WEBVTT - Short Stuff: Beast of Gevaudan 0:00:04.120 --> 0:00:06.360 Hey, and welcome to the short stuff. I'm Josh and 0:00:06.400 --> 0:00:09.680 there's Chuck and it's just us. But that's okay because 0:00:09.720 --> 0:00:12.600 we know Dave's here in spirit watching over us like 0:00:12.640 --> 0:00:17.520 this Obi wan kenobiesque type dude who uh just kind 0:00:17.520 --> 0:00:20.119 of gently guides us in the directions he wants us 0:00:20.160 --> 0:00:23.120 to go without us realizing that making us think that 0:00:23.160 --> 0:00:26.640 we have free will, but it ultimately just being an illusion. 0:00:27.880 --> 0:00:30.840 And this is the story of the Beast of Jevaudon. 0:00:31.400 --> 0:00:36.280 That was a great Who was that? Oh, Mello leghostie. 0:00:36.880 --> 0:00:40.239 We just walked through my basement and uh put a 0:00:40.280 --> 0:00:43.120 little uh sleeping stuff on a napkin, put it in 0:00:43.159 --> 0:00:45.080 my face and I woke up And now I'm recording? 0:00:45.400 --> 0:00:50.600 Was it? Jeff Bridges? And you're Sander Bullock? What have 0:00:50.680 --> 0:00:53.479 you ever seen the Vanishing? Was she in that? I 0:00:53.520 --> 0:00:55.920 saw the original version? I didn't see that. They were 0:00:55.920 --> 0:00:58.600 both very good on their own on their own for sure. 0:00:59.040 --> 0:01:01.200 One of those rare one is where the adaptation is 0:01:01.240 --> 0:01:07.520 as good as the original. Foreign Yeah, uh, Halloween in 0:01:07.560 --> 0:01:12.840 August July, jeez, yeah, it will be on July, I think, 0:01:12.840 --> 0:01:16.279 but yes, absolutely, we are talking about a horror show. 0:01:16.600 --> 0:01:20.319 Horror movie horror deal and eight, and the fact that 0:01:20.360 --> 0:01:22.640 it happened in the eighteenth century makes it even creepier. 0:01:23.280 --> 0:01:26.240 You can, in exactly the same way that the legend 0:01:26.240 --> 0:01:30.400 of Sleepy Hollow is still creepy and scary to this 0:01:30.520 --> 0:01:34.399 day because it takes place in eighteenth century upstate New York. 0:01:35.040 --> 0:01:38.880 This is creepy also in the exact same way. Right 0:01:39.160 --> 0:01:43.920 seventeen sixties. Uh, we're talking about the South of France, 0:01:44.520 --> 0:01:47.960 but not like, you know, the lovely seaside of the 0:01:48.000 --> 0:01:50.040 South of France. This sounds like it's a little bit 0:01:50.040 --> 0:01:54.480 more of a small town of Zebudin, and there is 0:01:54.520 --> 0:01:57.360 some a lot of killing going on, and no one 0:01:57.400 --> 0:02:00.880 knows what's doing the killing, but they know it's terrible. 0:02:01.080 --> 0:02:05.040 Bodies are ripped to shreds, heads are missing, throats are 0:02:05.120 --> 0:02:09.239 ripped out, and I think about a hundred people, give 0:02:09.320 --> 0:02:11.959 or take, because you know this is also legend, were killed, 0:02:12.160 --> 0:02:15.280 but it really did happen, and people were freaked out, 0:02:15.320 --> 0:02:19.360 and we're like, there's a monster in these darwoods. Um. Yeah, 0:02:19.400 --> 0:02:22.919 And they were understandably freaked out because those deaths were really, 0:02:23.040 --> 0:02:26.080 really grizzly and gruesome. And I mean, if this is 0:02:26.120 --> 0:02:31.160 a fairly sparsely populated area use a hundred people over 0:02:31.240 --> 0:02:33.400 three years, and some of them are having their heads 0:02:33.440 --> 0:02:37.600 pulled off and their entrails pulled out, like it definitely is, 0:02:37.639 --> 0:02:41.040 and it definitely did. And they they documented the first 0:02:41.120 --> 0:02:44.800 death and I believe June of seventeen sixty four, and 0:02:44.840 --> 0:02:47.720 it was a fourteen year old girl named Jean Boulet 0:02:48.240 --> 0:02:51.600 and she was just basically being like um little bo peep, 0:02:51.919 --> 0:02:55.040 tending to her livestock, her family's live stock out in 0:02:55.040 --> 0:02:59.400 the hills, and she was attacked and torn apart, and 0:02:59.480 --> 0:03:02.680 she was the first fatality, but apparently she was the 0:03:02.760 --> 0:03:07.040 second victim. And just a little before that, another um 0:03:07.080 --> 0:03:13.359 young sheepherder was tending to their flock and um was attacked, 0:03:13.400 --> 0:03:17.200 but their sheep banded together and chased off this beast 0:03:17.240 --> 0:03:21.040 of jevou Dan and saved their life, that's right. And 0:03:21.120 --> 0:03:25.400 so more attacks are following. M dozens of people are dying. 0:03:26.240 --> 0:03:30.440 There's some women, mostly kids, a few lone dudes here 0:03:30.480 --> 0:03:34.519 and there, and you know, described as a dog like 0:03:34.680 --> 0:03:37.680 a wolf like creature, as big as a horse though, 0:03:38.320 --> 0:03:40.200 and you know they really this was the time, this 0:03:40.240 --> 0:03:45.680 is the seventeen sixties that they're they're talking real monsters here. 0:03:45.720 --> 0:03:49.160 They're not saying, like, you know, it was probably a wolf, 0:03:49.200 --> 0:03:51.320 They're saying that it was some beasts that they've really 0:03:51.360 --> 0:03:57.200 never witnessed before. Yeah, I mean, there was a pretty 0:03:57.240 --> 0:04:00.000 decent amount of superstition among the people who lived there, 0:04:00.120 --> 0:04:02.520 I would guess too. But then also again, the fact 0:04:02.560 --> 0:04:05.040 that people are being torn to shreds and it's so 0:04:05.160 --> 0:04:08.440 happening so frequently, and their children are being killed too, Like, 0:04:08.800 --> 0:04:11.040 you can kind of understand how they would attribute this 0:04:11.120 --> 0:04:14.360 to a monster pretty much out of the gate. That's right, 0:04:14.960 --> 0:04:17.039 But we're gonna take a break. We almost certainly know 0:04:17.120 --> 0:04:19.080 what this beast was now, and we're gonna take a 0:04:19.120 --> 0:04:50.720 break and reveal it right after this, So Chuck. One 0:04:50.720 --> 0:04:52.719 of the things I saw about this was that this 0:04:53.120 --> 0:04:58.159 is considered one of the first international media stories that 0:04:58.400 --> 0:05:03.200 UM it was reported on by Evan yon Um newspaper, 0:05:03.400 --> 0:05:05.920 and that those reports made their way to the Paris 0:05:05.960 --> 0:05:08.360 newspapers and then from there they spread to the rest 0:05:08.400 --> 0:05:11.520 of the world, and that it was being um written 0:05:11.560 --> 0:05:15.360 about and covered all over the world from Europe over 0:05:15.560 --> 0:05:17.800 all the way to Boston. From what I saw, and 0:05:17.880 --> 0:05:20.200 that this was really the first time, and that part 0:05:20.200 --> 0:05:23.960 of that media attention and media frenzy um really kind 0:05:23.960 --> 0:05:28.440 of helped pump the story up into really huge proportions 0:05:28.480 --> 0:05:32.200 for a little while. Yeah. So there's a book written 0:05:32.200 --> 0:05:36.200 by a man named J. M. Smith, Historian, and it's 0:05:36.240 --> 0:05:39.280 called and this one really annoys me because it's such 0:05:39.320 --> 0:05:42.400 a great title. Did not need this colon. It should 0:05:42.400 --> 0:05:47.400 just be called Monsters of the Jevudin full stop, but 0:05:47.480 --> 0:05:51.039 it's called Monsters of the Vudin colon the Making of 0:05:51.080 --> 0:05:55.080 a Beast. I don't know why that colon annoys more 0:05:55.120 --> 0:05:58.599 than others. It's better, it's a better follow up subtitle. 0:05:58.640 --> 0:06:03.440 And you know, let's have sandwich or something. At least 0:06:03.440 --> 0:06:07.400 it's pertain into the to the main title. You you 0:06:07.440 --> 0:06:10.520 were always seconds away from saying let's have a sandwich. 0:06:11.320 --> 0:06:15.080 To be honest, I'm I'm a walking colon leading to 0:06:15.160 --> 0:06:18.919 that you and Joey Triviani. Oh did he like sandwiches? 0:06:19.440 --> 0:06:22.120 That was always the favorite joke. What's uh on friends? 0:06:22.120 --> 0:06:26.360 What's his favorite food? Sandwiches? Uh? So yeah, this Uh 0:06:26.400 --> 0:06:30.800 these days, basically everyone agrees that it was a wolf um. 0:06:30.839 --> 0:06:34.400 Back then, apparently, this author argues there were certain social 0:06:34.440 --> 0:06:38.520 factors at play. Where France was was not in the 0:06:38.520 --> 0:06:42.560 best way as a country as a nation after the 0:06:42.600 --> 0:06:45.920 war that they had, which war was that Seven Years War. Yeah, 0:06:45.920 --> 0:06:50.200 the Seven Years War that they had fought, and um, 0:06:50.360 --> 0:06:53.239 they sort of rallied around this story and came together 0:06:53.279 --> 0:06:56.560 a little bit and this monster, but it was it 0:06:56.600 --> 0:06:59.560 was a wolf. It was like you know, um, just 0:06:59.600 --> 0:07:02.719 to give an example, like let's say your your your 0:07:03.080 --> 0:07:06.719 country face the pandemic, how it would like bring everybody 0:07:06.760 --> 0:07:09.840 together to kind of like defeat that that pandemic and 0:07:09.880 --> 0:07:13.120 then everyone better off afterward. On the other side, this 0:07:13.160 --> 0:07:15.600 is exactly what happened with the Beast of j Budin. 0:07:15.680 --> 0:07:19.200 It brought France together. Uh, and it really brought a 0:07:19.200 --> 0:07:22.200 lot of um France together in that like King Louis 0:07:22.240 --> 0:07:25.400 the fifteenth got involved, started sending troops. There was a 0:07:26.440 --> 0:07:30.840 hundred livre tour noir, which is a type of currency 0:07:31.200 --> 0:07:36.400 French currency bounty and I did the calculations, that's twelve 0:07:37.240 --> 0:07:40.600 ms of silver. That's a lot of silver reward. It 0:07:40.640 --> 0:07:42.760 was I saw somewhere else that it was basically like 0:07:43.120 --> 0:07:45.880 a year's wages for the average person in France at 0:07:45.880 --> 0:07:48.400 the time. So it was a substantial reward, and there 0:07:48.400 --> 0:07:51.080 were a lot of people looking for this wolf or 0:07:51.200 --> 0:07:55.200 this monster, this beast. It was very much like Jaws um. 0:07:55.280 --> 0:07:57.960 But the fact that they couldn't find it, and they 0:07:58.000 --> 0:08:00.840 actually did find one wolf and kill it and stuff 0:08:00.880 --> 0:08:04.400 it and send it off to Versailles Um and the 0:08:04.480 --> 0:08:09.360 killing still continued, it made this this, this this problem 0:08:09.520 --> 0:08:13.920 take on those really kind of supernatural proportions even more so. 0:08:14.000 --> 0:08:16.400 Are you saying that the one they killed in June 0:08:16.400 --> 0:08:19.080 of seventeen sixty seven was not? In fact the world 0:08:19.320 --> 0:08:21.760 know this. This was a different wolf that was killed 0:08:21.800 --> 0:08:24.880 before seen sixties And I think everybody believes that in 0:08:24.960 --> 0:08:30.880 June of seventeen sixty seven, John chestel Um did kill whatever. 0:08:31.440 --> 0:08:33.800 If it wasn't dull one, it was the last of 0:08:33.920 --> 0:08:36.720 the ones that had been doing this. Well, this is 0:08:36.800 --> 0:08:39.800 just like Jaws then, because in Jaws they had the 0:08:39.840 --> 0:08:43.720 red herring shark that they killed and they they wanted 0:08:43.760 --> 0:08:45.240 to cut it open, and the mayor said, I'm not 0:08:45.240 --> 0:08:46.719 gonna let you cut that thing open in front of 0:08:46.720 --> 0:08:48.679 everyone and let that child spill out of its guts. 0:08:49.520 --> 0:08:52.840 And Richard Dreyfas said that there's no way that's the 0:08:52.840 --> 0:08:56.640 shark because that the shark we're looking for has teeth 0:08:56.679 --> 0:08:58.720 the size of a shot glass. It's one of my 0:08:58.720 --> 0:09:01.160 favorite lines. That's a great it is a great line. 0:09:01.520 --> 0:09:03.480 But then sakon and cut it up in the middle 0:09:03.480 --> 0:09:04.880 of the night and it's not the shark and this 0:09:04.960 --> 0:09:07.600 was not the wolf. I wonder though, like how much 0:09:07.720 --> 0:09:10.920 Spielberg kind of took from this true life story to 0:09:11.000 --> 0:09:13.040 add to Joe's because they're now that you're pointing it out, 0:09:13.040 --> 0:09:15.920 there's a lot of similarities between the two. Like there 0:09:16.080 --> 0:09:18.960 there were there were human remains. Oh yeah, it was 0:09:19.120 --> 0:09:25.240 um Richard Belcherley, Yeah, yeah, what is going on? I 0:09:25.240 --> 0:09:27.880 don't know, but um, they did find human remains in 0:09:28.000 --> 0:09:30.840 these wolves that were killed, so there was there was. 0:09:31.120 --> 0:09:33.240 It really supports this idea that it was a group 0:09:33.320 --> 0:09:36.480 of wolves that were killing people and that even at 0:09:36.480 --> 0:09:39.960 the time, even in this place, this little area was 0:09:40.240 --> 0:09:43.360 overrun by wolves. There was a huge wolf problem, and 0:09:43.679 --> 0:09:46.160 that's really what was the basis of all this this 0:09:46.320 --> 0:09:50.760 these attacks. Right, they did not find the Louisiana license plate. 0:09:51.600 --> 0:09:55.280 Sportsman's Paradise will be my last draws reference. That was 0:09:55.360 --> 0:09:59.520 a that's a trivia question, right, there will be like, 0:09:59.520 --> 0:10:03.880 oh yeah, um. But like we said, in seventeen sixty seven, 0:10:03.920 --> 0:10:07.960 they did a man named Jean Cash Schastel. I guess 0:10:09.440 --> 0:10:12.640 killed what who Everyone kind of agrees was the wolf 0:10:12.679 --> 0:10:16.360 because the killing stopped after that, and you know, there 0:10:16.400 --> 0:10:18.120 was still debate on whether or not it could have 0:10:18.160 --> 0:10:22.680 been something else. I think wolf experts say, you know what, 0:10:23.000 --> 0:10:27.680 back then, wolves would attack people much more than they 0:10:27.760 --> 0:10:29.959 do now. Uh. And in the heat of the moment 0:10:30.000 --> 0:10:33.280 with adrenaline going on, wolves can be really puffy at 0:10:33.320 --> 0:10:35.960 certain times. They with their coats, they have really big 0:10:36.000 --> 0:10:40.319 bones and long limbs that could people could easily exaggerate. 0:10:40.400 --> 0:10:42.200 The size of this thing is maybe the size of 0:10:42.200 --> 0:10:45.240 a horse. Yeah, because you know, over the years, there 0:10:45.240 --> 0:10:47.440 were a lot of things that were attributed to this. 0:10:47.520 --> 0:10:51.720 There was a hyena don, which was a prehistoric giant 0:10:51.920 --> 0:10:55.000 hyena jack old type dog that would have just torn 0:10:55.040 --> 0:10:58.880 you to shreds, probably not called dire wolf, same situation 0:10:58.960 --> 0:11:01.400 that was long extinct. There was the idea that it 0:11:01.440 --> 0:11:04.959 was actually human, a serial killer um who was actually 0:11:05.040 --> 0:11:08.520 on the prowl, but probably not it because they were 0:11:08.559 --> 0:11:12.040 just so prolific. If that was the case that a 0:11:12.160 --> 0:11:14.520 human probably could not have carried out all these killings. 0:11:14.840 --> 0:11:16.600 And then there was also the idea that a human 0:11:16.679 --> 0:11:18.720 was involved, but that they were acting as a wolf 0:11:18.840 --> 0:11:23.600 whisperer directing the wolves to kill like this. But then 0:11:23.640 --> 0:11:25.880 people said, now it's it was probably just a lot 0:11:25.920 --> 0:11:27.720 of wolves. There are a lot of wolves there, and 0:11:28.080 --> 0:11:30.960 people were leaving their little kids out to tend livestock, 0:11:31.400 --> 0:11:34.240 which you just don't see anymore, and there's far fewer wolves, 0:11:34.240 --> 0:11:37.679 so that's all. It was just statistics coming back and 0:11:38.080 --> 0:11:41.240 tearing people the shreds and a wolf being a wolf. Uh, 0:11:41.559 --> 0:11:42.959 this would make for a good movie that I think. 0:11:42.960 --> 0:11:46.200 The setting and everything, yeah, lends itself to to something 0:11:46.240 --> 0:11:48.280 that could be kind of cool. Yeah. And one other 0:11:48.320 --> 0:11:51.160 thing that's kind of cool about this is there were survivors, 0:11:51.720 --> 0:11:54.200 um who were attacked, and some of them were like 0:11:54.280 --> 0:11:57.840 little kids who fended off wolves. One girl did. She 0:11:57.920 --> 0:12:01.120 had a bayonet attached to us staff and used it 0:12:01.160 --> 0:12:03.920 to stab the wolf and uh, it's a beast of 0:12:03.960 --> 0:12:06.800 je vou dan and um. Some some lived to tell 0:12:06.840 --> 0:12:10.360 the tale, which is pretty cool. Wow. Yeah, definitely movie, 0:12:10.400 --> 0:12:16.240 let's do it. Movie material. Chuck, Um, you got anything else? No, okay, 0:12:16.400 --> 0:12:19.600 well then we'll see you later. Everybody okay, all right. 0:12:23.120 --> 0:12:25.440 Stuff you should Know is a production of I heart Radio. 0:12:25.920 --> 0:12:29.080 For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, 0:12:29.280 --> 0:12:32.199 Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.