The shadow of a man dressed in leathers, wearing a gas mask and soldier camo, haunted the forest of Maules, in Switzerland’s Canton of Fribourg. He would walk the same path and always linger just long enough for some passerby to catch a glimpse. They called him Le Loyon, “The Ghost Of Maules”. He became a boogyman to them, an urban legend to scare people who dared to walk alone in the woods. Once a photo was captured of him however, he was revealed as disturbing reality. People demanded action, they demanded fire and pitchforks, they demanded a hunt for the beast.

Le Loyon went nearly ten years before being captured on film. During that time there had been many sightings of him, fleeting encounters. Le Loyon was known to walk the same path every day but had never interacted with anyone. One report stated a woman had found him clutching a bundle of flowers before he spotted her and quickly left. Police had always responded to the calls and concerns from citizens who had run-ins with Le Loyon but, until the photo, hadn’t taken him seriously.

Killing The Ghost

Le Matin(The Morning) was the first newspaper to publish the photo and not long after reported the death of Le Loyon. Some hikers found the gas mask and leather outfit along the path that Le Loyon had walked. Along with it was a note titled “The Death Certificate And Testimate Of The Ghost Of Maules”.

In it, Le Loyon accused Le Matin of murdering “a very harmless being.” By publishing the photo, and the ensuing “…risk of a hunt for the beast”, far to much attention had been brought up. Le Loyon had been forced to give up his walks in the woods, which he had considered a “real therapy of happiness.”

So it was revealed that the dreaded Ghost Of Maules had been just an odd man who liked to walk alone in the woods. A walk he would never take again because the public assumed the worst of him. In the note, he goes on to give a possible reason for his unusual attire. He stated that Le Matin had no understanding of the works of Leopold von Sacher-Masoch. It would seem that Le Loyon was a man who enjoyed participating in masochism and the outfit might have been a type of gimp suit, sometimes worn by fetishists.

Sources

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