Latest / Stuff You Should Know / Short Stuff: Beast of Gevaudan

Transcript

Short Stuff: Beast of Gevaudan · Stuff You Should Know

• 0:04
  Speaker 1: Hey, and welcome to the short stuff. I'm Josh and
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: there's Chuck and it's just us. But that's okay because
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: we know Dave's here in spirit watching over us like
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: this Obi wan kenobiesque type dude who uh just kind
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: of gently guides us in the directions he wants us
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: to go without us realizing that making us think that
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: we have free will, but it ultimately just being an illusion.
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: And this is the story of the Beast of Jevaudon.
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: That was a great Who was that? Oh, Mello leghostie.
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: We just walked through my basement and uh put a
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: little uh sleeping stuff on a napkin, put it in
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: my face and I woke up And now I'm recording?
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: Was it? Jeff Bridges? And you're Sander Bullock? What have
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: you ever seen the Vanishing? Was she in that? I
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: saw the original version? I didn't see that. They were
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: both very good on their own on their own for sure.
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: One of those rare one is where the adaptation is
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: as good as the original. Foreign Yeah, uh, Halloween in
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: August July, jeez, yeah, it will be on July, I think,
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: but yes, absolutely, we are talking about a horror show.
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: Horror movie horror deal and eight, and the fact that
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: it happened in the eighteenth century makes it even creepier.
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: You can, in exactly the same way that the legend
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: of Sleepy Hollow is still creepy and scary to this
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: day because it takes place in eighteenth century upstate New York.
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: This is creepy also in the exact same way. Right
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: seventeen sixties. Uh, we're talking about the South of France,
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: but not like, you know, the lovely seaside of the
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: South of France. This sounds like it's a little bit
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: more of a small town of Zebudin, and there is
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: some a lot of killing going on, and no one
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: knows what's doing the killing, but they know it's terrible.
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: Bodies are ripped to shreds, heads are missing, throats are
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: ripped out, and I think about a hundred people, give
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: or take, because you know this is also legend, were killed,
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: but it really did happen, and people were freaked out,
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: and we're like, there's a monster in these darwoods. Um. Yeah,
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: And they were understandably freaked out because those deaths were really,
• 2:23
  Speaker 1: really grizzly and gruesome. And I mean, if this is
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: a fairly sparsely populated area use a hundred people over
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: three years, and some of them are having their heads
• 2:33
  Speaker 1: pulled off and their entrails pulled out, like it definitely is,
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: and it definitely did. And they they documented the first
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: death and I believe June of seventeen sixty four, and
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: it was a fourteen year old girl named Jean Boulet
• 2:48
  Speaker 1: and she was just basically being like um little bo peep,
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: tending to her livestock, her family's live stock out in
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: the hills, and she was attacked and torn apart, and
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: she was the first fatality, but apparently she was the
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: second victim. And just a little before that, another um
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: young sheepherder was tending to their flock and um was attacked,
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: but their sheep banded together and chased off this beast
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: of jevou Dan and saved their life, that's right. And
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: so more attacks are following. M dozens of people are dying.
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: There's some women, mostly kids, a few lone dudes here
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: and there, and you know, described as a dog like
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: a wolf like creature, as big as a horse though,
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: and you know they really this was the time, this
• 3:40
  Speaker 1: is the seventeen sixties that they're they're talking real monsters here.
• 3:45
  Speaker 1: They're not saying, like, you know, it was probably a wolf,
• 3:49
  Speaker 1: They're saying that it was some beasts that they've really
• 3:51
  Speaker 1: never witnessed before. Yeah, I mean, there was a pretty
• 3:57
  Speaker 1: decent amount of superstition among the people who lived there,
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: I would guess too. But then also again, the fact
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: that people are being torn to shreds and it's so
• 4:05
  Speaker 1: happening so frequently, and their children are being killed too, Like,
• 4:08
  Speaker 1: you can kind of understand how they would attribute this
• 4:11
  Speaker 1: to a monster pretty much out of the gate. That's right,
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: But we're gonna take a break. We almost certainly know
• 4:17
  Speaker 1: what this beast was now, and we're gonna take a
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: break and reveal it right after this, So Chuck. One
• 4:50
  Speaker 1: of the things I saw about this was that this
• 4:53
  Speaker 1: is considered one of the first international media stories that
• 4:58
  Speaker 1: UM it was reported on by Evan yon Um newspaper,
• 5:03
  Speaker 1: and that those reports made their way to the Paris
• 5:05
  Speaker 1: newspapers and then from there they spread to the rest
• 5:08
  Speaker 1: of the world, and that it was being um written
• 5:11
  Speaker 1: about and covered all over the world from Europe over
• 5:15
  Speaker 1: all the way to Boston. From what I saw, and
• 5:17
  Speaker 1: that this was really the first time, and that part
• 5:20
  Speaker 1: of that media attention and media frenzy um really kind
• 5:23
  Speaker 1: of helped pump the story up into really huge proportions
• 5:28
  Speaker 1: for a little while. Yeah. So there's a book written
• 5:32
  Speaker 1: by a man named J. M. Smith, Historian, and it's
• 5:36
  Speaker 1: called and this one really annoys me because it's such
• 5:39
  Speaker 1: a great title. Did not need this colon. It should
• 5:42
  Speaker 1: just be called Monsters of the Jevudin full stop, but
• 5:47
  Speaker 1: it's called Monsters of the Vudin colon the Making of
• 5:51
  Speaker 1: a Beast. I don't know why that colon annoys more
• 5:55
  Speaker 1: than others. It's better, it's a better follow up subtitle.
• 5:58
  Speaker 1: And you know, let's have sandwich or something. At least
• 6:03
  Speaker 1: it's pertain into the to the main title. You you
• 6:07
  Speaker 1: were always seconds away from saying let's have a sandwich.
• 6:11
  Speaker 1: To be honest, I'm I'm a walking colon leading to
• 6:15
  Speaker 1: that you and Joey Triviani. Oh did he like sandwiches?
• 6:19
  Speaker 1: That was always the favorite joke. What's uh on friends?
• 6:22
  Speaker 1: What's his favorite food? Sandwiches? Uh? So yeah, this Uh
• 6:26
  Speaker 1: these days, basically everyone agrees that it was a wolf um.
• 6:30
  Speaker 1: Back then, apparently, this author argues there were certain social
• 6:34
  Speaker 1: factors at play. Where France was was not in the
• 6:38
  Speaker 1: best way as a country as a nation after the
• 6:42
  Speaker 1: war that they had, which war was that Seven Years War. Yeah,
• 6:45
  Speaker 1: the Seven Years War that they had fought, and um,
• 6:50
  Speaker 1: they sort of rallied around this story and came together
• 6:53
  Speaker 1: a little bit and this monster, but it was it
• 6:56
  Speaker 1: was a wolf. It was like you know, um, just
• 6:59
  Speaker 1: to give an example, like let's say your your your
• 7:03
  Speaker 1: country face the pandemic, how it would like bring everybody
• 7:06
  Speaker 1: together to kind of like defeat that that pandemic and
• 7:09
  Speaker 1: then everyone better off afterward. On the other side, this
• 7:13
  Speaker 1: is exactly what happened with the Beast of j Budin.
• 7:15
  Speaker 1: It brought France together. Uh, and it really brought a
• 7:19
  Speaker 1: lot of um France together in that like King Louis
• 7:22
  Speaker 1: the fifteenth got involved, started sending troops. There was a
• 7:26
  Speaker 1: hundred livre tour noir, which is a type of currency
• 7:31
  Speaker 1: French currency bounty and I did the calculations, that's twelve
• 7:37
  Speaker 1: ms of silver. That's a lot of silver reward. It
• 7:40
  Speaker 1: was I saw somewhere else that it was basically like
• 7:43
  Speaker 1: a year's wages for the average person in France at
• 7:45
  Speaker 1: the time. So it was a substantial reward, and there
• 7:48
  Speaker 1: were a lot of people looking for this wolf or
• 7:51
  Speaker 1: this monster, this beast. It was very much like Jaws um.
• 7:55
  Speaker 1: But the fact that they couldn't find it, and they
• 7:58
  Speaker 1: actually did find one wolf and kill it and stuff
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: it and send it off to Versailles Um and the
• 8:04
  Speaker 1: killing still continued, it made this this, this this problem
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: take on those really kind of supernatural proportions even more so.
• 8:14
  Speaker 1: Are you saying that the one they killed in June
• 8:16
  Speaker 1: of seventeen sixty seven was not? In fact the world
• 8:19
  Speaker 1: know this. This was a different wolf that was killed
• 8:21
  Speaker 1: before seen sixties And I think everybody believes that in
• 8:24
  Speaker 1: June of seventeen sixty seven, John chestel Um did kill whatever.
• 8:31
  Speaker 1: If it wasn't dull one, it was the last of
• 8:33
  Speaker 1: the ones that had been doing this. Well, this is
• 8:36
  Speaker 1: just like Jaws then, because in Jaws they had the
• 8:39
  Speaker 1: red herring shark that they killed and they they wanted
• 8:43
  Speaker 1: to cut it open, and the mayor said, I'm not
• 8:45
  Speaker 1: gonna let you cut that thing open in front of
• 8:46
  Speaker 1: everyone and let that child spill out of its guts.
• 8:49
  Speaker 1: And Richard Dreyfas said that there's no way that's the
• 8:52
  Speaker 1: shark because that the shark we're looking for has teeth
• 8:56
  Speaker 1: the size of a shot glass. It's one of my
• 8:58
  Speaker 1: favorite lines. That's a great it is a great line.
• 9:01
  Speaker 1: But then sakon and cut it up in the middle
• 9:03
  Speaker 1: of the night and it's not the shark and this
• 9:04
  Speaker 1: was not the wolf. I wonder though, like how much
• 9:07
  Speaker 1: Spielberg kind of took from this true life story to
• 9:11
  Speaker 1: add to Joe's because they're now that you're pointing it out,
• 9:13
  Speaker 1: there's a lot of similarities between the two. Like there
• 9:16
  Speaker 1: there were there were human remains. Oh yeah, it was
• 9:19
  Speaker 1: um Richard Belcherley, Yeah, yeah, what is going on? I
• 9:25
  Speaker 1: don't know, but um, they did find human remains in
• 9:28
  Speaker 1: these wolves that were killed, so there was there was.
• 9:31
  Speaker 1: It really supports this idea that it was a group
• 9:33
  Speaker 1: of wolves that were killing people and that even at
• 9:36
  Speaker 1: the time, even in this place, this little area was
• 9:40
  Speaker 1: overrun by wolves. There was a huge wolf problem, and
• 9:43
  Speaker 1: that's really what was the basis of all this this
• 9:46
  Speaker 1: these attacks. Right, they did not find the Louisiana license plate.
• 9:51
  Speaker 1: Sportsman's Paradise will be my last draws reference. That was
• 9:55
  Speaker 1: a that's a trivia question, right, there will be like,
• 9:59
  Speaker 1: oh yeah, um. But like we said, in seventeen sixty seven,
• 10:03
  Speaker 1: they did a man named Jean Cash Schastel. I guess
• 10:09
  Speaker 1: killed what who Everyone kind of agrees was the wolf
• 10:12
  Speaker 1: because the killing stopped after that, and you know, there
• 10:16
  Speaker 1: was still debate on whether or not it could have
• 10:18
  Speaker 1: been something else. I think wolf experts say, you know what,
• 10:23
  Speaker 1: back then, wolves would attack people much more than they
• 10:27
  Speaker 1: do now. Uh. And in the heat of the moment
• 10:30
  Speaker 1: with adrenaline going on, wolves can be really puffy at
• 10:33
  Speaker 1: certain times. They with their coats, they have really big
• 10:36
  Speaker 1: bones and long limbs that could people could easily exaggerate.
• 10:40
  Speaker 1: The size of this thing is maybe the size of
• 10:42
  Speaker 1: a horse. Yeah, because you know, over the years, there
• 10:45
  Speaker 1: were a lot of things that were attributed to this.
• 10:47
  Speaker 1: There was a hyena don, which was a prehistoric giant
• 10:51
  Speaker 1: hyena jack old type dog that would have just torn
• 10:55
  Speaker 1: you to shreds, probably not called dire wolf, same situation
• 10:58
  Speaker 1: that was long extinct. There was the idea that it
• 11:01
  Speaker 1: was actually human, a serial killer um who was actually
• 11:05
  Speaker 1: on the prowl, but probably not it because they were
• 11:08
  Speaker 1: just so prolific. If that was the case that a
• 11:12
  Speaker 1: human probably could not have carried out all these killings.
• 11:14
  Speaker 1: And then there was also the idea that a human
• 11:16
  Speaker 1: was involved, but that they were acting as a wolf
• 11:18
  Speaker 1: whisperer directing the wolves to kill like this. But then
• 11:23
  Speaker 1: people said, now it's it was probably just a lot
• 11:25
  Speaker 1: of wolves. There are a lot of wolves there, and
• 11:28
  Speaker 1: people were leaving their little kids out to tend livestock,
• 11:31
  Speaker 1: which you just don't see anymore, and there's far fewer wolves,
• 11:34
  Speaker 1: so that's all. It was just statistics coming back and
• 11:38
  Speaker 1: tearing people the shreds and a wolf being a wolf. Uh,
• 11:41
  Speaker 1: this would make for a good movie that I think.
• 11:42
  Speaker 1: The setting and everything, yeah, lends itself to to something
• 11:46
  Speaker 1: that could be kind of cool. Yeah. And one other
• 11:48
  Speaker 1: thing that's kind of cool about this is there were survivors,
• 11:51
  Speaker 1: um who were attacked, and some of them were like
• 11:54
  Speaker 1: little kids who fended off wolves. One girl did. She
• 11:57
  Speaker 1: had a bayonet attached to us staff and used it
• 12:01
  Speaker 1: to stab the wolf and uh, it's a beast of
• 12:03
  Speaker 1: je vou dan and um. Some some lived to tell
• 12:06
  Speaker 1: the tale, which is pretty cool. Wow. Yeah, definitely movie,
• 12:10
  Speaker 1: let's do it. Movie material. Chuck, Um, you got anything else? No, okay,
• 12:16
  Speaker 1: well then we'll see you later. Everybody okay, all right.
• 12:23
  Speaker 1: Stuff you should Know is a production of I heart Radio.
• 12:25
  Speaker 1: For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app,
• 12:29
  Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.