Episode 31 - Chupacabras

You were taking a walk. It was a path you knew well. Out from your front door, down the gravel road, and then a meandering path beside the old two-lane highway. It made its way past several large fields, where some of your neighbors kept goats and other livestock.

Some days, they would wander out as far as the fence. On others, particularly rainy days, you wouldn’t see them. Generally, you didn’t really pay attention to them, just noted that they were there.

On this particular rainy afternoon, you were surprised as you made your way down the path. You saw several goats, it looked like they were lying in the field. It was odd. The way they were lying seemed strange, not to mention them being down near the fence in the rain.

As you closed the distance, you tried to get a better look. Your stomach rolled. They were all motionless, lying dead in the grass.

They were… you didn’t really know how to describe it. The word that came to mind was shriveled, dessicated.

The folklore of the Americas is incredibly varied. Each region, and each group of people, develop their own stories. Each has their own set of creatures. Some creatures become so popular that their stories spread.

One creature’s story started in the Caribbean, then rapidly spread. By today, it has reported sightings across Central and South America, and throughout Mexico and the southwestern United States.

It has a fearsome reputation and is accused of vicious attacks on livestock that leave them exsanguinated. But it is widely known to have peculiar tastes. It is the chupacabras - the goat-sucker.

Chupacabras, or El Chupacabra, is an urban legend that began spreading out of the Caribbean after its first reported sighting in 1995.

It’s story was strange and horrifying, so naturally, it caught on quickly. Soon, the creature was sighted across the Americas, and eventually it was reported as far away as Russia and the Philippines.

It attacks its favorite prey, goats, at night, draining them of blood entirely and leaving their bodies to be discovered the next morning.

According to the stories, its appetite is near insatiable, and hundreds of animal deaths can be attributed to the creature’s attacks.

Descriptions of the creature vary from region to region, and over time, but they all describe the same strange creature.

I am Andrew Eagle, and I would like to welcome you back to Through the Veil to learn the story of the chupacabras and the vicious folklore that grew around the cryptic creature.

You called your neighbor and told them what you’d found. They were understandably upset. After a full accounting was done, it was found that nearly a dozen goats were killed in the same way, a puncture wound in their neck and drained of blood.

Authorities were called. Reports were filed with animal control, but at the end of the day, there was very little they could do. Many of your other neighbors also kept animals, so they were worried and quickly returned home, trying to keep their livestock in a smaller area to be more easily watched for the night, in case whatever had committed the attack came back.

You volunteered to help your neighbor who had already lost so many animals. You’d help them watch the rest of their flock for a few nights until the source of the attacks could be determined and dealt with. So you found yourself up, patrolling the wide fields of your neighbor in the dark. You carried a flashlight out into the night, hoping to prevent another attack, or failing that, to identify the culprit.

Compared to many cryptids and other creatures of folklore, chupacabras is a fairly young story. Its first reported sighting and attack comes from Puerto Rico in 1995.

In March, eight sheep were discovered dead, with three deep puncture wounds in the chest, and drained of blood. A few months after those attacks, in August, a witness claimed to have seen the culprit in the town of Canovanas. The woman, Madelyne Tolentino, gives us our first recorded description of the creature where reports say nearly 150 farm animals and pets were killed.

She described a large creature, heavy set and the size of a small bear. The beast was said to have a row of sharp spines that ran from its neck to the base of its tail.

As early as 1975, the village of Moca had a series of animal killings that were attributed originally to what they called The Vampire of Moca. Eventually, their blame shifted to a Satanic cult. Eventually, these killings began to be attributed to the same creature as the Canovanas killings.

Shortly thereafter, the chupacabras was given its name by Puerto Rican comedian Silverio Perez.

As these stories, and its name, grew in popularity and infamy, with articles being published covering the events, more reports came out.

Animal deaths were reported, and attributed to the chupacabras, all across Central and South America, and eventually spreading north to Mexico and the United States.

It was going on three in the morning. You were nearly ready to pack it in, call it a night, and assume the thing, whatever it was that had killed those goats, was not coming back. Then you heard a pained bleat. The sound ripped through the quiet night, somewhere to your right and beyond the range of your flashlight’s beam.

You took a long pause, scanning with the flashlight for anything out of the ordinary. When nothing showed itself immediately, you began moving toward the sound. You move slowly, carefully, keeping the light moving, trying to catch a glimpse of whatever is attacking the goats.

You assume a coyote, maybe, or a wolf.

When you see the thing, you could not have been more wrong.

It was sitting back on its thick haunches, two gangly arms holding a struggling goat, the source of the pained sounds you were hearing.

Its mouth was latched onto the goat, somewhere between the neck and the chest. It had horribly large eyes, reflective in the beam of the flashlight, and a row of bony spines that ran the length of its back, from the neck all the way to the base of its strange tail.

As the light caught it in full force, and you got closer to it, the creature dropped the goat and quickly made an escape, vanishing on all fours into the darkness.

You did not dare give chase to whatever that thing was, especially not into the dark of night.

Over time, the reports of the chupacabras spread ever further. Its growing popularity attracted the attention of investigators, one in particular of significance was performed by Benjamin Radford, and reported in his book Tracking the Chupacabra.

He spent five years tracking the reports. Eventually concluding that “the most important chupcacabra description cannot be trusted.” As he accounts, this undermines the credibility of the existence of chupacabra as a real animal. He also broke the sightings down into two categories. The first, primarily appearing in Puerto Rico and Latin America, are reports where animals were attacked and drained of blood.

The second, more common in the United States, are simply stories of dog-like or coyote-like creatures, which he believes are probably dogs or coyotes with mange.

Because of the strange and off-putting appearance of those dogs and coyotes, they became associated with the chupacabras and its habits of killing animals.

In spite of investigations finding time and time again that chupacabras are likely dogs with mange, the reports keep coming, and they keep spreading. Chupacabras has now been sighted as far as Maine and Chile in north and south. And from there, across the world.

Stories of the chupacabras range from gruesome and horrifying to strange and off-putting. None are pleasant, but what can you expect from stories of vampiric dog-monsters?

They are prolific, and for such a young story, they have grown deep roots. It is a story that has grown to join the echelons of the most famous cryptids, with its own dedicated experts and researchers.

The chupacabras has spread across the world, despite evidence that many of the reports were the work of feral dogs, the legend of chupacabras continue to grow and evolve.

Thank you for joining me for this episode of Through the Veil. I hope you enjoyed. I encourage you to subscribe to receive new episodes weekly wherever you listen as we continue our exploration of folklore, myth, and magic.

If you are enjoying the show, and have subjects you would like to hear covered, please email me at throughtheveilpodcast@gmail.com or reach out on Twitter, you can find me @ThroughVeil.

As always, thank you, for listening.