Monsters are Real!

First, I would like to thank everyone for the kind words and positive feedback that I have received regarding The Real Wolfman, which aired on the History Channel during the week of Halloween. Overall, I think the producers did a nice job addressing lycanthropy and I feel honored to have been involved with such an enduring mystery. Now that I have had time to sit back and digest the show’s impact, I’d like reveal some of the research that did not make the final edit. I regret that the episode did not include our investigation of Victor, the wild boy of Aveyron, a French, feral child who was discovered living in the woods during 1797. Victor’s behavior was reportedly animalistic to say the least. Could some werewolves have been savage, wild humans? Also, I don’t recall if the show truly broached the topic of ergot, which is a grain fungus that can cause hallucinations and other psychosis. There have apparently been entire towns that have succumb to its mind altering symptoms, due to eating infected bread. Could the Beast simply have been a mass hallucination? In addition, there was a torture museum in Marvejols that Duke and I visited. There on display for all to see, were the implements of torture that the inquistion employed in past centuries, in order to keep the masses in line; sound reinforcement that the church’s witch hunts may have had a hand in the ensuing werewolf panic. Also, I regret that the show did not include my visit with French cryptozoologist Jeanne-Jacques Barloy, who was the first investigator to use computers, in order to build a cumulative model of the Beast of Gevaudan. The brilliant Barloy is quite a character and had some memorable moments! Ultimately, I confess that I am still not 100% convinced about the guilt of Jeanne Chastel. I mean, why didn’t anyone ever notice the hyena in Chastel’s care, with so much reward money being offered… and where did a poor, outcast like Chastel acquire a rare animal in the first place? With so many eyewitnesses to the Beast, why didn’t anyone report Chastel prowling the area? I feel a more likely scenario is that there was an escaped hyena running around loose at the time attacking people and also a serial killer who took advantage of the situation. Maybe it was Jeanne Chastel, maybe it wasn’t. The rulership of the time more than likely took advantage as well, in order to scare the legions into submission. Chastel, an excellent hunter, shot the creature and probably embellished the event for selfish reasons. In retrospect, the Beast was the result of composite identity.

250 years later, the Beast of Gevaudan is still a world class mystery