The Beast of Gêvandan: A Mini-Essay

     On June 30, 1764, Jeanne Boulet was mauled by an unknown animal while herding sheep in the mountainous area of south-central France. The fourteen-year-old girl was severely mangled, but her sheep remained unharmed. Boulet's death began a long succession of brutal attacks which horrified the nation. In the region of Le Gêvandan, a massive wolf with reddish-brown fir and a black stripe down its back savagely terrorized the countryside and left a wake of blood and fear. Some claimed the animal could pounce thirty feet and walk upright on its hind legs. In homes and public halls throughout France, people whispered that a loup-garou (werewolf) was running amok. As panic spread, rewards were issued for the beast – prompting many false claims and a mass attempt at exterminating all wolves within the area – and King Louis XV sent a cavalry troop to destroy la bête du Gêvandan (the beast of Gêvandan). All attempts, however, proved futile, the death toll continued to rise, and the event rapidly became known throughout Europe, with even the English periodical St. James's Chronicle featuring a report. Finally, on June 19, 1767, Jean Chastel, armed with a silver bullet, took down the beast. The monster's death sparked jubilation and made Chastel an instant hero. For two weeks he paraded the corpse across France, where its final stop was the Palace of Versailles. Disgusted by the animal's putrid state, King Louis XV ordered it immediately buried in an undisclosed location. The act made any concrete identification impossible and prompted the creation of a centuries-old mystery. What was la bête du Gêvandan? 

     Over the years, theories have arisen, including a wolf infected with rabies and a prehistoric mammal that survived extinction. In the 1980s, popular notions strayed into more bizarre realms. Jean-Jacques Barloy postulated that the incident was maliciously fabricated by Protestant hunters who, as part of a fervent Protestant-Jesuit rivalry occurring at the time, unleashed a pack of huge dogs on the Catholic peasantry. In 1992, Michel Louis built upon the 1988 proposal of R.F. Dubois and claimed the monster may have been purposefully bred by Chastel – who owned a large red-coated mastiff – and turned loose on the villages. Three years later, Pierre Cubizolles took the Chastel conspiracy to a new level, asserting the beast was Chastel or one of his sons dressed in a wolf-skin costume murdering hapless victims. In 1997, Franz Jullien, a taxidermist at the National Museum of Natural History in Paris, discovered a stuffed specimen of striped hyena similar to the animal shot by Chastel. Despite the discovery, though, individuals such as Rolf Peterson question whether this species could exist so far outside of its African habitat. A werewolf, a rabid animal, or a man-made fabrication – la bête du Gêvandan proves just as much an enigma today as it did in the middle of the eighteen century.

 Works Referenced

Barloy, Jean-Jacques. “La Bête du Gêvandan sournise á l’ordinateur.” Science et Vie 131 (1980): 54-59.

Cubizolles, Pierre. Loups Garous en Gévaudan: Le Martyre des Innocents. Paris: Brioude, 1995.

Dubois, R.F. Vie et Mort de la Bête du Gêvandan. Paris: Ogam, 1988.

Louis, Michel. La Bête du Gêvandan: L’innocence des loups. Paris: Perrin, 1992. 

Smith, Jay. Monsters of the Gêvandan: The Making of a Beast. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2011.

Swamp Punch

$3 - $5 (based on 2016 prices) 

Makes one gallon of punch 

I stumbled on this recipe purely by accident. I love creating drink mixtures with Kool-Aid packets (it makes me feel like a mad scientist). This particular drink was born by curiously fusing blue raspberry lemonade and orange. The combination produces a swampy green concoction that, although bizarre in color, possesses an interestingly refreshing taste. A majority of the fun comes with the presentation: serve the punch in a cauldron, a collection of grungy mason jars, or a hollowed-out gourd.

• One gallon of water
• One cup sugar
• One 0.22 oz. packet of orange flavored drink mix
• One 0.22 oz. packet of blue raspberry lemonade flavored drink mix
• One waterproof cauldron large enough to hold the punch
• One 12 oz. bag of sour gummy worms
  

1. In a large pitcher, mix together the packets of flavoring and sugar, adding one gallon of water and stirring until the sugar is well dissolved. To give the punch more fizz, use two two-liter bottles of lemon-lime flavored soft drink rather than water and sugar.

2. Pour the mixture into the cauldron and, before serving, drop gummy worms into it. You can also place the worms at the bottom of empty glasses and allow guests to drown them with the swampy juice.

"The Listeners" (A Poem)

First published in 1912, "The Listeners" is Walter de la Mare's most famous poem and one of the many supernatural stories he composed throughout his literary career. In the tale, a traveler ventures to an abandoned house nestled in a dark forest. While he knocks on the front door, a cluster of specters listen inertly to his calls. As David Sanders and Jacob Weisman emphasize, the poem "is a work of mystery and ambiguity." Who are them the traveler came to visit and what is his promise ("'Tell them I came, and no one answered / That I kept my word'")? Them, obviously, are individuals the traveler intends to see; however, the question remains why they don't answer the door. Are they unable to hear his knocks as they sleep soundly in their beds? Are they trying to avoid his presence? Have they moved and neglected to provide their new address? Or, have they perished and are now the phantom listeners lingering in the deserted home? 

"Is there anybody there?" said the Traveller, 
     Knocking on the moonlit door; 
And his horse in the silence champed the grasses 
     Of the forest’s ferny floor: 
And a bird flew up out of the turret, 
     Above the Traveller’s head: 
And he smote upon the door again a second time; 
     "Is there anybody there?" he said. 
But no one descended to the Traveller; 
     No head from the leaf-fringed sill 
Leaned over and looked into his grey eyes, 
     Where he stood perplexed and still. 
But only a host of phantom listeners
     That dwelt in the lone house then 
Stood listening in the quiet of the moonlight 
     To that voice from the world of men: 
Stood thronging the faint moonbeams on the dark stair,
     That goes down to the empty hall, 
Hearkening in an air stirred and shaken 
     By the lonely Traveller’s call. 
And he felt in his heart their strangeness, 
     Their stillness answering his cry, 
While his horse moved, cropping the dark turf, 
     ’Neath the starred and leafy sky; 
For he suddenly smote on the door, even 
     Louder, and lifted his head:— 
"Tell them I came, and no one answered, 
     That I kept my word," he said. 
Never the least stir made the listeners, 
     Though every word he spake 
Fell echoing through the shadowiness of the still house 
     From the one man left awake: 
Ay, they heard his foot upon the stirrup, 
     And the sound of iron on stone, 
And how the silence surged softly backward, 
     When the plunging hoofs were gone.

Works Referenced

de la Mare, Walter. "The Listeners." The Listeners and Other Poems. New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1916. 64-65.

Sanders, David and Jacob Weisman, eds. The Treasury of the Fantastic: Romanticism to Early Twentieth Century Literature. San Francisco, CA: Tachyon, 2013.

Skull with Candle

$15 - $20 (based on 2015 prices)

Makes one skull

I enjoy refurbishing the dopey Halloween props I buy on clearance at the end of the season (see my discussion of this in the swamp hag’s introduction). I purchased this prop in November of 2014 for less than ten dollars. I liked the concept, but hated its execution. With a little hot glue and wood stain, the prop’s hidden potential was easily unlocked.

• One skull prop with candle
• One 8 oz. can of interior/exterior, fast-drying latex paint in flat white*
• One 8 oz. can of oil-based interior wood stain in Jacobean*
• One 2 oz. bottle of acrylic paint in flat black*
• One 2 oz. bottle of acrylic paint in flat red*
• One 0.44 oz. bottle of clear nail polish

1. Remove any paint or decorations from the prop to give it a clean surface. The version I purchased had a print vacuformed to it. I scraped this off to expose the plastic beneath.

2. Using hot glue, give the candle extra girth by building up layers and piping drips of wax down the sides and onto the skull. The process works best if you move in stages, applying one layer at a time and allowing the glue to dry between each application. Also, I found that pumping the glue along the top of the candle and allowing it to naturally run downward creates the best results.

3. On a newspaper-lined surface in a well-ventilated area, apply one or two even coats of white latex paint. Although I only used one coat, you may want more depending on your desired coverage. Keep in mind, though, that this is a base coat and meant to give the prop a uniformed canvas before adding the wood stain. Don’t spend too much effort and time ensuring the coverage is pristine, since it will be masked entirely by the stain.

4. Once the paint has dried, stain the skull. I used two coats; however, you may want more. Like the hot glue process, apply one coat at a time and allow the stain to dry between applications. You want to gradually work from light to dark to give the skull an aged and rotted appearance. As a helpful hint: barely stain the teeth (you want them lighter than the skull).

5. To give the skull detail and depth, paint the eye sockets, nasal cavity, skull sutures, and the spaces between the teeth black. If you use a skull that has additional embellishments – chips and cracks – paint these as well. 

6. Apply four coats of red paint to the candle. I used four because I wanted a deep, vibrant red to contrast with the dull blacks and browns of the skull. You, of course, are free to use fewer (or more) coats based on your chosen appearance for the prop.

7. To make the candle look waxy, cover the red paint with a layer of clear nail polish. If you want the candle to seem old and unused rather than freshly melted, do not add the nail polish, but give the candle a light brushing of brown paint to simulate dirt and dust.

 

*You will not use the entire bottle’s content for this project.