Chupacabras: The Truth About a Strange Blood-Sucking Monster

Everyone loves a good monster story.

The problem is, monsters always insist on living in faraway lands, at the bottom of lakes, or in the depths of forests. While this adds to their mystique, it is little wonder that our knowledge of them comes exclusively from grainy photos and unreliable witness reports.

This is what first drew Benjamin Radford to the chupacabra, a supposedly vampire-like creature. Its roots are in Latin America, but stories about it have since spread to the rest of the world, including his native New Mexico.

“This was a much more local mystery to me,” says Radford. “I didn’t have to go to Inverness or Borneo, it was right here in my backyard.” Helpfully, the chupacabra also seemed to be less shy than your average monster. That meant Radford had a good chance of figuring out whether or not it was real.

Tales of the chupacabra first emerged in Puerto Rico in the late 1990s. They described a bipedal creature four or five feet tall with large eyes, spikes down its back and long claws. This beast, people claimed, was responsible for killing and draining the blood of livestock, an act that earned it its name – which is Spanish for “goat-sucker”.

In his extensive investigation, which took a total of five years and saw him travel as far as the jungles of Nicaragua, Radford even located the person who first reported this beast: chupacabra patient zero.

Her name is Madelyne Tolentino and she comes from Canóvanas, a town in the east of Puerto Rico. In 1995, she spotted a scary alien-like creature out of her window.