Lore - Episode 71: Silver Lining

Episode Date: October 16, 2017

We’ve conquered much of our world, but even with all of our great cities and urban sprawl, there are still shadows on the edge. And it’s in the shadows that the greatest threats still exist—creatures from our darkest nightmares that threaten our feeling of safety. Which has led some to strike out into the dark and hunt them. * * * Official Lore Website: www.lorepodcast.com Extra member episodes: www.patreon.com/lorepodcast Official Lore Merchandise: www.lorepodcast.com/shop Access premium content!: https://www.lorepodcast.com/support

In December of 1965, newspaper reporter George May was keeping the people of Frederick County, Maryland on the edge of their collective seats. For days, he had been their only source of news about something that had left almost everyone in a constant state of fear. A local man named John Becker had told his friends that something large and unnatural had attacked him outside his home a few days earlier. He described it as a dog the size of a bear with black fur and a vicious growl and it stood on two legs. Becker claimed that this enormous beast actually attacked him, but he somehow managed to fight it off. There had been stories of something that fit Becker's description as far back as the 1890s,

with sightings as recent as 1944 in nearby Carroll County. So a group of over 100 college students did the only logical thing they could think of. They organized a hunt. John Becker himself even applied for a hunting license, paying the $1 fee in cash. If anything ever came of the hunt though, it was never reported, probably because it was all a hoax. You see, the police never received a report from John Becker about an animal attack, and the hunting license had a return address with someone else's name on it. The newspaper reporter himself, George May. It seems John Becker was no more real than the monster he was supposed to have fought, but what is real is the tension and fear that rippled through the community there in 1965. We fear invasion from the outside. We fear

for our safety in the face of the unknown. We fear, or maybe we know, that the world holds more danger than we'd like to admit, and it's out there waiting for us. Some run and hide in praise it goes away. Others dispel the darkness of superstition with the light of reason, but history holds a story of those who chose a different path. There are some, it seems, who took the fight to the darkness. So grab your metaphorical gun and brace yourself. The hunt is about to begin. I'm Aaron Mankey, and this is Lore. Every widespread panic begins as something small. A whisper here, a rumor there. It's a seed,

full of potential, just waiting for something to nourish it into maturity. And our story found its nourishment in the southeastern countryside of 18th-century France. It began on June 30th of 1764. A 14-year-old girl named Jean Boulet from the village of Eubeck was out watching over her family's cattle, up on the gentle slopes of the hills south of the city of Vivaire. There are no detailed records of exactly what happened to her, outside of the notes written down by a local priest upon her burial. But we know she was mauled by something, something vicious and bloodthirsty. A month later, on August 8th, it happened again. A 15-year-old girl was torn to pieces by an unknown creature. Weeks later,

at the end of August, a 16-year-old boy was found dead in the fields where he worked, clearly the victim of some sort of animal attack. It was horrible and tragic, and not at all something they felt safe dealing with. But it wasn't over, either. September of 1764 saw four more deaths, three children and an adult woman. What was unnerving about her death was that it occurred just steps away from her home. All across the region of Gévoudin, people were beginning to feel unsafe. The threat of the unknown was creeping in and creating a vacuum of tension and fear, and rumor and superstition were rushing in to fill the space.

These attacks weren't new to the people of rural France in the 18th century, though. Over a century before, in 1634, the area around Evreux was plagued by a similar creature. They called it a beast because, in their eyes, the creature was behaving in a way that was just too unusual to be a natural thing. This, they believed, was a monster. In 1655, the province of Gétiné went through the same ordeal. In 1743, it was Upper Brittany. Each time, people would die, often horribly. In the rare instances when the beast was finally killed, they would find human remains inside it. Then, a panic would shift to another community miles away, taking all that fear and superstition with it.

Remember, though, this is the cultural soil that we get the fairy tale of Little Red Riding Hood. Yes, it had already existed for centuries, but it was 18th century France, an era full of monstrous wolf-like attacks that gave the legend the flavor we know today. A wolf that behaves like a person, and eagerly devours a little girl, dressed in her red baptismal gown. No one, not even good Christian children, it seems, were safe from this beast. And it didn't help that the killer seemed to be almost supernaturally violent. In October, just four months after the attacks began, three more children were mauled by the creature. Two of them died. On October 7th, a woman from the village of Apshi was literally decapitated. Her body was discovered the same day,

but it took her neighbors over a week to find her head. Some, like the bishop in nearby Monde, believed that the beast had been sent by God to punish them. Others believed it was a monster of darker origin. In either way, for the uneducated farmers and shepherds of southeastern France, it was a symbol of their superstition, a monster from their darkest nightmares, a monster that needed to be destroyed. But to kill it, you had to hunt it. So in late October, a former captain in the French cavalry named Jean-Baptiste Duamel decided to do just that. When he rode into Gévoudin, it seemed to everyone as if the man had brought an army with him, at least 60 foot soldiers and another 20 men on horseback. Duamel also brought a bag of tricks with him, figuratively

speaking. As he and his army moved from village to village, they would set up traps. In some places, they would build scarecrows filled with human blood and poison. On other occasions, some of his men would dress in women's clothes and walk through the woods like bait. It never seemed to work though. And then, after weeks of frustration, news of an actual sighting reached Duamel. He gathered his men and rode off to find the creature, spotting it from a distance in a wide open area. When the cavalry came within 10 meters of the beast, they opened fire, knocking it to the ground. Then, it got back up. They fired again, but the beast made a run for the tree line in the distance. Duamel's army made chase, firing as they went, but the monster managed to slip into the shadows

of the thick forest. The captain, though, was a determined man, and he ordered his men to step inside and follow the beast into the darkness, nervously, placing one foot slowly in front of the other. They obeyed. When one of the men spotted the creature again, the group let loose a rain of bullets that would have taken down almost any large animal. And that seemed to be the case for them as well. The beast, off in the distance, appeared to fall to the ground. Finally, they had succeeded. The creature, whatever it had been, was dead, and the people of Jevudon were safe. All that was left now was to retrieve the corpse and bring it back for display, so they marched toward the body. The men walked with confidence, excitement even. They had won.

But when they reached the spot where the beast had fallen, everyone stopped and stared. There before them lay something that inspired the deepest of fears and sent panic rippling through their ranks. Right there, where their prey should have been, was nothing. The beast was gone. The beast had already been spreading quickly. But the news of its impossible escape from Duhamel's hunting party only seemed to accelerate them. The thing they feared was still alive and apparently immune to the weapons of brave soldiers sent to defeat it. Two days after the forest hunt, more victims were discovered over three miles away. The following day, miles in another direction, the body of a young girl was found outside her

family's barn, where she had gone earlier that morning to milk the cows. That reminded people of another thing about this beast that was so different from all the others on record. The beast of Jevoudin, it seems, really got around. Reports would sometimes occur 20 miles apart in a single day, and yet all of them would fit the exact same description. Soon, volunteers were flocking to the village to help Duhamel. One report claims that at least 1,200 men arrived, a stereotypical peasant army right out of a 1940s horror movie. But as the men assembled, so too did a whole new collection of rumors about the beast. There always seemed to be someone who had seen the monster and lived. One man claimed that the beast's rear legs didn't

have paws as they might expect, but the hooves of a horse. Another suggested that the creature could walk on water, while someone else said they heard the thing laugh and speak. The descriptions of its attacks were just as varied. It decapitated some, but others were merely scalped. Some had their hearts removed, while others were completely disemboweled. And then, in January of 1765, something happened to validate everything. As the story goes, seven boys from Jevoudin, all roughly 12 years old, were playing near the woods on a cold winter day. While they were out there, a creature sprang out from the shadows of the forest and dragged one of the boys back into the trees. Terrified, most of them fell back in horror and tried to run, except one.

His name was Portefe. Then he was made of stronger stuff. He bolted into the woods and found the creature standing over the crumpled shape of his sobbing friend. Without hesitation, he picked up a sharp branch and stepped between his friend and the beast. And then, he swung at it, hitting the creature on the head, and driving it away. It's a crazy story, if it's true. That sort of bravery is rare, which is why the tale spread. When the story reached the ear of King Louis XV, the ruler took action. Now, maybe it was this tale of brave children, but it could also have been the report that local markets were shutting down out of fear and that farmers were too afraid to go out and work in their fields. We would like to imagine political leaders were driven by compassion,

but often it's the bottom line that they respond to best. Either way, King Louis put out a call to arms, asking for hunters with the experience and courage necessary to track down such an unnatural prey. Many willing volunteers arrived in Jevedon that spring, each eager for a chance to please their king. But the most famous among them was a Norman wolf hunter named Jean-Charles Deneval. When Deneval strolled into Jevedon, he walked into a territory filled with tension. Maybe it was all of that pent-up frustration or such a large gathering of egos in one space. Maybe it was just fear pushing everyone against each other, but it seems that in the three months that followed the king's invitation,

nothing was accomplished outside of annoying the locals who just wanted their lives to return to normal. Not for a lack of trying, though. More of those poisonous blood-filled scarecrows were set up in the region, but they were ineffective. Traps were set and bait was laid out, but nothing was working. Still, extra credit goes to our old friend, Captain Duamel, for his own creative, if not a bit gruesome attempt. You see, a woman named Catherine Vallee had recently led her cattle to a nearby stream for a drink when the beast emerged from the trees and brutally killed her. When her body was discovered, her family did what families do. They mourned her death and prepared her for burial. But that's when Duamel stepped in, literally knocking on their door.

He had an idea, albeit a very unpopular one, that historians have been able to piece together from a number of letters he later wrote. It seems he believed that the beast would return to the place where Vallee had been found, looking for her body so it could finish the job. She's already dead, he told them. What difference will another day make? So he begged the grieving children to let him take their mother's body back out into the fields, right to the very spot where they'd found her. As bait, when they finally agreed, Duamel and his men carried Vallee's body back out and then sat in a circle around her through the night, waiting for the beast to return. It didn't, though. But rather than take the body home

and let the family begin the burial process, Duamel kept it another day, instructing his men to patrol the wider area around it. In the end, the men were forced to admit defeat, gathering up the decomposing corpse once more and delivering it a day late to her children. The people of Jeboudin were at the breaking point. Fear and frustration pulsed through the communities all across the rural territory, and something needed to be done. They were desperate. And desperate times, as we know. Call for desperate measures. The straw that broke the camel's back wasn't actually a straw. It was a crude wooden spear

that had been carved to a sharp point by a woman named Marie-Jeanne Vallee. She had left home one morning to take care of work in the fields, and that journey took her through a patch of nearby trees where a small river cut through the undergrowth. And it was there as she was stepping across that river that she encountered the beast. She claimed that the beast walked toward her on its hind legs, its eyes almost seeming to glow. It was a common description that had earned the beast another name, the Lou Garou, the Wolfman. But this woman wasn't afraid of the superstitions, apparently. She brought the spear up as the beast lunged toward her and pierced it directly in the chest. Amazingly, the creature that had evaded the countless

bullets of all those hunters stumbled back and fell into the river. And then, it stopped moving. Marie-Jeanne ran back to her village and told the others who rushed out to collect the body. But when they got there, it was gone. Perhaps washed away by the current, or maybe something else. Because the very next day, the creature was spotted outside another nearby village. King Louis had reached his limit. He called upon his gunbearer, a man named François Antoine. He was a knight, a military officer, and a member of the king's personal staff. If anyone could kill the beast, it would be the king's own game master and lieutenant of the hunt, so he was sent to Jeveudin. That was June of 1765. For the next few months,

Antoine and his elite hunting party explored the region and made plans. He mapped the forests and hills. He spoke with witnesses and gathered help. It wasn't until September, though, that they finally spotted the beast. The historical record tells us that on September 21st, Antoine's men managed to ambush the creature. After a number of shots that struck the beast but failed to bring it down, one lucky hunter managed to put a bullet right through one of the beast's eyes. And with that shot, everything seemed to come to a victorious conclusion. Antoine had the creature examined, but the report was less than encouraging.

It seemed to be nothing more than an enormous wolf, roughly six feet long and three feet tall, weighing in at about 150 pounds. The animal's stomach didn't contain human remains as they had morbidly hoped, and it certainly didn't walk on its hind legs. Despite this, he returned to Versailles with the stuffed wolf in tow. The king rewarded him handsomely, allowing Antoine to retire with a healthy pension and presenting him with the dignified cross of the Order of St. Louis. The king even gave Antoine permission to add the image of the beast to his own coat of arms. But if there was any doubt that the animal killed by Antoine was not the beast of Jevoudin, solid proof arrived in December of 1765.

First, a girl went missing from the town of Marciac, and then a woman from a nearby village did the same. When that woman's severed hands were later discovered, the people of Jevoudin knew once and for all that their nightmare had never really ended. Winter arrived, and with it, a new ferocity from the beast. As 1766 began, attacks and sightings were reported almost every single day. But there was no one left to help them. All the hunters had gone home. The people were in a state of panic. For over a year, they were left on their own to defend themselves. In the six months between January and June of 1767, at least 16 people were officially reported as killed, slaughtered by a monster that defied capture or defeat.

Taking the whole story into account, this was their darkest hour. Which is when the hero always seems to step into the picture, isn't it? Maybe that's just Hollywood's deeply embedded archetype speaking into our past, or maybe dark moments really do attract the right person at the right time. I'd like to think it's the latter, and it certainly was the case in June of 1767. The hero of Jevoudin was Jean Chastel, a 60-year-old peasant farmer from Monmouchet. He wasn't a decorated royal hunter or an experienced military officer with a dozen battles under his belt. But he'd heard that the beast had been sighted in a clearing nearby, so he went to see if he could help. When he arrived, the creature was nowhere to be seen.

But rather than go home, he set up camp and waited in the trees. And that's where he was, holding his rosary beads tightly and whispering prayers like any good 18th century Catholic, when the beast arrived, stepping out of the trees into the sunlit clearing. Chastel raised his rifle, set his aim, and pulled the trigger. But the shot missed, alerting the monster of his location, and then it charged toward him. But with his last remaining bullet, Chastel aimed once more, whispered another prayer, and then fired. The beast that lumbered across the clearing flinched slightly, seemed to trip, and then crashed to a stop and lay still. It was finally dead.

Like Antoine, the farmer decided to have the creature examined. There was a lot riding on his success, after all. The public needed to know that the beast that devoured their children was finally gone, so it was measured and weighed, and then its belly was sliced open to access the stomach. When they cut it open, though, they were caught in a morbid tug of war between utter disgust and joyous celebration. Inside the stomach was the body of a little girl. Monsters are real. It's easy to be cynical about something like that, but at the end of the day, monsters really do exist. Sometimes they're a product of the horrible actions of the people around us. Humans can achieve amazing things, after all, but that greatness can just as easily

be bent toward evil and destruction. Other times, monsters come to us from the outside. They are members of the unknown world outside our border, things we don't fully understand. They may be natural and fully embedded in our world, but if they're strange or unknown to us, we can't help but see them as creatures from our darkest nightmares. It's not that Southern France hadn't seen a wolf before. Quite the opposite, actually. In the century before the events in Jevoudin began, there were at least 775 wolf-related deaths officially recorded. And it didn't stop, either. In the decade that followed, another 130 would die in much the same way. As sad as it is for lovers of fairy tales and folklore to hear,

the events in Jevoudin weren't unique or supernatural. It was just a temporary uptick in the natural order of things. What's more bizarre is the juxtaposition of the panic in Southern France with what was happening in the big cities to the north. The Enlightenment was spreading, and people's understanding of the world around them was transforming rapidly. Disciplines such as mathematics, physics, biology, and even astronomy were all teaching us that the world around us was much less mysterious and dark. And yet, hundreds of miles to the south, an entire region of France had allowed itself to be driven to hysteria by superstition. The tales of old, the legends, the communal fear that had been

passed down from one generation to the next. And as a result, wolves were hunted constantly. In fact, they were almost eradicated completely for over two centuries. It wasn't until 2004 though that France finally outlawed wolf hunting without a license and a just cause. Thanks to that, their population is finally on the rise again. Jean Chastel was a product of that culture of fear-based superstition. He believed, like so many in the area around him, that the beast was real. A monster sent by God to destroy sinful man, more supernatural than natural. And even when the creature lay dead at his feet, he believed the stories were true. As far as he was concerned, the thing he had killed was no simple wolf. Like Francois Antoine, Chastel had his trophy

embalmed for transport to the king. But it wasn't done properly. Before his carriage could reach Versailles, the corpse had decomposed so badly that he and his friends were forced to burn it right there on the roadside. He died two decades later, a hero in Jeboudin, but almost completely unknown to the king and his nobles back at Versailles. But there is a silver lining to it all, and we can find it in one last story about Chastel that I think bears repeating. It seems that the old, religious farmer had used a tool that no one else had ever thought of until that moment. Before his hunt, it's said that Chastel had visited his local priest for a blessing. It makes sense. Fear of the beast was almost palpable in 1767. All the great hunters had failed.

Chastel needed any advantage he could get, even a divine one. But he brought something with him to the church that day as well, something that he would later use to bring the monster down. Two things, actually. He asked the priest to bless a pair of bullets, silver bullets. Whether or not they were true, Jean Chastel managed to put one legend to death that day, while giving birth to another. The beast of Jeboudin might be a thing of the past, but the silver bullet is here to stay. This episode of Lore was written and produced by me, Aaron Mankey, with research help from Marsette Crockett.

Lore is much more than a podcast. There's a book series in bookstores around the country and online, and the second season of the Amazon Prime television show was recently released. Check them both out if you want more Lore in your life. I also make two other podcasts, Aaron Mankey's Cabinet of Curiosities, and Unobscured, and I think you'd enjoy both. Each one explores other areas of our dark history, ranging from bite-sized episodes to season-long dives into a single topic. You can learn about both of those shows and everything else going on all over in one central place, theworldoflore.com slash now. And you can also follow the show on Facebook,

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