October 8, 2020 • 23 mins
As the investigation into the Beast became a national obsession, the French monarchy stepped in, offering rewards (and threats) in their attempt to capture the murderous creature. In part two of this episode, Ben, Noel and Casey explore the end of the tale (tail? Nevermind.) and the mystery of the case that remains unsolved in the modern day.
Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Ridiculous History is a production of I Heart Radio. Welcome
(00:27):
back to the show Ridiculous Historians. Thank you as always
for tuning in to our our our Halloween Phase podcast.
Critics will call it it's like a blue phase, kind
of spookier. That's right, I am today, I am Ben. Uh.
That's our super producer, Casey Pegro on the ones and twos.
(00:53):
So this is part two of our episode on the
Beast of and uh. And we were talking off Mike
before we started part two. Uh, Gabe, I don't know
how much of it made it on the air in
part one, but Gabe Lizier, who is our our north
star in the world of research, really surprised us with
(01:16):
this with with some of the research here, like in
a way that I don't know, Noll makes me feel
like maybe maybe we're nerds. I'm not sure. Well, I mean,
I think everyone who's listening to part one will know
that about six of the content of that episode is
us gushing about the movie Brotherhood of the Wolf. Hopefully
everyone's watched it by now, or maybe save it. I
(01:36):
don't know. We can't control what you do. Um, but
there's a section in the research that that Gabe provided
us about pop culture references to this story, The Beast
of Jevodont, and he mentions a Robert Lewis Stevenson story
UM that references this event to some degree, and the
movie Teen Wolf starting Uh starring Michael J. Fox. I
(02:00):
kind of think he was joking, because that certainly is
a pop culture reference to were wolves. But in my
mind and both of our minds, clearly the number one
reference to this story and pop culture is the Brotherhood
of the Wolf. It is known as they say, a
Game of Thrones, which is adapted from the song about Empire.
George ore R Martin. Please put out Wind's Winter. He's
not gonna do it. You can't tell him what to do.
(02:23):
God when you know one day anyhow, Yeah, you're right,
you're at Gabe. We were. We were surprised if we
thought maybe you were were pulling a fast one on us,
because uh, we're the three of us are such big
fans of you do that. We were like, obviously, gave
is why is Gabe not talking about Brotherhood of the Wolf.
This is very important to us. Ben. I love that
(02:44):
we have such a shared appreciation for this movie, UM,
and a shared appreciation for this story. So let's get
back into it. This story kept developing and either kept
being these really interesting characters that would present themselves. We've
got the you know, the disgraced soldier, We've got the
scrappy young lad. You know, it's it's really I mean,
it's it's perfect for making a movie about UM. And
(03:07):
a new character enters the fight, uh, a nineteen to
twenty year old young woman named Marie Jean Valet uh
and she uh went after the beast with a pike
of her Ownly, this was a bayonet attached to a pole.
I would say, that's still pretty pike. Like it's a
it's an improvised pike. And on August eleven, seventeen sixty five,
(03:27):
she was crossing the River desag Casey d E s
g E S probably des the River des Casey on
the case with her sister UM, armed with said improvised pike,
and managed to give that beast a stick in, you know,
gave it a good old poke in the chest and
(03:49):
impaled it, you know, drew blood. But still, you know,
in keeping with what we know about this creature, it
got away again. But Valet became this like an heroine.
You know, they dubbed her the Amazon and the Maid
of getting God of a I'm sorry now forgotten that
jod Devon the Maid of Jeeval. This is all stays
(04:10):
in um and I believe, if I'm not mistaken, that's
the badass woman in the Brotherhood of the Wolf. Probably
inspired by this real life character. Uh, much more ninja
like in the movie though, if I'm not mistaken. But
such a fun story and grizzly. It has all the
things that we love about spooky historical tales. Yeah. So
(04:32):
we have these human interest stories of brave individuals surviving
these attacks and in some cases wounding the beast or
appearing to But the official hunters didn't have much luck
at all. You know, we know that they went out
and they killed wolves, you know, more than a thousand likely, uh.
(04:52):
And they also kind of everybody assumed this was like
an uber version of a wolf. This was a really big,
like dire wolf kind of thing. It just made sense.
I will add a quick trigger warning if anyone's considering
watching Brotherhood of the Wolf if you are bothered by
animal violence, not the movie for you, because a lot
(05:14):
of the stuff that we're talking about here there are
piles and piles of dead wolves that you see like
this this whole period here where people were presenting these
beasts to the court. Um, you see a lot of
grizzly just actual facts wolves. I mean, I'm sure they
didn't actually slaughter a bunch of wolves, but it's very
realistic and very gory. And if that's something that that
bothers you, I would I would maybe give this movie
(05:35):
a pass. But um, you're right then the hunters were
really flummixed. Uh this Gean Charles Uh and his son,
a hunting team from Normandy, made a big show of
coming to Jeval Dance who to put an end to
this once and for all. And they're the ones that
were boasting they'd already killed wolves and that they you know,
(05:57):
we're up to the task. But in fact, the no
one really knew if it was a wolf or not.
All of these disparate descriptions of the thing really made
it super unclear. Um, and we'll get into some of
the possibilities and a little bit. Yeah, for now, we're
gonna follow the career of the beast. So eventually, after
(06:18):
repeated failures, folks like the Dino Vols give up and
the King is getting irritated. This is making the king
look bad, you know what I mean. So he eventually
sends his own personal bodyguard, one Francois Anton. He is
seventy one years old, so he's no spring spring chicken.
(06:41):
He and his nephew on September set shoot a very
large wolf near an abbey at chase It, which is
assumed to be the beast. They were like, this wolf
was so big, This wolf could easily eat children. It's
gotta be this is this is the wolf we're looking for.
And Francois is awarded. He gets money, he gets actual
(07:05):
titles of nobility. The corpse of the animal, and this
is what they're alluding to in Brotherhood of the Wolf.
The corpse of the animal is stuffed by a taxidermist
and sent to the royal court at first Side to
be displayed. But if you've seen the movie, uh, you
know that the taxidermy job looked really really bad. They
actually I think they uh Casey correct me if I'm
(07:26):
wrong on this, but I think they were in the
film instructed to sort of up right and make it
scarier big time. They broke its jaw even I believe
to make it have a wider, kind of scarier looking
ma um. And yeah, you're right. They almost did like
a what do they call those things, like a cock
and tree kind of situation. Yeah, where they like, you know,
(07:49):
do a Frankenstein's Monster mishmash of parts in it, you know.
And it was a real hack job. It was literally
literally Yeah. And that's again another thing that might trigger
you about the movie. This this is in the movie
as well. So all's well, that ends well, not psych
(08:11):
you thought, as we say in the world of memes. Uh.
The attacks began again. They resumed in December, and this
comes to us via volume of the Parisian Illustrated Review.
But this time, just like with any other good sequel,
the beast seemed different. At least it was behaving differently.
(08:32):
It used to be afraid of live stock of cattle, right,
I get it. Cows are big. There's spooky if you
if you get a mad, you know. But this time
it wasn't scared of them. It was was it the
same beast that was just like a gritty reboot of
itself or was there a new second beast? Didn't matter
to the Royal Court. They decided to ignore these new
(08:54):
attacks and again they had very strong control over the press,
so they just look. Our official line is it's over.
Francois Antoine killed the creature. But what I'm saying is
they didn't. Well yeah, but that's the you know, that's
the pr line is that it's done. Um. But then
there's another outbreak in June of seventeen sixty seven. Um.
(09:16):
And then another nobleman gets involved, trying to make you know,
just make a name for himself and be part of
the whole fracas here. Uh, Marquis de Chair I'm gonna
go with that, um, And he organized his own hunt.
And then there's this guy farmer name is Jean Chassell
who had been involved in a previous hunt but was
actually thrown in prison by Antone um who was in
(09:38):
charge because he like did a bad job navigating and
led his men into a mucky, swampy bog type place.
But then all was forgiven when Chassell was able to
bring down the beast, you know, a beast with a
with a shot from his from his musket, and that
(10:00):
was on Mount Moche on June nine of seventeen sixty seven. Amazing,
And they have the body and they do an autopsy
and they find human remains inside. This may not have
been the beast all the time, but this was definitely
something eating people in the woods. And then they find
(10:21):
some interesting stuff, don't they As they dig in, they say,
you know, this animal has some real non lupine, non
wolf stuff about it. The attacks ends at this point,
and it was assumed at the time that the beast,
the beast, this man that had killed was the beast,
(10:43):
but people were still kind of there. There's like a
conspiracy theory about whether or not it was in actuality
a wolf Chestel by the way, like the Amazon has
a statue in his honor. Of course, what the hell
was this thing? Um? There's some possibility of these that
get bandied around. A Eurasian wolf, which I'm guessing is
(11:03):
just a much larger dire wolfeed type wolf like you're
talking about. Hey, a, I love this one, and this
is very much what they kind of went with in
Brotherhood of the Wolf, an armored war dog, only they
took it. They took it a step further. Yeah. Indeed, um,
a striped hyena that's in keeping with that black stripe
that they've seen. And I'm sure there's some red headed
(11:24):
hyenas out there in the world. Um or an escaped lion.
Perhaps some nobleman had it as an exotic pet in
their menagerie and and it jumped the fence and wreaked
havoc on the countryside. Yeah, or some kind of prehistoric predator,
which is super exciting and also probably not true or
(11:48):
my favorite. Okay, so I should have mentioned this. Uh
Chastel when he fires that famous shot, and when he
kills what is largely acknowledged to be the beast, he
uses a silver bullet. Silver bullet kills this creature. Uh.
And so you can't blame people for saying, this is
clearly a werewolf. This is werewolf country, that's where wolf
(12:10):
uh loop gatto here we are. This is just a
silly question. But like when was werewolf mythology first? Kind
of when did that come around? I wouldn't have even thought.
I would have thought would have been later than that.
But I guess maybe it's one of those tailors old
his time about humans transforming into creatures. Yeah, in centuries before,
there have been cases where people were accused of being werewolves,
(12:33):
usually through some satanic pact. And uh, this was very
you know this was very in ligne when supernatural beliefs
of the time. People would have been aware of the
case of Peter Stump who was accused of being a werewolf.
He he actually was probably a German serial killer. But
(12:56):
we have to remember werewolves were very much in play.
These were real things people were genuinely afraid of. So
one thing that really stood out, at least to me,
I think to all three of us when we were
looking at early descriptions of the beast, is that that
detail you mentioned earlier and all which is consistent and
eyewitness accounts, the stripe, the stuff going on along the spine, right,
(13:21):
that's what led people to think it was as striped hyena.
Just as we mentioned earlier. Maybe some eccentric aristocrat had
this in their private menagerie and it escaped. It wasn't
native to France, so you would have reasonably thought, what
does this look like? It looks like a wolf, but
(13:41):
it's not a wolf definitely. So that's like, based on
that evidence, that's a pretty good argument that it might
be a hyena, but our hyena known to attack humans,
not really. Oh and by the way, I realized literally
in doing the recharch for this episode, that a dire
wolf is a real thing. It's a prehistoric predator that
we talked about being one of the possibilities um, not
(14:04):
just a made up Game of Thrones things. So that's
that's interesting. Also potentially on that list with something called
a bear dog um or a hyena don which I
guess is a prehistoric hyena. And don't forget our farmer
friends Chassel. There's a fascinating theory that even that that
has jumped on pretty heavily in our favorite movie Um
that he himself actually trained the beast to uh to
(14:27):
murder humans um in an effort to deflect attention from
some crimes of or another that we don't really know
uh what that might have been. Uh. And another option
that we've touched on earlier but that definitely is a thing,
is the idea that might and I think it's our
favorite too. We talked about it offline ben Um, the
idea that it was a juvenile lion, and this gets
(14:47):
some sand in some of the reporting that we've read. Yeah, yeah,
think about it. The idea is just like the hyena thing.
Like we mentioned earlier, it escapes from some private menagerie
and it begins to do it. Lions do it. Hunts
with an ambush strategy. It sees his prey by the
neck and possibly if you do the physics on you know,
(15:08):
pressure per square inch for the jaw, it could possibly
decapitate a human being. And that's why people like Carl
hans Talk argue that a that that a lion was
the ultimate culprit. It's also true that lions have been known,
uh in some cases to prey on humans for food,
(15:28):
like the lions of Tsavo. I was about to say
the ghost in the darkness, that's the ghost that was
that's so funny. I was literally I've got that up
on wiki right now with Val Kilmer and who else
is that? Michael Douglas a very similar story. Actually, there
are these lions of Tsavo in Africa that are just
wrecking the villages and murdering the hell out of people,
(15:50):
and these two hunters are out to get them and
and they I believe those lions are in a museum,
maybe the Field Museum in Chicago, if I'm not mistaken,
I believe, Yeah, I believe they are in a museum.
Lions typically if they're if they're hunting humans. It's going
to be because they may have aged out of being
able to hunt more efficient and more delicious prey, like
(16:14):
their teeth may have worn down. That's one of the
big theories. So this could have happened. This could have
happened in France. And again, just like with Hyena, the
eyewitnesses of the time, we're probably not familiar with living lions.
They may have heard of one, they may have seen
drawing or a woodcut of one. But this problem is
compounded because the drawings that they would have seen of
(16:35):
a lion would almost certainly have been drawings with a
big main, like an adult lion has us. A juvenile
male lion doesn't have a main. What it does have,
it's kind of a stripe running down its back. Yeah,
and the lions of Tsavo didn't have mains either, and um,
they you know rampage. I believe it was had to
(16:57):
do with the British railway bridge construction and Tsavo uh
in kenya um And that's you know. And then the
reason that the two white characters were brought in wasn't
necessarily because had anything to do with them caring about
you know, indigenous people. It was more about you know,
the continuing the construction project. Um. But these lions, if
(17:19):
they were juvenile lions, and they wouldn't have had Mainz either.
You're absolutely righting. So now we have to go to
what is largely considered the most credible theory. Womp womp
wolves a wolve for groups of wolves. Are they at
(17:42):
least super wolves or I I don't see. So the
idea is this one is that the that the region
Deevil don't did have a serious wolf infestation, but they
were just wolves out Wolven, you know, doing what they
could to eat, and they had a lot of competition
from a bunch of other wolves. And the question about
(18:06):
why it became the beast became such a terror, at
least to smith is is really a question of the
clergy's agenda. There's the idea that the clergy took was
very opportunistic and leverage these deaths to try to reinstill
(18:26):
the fear of God in the population. So the clergy
folks were saying that this is these attacks are happening
because God is punishing the French because you got your
keysters kicked in the Seven Years War and checks out.
Now it's a divine instrument, so of course it has powers.
(18:48):
Uh Still it's it's weird, and you know, we see
that recurrent theme that I'm so glad you mentioned about
recovering one's masculinity because the hunter who had been thrown
in jail was doing the same thing as do Hamel.
And that's that's the story. But one one thing for
every fan of cryptods in the audience today, there are
some flaws in the theory. Uh, the beast attacks lasted
(19:13):
for a pretty long time, longer than they would have
if it was just like one single wolf with rabies,
it would have died. Yeah, it's a really good point then,
and it is a bit of a kink in the
armor of this version of the events, added to by
the fact that none of the survivors got rabies, which
definitely have happened, you know, if they were bitten or
(19:33):
you know, winged by a rabid wolf. But what do
you think? What what what led I mean the clergy
stuff I get, and all the journalism and in them,
you know, making a big to do about this, and
all the different the telephone effect of all of these
different descriptions, But why didn't anybody just do you think
there weren't people that were attacked. They said, yeah, yeah,
it was a little wolf. I got wolfed, you know, right,
(19:57):
because the true story might uh not be s flattering.
I think maybe that's the case. I don't know. It's
interesting though, um the way these things happen to take
on a life of their own, and you know, sad
for all the folks that died horrifically in this story.
But damn if it's not a good story, like really
enough of a story to make a an intentional two
(20:17):
parter that we you know, we tend to do those
after the fact, but really really cool, so many interesting
twists and turns and interesting characters, and uh, if I
have if I've said it once, I've said a thousand times,
checkout Brother of the Wolf. You won't be disappointed unless
you're squigged out by animal stuff. Well, then you won't
be disappointed. You'll be horrified. It isn't that what Halloween?
(20:39):
It's all? So when one last note I think would
be great to end on and maybe of interest to you,
Casey in your alternate identity across the pond, if you
want to get some some firsthand experience with this story,
why not visit the Museum of the Beast of javel Don,
(21:01):
which is a thing. It's open now. The case of
the Beast remains largely unsolved to this day. Who knows,
maybe strolling around through one of the twenty two dioramas, uh,
you may become the person who finally solves the mystery.
This museum is big to make it play the whole
afternoon for interesting. I love a good diorama. And I
(21:21):
know this is only a side story, but the Lions
of Tsavo another fascinating story about wild animals. We know,
we know what these were though they were in fact lions.
They are taxidermy at the Field Museum in Chicago. So
if that if that's you know, close by to where
you are, definitely worth checking that out as well. And
there's a great episode of stuff you miss in history
(21:41):
class on the Lions of Tsavo as well. Oh man,
I missed going to museums. That's why the things I
missed the most. So that is our story for today.
That concludes our two part series on the Mystery of
the Beasts of javl Don. Thanks as always and in
today's at episode, especially to our super producer Casey Pegram
(22:04):
patron saint of being patient on a podcast YEP, and
patron saint of French pronunciation assistants as well. Agreed thinks
also to Alex Williams who composed this track thanks to
the Brotherhood of the Wolf, which again, like, I have
the DVD and I was telling myself I would reward
(22:26):
myself by rewatching it after we did this episode. I'm
trying to see if the director, Christoph Ghnz, did anything
else interesting because it is such a weird movie and
obviously we were both very taken by. Let's see, he
did a movie called Crying Freeman which looks very Highlander esque.
It's got Mark di costcos in it um and look,
(22:48):
it's got a ninja sword or a Samurai sword situation
on the cover. He also did oh, he directed the
Silent Hill movie, but he did Psychonomical and as well
for an anthology series is an ecronomic con anthology for
a film? And what's better than love God? And thanks
of course to uh our own Beast of ridiculous History
(23:09):
Jonathan Strickland. Okay, the quister is he a lion? Is
he a striped hyena? Is he a human being? Question
remains unsolved to this day. We'll see you next time, folks.
(23:29):
For more podcasts for My Heart Radio, visit the I
Heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to
your favorite shows.
Ridiculous History is a production of I Heart Radio. Welcome
(00:27):
back to the show Ridiculous Historians. Thank you as always
for tuning in to our our our Halloween Phase podcast.
Critics will call it it's like a blue phase, kind
of spookier. That's right, I am today, I am Ben. Uh.
That's our super producer, Casey Pegro on the ones and twos.
(00:53):
So this is part two of our episode on the
Beast of and uh. And we were talking off Mike
before we started part two. Uh, Gabe, I don't know
how much of it made it on the air in
part one, but Gabe Lizier, who is our our north
star in the world of research, really surprised us with
(01:16):
this with with some of the research here, like in
a way that I don't know, Noll makes me feel
like maybe maybe we're nerds. I'm not sure. Well, I mean,
I think everyone who's listening to part one will know
that about six of the content of that episode is
us gushing about the movie Brotherhood of the Wolf. Hopefully
everyone's watched it by now, or maybe save it. I
(01:36):
don't know. We can't control what you do. Um, but
there's a section in the research that that Gabe provided
us about pop culture references to this story, The Beast
of Jevodont, and he mentions a Robert Lewis Stevenson story
UM that references this event to some degree, and the
movie Teen Wolf starting Uh starring Michael J. Fox. I
(02:00):
kind of think he was joking, because that certainly is
a pop culture reference to were wolves. But in my
mind and both of our minds, clearly the number one
reference to this story and pop culture is the Brotherhood
of the Wolf. It is known as they say, a
Game of Thrones, which is adapted from the song about Empire.
George ore R Martin. Please put out Wind's Winter. He's
not gonna do it. You can't tell him what to do.
(02:23):
God when you know one day anyhow, Yeah, you're right,
you're at Gabe. We were. We were surprised if we
thought maybe you were were pulling a fast one on us,
because uh, we're the three of us are such big
fans of you do that. We were like, obviously, gave
is why is Gabe not talking about Brotherhood of the Wolf.
This is very important to us. Ben. I love that
(02:44):
we have such a shared appreciation for this movie, UM,
and a shared appreciation for this story. So let's get
back into it. This story kept developing and either kept
being these really interesting characters that would present themselves. We've
got the you know, the disgraced soldier, We've got the
scrappy young lad. You know, it's it's really I mean,
it's it's perfect for making a movie about UM. And
(03:07):
a new character enters the fight, uh, a nineteen to
twenty year old young woman named Marie Jean Valet uh
and she uh went after the beast with a pike
of her Ownly, this was a bayonet attached to a pole.
I would say, that's still pretty pike. Like it's a
it's an improvised pike. And on August eleven, seventeen sixty five,
(03:27):
she was crossing the River desag Casey d E s
g E S probably des the River des Casey on
the case with her sister UM, armed with said improvised pike,
and managed to give that beast a stick in, you know,
gave it a good old poke in the chest and
(03:49):
impaled it, you know, drew blood. But still, you know,
in keeping with what we know about this creature, it
got away again. But Valet became this like an heroine.
You know, they dubbed her the Amazon and the Maid
of getting God of a I'm sorry now forgotten that
jod Devon the Maid of Jeeval. This is all stays
(04:10):
in um and I believe, if I'm not mistaken, that's
the badass woman in the Brotherhood of the Wolf. Probably
inspired by this real life character. Uh, much more ninja
like in the movie though, if I'm not mistaken. But
such a fun story and grizzly. It has all the
things that we love about spooky historical tales. Yeah. So
(04:32):
we have these human interest stories of brave individuals surviving
these attacks and in some cases wounding the beast or
appearing to But the official hunters didn't have much luck
at all. You know, we know that they went out
and they killed wolves, you know, more than a thousand likely, uh.
(04:52):
And they also kind of everybody assumed this was like
an uber version of a wolf. This was a really big,
like dire wolf kind of thing. It just made sense.
I will add a quick trigger warning if anyone's considering
watching Brotherhood of the Wolf if you are bothered by
animal violence, not the movie for you, because a lot
(05:14):
of the stuff that we're talking about here there are
piles and piles of dead wolves that you see like
this this whole period here where people were presenting these
beasts to the court. Um, you see a lot of
grizzly just actual facts wolves. I mean, I'm sure they
didn't actually slaughter a bunch of wolves, but it's very
realistic and very gory. And if that's something that that
bothers you, I would I would maybe give this movie
(05:35):
a pass. But um, you're right then the hunters were
really flummixed. Uh this Gean Charles Uh and his son,
a hunting team from Normandy, made a big show of
coming to Jeval Dance who to put an end to
this once and for all. And they're the ones that
were boasting they'd already killed wolves and that they you know,
(05:57):
we're up to the task. But in fact, the no
one really knew if it was a wolf or not.
All of these disparate descriptions of the thing really made
it super unclear. Um, and we'll get into some of
the possibilities and a little bit. Yeah, for now, we're
gonna follow the career of the beast. So eventually, after
(06:18):
repeated failures, folks like the Dino Vols give up and
the King is getting irritated. This is making the king
look bad, you know what I mean. So he eventually
sends his own personal bodyguard, one Francois Anton. He is
seventy one years old, so he's no spring spring chicken.
(06:41):
He and his nephew on September set shoot a very
large wolf near an abbey at chase It, which is
assumed to be the beast. They were like, this wolf
was so big, This wolf could easily eat children. It's
gotta be this is this is the wolf we're looking for.
And Francois is awarded. He gets money, he gets actual
(07:05):
titles of nobility. The corpse of the animal, and this
is what they're alluding to in Brotherhood of the Wolf.
The corpse of the animal is stuffed by a taxidermist
and sent to the royal court at first Side to
be displayed. But if you've seen the movie, uh, you
know that the taxidermy job looked really really bad. They
actually I think they uh Casey correct me if I'm
(07:26):
wrong on this, but I think they were in the
film instructed to sort of up right and make it
scarier big time. They broke its jaw even I believe
to make it have a wider, kind of scarier looking
ma um. And yeah, you're right. They almost did like
a what do they call those things, like a cock
and tree kind of situation. Yeah, where they like, you know,
(07:49):
do a Frankenstein's Monster mishmash of parts in it, you know.
And it was a real hack job. It was literally
literally Yeah. And that's again another thing that might trigger
you about the movie. This this is in the movie
as well. So all's well, that ends well, not psych
(08:11):
you thought, as we say in the world of memes. Uh.
The attacks began again. They resumed in December, and this
comes to us via volume of the Parisian Illustrated Review.
But this time, just like with any other good sequel,
the beast seemed different. At least it was behaving differently.
(08:32):
It used to be afraid of live stock of cattle, right,
I get it. Cows are big. There's spooky if you
if you get a mad, you know. But this time
it wasn't scared of them. It was was it the
same beast that was just like a gritty reboot of
itself or was there a new second beast? Didn't matter
to the Royal Court. They decided to ignore these new
(08:54):
attacks and again they had very strong control over the press,
so they just look. Our official line is it's over.
Francois Antoine killed the creature. But what I'm saying is
they didn't. Well yeah, but that's the you know, that's
the pr line is that it's done. Um. But then
there's another outbreak in June of seventeen sixty seven. Um.
(09:16):
And then another nobleman gets involved, trying to make you know,
just make a name for himself and be part of
the whole fracas here. Uh, Marquis de Chair I'm gonna
go with that, um, And he organized his own hunt.
And then there's this guy farmer name is Jean Chassell
who had been involved in a previous hunt but was
actually thrown in prison by Antone um who was in
(09:38):
charge because he like did a bad job navigating and
led his men into a mucky, swampy bog type place.
But then all was forgiven when Chassell was able to
bring down the beast, you know, a beast with a
with a shot from his from his musket, and that
(10:00):
was on Mount Moche on June nine of seventeen sixty seven. Amazing,
And they have the body and they do an autopsy
and they find human remains inside. This may not have
been the beast all the time, but this was definitely
something eating people in the woods. And then they find
(10:21):
some interesting stuff, don't they As they dig in, they say,
you know, this animal has some real non lupine, non
wolf stuff about it. The attacks ends at this point,
and it was assumed at the time that the beast,
the beast, this man that had killed was the beast,
(10:43):
but people were still kind of there. There's like a
conspiracy theory about whether or not it was in actuality
a wolf Chestel by the way, like the Amazon has
a statue in his honor. Of course, what the hell
was this thing? Um? There's some possibility of these that
get bandied around. A Eurasian wolf, which I'm guessing is
(11:03):
just a much larger dire wolfeed type wolf like you're
talking about. Hey, a, I love this one, and this
is very much what they kind of went with in
Brotherhood of the Wolf, an armored war dog, only they
took it. They took it a step further. Yeah. Indeed, um,
a striped hyena that's in keeping with that black stripe
that they've seen. And I'm sure there's some red headed
(11:24):
hyenas out there in the world. Um or an escaped lion.
Perhaps some nobleman had it as an exotic pet in
their menagerie and and it jumped the fence and wreaked
havoc on the countryside. Yeah, or some kind of prehistoric predator,
which is super exciting and also probably not true or
(11:48):
my favorite. Okay, so I should have mentioned this. Uh
Chastel when he fires that famous shot, and when he
kills what is largely acknowledged to be the beast, he
uses a silver bullet. Silver bullet kills this creature. Uh.
And so you can't blame people for saying, this is
clearly a werewolf. This is werewolf country, that's where wolf
(12:10):
uh loop gatto here we are. This is just a
silly question. But like when was werewolf mythology first? Kind
of when did that come around? I wouldn't have even thought.
I would have thought would have been later than that.
But I guess maybe it's one of those tailors old
his time about humans transforming into creatures. Yeah, in centuries before,
there have been cases where people were accused of being werewolves,
(12:33):
usually through some satanic pact. And uh, this was very
you know this was very in ligne when supernatural beliefs
of the time. People would have been aware of the
case of Peter Stump who was accused of being a werewolf.
He he actually was probably a German serial killer. But
(12:56):
we have to remember werewolves were very much in play.
These were real things people were genuinely afraid of. So
one thing that really stood out, at least to me,
I think to all three of us when we were
looking at early descriptions of the beast, is that that
detail you mentioned earlier and all which is consistent and
eyewitness accounts, the stripe, the stuff going on along the spine, right,
(13:21):
that's what led people to think it was as striped hyena.
Just as we mentioned earlier. Maybe some eccentric aristocrat had
this in their private menagerie and it escaped. It wasn't
native to France, so you would have reasonably thought, what
does this look like? It looks like a wolf, but
(13:41):
it's not a wolf definitely. So that's like, based on
that evidence, that's a pretty good argument that it might
be a hyena, but our hyena known to attack humans,
not really. Oh and by the way, I realized literally
in doing the recharch for this episode, that a dire
wolf is a real thing. It's a prehistoric predator that
we talked about being one of the possibilities um, not
(14:04):
just a made up Game of Thrones things. So that's
that's interesting. Also potentially on that list with something called
a bear dog um or a hyena don which I
guess is a prehistoric hyena. And don't forget our farmer
friends Chassel. There's a fascinating theory that even that that
has jumped on pretty heavily in our favorite movie Um
that he himself actually trained the beast to uh to
(14:27):
murder humans um in an effort to deflect attention from
some crimes of or another that we don't really know
uh what that might have been. Uh. And another option
that we've touched on earlier but that definitely is a thing,
is the idea that might and I think it's our
favorite too. We talked about it offline ben Um, the
idea that it was a juvenile lion, and this gets
(14:47):
some sand in some of the reporting that we've read. Yeah, yeah,
think about it. The idea is just like the hyena thing.
Like we mentioned earlier, it escapes from some private menagerie
and it begins to do it. Lions do it. Hunts
with an ambush strategy. It sees his prey by the
neck and possibly if you do the physics on you know,
(15:08):
pressure per square inch for the jaw, it could possibly
decapitate a human being. And that's why people like Carl
hans Talk argue that a that that a lion was
the ultimate culprit. It's also true that lions have been known,
uh in some cases to prey on humans for food,
(15:28):
like the lions of Tsavo. I was about to say
the ghost in the darkness, that's the ghost that was
that's so funny. I was literally I've got that up
on wiki right now with Val Kilmer and who else
is that? Michael Douglas a very similar story. Actually, there
are these lions of Tsavo in Africa that are just
wrecking the villages and murdering the hell out of people,
(15:50):
and these two hunters are out to get them and
and they I believe those lions are in a museum,
maybe the Field Museum in Chicago, if I'm not mistaken,
I believe, Yeah, I believe they are in a museum.
Lions typically if they're if they're hunting humans. It's going
to be because they may have aged out of being
able to hunt more efficient and more delicious prey, like
(16:14):
their teeth may have worn down. That's one of the
big theories. So this could have happened. This could have
happened in France. And again, just like with Hyena, the
eyewitnesses of the time, we're probably not familiar with living lions.
They may have heard of one, they may have seen
drawing or a woodcut of one. But this problem is
compounded because the drawings that they would have seen of
(16:35):
a lion would almost certainly have been drawings with a
big main, like an adult lion has us. A juvenile
male lion doesn't have a main. What it does have,
it's kind of a stripe running down its back. Yeah,
and the lions of Tsavo didn't have mains either, and um,
they you know rampage. I believe it was had to
(16:57):
do with the British railway bridge construction and Tsavo uh
in kenya um And that's you know. And then the
reason that the two white characters were brought in wasn't
necessarily because had anything to do with them caring about
you know, indigenous people. It was more about you know,
the continuing the construction project. Um. But these lions, if
(17:19):
they were juvenile lions, and they wouldn't have had Mainz either.
You're absolutely righting. So now we have to go to
what is largely considered the most credible theory. Womp womp
wolves a wolve for groups of wolves. Are they at
(17:42):
least super wolves or I I don't see. So the
idea is this one is that the that the region
Deevil don't did have a serious wolf infestation, but they
were just wolves out Wolven, you know, doing what they
could to eat, and they had a lot of competition
from a bunch of other wolves. And the question about
(18:06):
why it became the beast became such a terror, at
least to smith is is really a question of the
clergy's agenda. There's the idea that the clergy took was
very opportunistic and leverage these deaths to try to reinstill
(18:26):
the fear of God in the population. So the clergy
folks were saying that this is these attacks are happening
because God is punishing the French because you got your
keysters kicked in the Seven Years War and checks out.
Now it's a divine instrument, so of course it has powers.
(18:48):
Uh Still it's it's weird, and you know, we see
that recurrent theme that I'm so glad you mentioned about
recovering one's masculinity because the hunter who had been thrown
in jail was doing the same thing as do Hamel.
And that's that's the story. But one one thing for
every fan of cryptods in the audience today, there are
some flaws in the theory. Uh, the beast attacks lasted
(19:13):
for a pretty long time, longer than they would have
if it was just like one single wolf with rabies,
it would have died. Yeah, it's a really good point then,
and it is a bit of a kink in the
armor of this version of the events, added to by
the fact that none of the survivors got rabies, which
definitely have happened, you know, if they were bitten or
(19:33):
you know, winged by a rabid wolf. But what do
you think? What what what led I mean the clergy
stuff I get, and all the journalism and in them,
you know, making a big to do about this, and
all the different the telephone effect of all of these
different descriptions, But why didn't anybody just do you think
there weren't people that were attacked. They said, yeah, yeah,
it was a little wolf. I got wolfed, you know, right,
(19:57):
because the true story might uh not be s flattering.
I think maybe that's the case. I don't know. It's
interesting though, um the way these things happen to take
on a life of their own, and you know, sad
for all the folks that died horrifically in this story.
But damn if it's not a good story, like really
enough of a story to make a an intentional two
(20:17):
parter that we you know, we tend to do those
after the fact, but really really cool, so many interesting
twists and turns and interesting characters, and uh, if I
have if I've said it once, I've said a thousand times,
checkout Brother of the Wolf. You won't be disappointed unless
you're squigged out by animal stuff. Well, then you won't
be disappointed. You'll be horrified. It isn't that what Halloween?
(20:39):
It's all? So when one last note I think would
be great to end on and maybe of interest to you,
Casey in your alternate identity across the pond, if you
want to get some some firsthand experience with this story,
why not visit the Museum of the Beast of javel Don,
(21:01):
which is a thing. It's open now. The case of
the Beast remains largely unsolved to this day. Who knows,
maybe strolling around through one of the twenty two dioramas, uh,
you may become the person who finally solves the mystery.
This museum is big to make it play the whole
afternoon for interesting. I love a good diorama. And I
(21:21):
know this is only a side story, but the Lions
of Tsavo another fascinating story about wild animals. We know,
we know what these were though they were in fact lions.
They are taxidermy at the Field Museum in Chicago. So
if that if that's you know, close by to where
you are, definitely worth checking that out as well. And
there's a great episode of stuff you miss in history
(21:41):
class on the Lions of Tsavo as well. Oh man,
I missed going to museums. That's why the things I
missed the most. So that is our story for today.
That concludes our two part series on the Mystery of
the Beasts of javl Don. Thanks as always and in
today's at episode, especially to our super producer Casey Pegram
(22:04):
patron saint of being patient on a podcast YEP, and
patron saint of French pronunciation assistants as well. Agreed thinks
also to Alex Williams who composed this track thanks to
the Brotherhood of the Wolf, which again, like, I have
the DVD and I was telling myself I would reward
(22:26):
myself by rewatching it after we did this episode. I'm
trying to see if the director, Christoph Ghnz, did anything
else interesting because it is such a weird movie and
obviously we were both very taken by. Let's see, he
did a movie called Crying Freeman which looks very Highlander esque.
It's got Mark di costcos in it um and look,
(22:48):
it's got a ninja sword or a Samurai sword situation
on the cover. He also did oh, he directed the
Silent Hill movie, but he did Psychonomical and as well
for an anthology series is an ecronomic con anthology for
a film? And what's better than love God? And thanks
of course to uh our own Beast of ridiculous History
(23:09):
Jonathan Strickland. Okay, the quister is he a lion? Is
he a striped hyena? Is he a human being? Question
remains unsolved to this day. We'll see you next time, folks.
(23:29):
For more podcasts for My Heart Radio, visit the I
Heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to
your favorite shows.
Ridiculous History News
Hosts And Creators
Ben Bowlin
Noel Brown
Popular Podcasts
United States of Kennedy
United States of Kennedy is a podcast about our cultural fascination with the Kennedy dynasty. Every week, hosts Lyra Smith and George Civeris go into one aspect of the Kennedy story.
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com