The Beast of Gevaudan: attacks and hunts
Real fatal eighteenth-century attacks prompted royal hunts and a lasting monster tradition; the animals’ precise identity remains disputed.
Under reviewGevaudan, Margeride uplands
Atlas of mysteries
Items: 143All material
The Cock Lane ghost: knocks, an accusation and the 1762 investigation
A supposed spirit answered through knocks and appeared to accuse a living man of murder.
An explanation existsCock Lane, London
Arnaut Paole: an old grave behind a new investigation
Military specialists opened graves after a series of deaths, while villagers linked the crisis to a neighbour burned years earlier.
Insufficient evidenceMedvedja in the documents; no exact modern cemetery established
Petar Blagojevic: nine deaths and a demand to open a grave
Villagers connected a rapid series of deaths to a buried neighbour and insisted on exhumation.
Insufficient evidenceKisilova in historical accounts; no exact modern location assign…
Mykonos: the vroucolacas whose heart was burned
A botanist witnessed an exhumation and disputed villagers’ attribution of night-time disorder to a murdered peasant.
Insufficient evidenceMykonos island, Aegean Sea
Old Thiess: the werewolf who said he protected the harvest
Court records from 1691–1692 preserve the account of a man who called himself a werewolf. He described a struggle for crops rather than attacks on people.
Insufficient evidenceHistorical Livonia; not assigned an exact modern coordinate
Jure Grando: knocking at Kringa’s doors
A dead neighbour supposedly wandered for sixteen years; villagers ended the terror by opening his grave and cutting off the corpse’s head.
Insufficient evidenceKringa, Istria
Peter Stumpp: the execution of a man printed as a werewolf
A pamphlet linked murder accusations with a diabolical belt and presented the execution as a public warning.
Insufficient evidenceBedburg near Cologne; the exact execution site is not assigned
Gilles Garnier: how Dole tried a wolf-man
Attacks on children prompted a werewolf hunt and then prosecution of a hermit living near the forest.
Insufficient evidenceDole, Amange and the Serre forest, Franche-Comté
Dallol: colored brines at the limits of life
Acidic saline springs became a testing ground for deciding which shapes and genetic signals genuinely indicate life.
An explanation existsDanakil Depression, Afar Region