A new strain of cryptozoology is howling across the internet. It’s less about stuff like “undiscovered birds” and more like “Bigfoot is interdimensional.” This week, we are joined by guest writer Jack LaRoche follow that trail straight into Louisiana’s swampy heartland to meet the Rougarou: a Cajun loup-garou legend shaped by Catholic ideas about sin and control, then transformed through centuries of cultural mixing into something that’s been feared, joked about, and even embraced as a local mascot.

Along the way, we rewind to medieval France to untangle where “werewolves” actually come from, detour through the shaky math and moral panic of the werewolf trials, and trace how the Acadian diaspora and Indigenous storytelling traditions helped remake the monster on American soil. It’s sometimes a trickster, sometimes a warning, sometimes protection.

We end by asking what these stories do: how folklore polices behavior, manufactures outsiders, and rhymes with modern conspiracist fearcraft.

Jack LaRouche

https://x.com/coyotejacques

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QAA was known as the QAnon Anonymous podcast.