village, and after having

10:15

eaten the neck all the way down to the

10:17

shoulders and having sucked the blood

10:19

from the body, it carried away.

10:21

The head hunters,

10:25

Uh, in sort of a grizzly move, began

10:28

using the remains of the beast's victims

10:30

as bait. They were hoping to draw the creature

10:32

out again. Uh. Not only

10:34

did it not work, it also upset people

10:37

understandably, and

10:39

as the fall turned to winter, the

10:41

weather started to seriously get

10:44

in the way of effectively hunting. Before

10:47

we talk about the next major shift in all

10:49

of this, Holly, would you like to take a moment for

10:51

a brief word from a sponsor and would Indeed,

11:03

in December, the dragoons

11:05

led by Jehan Baptist Damel found

11:08

what they thought was the beast while they were

11:10

hunting through the forest. Doom

11:12

L himself was prepared to fire

11:14

on it he had it in his sights, but the other

11:17

men, not realizing what was going

11:19

on, came up behind him and startled it.

11:21

They unfortunately lost sight of the beast

11:24

as the sun went down. Doom

11:26

L was deeply distressed by this, not

11:29

merely because he had missed their corey at

11:31

the likely expense of more lives being

11:33

lost, but he also had

11:35

a little bit of an

11:37

ego element in the in the mix.

11:39

He didn't want to lose the glory of being the one

11:42

that took the beast down. Yeah,

11:44

he was a soldier and had you know, gotten

11:47

a claim on the field of battle before,

11:49

and now that he was not in a battle, he

11:51

was very frustrated by the failure

11:54

to get more acclaim

11:56

and fortunately this was just the first of many

11:59

of Doomel's fail years to capture his

12:01

quarry. As people started to question

12:03

whether he knew what he was doing, he

12:05

started distributing drawings and

12:07

telling people really vivid accounts of this

12:10

monster to try to convince everyone that

12:12

it wasn't his fault. He was sort of

12:14

building this mythology that the creature

12:17

was too powerful and too obviously supernatural

12:20

to be caught quickly, and

12:22

a seventeen sixty four drew to a close.

12:24

A bishop from the church put out an official

12:27

circular that said that the beast was

12:29

a scourge sent by God. So it

12:31

just built that mythology up a little

12:33

bit more. In January

12:36

of seventeen sixty five, D M. L started

12:39

sending out his dragoons dressed as women

12:41

to try to escort women and children about

12:43

their duties in the fields. He was

12:45

hoping that the wolf would mistake

12:47

them for a woman in attack, since it mostly

12:50

attacked women and children. Uh,

12:52

this didn't work. I

12:54

like that the beast could clock their drag um.

12:58

On January twelfth, a

13:00

twelve year old boy known as porta Fe

13:03

reportedly chased down the wolf and

13:05

attacked it with a bayonet after it had

13:07

attacked and dragged off a small child. Uh.

13:10

Porta Fe became famous for this act of

13:12

extreme bravery or foolishness, depending

13:15

on your point of view, Although there were

13:17

accounts of it that were heavily embellished,

13:19

and the different accounts of what actually

13:22

happened very quite a bit from one to another.

13:25

Porta Fay, however, became a rallying

13:27

cry. Duomel,

13:30

becoming kind of desperate to uh

13:33

to catch the thing and to maintain his

13:35

his reputation, organized a massive

13:37

hunt to take place on February seventh,

13:39

seventeen sixty five. This was not

13:41

the first coordinated hunt that

13:44

was going to take place for multiple parts

13:46

of this area in France at the same

13:48

time, but it was definitely the biggest. About

13:51

twenty thousand people gathered

13:54

in about one hundred different parishes,

13:57

and in spite of their being heavy fog

13:59

that day and about six inches of snow

14:01

on the ground, search parties spread

14:03

out from their respective communities at

14:05

the same time to try to find the beast. One

14:09

party thought they did, and as

14:11

they pursued the animal that they believed to be

14:13

the beast, it tried to escape down a river.

14:16

Villagers in the town of Malzieu were

14:18

supposed to be patrolling the river banks, but

14:21

one of that town's most prominent citizens

14:23

had said he would stay home if the weather was

14:25

bad, and enough people followed his example

14:28

that the beast easily slipped through this hole

14:30

in the defenses. However,

14:33

and perhaps in an effort to save

14:35

face, a hunting party from

14:37

Malsa claimed that it had seen

14:40

and shot the beast, so

14:42

Duomel abandoned his original plan,

14:44

which was to have a second massive hunt on

14:46

the eleventh. If the one on the seventh failed.

14:49

Instead, he arranged a smaller hunt

14:51

to focus just on the area around

14:54

Malgia, to take place on the tenth.

14:57

As they were hunting, a teenage girl

15:00

was killed while feeding her livestock. Duom

15:03

L regrouped and prepared to keep hunting

15:05

near where that attack had occurred on the eleventh,

15:07

using the girl's body as bait. They

15:11

did not succeed on the eleventh, and they tried

15:13

again on the twelfth, this time fighting biting

15:16

windy weather, and in

15:18

spite of their multi day attempt

15:20

and with so many hunters on the

15:23

on the team, they found nothing.

15:27

On his return from this hunt, d am

15:29

L again tried to explain his failure

15:31

and retain his position with a supernatural

15:34

explanation. According

15:36

to him, the beast was a witch or the

15:38

devil. After all, twenty thousand

15:41

men, which he in his telling

15:43

rounded up to thirty thou had failed to

15:45

get it, so it had to be magical

15:47

or supernatural. Okay, he was

15:50

really getting desperate to hold

15:52

onto his position. What he did

15:54

not know was that his replacement,

15:57

says basically wolf Hunter in Chief, had

15:59

already been chosen and were on their

16:01

way to the Jevadon. Jean

16:04

Charles Marc Antoine de Vonzelle

16:06

Donnevale of Normandy took Jean

16:09

Baptiste Dummels place in the fight

16:11

against the Beast of Jebudon. They

16:13

arrived in February with Jean Charles

16:15

son Jean Francois accompanying his

16:18

father. The DNA Val did

16:20

not get along with the wolf hunters

16:22

and the Jevadant. They made demands for

16:25

help and for accommodations that rankled

16:27

people. They were simultaneously

16:30

overconfident and underprepared. Some

16:32

of the other wolf hunters, who had been searching the Jevadon

16:35

for months, decided that they were frauds. You

16:37

know how, in bad, badly written

16:39

crime dramas you have the scene

16:41

where the local police have been trying really

16:43

hard to catch the killer and then some really

16:45

slick FBI guys come in and stop

16:48

all over their investigation. It

16:51

was like that, Yeah, they were all swagger

16:53

and did not really have the skills. Meanwhile,

16:57

in March, the London Chronicle

16:59

published an obviously satirical article,

17:02

possibly written by Horace Walpole, about

17:05

the beasts, saying that it had eaten the entire

17:07

French army and was found to have mortars

17:09

cannons and at least one hundred small arms

17:11

in its belly when it was slain. This

17:15

really annoyed the people of France

17:17

in the monarchy because a

17:19

lot of people had been killed in the je Boudon

17:21

already, so to kind of make fun of the whole thing

17:24

was kind of a slap in the face. We

17:26

should put these ears into the was

17:28

England at war with France websites?

17:31

Yeah, I don't think that they were,

17:34

but they were socially

17:37

they were having some issues. Um.

17:39

Even in light of the fact that

17:41

France was facing facing international

17:44

criticism for its failure to

17:46

take care of this wolf problem, and

17:48

King Louis himself

17:50

was eager to have this beast killed,

17:53

The dentevals did not do much

17:55

in March or April. They just did not seem

17:57

to be in a big hurry. They blamed low

18:00

cool people for all manner of ills

18:02

and for their failure to get

18:04

the beast. Meanwhile, there

18:06

were fourteen deaths over those two months,

18:10

one death in particular of note.

18:13

On March thirteenth, the beast attacked

18:15

a group of children in the garden outside

18:17

their home, and their mother, Jeanne

18:19

Varley, was with them and reported

18:22

to be pregnant. She turned

18:24

to see the beast attack her six year old,

18:27

and in a struggle that went on for several minutes,

18:29

Varley climbed onto the beasts back in an

18:31

effort to wrestle her child from its jaws.

18:34

When she fell off, it jumped over

18:36

a hedge, and she gave chase. One

18:39

of her older children was inside the house and

18:41

he heard the commotion and came out with a lance

18:44

and the family sheep dog, and

18:46

he chased the animal and they basically fought

18:49

it until it tired out, abandoned

18:51

its quarry, and ran away.

18:53

The six year old, unfortunately didn't

18:55

survive, although the rest of the family

18:57

did, and Varley's story

19:00

spread as one of heroic tragedy.

19:03

So she became kind of an emblem

19:05

of the need to get this over with. Yeah,

19:08

I'm sure that was a little

19:10

bit of an ego blow to all of these hunters

19:12

that a pregnant woman and her children had

19:15

kind of had better luck at least kind of

19:17

running this animal down than they had with their

19:19

firepower and hunting knowledge. Uh.

19:23

In early May, the Denival started

19:25

trying to combat the wolves by poisoning

19:27

the bodies of their victims and leaving

19:29

them out as bait. This

19:31

did not work and once again upset

19:34

people. Then in

19:36

mid May, there was a two week period with no

19:38

wolf attacks. The Denevals

19:40

took credit for it, and they said they must

19:42

have actually killed a wolf that they'd

19:44

shot and had then gotten away earlier in

19:47

the month. Then when another

19:49

attack happened on May nineteen, they

19:51

started trying to seek the protection of

19:53

the king. At first, I they were

19:56

afraid that their actions were going to catch up with

19:58

them and that they themselves might come to harm.

20:01

They were finally forced to leave town

20:03

and their reputations were in shreds.

20:06

And before we turn to a

20:08

little happier part of this story, let's

20:11

take another brief moment for a word from a sponsor

20:13

that sounds grand. So

20:24

the Denevals who have been run out of town

20:26

were soon replaced by Francois Antoine,

20:29

who was the king's gun bearer. He

20:31

organized hunts with dogs and men, using

20:33

dogs in particular to try to cover the

20:35

regions more difficult to rain, and

20:38

unlike the Dnevals, he was extremely

20:40

polite. He gained the trust and the affection

20:42

of the locals. He did not walk in with a bunch of attitude

20:45

and swagger. He really tried to work with

20:47

them, and he worked through the summer of seventeen

20:49

sixty five as the deaths continued to

20:51

find the beast. On September,

20:55

Antoine caught sight of a wolf so

20:58

big that at first he thought it was a

21:00

donkey. From about fifty

21:02

paces away. He shot it with a long barreled

21:05

musket that he loaded with a lead ball,

21:07

along with lots of other smaller pieces

21:09

of shot. The animal was

21:11

hit, but it wasn't killed. It got to its feet

21:13

and went after Antoine, who had to retreat.

21:15

Rather than trying to reload his weapon. Monsieur

21:18

Riehard, who was an officer

21:21

of the hunt, delivered the actual killing

21:23

shot. They took the

21:26

wolf's body to a nearby chateau,

21:28

and then they brought in people who had either witnessed

21:30

or survived attacks to identify

21:32

it. They all agreed that this

21:34

was the wolf that attacked them, and even

21:37

so Antoine urged people not to drop

21:39

their guard. Yet pretty

21:41

much everyone in the Jevadan who looked

21:43

at it agreed that the thing was enormous,

21:47

and as Antoine and others told

21:49

the story over and over at depositions,

21:52

and when talking to the newspapers, this description

21:54

just got bigger and bigger. Antoine

21:57

said about hunting for any offspring

21:59

the beast may have had, and ordering an artisan

22:01

to construct a frame for its skin so

22:04

that it could be preserved and sent to the king.

22:07

It wound up being embalmed instead, and

22:09

by the time that happened, it had already

22:11

started to decompose. The

22:14

beast body arrived at Versailles

22:16

on the first of October, but the court

22:18

of Versailles was not nearly as impressed

22:20

with it as the people of the Javadan had been.

22:23

They had really suffered from some

22:25

inflated expectations by people

22:28

increasingly talking about how more and more monstrous

22:30

this thing was. Also because

22:33

of what we just discussed with the embalming it

22:35

smelled. Antoine finished

22:37

his task of seeking and destroying wolves

22:39

from around the area where the beast had been killed

22:41

on October seventeenth, and for

22:43

more than two months there were no more wolf

22:46

attacks. This is actually

22:48

a you know, it's stretched into like.

22:50

That was two months from when he finished killing,

22:52

But it wound up that there weren't any

22:54

deaths from when he shot that wolf until December

22:57

seventh, seventeen sixty five day,

23:00

two boys survived a wolf attack while

23:02

they were guarding cattle, and then an

23:04

eleven year old girl was killed on December twenty

23:07

one. Unlike the first time

23:09

around, when it had taken so many deaths before

23:11

people saw it as a pattern, everyone immediately

23:14

panicked. However,

23:17

there was also this uh

23:19

kind of issue of saturation. Everyone

23:21

also, while they were quicker

23:24

to recognize this danger, they were

23:26

also kind of tired of talking about this beast.

23:29

Uh. So there are far fewer newspaper

23:31

reports and other records detailing what happened

23:34

between Francois Antoine killing a wolf

23:36

on septem s

23:40

and Jean Shastel killing another one

23:42

in August of seventeen sixty seven.

23:45

Yeah, so almost two years later.

23:48

The wolf that Shastel killed was big, although

23:50

not nearly as big as the one that Antoine

23:53

had killed almost two years before. However,

23:56

Schastell followed what Antoine's

23:58

had done. Like owed his example,

24:01

he rounded people up to I d this wolf

24:03

and say that it was the wolf that had attacked them,

24:06

and then he sent its body to Versailles. However,

24:08

by the time it arrived in Versailles, it was extremely

24:10

rotten. The king was extremely

24:12

insulting to Chastel and his son for

24:15

having just brought this rotten wolf carcass

24:17

into his presence, and the king ordered

24:19

them all away. Folklorist

24:22

and researchers started documenting

24:24

the Jevudin wolf loor almost immediately.

24:27

H In the eighteen eighties, a man named Pierre Pouchet

24:30

wrote an enormous history of the wolf.

24:33

And there are all kinds of theories about

24:35

exactly what this animal was, and

24:38

whether it was acting on its own or whether

24:41

it had been trained to somehow attack

24:44

people. This last theory actually

24:46

got a shot in the arm when people realized

24:48

that Jean Chastel had played a prank

24:50

on a wolf hunting party two years before.

24:53

They had basically said, hey, is this ground

24:56

up here safe to walk on? And he was like, yeah, it's

24:58

awesome, and it was actually a bo And

25:00

so the wolf hunters sunk into

25:02

it up to their chests while

25:05

he laughed along the sidelines.

25:08

Uh. There are people who were extremely suspicious

25:11

of him now and kind of wonder if

25:13

he had trained animals to attack

25:15

other people, and that that gap between

25:18

killing one wolf and uh

25:20

and another attack happening was because

25:23

he was having to retrain another animal that gets

25:25

some kind of conspiracy theory ideas

25:27

not totally sure. We should

25:30

call Ben and Madden and see what they think. We

25:33

will probably never know for sure

25:36

if this beast was actually

25:38

a wolf, or multiple wolves, or

25:40

perhaps even something else that hasn't been identified.

25:44

More recently, the beast makes an appearance

25:46

in the movie Brotherhood of the Wolf. I

25:48

love that movie so much. I can't even describe.

25:52

That goes into the category of cinema that I

25:54

like to call out fromage because it's a little

25:56

cheesy, but it's also really

25:58

fantastic fun and it has been sink

26:00

Cassel, which is the important part for me. Uh

26:04

and the Jevadan region is now part

26:06

of the Department of Logier that happened

26:08

after the French Revolution, so that was not in

26:11

play when this was going on, right,

26:14

So that is the Beast of Jevadon

26:17

creepy and yeah,

26:19

the book that was the primary

26:22

source on this. Normally, when I

26:24

researched episodes, they're like fifteen

26:26

or twenties sources at least um.

26:29

This one was mostly sourced from

26:31

a book by J Smith called Monsters

26:33

of the Jevadon, which was published

26:35

by Harvard University Press in two thousand

26:38

and eleven. That's pretty much the source

26:40

in English on this

26:43

story, so it has a lot more dedale

26:45

about various things that went on if you were interested

26:47

in it. I had to get it from inter Library

26:50

loan Um, which is I

26:52

had to time it just right. So if

26:54

this story interests you, I highly recommend

26:58

that book. It gets into sort

27:00

of the beginning of it talks

27:02

a lot about how the the search for

27:05

what was this animal kind

27:08

of distracts from the greater

27:10

story of like why people

27:12

in France were so obsessed

27:14

with this thing when it

27:17

was going on. So it's a good read. Thank

27:25

you so much for joining us on this Saturday.

27:27

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27:29

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