Content Warning: This article discusses topics related to sexual crimes. Reader discretion advised.
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| A 1936 illustration of the case |
A Nocturnal Violation
It would glide behind the rows of tombstones, and the guards of Père Lachaise Cemetery were seemingly powerless to stop whatever nefarious business it was carrying out. It was described as being 'partly human and partly animal' and would vanish like an illusion when the guards attempted to capture it. The guards' dogs refused to attack the beast - barking and howling with 'abject terror' when deployed to catch the thing.
The next morning a truly foul scene awaited the terrified guards of the cemetery. Graves had been dug up and coffins had been burst open. The contents of these destroyed caskets had been scattered all over the ground, and had - horrifyingly - been partially eaten by the same ghastly thing that had visited the graveyard the night before. This horrifying cycle would continue 'at length' - with the phantom always evading capture and violating yet more resting places in search of its sickening meals. When consulted, medical professionals announced that the damage to the cadavers had been done with human teeth, which I can imagine was somehow both comforting and the exact opposite at the same time. The quantity of guards watching over the cemetery was doubled, but no sign of the true culprit of the raids was ever found. A young soldier attempting to meet with a friend at the cemetery was arrested under vampiric suspicion, but he was found not guilty and released.
It must've seemed like the terror in Père Lachaise would be unending - and yet eventually it suddenly drew to an abrupt halt. However, the monster was not quite finished with its rampage, and instead of vanishing entirely it had merely relocated its horrific crusade against those who rest in peace. A young girl - 'greatly beloved by her relatives and friends' - was to form the monster's next meal. Her funeral was attended by a large group of saddened onlookers, and so of course the outrage was truly enormous when her coffin was discovered to have been exhumed overnight so that some mysterious pervert could feed on her body. The girl's father was briefly listed as a suspect, and was actually arrested for the crime, but his innocence was quickly established and he was released. Some members of the public were now beginning to suspect that perhaps the perpetrator of these horrific crimes was not of flesh and blood - seeing as the cemetery in which the girl had been devoured was protected by 'very high' walls and massive iron gates kept shut all night. It seemed as if no mortal man would be able to scale these obstacles.
However, these walls, which had once seemed to throw a hefty spanner into the proceedings of the investigation in the matter, would soon become what would ultimately lead to the capture of the culprit. An old army officer crucially noticed that there was a certain point on one of the walls that showed signs of having been frequently scaled. Although it was nearly 10ft tall at this specific point, precautions to catch a human perpetrator were taken just in case. The aforementioned officer constructed a booby trap - consisting of a tripwire attached to an explosive - on the wall in question, meaning that nobody would be able to climb it without causing an explosion. Sure enough, an explosion was heard from the vicinity at around midnight that night.
The detectives that had been tasked with keeping watch over the beseiged graveyard rushed to the scene of the detonation. There, they caught sight of a humanoid figure stood at the base of the wall. Immediately opening fire upon the apparition, they were seemingly able to wound the creature but unable to capture it - seeing as it supposedly dashed up the wall with prodigious speed, moving 'with the agility of a monkey'. Despite its escape, it was the beginning of the end for the Parisian prowler. A trail of blood had been left behind when it scaled the wall, and there were scraps of torn uniform scattered about the scene. It was thus concluded by the onlookers that the perpetrator was wounded, and was a soldier.
This might not have been enough to catch the one responsible if it weren't for mumblings between members of the 74th Regiment which were overheard by some local grave-diggers. These soldiers were talking about how a sergeant of their regiment had been taken to Val-de-Grâce Hospital after being badly wounded the night before. This seemed like a promising lead, and so the identity of this sergeant was at once found out and he was questioned. Sergeant François Bertrand was interrogated and freely confessed his guilt.
The First Necrophile
Sergeant Bertrand seemed to present himself as being as much of a victim as his deceased prey. He claimed that he had been being controlled by some external force, and that this nebulous force would never leave him. He appeared to be a victim of possession - being unable to describe his sensations while he was under the thing's influence but knowing that he was 'not himself' while thus controlled, and was instead some vicious and ravenous animal. He told of how he didn't require any instruments to dig up the bodies - instead just tearing through the soil and the coffins with his bare hands under the moonlight, like some starved beast. He confessed to having once exhumed and bitten fifteen bodies in one night.
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| A 1936 illustration of the Sergeant |
Apparently he would always fall into a very deep sleep after his nocturnal activities - during which he was aware of his body undergoing some inexplicable type of metamorphosis. He told the court that he had first fell into one of these literally transformative slumbers after an excursion to one of the secluded locales he often liked to visit when he was younger. He was apparently something of an introverted youth, preferring the company of animals to that of his fellow man - and often choosing to spend his time in isolated regions such as moors and deserts. The evening after he first fell into his supernatural sleep, he was passing a cemetery in which some grave-diggers were busy covering a recently interred corpse - and was seized by a sudden urge to enter the site and watch them at work. He was unable to resist this, and when a sudden bout of rain prompted the grave-diggers to briefly abandon their work (leaving a cadaver unattended) - he found himself afflicted by 'horrible desires'. His head throbbed with pain and his heart felt like it would break out of his chest.
He was only prevented from feeding on the corpse before him by the arrival of some of his friends on the scene. He was thus able to resist the temptation, but for many a night in the future he would not be so lucky. He claimed that the same grotesque urges would invade his mind every night from then on, and he would often find himself figuratively (and perhaps literally) transformed into a man-eating monster. He would eviscerate the corpses of his victims before masturbating - experiencing pleasure that was 'nothing in comparison' with what he could experience with living partners.
Once the trial, held in front of a military counsel on the 10th of July, 1847 and presided over by one Colonel Manselon, ultimately concluded that Bertrand was guilty of everything he had confessed to - and sentenced him to one year in prison. His case would become the inspiration for Joseph Guislain, a Belgian physician, to coin the term 'necrophilia' to refer to the condition under which people gain sexual pleasure from dead bodies.
Werewolf or Pervert?
Interestingly enough, I don't think that the reports of Bertrand being 'partly human and partly animal' have ever been properly addressed or explained. Although some more sensationalistic sources have called him a vampire, I would instead be driven to conclude that his case more closely fits the folkloric definition of an Arabic ghoul. These gruesome spirits would feed on the flesh of the dead, prowling cemeteries at night and hunting in packs. They were also said to be capable of shapeshifting to deceive humans and blend into their society. While deliberate shapeshifting seems not to have been an element in Bertrand's case, the description of a morphing monster feeding on corpses sounds very much like a classic ghoul. Obviously, another folkloric connection could be made to the legend of the werewolf. The description of Bertrand scaling a 10ft fence at extreme speeds also seems not to fit with the notion of this being a purely mundane crime spree, and of course his testimony of not being in control of himself during his ghastly excursions becomes a lot more interesting when viewed through a lycanthropic lens. This same lack of control has been reported in other cases involving cannibalism and other such abhorrent crimes, in the case of Austin Harrouff for example.
Sources
'Werwolves' by Elliott O'Donnell
'François Bertrand' on Wikipedia
'The Infamous Sergeant Bertrand' on Vampires.com
