The Valais Monster and the Eischoll Wolf

Spring 1946. Flocks grazed the summer pastures of Valais, in Switzerland. On 26 April, thirteen sheep were found dead at Finges, the Pfynwald forest between Sierre and Leuk. Their throats had been cut.

It was only the beginning. The killings spread to La Souste, the Turtmann valley, Zinal, Chandolin, Ayer and the Val d'Hérens. By the end of 1946 the toll stood at about 125 sheep, 25 goats, a calf and a pig. The sources do not agree on every date or every count.

9 August 1946. Near Oberems, in the Turtmann valley, a forest ranger saw the animal. The ranger described a grey-black coat. A round head. A small, bushy tail.

Other reports followed. A shepherd near Evolène saw a grey coat with tawny tones. Witnesses spoke of rounded ears, and later of tufted ears. Its cries were called clapissements. It struck by day and by night and moved quickly from valley to valley. In January 1947 it left tracks in the snow and ate a whole chamois. In August 1947, five witnesses near Eischoll saw a long-tailed big cat.

On 14 August 1946, 22 hunters beat the Finges forest. Nothing. An animal tamer named Fernando declared it a young panther. A Canadian lynx hunter was hired, and cages were baited with live animals, one with an old donkey. On 4 October, 70 hunters swept from the Turtmann valley through Illgraben to Finges, in the rain. Nothing again. In December the bounty rose to 500 francs per monster. Police checked whether panthers had escaped from an Italian zoo damaged by wartime bombing. Only two lions had, and they were quickly recaptured. By June 1947 the police were asking the press to stay quiet.

November 1947. At Eischoll, near Raron, the cattle owner Marinus Brunner set out the entrails of a freshly slaughtered cow. He and his nephew Albin hid in the barn. Two scavengers came to the bait first. Then the animal came. Albin Brunner waited until it was close, about 50 metres away, and fired. It collapsed and was finished off with rifle butts.

The date is usually given as 27 November. One account says the 26th. Some sources credit both Brunners with the kill.

The gendarmerie at Raron identified a wolf. It was shown for a day in a shop window in Sion, then sent to Geneva. Henry Larsen, the taxidermist, weighed it at 43 kilograms. Robert Hainard gave 36. It measured 1.20 metres long and 80 centimetres tall. Its gut held tapeworms whose larvae live in sheep. Today the mounted animal stands in the Musée de la nature du Valais in Sion.

Yet a question remained. Pierre Revilliod, director of the Geneva natural history museum, put the wolf at 18 to 19 months old. It had been born around the time of the first killings. Something else, perhaps dogs or another wolf, may have started them. No source settles it.

Ignace Mariétan, priest and naturalist, favoured the lynx at the time. Michel Meurger later argued that the word "monster" in the press fed a collective psychosis, and that the lynx theory shaped later reports of tufted ears. Véronique Campion-Vincent and Jean-Bruno Renard noted that without a body the rumour could have lasted indefinitely. Anne Bachmann traced how the vocabulary of the papers stoked fear. S. Corinna Bille turned the affair into Le Mystère du Monstre in 1966. It remains one of the rare mystery beasts that ended with a body.