Between 1764 and 1767, something stalked the hills of south-central France and tore apart around 100 people, mostly women and children. The king sent professional wolf-hunters and even his own gun-bearer; the killings continued. Nobody has ever agreed on what the Beast actually was.
The complete story in one sitting: the first attacks, the panic, the royal hunters, and the strange creature finally shot and paraded before it could rot.
The documentary record: roughly 300 attacks, 100 or so deaths, contemporary engravings, and the eyewitness descriptions of a wolf-like animal too big and too bold to be an ordinary wolf.
A folklorist's lens: how a real predator became a werewolf legend, and how fear, religion, and politics shaped what people believed they were fighting.
HISTORY runs the suspect lineup: an outsized wolf pack, an escaped exotic animal like a hyena or lion, or a human killer using the terror as cover.
A deep, atmospheric retelling that leans into the eeriest details — the armored hide, the attacks that targeted the throat, and the beast that seemed to learn from hunters.
The primary sources themselves: the 18th-century prints and broadsheets that spread the Beast across Europe, drawn by people who had never seen it.
Red Web weighs the modern theories one by one — cryptid, misidentified predator, or serial killer — and lands on why the case still refuses to close.