← All case filesView as graph →
🐺
CASE #K34URZ · 2 entities · 1 connections
The Beast of Gévaudan
A creature killed around 100 people and injured nearly 300 more across rural France in the 1760s — witnesses described something too large and strange to be an ordinary wolf, and to this day nobody agrees on exactly what actually did the killing.
Between 1764 and 1767, a mysterious creature killed an estimated 100 people and injured nearly 300 more across the Gévaudan region of south-central France, in one of the best-documented and deadliest animal attack series in European history. Despite the eventual killing of large wolves credited with ending the attacks, the creature's true identity and the reason for its unusually sustained, aggressive behavior remain genuinely disputed among historians.
⇄disputed
Quick facts
- →The attacks occurred over roughly three years, from 1764 to 1767, in the Gévaudan region (part of modern Lozère, France), killing an estimated 100 people and injuring nearly 300 more.
- →Contemporary press accounts, among the first genuinely international news stories, described the creature with often exaggerated, monstrous features far exceeding typical wolf descriptions.
- →King Louis XV dispatched royal hunters, including a professional wolf hunter, to track and kill the beast, reflecting the attacks' significant contemporary political and public alarm.
- →A large wolf killed by hunter Jean Chastel in 1767 was widely credited at the time with ending the attacks, though historians continue debating whether one or multiple animals, or additional factors, were actually responsible across the full three-year period.
Entities on file
📅
Beast of Gévaudan (event)
Series of deadly animal attacks that killed around 100 people across rural France between 1764 and 1767; the specific animal responsible remains debated by historians.
No outgoing connections on file.
🧑
Jean Chastel (person)
Hunter who killed a large wolf in 1767 widely credited with ending the Beast of Gévaudan attacks.
→ was credited with ending → Beast of Gévaudan✓documented