Was just dozing through a discovery channel or history channel or something show on Bigfoot. They spoke about the legend here in the states and of course the Yeti in the Himalayas, but they didn’t mention any legends in Europe. Do you guys have a similar story?
I thought the Loch Ness Monster legend was fairly widely known. There are numerous stories about similar reptilian monsters in various European countries. There have also been lots of sightings of unlikely carnivorous animals such as big cats and ghostly dogs, but I can’t recall one about an ape man.
The Spring Heeled Jack legend tells about a man with supernatural powers who haunted London, Liverpool and other cities in the 1800s.
Yep, I’ve certainly heard of the Loch Ness Monster…
But I was wondering about Bigfoot.
Sure… it even has it’s own website.
LOL.
Does The Beast of Accrington count? There was a film about it.
I humbly submit the vicious Chicken of Bristol…
There has been the “beast of Gevaudan” in France during the XVIII° century. Sorry to give a link to a site dedicaced to occult mysteries, but though I googled several sites including this name, for some reason I can’t fathom, most of them are porn sites 
totally unrelated to the legend. There doesn’t seem to be much in the way of sites in english about it, and I got quickly tired with the porn pop up.
Anyway, occult site or not, the beast, whatever it could have been (one or several huge man-killer wolves, a domesticated then released big cat, a serial murderer or several of these at the same time), the beast was for real and killed dozens and dozens on people over the course of several years, giving birth to many fantastic tales. The king’s master hunter was even send there, killed a really huge wolf, but the attacks still went on for years. It’s still today one of these major intriguing mysteries in french history, like the “man in the iron mask”, for instance. And there have been many hypothesis (like the serial murderer using trained wolves, for instance), none really satisfying.
A couple of other pages in english about this beast :
or this one
There are many more pages, actually. I managed to avoid the porn sites (still wondering about them…does anyone has a clue???) by adding the word “king” to my query “beast” and “gevaudan” instead of simply “beast of gevaudan”.
At a guess, it may be the connection with Walerian Borowczyk’s 1975 film The Beast. David Thomson has described Borowczyk as “one of the major artists of modern cinema”, but there’s a point where he drifted off into making porn (including Emmanuelle 5). The Beast is sort of on the cusp between his two careers. Somewhat loosely based on the Gevaudan legend, it involves a modern English girl marrying into a French aristocratic family with a dark secret: one of their ancestors was raped by the Beast.
I have seen attempts to argue that it’s a serious work, rather than an exploitation flick. But it’s probably more telling that the late, lamented arts cinema in Liverpool, the 051, had a popular tradition of screening it once a year. In my experience, friends either found it wildly funny (as I did) or deeply shocking.
There’s the Yowie in Australia. Googling yowie brings up quite a few hits.
There’s also the Beast of Bodmin Moor, in Cornwall, which may be an escaped big cat from a private collection, or may be completely fabricated. Who knows.
There’s a movie about it, too.
But Bigfoot it ain’t.
We have a joke, however, about two Yetis who meet and one of them claims to have seen Reinhold Messner on the mountain. 