WILLIAM SHATNER (VOICEOVER): Gévaudan, France.
June 30, 1764.
On a warm summer morning in this farming region of South Central
France, 14-year-old Jeanne Boulet leaves home
to tend to her flock of sheep.
By sundown, she's dead.
[growling, screaming]
Murdered by a mysterious animal that reportedly
mutilated her body, severed her head, and ripped out her heart.
Jeanne Boulet was the first documented casualty
of a monster that many people believed
was roaming around South Central France,
beginning in the late spring of 1764.
By the end of September, another 10 or so casualties, however,
had appeared.
KEN GERHARD: La Bete du Gévaudan,
also known as the Beast of Gévaudan,
was a mysterious wolf-like creature which mounted
a murderous rampage over a three-year
span within the 18th century.
The beast frequently attacked women and young children who
had been assigned the task of herding sheep and cattle
in remote mountainous meadows.
And in many cases, they were rather
defenseless and vulnerable.
WILLIAM SHATNER (VOICEOVER): Between 1764 and 1767,
the so-called Beast of Gévaudan terrorized
the Margeride mountain region of Southern France.
According to historical records, more than 100 people
were brutally killed.
JAY M. SMITH: The Beast of Gévaudan's ravages did incite
panic among the people, and we know this largely from evidence
from journalists and others who are commenting about
the activities of the beast.
By early 1765, newspapers all across France, and, indeed,
all across Europe and in America,
were reporting on the Beast of Gévaudan, his exploits,
the various hunts for the beast, the various mysteries
surrounding it, which is why so many people
were transfixed by this story.
KEN GERHARD: There were many attempts
to hunt down the beast.
People in the Gévaudan region typically did not own guns,
but there were posses formed, groups that would go out
in the woods and literally beat the brush with pitchforks,
sticks, knives, whatever types of weapons were available.
However, the hunt for the beast really ramped up when
King Louis XV became involved.
He brought in a professional wolf hunter named d'Enneval,
who allegedly killed over 100 wolves.
But the killing still did not end.
WILLIAM SHATNER (VOICEOVER): According to multiple reports,
the beast resembled a wolf, but was unlike any canine
that was known to man.
KEN GERHARD: Many of the local villagers noted as saying
it resembles a very large wolf.
But the Beast of Gévaudan attacked
and killed people in a nature that was very unlike a wolf.
The nature of these attacks, the way
that this thing was decapitating people, disemboweling people,
this was something completely different.
JAY M. SMITH: One of the reasons this becomes such
a magnetic story, it's because there were always
new strange stories about the beast's behavior,
its appearance, its strange abilities.
The peasants on the ground were describing it
as having the ability to walk on its hind legs,
glowing eyes, and having five or six talons rather than four.
They didn't use the word "werewolf."
They used descriptions of this creature
that made it easy to believe that this
could indeed be a werewolf.
KEN GERHARD: The Beast of Gévaudan
is one of France's most enduring and popular mysteries.
There are museums.
There are statues.
There are songs.
There are stories.
This was like a real life nightmare.
To this day, the Beast of Gévaudan is celebrated
in French culture, and it really has
a profound effect on people.
WILLIAM SHATNER (VOICEOVER): The descriptions
of the beast were so terrifying that it's not
surprising locals thought it was some kind
of supernatural monster.
But there were scientists at the time who
proposed a different theory.
JAY M. SMITH: Among the many hypotheses
that emerged was that the beast might be an African hyena.
The hyena was this very mysterious creature
that lots of naturalists and others
wrote about in the 1750s and '60s.
KEN GERHARD: The general description of the Beast
of Gévaudan was a wolf-like creature, but bigger, the size
of a mule or a calf, perhaps.
It had a large head.
It had a long muzzle lined with razor
sharp teeth, pointy ears, a long tail with a tuft of fur
on the end.
The coat of fur was typically described as a reddish
brown or gray with a black stripe running down
the back and a white breast.
These are hyena-like characteristics.
CORBIN MAXEY: Back in the day, kings and even people of status
had exotic pets.
They had exotic zoos.
Who's to say that a hyena didn't escape?
If you take a look at the victims, their chest cavities
torn apart, their limbs missing, their heads decapitated,
this all resembles attacks of a hyena.
WILLIAM SHATNER (VOICEOVER): Could
the Beast of Gévaudan have been an escaped African hyena?
Perhaps.
But some researchers have suggested
a less exotic possibility.
KEN GERHARD: There are a number of arguments
for the Beast of Gévaudan actually being a killer wolf.
Wolves typically are very timid animals around humans.
But there have been some 9,000 wolf attacks in France
over the centuries.
And there was also a theory that the beast attacks
may have been perpetrated by a wolf
that had come down with rabies.
WILLIAM SHATNER (VOICEOVER): According to experts,
rabid wolves often lose their innate fear of humans and walk
with a strange gait, which are behaviors
described in the eyewitness accounts
of the Beast of Gévaudan.
But while the rabid wolf theory may make sense,
the best clue scientists have today
about the beast's identity was obtained on the day
it was reportedly killed.
The beast's reign of terror ended on June 19, 1767.
A local hunter named Jean Chastel
fell the monster with one shot of a silver bullet.
[gunshot]
After Chastel shot this strange creature,
the killings actually stopped.
So everyone was in agreement that he
had actually killed the beast.
A surgeon who conducted an autopsy
determined that while it resembled a wolf,
it was not a wolf.
And in fact, it possessed 40 teeth compared to a wolf's 42
teeth, which is quite strange.
The beast's remains were paraded around the Gévaudan
region for weeks thereafter.
And by the time the carcass was taken
to the Palace of Versailles and presented to King Louis XV,
it was so smelly that he immediately demanded that it
be removed from the palace.
And to this day, nobody knows what happened to those remains.
They vanished.
Ultimately, while some people feel the Beast of Gévaudan may
have been a supernatural phenomenon,
the deaths, the occurrences documented, they're real.
And the Beast of Gévaudan remains a great mystery.