Gilles Garnier

Gilles Garnier, also known as the Werewolf of Dole, was a poor and solitary French hermit who lived in the forests of Arbois near the city of Dole in the Franche-Comté during the 1570s of the 16th century. In the context of a severe famine that struck the region in 1572, it is said that he received a visit from the devil, who gave him a magical ointment enabling him to transform into a predatory beast to more easily hunt prey, especially children wandering in the forests in search of food or firewood. This demonic pact, as recorded in trial documents, made him initially a faithful servant of Lucifer in exchange for the ability to satiate his ravenous hunger, reflecting the common European folklore about lycanthropy resulting from deals with evil forces.

According to Garnier's confessions under torture, he anointed his body with the devil's ointment made from mysterious herbs and animal fats, triggering a painful transformation into a huge gray wolf over seven feet long, with iron-like claws, dagger-sharp fangs, and glowing yellow eyes. Despite losing full control, he retained part of human consciousness allowing him to recognize potential victims and return to his natural form at dawn, but driven by an irresistible savage hunger for tender child flesh, in harmony with the era's popular beliefs that lycanthropy was a pathological or magical condition granting superhuman strength but cursing the soul.

Between October 1572 and November 1573, Garnier committed at least five documented crimes, plus further accusations, targeting children aged 9 to 12 who left the city to gather firewood or forage for wild fruits. In the first incident, a girl's head was found in the woods; in another, a boy's severed leg; eyewitnesses described the wolf ripping open victims' bellies, devouring parts of their intestines and thighs, leaving horribly mutilated corpses. These crimes sparked collective terror in Dole, prompting authorities to issue a royal edict in 1573 allowing the hunt for ferocious wolves, before the true culprit was uncovered.

After a failed mass hunt, Garnier was captured in November 1573 thanks to local testimonies linking him to the beast, and confessed under severe torture to at least seven child murders, details of the pact with Lucifer, and use of the magic ointment. Sentenced by the secular court of Dole as a sorcerer and werewolf, he was burned alive on a public pyre on January 18, 1574, before a large crowd, in a scene reflecting the peak of witch hunts in 16th-century Europe, where lycanthropy was treated as proof of heresy and satanic alliance, contributing to the history of popular folklore about human monsters.