The legend of the Chupacabra (goat sucker) began in Puerto Rico around 1995. Many local Islanders claimed that this beast, which was killing Goats and supposedly sucking the blood out of them had escaped a laboratory. Others claim it was a space alien and related to cattle mutilations. The Chupacbra then was reportedley seen all over Latin American and then the Southern United States. It baffled many scientists, who couldn’t explain the goat killings and never found the beat responsible. Well according Benjamin Radford, he has solved the mystery of the Chupacabra.

Bigfoot and the Loch Ness Monster rank as the top two best-known monsters in the world, but since its 1995 debut, El Chupacabra has made a Justin Bieber-like ascension to No. 3 on the charts. The relative newcomer to the monster world is the go-to culprit for weird livestock deaths and creates a massive media stir whenever it’s “sighted.” It even has a fan club on Facebook.

That could all end, now that Benjamin Radford, author of several books on monsters and paranormal phenomena, managing editor of the journal The Skeptical Inquirer and LiveScience columnist, has released what he says to be definitive proof that El Chupacabra is not real; it’s not even a hoax, he said, but rather a leftover memory of a science- fiction film.

Stories of El Chupacabra first surfaced in March 1995 in Puerto Rico, Radford said, when dead, blood-drained goats began showing up (El Chupacabra translates to “goat sucker”). That August, a newspaper printed an eyewitness description of a bipedal creature, 4 to 5 feet tall with spikes down its back, long, thin arms and legs, and an alienlike oblong head with red or black eyes. That depiction became associated with El Chupacabra, and it reports of similar creatures began popping up throughout the Caribbean, in Latin America, Mexico and Florida.

[….]

The creature, Radford noticed, shared a strong resemblance to the alien/human hybrid in the 1995 sci-fi thriller “Species.” When he spoke to Tolentino, he asked her if the thing that she saw could have been inspired by the film. Indeed, she had seen the movie in the weeks prior to making her description.

“You can make a direct connection between the film hitting theaters, her seeing the creature in the film, seeing it in the street, making the report and entering the public conscious,” Radford said.

Read the Rest: El Chupacabra Mystery Solved: Case of Mistaken Identity

So the whole Chupacabra phenomenon was based on some lady who saw the 1995 film Species! Amazing that a description of a creature based on a movie became the basis for a Puerto Rican, then continental legend. Whether this really solves the mystery, it remains to be seen.

Rodan Note:

I had a friend who went to Puerto Rico around 1996 and claimed to have seen the Chupacabra. Off course he was drunk on Rum and on other substances.

Update:

My Homie Brick pointed out something I should have and do know. The legend of the Chupacabra predates 1995. The Taino natives of the Island, who later  intermarried with the Latin European settlers from Spain, Portugal and Italy, had legends of a creature named the Maboya. These legends stayed in island folklore and eventually manifested itself as the Chupacabra.

A further headache is the chupacabra fad itself, which obscures any important evidence and sensationalizes this cryptid so much that serious investigators become afraid to have their name associated with it. The chupacabra is often held up as a prime example of a fad monster with no historical precedent. People like to say that it popped suddenly into existence in 1995 and died out a few years later. In reality, researchers have found that the sightings, though less numerous, occurred as early as 1974, and that the Taino Indians had folklore about a similar being, the maboya.

Here are a couple videos about the Chupacabra.

(Hat Tip: Brick)