Internet’s First Cryptid: Chupacabras
Posted by: Loren Coleman on September 7th, 2006
Let us celebrate the 11th anniversary of the first cryptid of the Internet Age: Chupacabras.
In August and September 1995, the chupacabras (Spanish for "goatsucker" – the singular and plural forms) seemed to erupt on the cryptozoological landscape. I’m not talking about the mangy dogs that have been mistaken for Chupacabras in recent years. No, I mean the sightings – as if out-of-the-blue – of large, upright, goat-sucking, spiked creatures that were seen in Puerto Rico in increasing numbers a mere eleven years ago.
Researchers such as Scott Corrales and Jorge Martin have since backtracked the critters through Indian lore to the 1970s and then further into the past. The year 1995, however, will be remembered as the official year of the "Chupacabras Explosion."
At first heavily discussed in local Latin American media, Chupacabras quickly became a major topic of chatter on the Internet, via emails and chatrooms. Before the end of the year, college campuses across the Americas experienced the first major use of websites to promote a new cryptozoological phenomenon: Chupacabras. Then in March 1996 a segment on Chupacabras appeared on the TV talk show "Christina," the Spanish-language Univision network’s popular counterpart to Oprah Winfrey. The show drew a tremendous response, and Chupacabras updates became a regular feature of the program, on the Internet, and around college campus chatrooms. Soon after, ABC News quoted me as saying (it now has become a classic line about the events): "What’s unique about the Chupacabras is it is crossing languages, which I think shows how small our world is becoming. It’s sort of like Jennifer Lopez, kind of cross-cultural."
While a few who seem to practice cryptoxenophobia caused the initial exclusion of Chupacabras from cryptozoology, forgetting perhaps that most creatures are fantastic and culturally-framed in the beginning of their introduction to cryptozoology, today almost everyone understands that Chupacabras are here to stay, firmly, as cryptids to be dealt with from year to year.
The legend of this livestock-slaughtering monster was born in small villages in Puerto Rico in 1995 and quickly spread to Mexico and Hispanic communities in the United States on its way to becoming a worldwide sensation like no unexplained creature since Bigfoot issued from the events of 1958 and 1967.
Chupacabras became important quickly. I deemed them so culturally significant by 1999 that I recognized them as one of the subjects in the world’s first handbook on cryptozoology and placed them in the text and honored them in the subtitle of my and Jerome Clark’s Cryptozoology A to Z: The Encyclopedia of Loch Monsters, Sasquatch, Chupacabras, and Other Authentic Mysteries of Nature, from Simon & Schuster.
On this 11th anniversary, I share one of the first cases, which occurred at the beginning of the cultural awareness of their appearances – even before some people were labeling them chupacabras:
September 7, 1995 – On this evening in Campo Rico, Canovanas, Puerto Rico a five-foot tall humanoid creature attacked a police officer’s chow chow dog. The officer fired his pistol at the creature, which doubled into a ball, bounced against a wall, and ran away at a high speed. A mutilated goat was found in the area the next day. On the same night Misael Negron observed a strange creature standing on his second story balcony for about ten minutes. He described the creature as about five feet tall, with dark skin, a round head and pointy chin, large red eyes, no ears and what appeared to be two long fangs coming out of its mouth. It had a thin neck and thin arms with three fingered hands that had sharp claws.
Source of this case: Albert Rosales, Humanoid Contact Database, cases 2299 & 2300, citing Jorge Martin, Evidencia OVNI, issue # 8.
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Spot-on analysis. It is a creature spawned from the Internet. My only observation would be, where are all of the other cyber creatures that should already exist in cyber fable?
I’ve read Scott’s book and, of all the cryptocreatures, Chupa is one of the most impossible to pin down. The descriptions are so varied from humanoid to dog-like and there is so much of a paranormal aspect described that is makes for such a mish-mash of story. An interesting one, nonetheless.
What strikes me about the drawing above is it’s resemblance to the ‘grey aliens’. Of course that could simply be a cultural icon influencing someone’s memory of what they saw.
The alien influence is in the drawings. But that has a contextual explanation. The first Hispanic investigators were not cryptozoologists mainly because there was not a foundation of cryptozoologists in Latin America before 1995. Instead, most of the early researchers of the P.R. reports were ufologists, and from that tradition, even though no ufos or spacecraft were ever seen, came the alien bias in the early sketches. However, today, cryptozoological links to cryptids in Asia and Africa have been firmly made, and more realistic, naturalistic illustrations have appeared.
I have always found it interesting that the reports only had one thing in common, really, livestock was killed by having their blood or innards sucked out thru their necks. Loren, are there any pics of the dead animals? I’m mostly interested in the bite marks. I’ve heard of 1 hole and then 2 holes. I’ve heard that only the blood was sucked dry, and then I heard that all the organs were missing (although depending on how long the animal was missing something in their ecological chain filling our opossum’s niche could have eaten the organs). Complete organs missing in the manner the legend claims could make way for something along the lines of a huge spider. Just the blood, well, that could go down many roads. The unfortunate thing here is that there isn’t any one or paralleling sightings. All the descriptions vary so much that it is difficult to know which way to start heading when actually looking for them.
Missing organs and small bite marks could be explained by bugs.
“Missing organs and small bite marks could be explained by bugs.”
HAW HAW HAW! That’s purty good one.
You’re kidding, right?
Cryptoxenophobia? Hmm, that’s a new word.
I still don’t like the thing as a real animal:
First, the decriptions are impossibly varied. Sasquatches vary in size and color, but they always look like sasquatches. Chupas look like… well, depending on the reports, they could be mammals, reptiles, furred, scaled, winged, hoofed, clawed, etc. That does not mean there’s no cryptid, but how do you judge the usefulness of a given report in a situation like that?
Sincerely yours,
Matt Bille
In the initial reports out of Puerto Rico, a veterinarian was shown working on a carcass allegedly done in by what is described as a chupacabra. He showed the fang holes and the path of the fangs inside the carcass. In reality, the description of the witnesses matches almost every time. Keep in mind that most witnesses of such a creature are first scared out of their wits and many not consider doing a detailed observation.
The resemblance to an “alien” is media hype as no one has ever seen an “alien” and the popular image accepted as an “alien” is a human construct. Early “alien” reports do not describe the popular modern image.
I’ve long wondered whether the traditional vampire might not be an animal native to the countryside which normally lives very quietly, drawing nourishment from the blood of rodents and other small animals, only rising to human consciousness during times of pestilential plague and/or extreme famine, when humans themselves become temporary prey.
Might not the chupacabras be such an animal?
I think we should look at the resemblance to the “Grays” again, it seem to me that we could be dealing with the same species. Once we remove the spines and trust our eyes we have a very similar looking creature to the abduction aliens, only more primitive? We have to consider the idea that these “things” are coming out of the same factory or are part of the same project. Just as it is with the grays, the chupacabra’s seem to need bodily fluids and organs for some purpose. The way they extract their desired materials from prey is another classic example of UFO folklore, with Linda Moulton Howe’s books offering an abundace of relative material. The deceiver it seems, takes many forms.
The reports of chupacabrases (los chupacabras) have fascinated me for many reasons.
For one, I have a real interest in UFOs and the evolution of thought about alien physiology, specifically the way a variety of alien body types have over time succumbed to or been obscured by the homogenous “grey” image. Interestingly, one of the areas where the American version of the “grey” hasn’t dominated accounts (or at the very least has been slower to dominate) is Latin America. The parallels between a diversity of reported types in supposed ETs and in chupacabrases is interesting, as we can actually observe, in real time, the homogenization of the image of los chupacabras (as well as variations). It’s also interesting because, in cases where mangy dogs HAVE been shot (such as near San Antonio) you have witnesses swearing that “this is what my grandma described to me as a chupacabras when I was a child” despite the fact the phenomenon is barely over a decade old.
These issues make the phenomenon intriguing to me, from a sociological standpoint, despite the veracity of the witnesses or their testimony.
Another question that the chupacabras phenomenon raises for me is “How would humans react in the face of a newly evolved species?”
Geology shows us that new and varied species have evolved and disappeared throughout earth’s history. Logic dictates (and historical and archaeological data would seem to verify) that any new species, when it first establishes itself, will consist of a small population of individuals who then, depending on their success, spread to new areas.
It seems natural that, confronted with a brand new species, many people would refuse to believe in something they themselves have yet to experience but that reports would continue to rise as the new creature established itself and became more succesful/increased its numbers.
I’m not saying that los chupacabras represent this type of “new” creature, but the study of the phenomenon does naturally lead to such questions for myself, especially when one considers their rather recent eruption onto the scene with rather limited historical antecedents (that is, antecedents outside the realm of stories largely regarded as folklore).