What do you think about this?
Between 1764 and 1767, in a rugged region of south central France called the Gévaudan, something began hunting people. It struck in daylight and in open country, going for shepherds, women, and above all children tending flocks in the hills. Survivors described a creature larger than any wolf they knew, with a broad chest, reddish fur, a long tail, and a taste for the throat. Over three years it was blamed for well over a hundred deaths and hundreds of attacks.
The terror grew so great that King Louis the Fifteenth himself got involved, sending professional wolf hunters and even his own gun bearer to kill the thing. Huge wolves were shot and paraded as the beast, yet the killings continued after each one. Finally, in June of 1767, a local hunter named Jean Chastel shot a large animal, and after that the attacks stopped. When they opened it, they are said to have found human remains inside.
To this day no one is certain what it was. A very large wolf or pack of wolves is the simplest answer. But others have wondered about a hybrid, an exotic animal kept and trained, even a man using an animal as cover, because some accounts describe it shrugging off musket balls.
The truth may be far stranger than we have been told, hidden now under two and a half centuries of fear, folklore, and a countryside that wanted the nightmare to simply be over.
A pack of ordinary wolves, or a single creature no one could name? What do you think stalked the Gévaudan?
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