Parents hide your children, the Catholics are paying furries to eat them!

[eric_hinkle]

Or something not entirely unlike that. It has been my great displeasure to see one of the utterly worst historical "documentaries" I can remember seeing, covering the Beast of Gevaudan

Comments

[stokerbramwell]

The History Channel has really gone downhill these days.

[eric_hinkle]

It wasn't so much the blithe assumption of unproven ideas that was required to make the theory they gave us work (that's pretty much every TV documentary I've seen, sadly), as the fact that they did so in a rather obviously contemptuous-of-the-audience fashion.

This idea would only look realistic to someone who knew literally NOTHING about the Beast, or 18th century France, or wolves and hyenas, or guns, or anything else they mentioned. Next too this show, pro wrestling looks more honest and respectful of the intelligence of its audience.

Oh, well, I also got to see a nice episode of Destination Truth on SyFy last night where they went hunting for Romanian werewolves. Every bit as silly as the History Channel, but no one pretended it was deep scholarship. And they had a nice CGI werewolf.

[chipuni]

*looks up from his meal*

Oh, heavens... we furries don't eat people...

*oopses, and removes the wristwatch from his meal*

...well, at least, not much.

[eric_hinkle]

It was all the weirder, in that the whole furry/therian connection ended up having nothing to do with the half-baked conclusion they gave. So apparently demonizing us freaky furries was just done for a point in the ratings or something

[ringtail1592]

I think that THC should stick with Hitler, wars (WWII and the Civil War), mechanical origins, and Haunted Histories. They are better at those historical incidents than they are the Bible, myths and folk lore.

Jeff Ringtail

[eric_hinkle]

The Beast of Gevaudan isn't folklore; it's something that actually did happen.

[ringtail1592]

There are always history behind folk lore and legends.
I think that the History Channel uses something someone else has done ... even if it is badly researched ... and put it on for some sort of entertainment value, or just because they don't have anything else to put on about the subject.

Jeff Ringtail

[anonymous]

There is very little worth watching on the History Channel any more. It has gone over almost completely to sensationalism with very little regard to anything resembling truth or facts.

BTW, I have personally dropped deer, both standing and moving, with a single shot at distances over 70 feet. I even dropped an elk at over 100 yards with a single shot. And I only consider myself a fair shot at best. Of course, I wasn't using silver bullets, so maybe that was the difference--obviously, silver can't kill you!

Brock

[eric_hinkle]

There is very little worth watching on the History Channel any more. It has gone over almost completely to sensationalism with very little regard to anything resembling truth or facts.

Sadly true.

BTW, I have personally dropped deer, both standing and moving, with a single shot at distances over 70 feet. I even dropped an elk at over 100 yards with a single shot. And I only consider myself a fair shot at best. Of course, I wasn't using silver bullets, so maybe that was the difference--obviously, silver can't kill you!

Yes, but the two 'experts' (one a former police detective, the other a cryptozoologist who said he was also a hunter) 'proved' otherwise. I wonder what it takes to get some of the colege degrees we see flaunted on TV documentaries. Do people find them in Crackerjack boxes or what?

[anonymous]

History Channel as in "All DaVinci Code, All The Time" two Easters ago?

History Channel as in "UFO Fill-in-the-Blank", always with that UFOlogist Groat & Iron Badger hoaxed in Tucson years ago?

[headnoises]

They can't conclude that anything actually wolf-like killed people, they get massive complaints from various wildlife groups.

I actually had some idiot try to claim _all wolf attacks_ in history had been feral dogs, and the regional director for the forest service's wolf program tried to tell my dad and a group of ranchers there was no record of a wolf ever attacking a full-grown cow. (In a year when 83 kills were verified by the forest service.)

Much safer to make the bad guy an insane furry, furries will just write angry blog posts; animal psychoes will start calling campaigns and send nasty stuff in the mail.

[eric_hinkle]

Truthfully, though, the hyena theory does have some good evidence for it, like the description of the attack scenes (with limbs and heads severed from bodies -- I've read several books on hyenas that state flat out that hyenas are indeed that strong) and some descriptions of the animal as "looking like a man hunched over". Look at a hyena's body as comared to a wolf and ask yourself: what would a frightened child who knew nothing about hyenas but something about werewolves think if they saw a vaguely familiar-looking animal come charging at them in a dark woods, making laughing sounds?

For that matter... apparently there actually was one local account of a doctor who, when out riding on a house call, heard a woman screaming. He rode to her aid and found a woman at a farm being savagely attacked by a man in wolf hides. The man attacked the doctor, who promptly shot him dead. So they do have evidence for the possibility of some murders by humans being mixed in with the actual Beast attacks.

[headnoises]

I do wish they'd done a bit more on it, maybe gone through records of the time looking for hyenas being mentioned or checking for menageries, figuring in the distance a hyena can get-- I remember watching a video of a hyena biting through the juicy beef leg-bone about how a human would do with a chicken leg. Those jaws are impressive.
Oh, and the red-brown hair ruff that some have would definitely push me towards "man-beast."

Compare this to this and I'm _really_ wishing they'd done some research into who had a private zoo, and how far hyenas can travel.

I halfway remember some official doubt being thrown on the man-in-wolf-skins story? Dang it, it's been nearly a decade since I went through my "werewolf" phase, but I vaguely remember something like the location was way off, or the time-line was way off, but it was just interesting enough to always get grouped in werewolf specials....

[eric_hinkle]

I halfway remember some official doubt being thrown on the man-in-wolf-skins story? Dang it, it's been nearly a decade since I went through my "werewolf" phase, but I vaguely remember something like the location was way off, or the time-line was way off, but it was just interesting enough to always get grouped in werewolf specials....

Considering the sloppiness verging on outright lies this show presented under the guise of "research", somehow I'm not surprised. But thanks for that information.