What happened
In March 1995 eight sheep were found dead in Puerto Rico, each with three puncture wounds in the chest and, it was claimed, drained of blood. Over the following months the reports multiplied – dead goats, chickens, rabbits and dogs, more than two hundred reports in a year. The comedian Silverio Pérez, discussing the attacks on his San Juan radio show, named the culprit ‘chupacabras’, the goat-sucker. In August 1995 Madelyne Tolentino of the town of Canóvanas said she had seen a creature walking on two legs, with large dark eyes and a row of spines along its back. Her account became the standard portrait of the chupacabra, repeated on television and in newspapers. The island had known similar fears before: in 1975 animal deaths around Moca were blamed on ‘the vampire of Moca’. After 1995 the chupacabra ‘moved’ to Mexico, Central America and the southern United States, where more dead animals were blamed on it – and mangy, hairless coyotes and dogs were taken for the beast itself.
Witnesses
Madelyne Tolentino of Canóvanas (August 1995), farmers and residents of Puerto Rico who reported dead animals; Silverio Pérez's radio show.
Explanations and hypotheses
Benjamin Radford, who investigated the case for five years, found that Tolentino had watched the science-fiction film Species (1995) shortly before her sighting, and that her description almost exactly matches the film's creature, Sil – so the most important chupacabra description cannot be trusted. The Puerto Rican veterinarian David Morales examined about 300 alleged victims and found not one that had been drained of blood; the necropsies pointed to ordinary predators, mostly feral dogs. The island was going through a severe drought at the time, which may have driven predators to attack livestock.
Explained The phenomenon has a widely accepted, down-to-earth explanation.
Sources
- Benjamin Radford, Tracking the Chupacabra: The Vampire Beast in Fact, Fiction and Folklore (University of New Mexico Press, 2011)
- Skeptical Inquirer – Benjamin Radford, Slaying the Vampire: Solving the Chupacabra Mystery (2011)
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