Werewolves of the Bayou feat. Jack LaRoche (Premium E318) Sample
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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qaapodcast.com
QAA was known as the QAnon Anonymous podcast.
Welcome to the QA Podcast Premium Episode 318, Werewolves of the Bayou with Jack LaRoche.
As always, we are your host, Jake Rocketansky, Liv Akar, Julian Field, Travis View, and Jack LaRoche.
Hello, everybody.
I know that the Maine was a lot this week, and there was a lot to take in.
And maybe we're at a pivotal time in history, and maybe there's things to think about there.
But we are also interested, always, in folklore, in culture, and in depthening our understanding of how cryptozoology and other forms of what some consider conspiracy theories are a form of storytelling.
And so this week we have something very, very interesting for you.
We have Jacques LaRoche as a guest writer, and they are members of the Blackfeet and Cherokee tribe.
They've spent two years with the Urban Coyote Research Project in Montana, where they worked with coyotes and wolves.
They've been working with wildlife for 20 years, and they've been with the folklore podcast for five years.
They've been working on animal human transformation-specific folklore for a long time, collecting stories and what you're about to hear.
The story of the Rugaroo is original research.
Thank you so much for joining us, Jack.
Thank you for having me.
It's a pleasure to be here.
Yeah, it's exciting to hear a story that just sounds, I don't know, nocturne.
I can hear the howls.
I can kind of smell the bathtub alcohol.
Like I could, you know, I feel already at home.
Well, this is really the yin to QA's yang.
You know, you have an episode like Maine where you're not sure if Julian's going to survive.
But then, but then, just, just only, oh, 24, less than 24 hours later.
We get a nice little treat like this.
So thank you, Jack, for all your research.
Not going to be how the audience experiences it, Jake, but that's okay.
It'll probably be about three days.
The rest of the points stand.
Yeah, I said 24 hours, but you're going to experience it in three days because I'm in like QA time, which is kind of like interstellar.
Like you guys all sort of like, you guys all get really old and I stay the same age.
So you're all on the ship and I'm on the water planet.
Also, don't assume I'll survive.
I think the Rougaroo is going to tear me to pieces or drown me in the swamp.
As long as you don't tell anybody you are a Rougaroo, you'll be okay.
That's the thing.
That's very good.
I do like playing the game Rougaroo and Villagers with my friends.
Well, I think that we should launch straight into it.
What a great script.
And I'm very excited to get into this with all of you.
So a very particular kind of cryptozoologist is on the rise.
I'm talking about the kind who has been raised on a studied diet of monster quest, the unexplained with William Shapner, in search of with Leonard Nimoy, and a small dash of ancient aliens.
Now and then, cryptozoologists are proven right.
It's been a while since the discovery of the coelacanth, the mountain gorilla, platypus, and docapi, sure, but you have to admit, they were right about those.
It's not always Mothman and Bigfoot that cryptozoologists are after, but the kind of cryptozoologists taking over these communities is searching less for the ivory-billed woodpecker and more for the map and guari, a folklorically significant creature in the Brazilian Amazon with a mouth in its stomach and backwards-facing feet.
I don't like to be described that specifically.
Yeah, this sounds like one of the fake labo-boos that I've got where the feet turn all the way around.
They've mounted it wrong.
Yeah, the backwards-facing feet is really interesting because it shows up in more than just the map and guari, and it's so that you can't follow them.
You think they're going one way, but they're actually going the other.
Good stuff.
And that's also true of the Lefufu that you have.
It's actually an ambush predator coming after you.
An ambush predator.
That's like, that's like Julian.
That's like Julian when I tell a story more than twice on the podcast.
That's so true.
That's so accurate.
And I'm so over.
But like, but wasn't I nice?
I said more than twice that you'll let me tell the same story twice at the very least.
But a third time you'll be like, all right, all right, we've heard this one.
Yeah.
But I do think it's funny to think that like you're building an army of Lefufus that will eventually attack you like in your home, hunt you down like a band of weapons.
These true believers will corner you at a party or post incessantly on our conspiracy and our cryptozoology, talking to you for half an hour straight about how Bigfoot is an ultraterrestrial and the Loch Ness monster merely the ghost of a plesiosaur.
More than that, though, this cryptozoologist wants to talk to you about one thing and one thing alone: werewolves.
Since the 2010s, there's been a steep increase in the belief in all sorts of werewolves.
Some, such as the dire wolves and other hybrids reported on Utah's Gorman Ranch, appear to be interdimensional in origin, as covered in Premium Episode 130.
Others, like the dogman, are believed by some to be an extant population of cave hyenas.
Rest assured, though, dearly departed journalist and ardent cryptozoologist Linda Godfrey's vast collection of interviews and testimonies shows that the belief in the classic werewolf, right down to the physical transformation, still remains here in the wilds of the United States.
But today, we're going to talk about a slightly more obscure werewolf that, in spite of being featured briefly on the cursed show Supernatural and episodes with folklore inaccuracies that border on disrespectful, get their asses still remains relatively unknown outside of Louisiana.
And I'm here to talk to you about how Catholic systems of control were undermined by the mixing of different cultural beliefs about wolves and morality and the bio-legend of the Rougaru.
I do love the word rougaroo because it sounds well, the French word for werewolves is Lugaroo, and Rougaroo sounds just kind of like, I don't know, something that maybe Nick Mullen would come up with if he were to try to say the word Lugaroo.
It sounds like the Lefufu.
The Lefufaroo?
Lefufaroo.
These can be found hanging in Subarus.
I've only been to Louisiana once, and it was for a wedding, a very Catholic wedding in New Orleans.
And I'll say this: during the day, I loved it because there was all of this amazing music just echoing out of everywhere you walked.
And there was amazing food and coffee, and it was just incredible.
But then at night, and as somebody who doesn't drink alcohol, it like terrified me.
Like it, I felt like everybody turned into vampires and werewolves.
And, you know, like I'm in some sort of like steamy HBO show, but like, you know, lost in the streets.
You're safe as long as you don't like wander into Fatiche or something after hours.
Yeah, I was like, I stuck with my group.
Only one of my friends got picked off by a local salesman.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
The link, the link between the Rougaroo and the nighttime street cocaine dealer is alive and well.
There's actually a fella, homeless person, who wanders around who was calling himself the Rougaroo, and people would recognize him because he was indeed hairy and naked.
And you just were bound to walk turn a corner, you know, just find him.
I love that.
Yeah, people loved him.
They were hiding him from the cops.
Yeah, he's become a piece of folklore himself.
No, he's Jesus.
Yeah, he's getting hidden by children in a barn and shit.
Yeah, it's kind of like the Catman in Glasgow.
You've been listening to a sample of a premium episode of the QA podcast.
For access to the full episode, as well as all past premium episodes and all of our podcast miniseries, go to patreon.com/slash QAA.
Travis, why is that such a good deal?
Well, Jake, you get hundreds of additional episodes of the QAA podcast for just $5 per month.
For that very low price, you get access to over 200 premium episodes, plus all of our miniseries.
That includes 10 episodes of Man Clan with Julia and the Nanny, 10 episodes of Perverse with Julia and Liv, 10 episodes of The Spectral Voyager with Jake and Brad, plus 20 episodes of Trickle Down with me, Travis View.
It's a bounty of content and the best deal in podcasting.
Travis, for once, I agree with you.
And I also agree that people could subscribe by going to patreon.com/slash QAA.