The Welcome Welcome. Welcome back, everyone to 1001 Heroes, Legends, Histories, and Mysteries Podcast.

This is your host, John Haggardorn.

And today we're taking a trip into history to deal with one of my favorite story genres, Unsolved Mysteries.

Today's story, The Beast of Jevoudon. We're going to take you to rural southern France in 1764,

in what was then Jevoudon Province, which makes up today's Lozère and Hotwire districts.

Hilly, rocky, scenic, dotted with livestock farms and small villages, but still

very rural. It was all very quiet and pastoral, the kind of setting you might expect to see

in an old French painting, with young children tending flocks of sheep or cattle on the hillsides,

and farmers tending fields in the valleys. But in 1764, their idyllic world was

shattered when a mysterious and ferocious beast began attacking children, women, and men,

in a string of attacks that would last for three years. The beast was tracking them,

almost always when they were alone, and then would attack,

its huge jaws tearing out the victim's throat, then, often dismembering the head, and

sometimes carrying that off. In some instances it would eat portions of the bodies, and others

it seemed to kill just for the sport of it. It was not known to kill sheep or cattle, just people.

And in appearance, it was much larger and different looking than a wolf.

Wolf attacks were rare, but not unheard of.

They generally attacked livestock, but sometimes humans as well,

and when that happened, whole communities would turn out to hunt the man-eater.

The district of Jevoudan was a quiet, secluded, mountainous region in southern France,

but from 1764 to 1767, Jevoudan was tormented by a wolf-like beast that mauled over 200 people,

killing over 100 of people, killing over

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