La Bete Du Gevaudan?

[james]

I hate to go all X-Files on you. But I will.

So what's everyone’s opinion? What happened in France? I try to be a realist in dealing with Bigfoot and UFOs, but I'm at a loss of words with this story. The most explainable theory is that le Bete was a wolf-dog hybrid, or that it didn't exist at all (and was just a political tool). But even the most explainable stories aren't very believable. Why were there so many witnesses? Why don't you ever hear about this? You can still visit the church with burned claw-marks on the wooden door where it supposedly ran in and killed several people in front of an entire congregation.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beast_of_gevaudan

http://labete.7hunters.net/bete1.htm

[djbomberto]

so? its a rabit dog?

[Lakemonster]

Very interesting articles.

The size of a Cow..... thats a big ass dog.

[ShishaFred]

Haha the wikipedia picture reads something like this : It specifically attacks women and children , drinks their blood , cuts their head off and runs away with it.

You mentionning a great wolf that terrorized France reminded me of the movie called ''Le Pacte des Loups'' or ''Brotherhood of the wolfes'' in english... terrible translation. Upon further investigation , it really tells the same tale. The movie isn't bad , you should go and try to rent it if you are interested in this story.

[james]

Movie is based on this story.

I doubt it was a rabid dog. When something becomes rabid it loses its sense of sight. A huge blind dog with a habit of killing people in the daytime wouldn't have been lucky enough to eat close to 100 people before somebody killed it. On top of that, I'm sure rabies was present in France at that time. What made this animal different from any other large rabid dog?

Was it a dog, though? Probably, but that doesn't explain everything away. Why did it not attack animals? Most of the peasants that witnessed the killings weren't the most educated people in the world. But, they had seen wolves and dogs before. Most couldn't describe whatever was killing people. That's where people come in with suggestions of lions, hyenas, and other animals that poor residents of France wouldn't recognize. On top of that, nobody ever killed it. Most of the wolves in that area of France were killed, and some of them were presented as the animal. The most famous was a rather large wolf with an oversized jaw. It's skin was on display in a museum until the turn of the century when it was thrown out. But even after they killed it, several other people were eaten. Then everything just stopped.

It killed just under 100 people in a fairly short span of time, and was considered somewhat of a national disaster. This is as close to being concretely documented as anything supernatural or a cryptid has been (with the 18th century mass sightings of the Jersey Devil being a close second). "La Bete" is even given as the caused of death for most of those killed.

If it was a dog, it must have been quite large. It mostly likely also developed an appreciation for human the way the Tsavo lions did (through eating poorly buried corpses). But I still don't understand some of the strange circumstances surrounding many of the killings, and why they just slowly ended.

Makes a hell of a campfire story, though.

[The King]

You know, everyone takes these stories of beasts like bigfoot as such B.S. and I bet most of them are, but what If they did find one? Think about this, tales of a giant squid used to be regarded as a tall tale like bigfoot, but then they found one. I just think it would be nuts If the found some sort of tall tale beast

[djbomberto]

This is all i say
MAN-BEAR-PIG
Edited April 3, 2007 by djbomberto