Tracking the Chupacabra

The Vampire Beast in Fact, Fiction, and Folklore

Benjamin Radford

• Publisher: UNM Press
• Year: 2011
• Print ISBN: 9780826350152
• eBook ISBN: 9780826350169
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Folklore & Mythology
• Index: Social Sciences

Among the monsters said to roam the world’s jungles and desolate deserts, none is more feared than the chupacabra—-the blood-sucking beast blamed for the mysterious deaths of thousands of animals since the 1990s. To some it is a joke; to many it is a very real threat and even a harbinger of the apocalypse. Originating in Latin America yet known worldwide, the chupacabra is a contradictory and bizarre blend of vampire and shapeshifter, changing its appearance and characteristics depending on when and where it is seen. Rooted in conspiracy theory and anti-American sentiment, the beast is said to be the result of Frankenstein-like secret U.S. government experiments in the Puerto Rican jungles.

Combining five years of careful investigation (including information from eyewitness accounts, field research, and forensic analysis) with a close study of the creature’s cultural and folkloric significance, Radford’s book is the first to fully explore and try to solve the decades-old mystery of the chupacabra.

Part I: The Short History of the Chupacabra

1: The Goatsucker Mystery

Among the monsters said to roam the world’s desolate deserts and dense jungles, perhaps none is more feared than the bloodthirsty chupacabra.1 Rooted in conspiracy theory and anti-American sentiment, the chupacabra is a contradictory and bizarre amalgamation of vampiric monster, folk myth, and chameleon. It is a shapeshifter, changing its appearance and characteristics according to the time and place it is seen, and according to the beliefs and expectations of those who see it.

Bigfoot, the mysterious bipedal beast said to roam the North American wilderness, is named after what it leaves behind: big footprints. Bigfoot’s Hispanic cousin, the chupacabra, is also known less for what it is than for what it leaves behind: dead animals. Though goats are said to be its favorite prey (chupacabra means goat sucker in Spanish), it has also been blamed for attacks on cats, sheep, rabbits, dogs, chickens, ducks, hogs, and other animals.

Descriptions of the chupacabra vary widely, but many accounts suggest that the creature stands about four to five feet tall. It has short but powerful legs that allow it to leap fantastic distances, long claws, and terrifying black or glowing red eyes. Some claim it has spikes down its back; others report seeing stubby, bat-like wings. Some say the stench of sulfur taints the air around chupacabras, or that it emits a terrifying hiss when threatened (see, for example, Carroll 2003).

While some mistakenly believe that chupacabra sightings date back to the 1970s, the chupacabra first gained real notoriety in 1995 in Puerto Rico. No one knew for certain why or how the chupacabra seemingly suddenly sprang into existence, but many Latin Americans believe it is the unholy creation of secret U.S. government experiments in the jungles of Puerto Rico. It had a heyday of about five years, when it was widely reported in Mexico, Chile, Nicaragua, Spain, Argentina, Brazil, and Florida, among other places.

The chupacabra can be categorized as appearing in three different physical forms (and countless cultural ones). The “original” and best known is that of a five-foot-tall bipedal creature with long claws and a distinctive row of spikes down its back, reported in August 1995 by Puerto Rican eyewitness Madelyne Tolentino. The second form is a mammal from the Canidae family, a small, four-legged beast looking very much like a dog or a coyote. The third is a catchall category that basically includes any unusual animal, alive or dead, that anyone reports seeing or thinks for whatever reason might be the dreaded chupacabra. This version of the chupacabra includes everything from a “kangaroo with wings” to a dried and misshapen ocean animal.

Whatever form it takes, in fifteen years it has become a global phenomenon—the world’s third best-known monster (after Bigfoot and the Loch Ness Monster). In 2002, a writer for Fortean Times magazine (“Chupacabras Rides Agains Again” 2002a) noted that “[n]ot since the advent of crop circles has a strange phenomenon been so quickly assimilated into popular culture. Chupacabras is now equal to the Loch Ness Monster or Bigfoot as a cultural icon.”

Some researchers, such as Loren Coleman and Scott Corrales, suggest that the name chupacabras dates back to 1960, when a character on the TV Western show Bonanza referred to a chupacabras. It seems that this reference was to a whippoorwill bird (Caprimulgus vociferus), which folklore suggested drank milk (not blood) from goats. Other than the shared name, however, there is no connection between the insect-eating whippoorwill bird and the Hispanic vampire beast el chupacabra. As Coleman (2010) notes, “the vampire element appears to be a recent addition to the folkloric aspects of these tales.” (A “goat-sucker” is also referred to in the writings of Aristotle, though no serious researcher would suggest that the Greek philosopher, who died in 322 BC, was referring to the subject of this book.)

Confounding the Mystery

For a creature as well known as the chupacabra, it has been the subject of remarkably little serious research. Information on the beast is fragmentary, often poorly sourced, and contradictory. In the world of chupacabra, proven facts and wild speculations mix freely and indistinguishably. Researcher Karl Shuker (2009b) lamented the “immense confusion and contradiction” surrounding the chupacabra, making it “almost impossible to distinguish fact from fiction, and reality from hearsay and local lore” about the creature.

The chupacabra has of course made its way into various books on unexplained mysteries. While a few authors write with some scholarship and authority on the chupacabra, the vast majority of information on the subject is rife with error, mistaken assumption, and misinformation. Often this misinformation is because authors, instead of doing the “heavy lifting” of any actual investigation, fact-checking, or research, will simply copy liberally from other authors and other sources, sometimes embellishing or inventing facts along the way to spice up the story.

Listing all the instances of sloppy scholarship (enumerating mistakes and their corrections) would take a book in itself, but a few examples will set the stage. I expose some here and throughout the book, not necessarily to chide careless authors, but because it cannot be overemphasized just how shabby research on the chupacabra has been. This shabbiness is a direct cause of the seemingly hopeless welter of contradictions and confusions, and this book is in part an exercise in setting the record straight and debunking extraneous myths that only shroud the truth behind the goatsucker.2

Chupacabra Descriptions

When it comes to descriptions of the goatsucker, authors arbitrarily pick and choose which details they want to use to create their chimeric chupacabra. W. Haden Blackman, for example, in his Field Guide to North American Monsters (1998), states that the “typical chupacabra is covered in glossy matted hair and has a feral face. Its long limbs, which end in massive claws, can propel the monster across any terrain at amazing speeds, but it is the creature’s powerful bat-like wings that allow it to migrate huge distances . . . Goatsuckers are deceptively small, standing just three to four feet high.” George Eberhart’s Mysterious Creatures: A Guide to Cryptozoology offers another description: “Height, four to five feet. Covered in short, gray fur. Said to have a chameleon-like ability to change color. Large, round head. Huge, lidless, fiery-red eyes run up to the temples and spread to the sides. Ears small or absent. Two small nostrils. Lipless mouth. Sharp, protruding fangs. Pointy spikes run from the head down the spine; these may double as wings. Thin arms with three webbed fingers. Muscular but thin hind legs. Three clawed toes. No tail” (Eberhart 2002, 106). Loren Coleman and Patrick Huyghe, in their Field Guide to Bigfoot, Yeti, and Other Mystery Primates Worldwide (1999), draw from the same chief eyewitness and offer a similar description, but curiously suggest the creature might be a type of freshwater merbeing.

The book A Natural History of the Unnatural World (written by the fictional Cryptozoological Society of London, ghostwritten by Joel Levy) states that the chupacabra is “a strange two-legged creature, about four to five feet high, which looked like a cross between an alien and a fanged kangaroo . . . it has sharp spines down its back, a powerful tail . . . and staring red eyes and big ears and needle-like teeth for the blood sucking” (Levy 1999). Not to be outdone, Giles Sparrow’s Field Guide to Fantastic Creatures describes it as “a strange reptilian beast with a kangaroo-like gait, glowing red eyes and a row of sharp spines running along its back” (Sparrow 2009, 92–93). The beast is depicted with long, spindly limbs and four long-fingered claws on each hand. Another book states that the beast is “five feet tall with a pronounced lower jaw, large red eyes, small nostrils, and a razor-thin mouth with curved fangs. It has a rough black coat . . . Jagged spikes are said to grow on its back . . . it looks kind of like a dinosaur” (Genzmer and Hellenbrand 2007, 248–49).

From this sample we can see that, depending on which book you are reading (or whose eyewitness account you believe), the chupacabra either has a “powerful tail” or it has no tail at all; it either spends most of its time flying in the night skies—or doesn’t, lacking wings. It might have three fingers on each hand, or four; it might have a row of distinctive spikes running down its back—or it might not. Its ears are either “big” or they are “small or absent.” About the only detail these accounts have in common is the pair of red eyes. Remarkably, several writers (including Herbert Genzmer and Ulrich Hellenbrand, in their book Mysteries of the World) conclude that “[t]he descriptions are, for the most part, very similar”!

If these summaries of the chupacabra characteristics are confusing and contradictory, the original eyewitness descriptions (presented in later chapters) are even worse. The huge disparity in chupacabra reports is one of the things that Loren Coleman finds most fascinating. “It is intriguing that a relatively small number of sightings of an upright gray, spiky haired primate in Puerto Rico morphed into a widespread misidentification of four-legged, usually black and brown dogs, foxes, coyotes, and other canids with or without mange, living or dead, as chupacabras,” he told me in an interview. But here we are getting ahead of the story; let’s begin at the beginning, in Puerto Rico.

The Puerto Rican Chupacabra

The Puerto Rican chupacabra panic began in March 1995 when residents in the small towns of Orocovis and Morovis discovered farm animals that had apparently been drained of blood through small puncture wounds (Corrales 1996). Similar mysterious mutilations and desanguinations occurred occasionally around the island, but the creature or creatures responsible were rarely sighted. It seemed the elusive vampires somehow always managed to do their dirty work away from prying eyes. Puerto Rican comedian Silverio Perez claimed he coined the name chupacabra shortly after the first attacks became public (though others dispute this claim; Jonathan Downes, for example, states that his friend Ismael Aguayo came up with the monicker [2009]). Regardless of who named ...

Table of contents

• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Part I: The Short History of the Chupacabra
• 1: The Goatsucker Mystery
• Part II: Folklore of the Chupacabra
• 2: A Brief History of Vampires
• 3: Chupacabras in Popular Culture
• Part III: Search for the Chupacabra
• 4: Searching for Chupacabras in Nicaragua
• 5: The Dead Vampires Speak: Chupacabra Carcasses
• 6: The Curious Case of the Cuero Chupacabra
• Part IV: Solving the Mystery of the Chupacabra
• 7: Reconsidering the Goatsucker
• 8: The Zoology of Chupacabras and the Science of Vampires
• Appendix 1: Comparison of Ten Notable Chupacabra Reports, 1995–2010
• Appendix 2: How to Identify a Chupacabra
• Appendix 3: 2010 Interview with Madelyne Tolentino
• Notes
• References Cited
• Index