Speaker 1: You're listening to an airwave media podcast.
Speaker 2: Let's go back to nineteen ninety six.
Speaker 3: The X files were fresh and popular.
Speaker 4: The nightly am airwaves were ruled from the desert compound
Speaker 4: of art Bell and in the Tropics, a new menace
Speaker 4: troubled ranchers, a bloodsucking animal known as el chupacabra. Before
Speaker 4: it became the go to explanation for every mysterious animal corpse,
Speaker 4: the chupacabra was a serious threat for poor hardscrabble ranchers
Speaker 4: who feared this.
Speaker 2: Bloodsucking monster and what it could do to their livestock.
Speaker 4: Fifteen years have gone by, and the chupacabra has become
Speaker 4: a punchline for many people.
Speaker 3: Hairless dogs are hardly the stuff of.
Speaker 4: Nightmare, but Ben Radford remembers the original claims the strange
Speaker 4: hairless humanoid creature which seemed to have amazing powers of leaping, flying,
Speaker 4: and more. Inspired to get to the bottom of it,
Speaker 4: Ben worked for five years to find out what was
Speaker 4: behind the story, and now his findings are available in
Speaker 4: his newest book, Tracking the Chupacabra.
Speaker 2: Today aln Monster Talk.
Speaker 4: It's actually quite unlike anything we've ever seen before. A
Speaker 4: giant hairy creature mark Ape Park mat in Luckness, a
Speaker 4: twenty four a mile long bottomless lake in the Highlands
Speaker 4: of Scotland.
Speaker 2: It's a creature known as the Luckness Monster. Monstertal.
Speaker 4: Welcome to Monster Talk, the science show about monsters. I'm
Speaker 4: Blake Smith and together we've been Radford and doctor karn Stolesno,
Speaker 4: we look at the science behind monster stories.
Speaker 2: This week it's just been in me.
Speaker 4: Karen is out sick, but hopefully we'll be back in
Speaker 4: the podcasting saddle very soon.
Speaker 3: Our interview today is with Ben Radford.
Speaker 4: Or get their co host on our show and the
Speaker 4: author of several books on monsters topics. Today we're discussing
Speaker 4: his latest tracking The Chuop of Cabra. You can get
Speaker 4: a copy of his book at Redford Books dot com
Speaker 4: or check the show notes at monster talk dot org.
Speaker 4: Monster Welcome to Monster Talk Today. We're going to be
Speaker 4: talking to author and Monster Talk co host Benjamin Radford
Speaker 4: about his new book.
Speaker 2: What's your new book called?
Speaker 5: Ben is Tracking the Chupacabre the Vampire Beast in fact,
Speaker 5: fiction and folklore.
Speaker 2: Awesome.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I spent a lot of time working on it.
Speaker 4: So you have you have I since you shared some
Speaker 4: of your research with myself and Karen and Daniel Loxton
Speaker 4: as you were working on it, it was kind of
Speaker 4: fun to see it all come together and now you've
Speaker 4: got your book.
Speaker 2: So I'm proud of you.
Speaker 5: Good job, Thank you, thank you. I appreciate that. It's
Speaker 5: it's as you know, in in skepticism, a lot of
Speaker 5: times the thing hues are not forthcoming. Usually just get
Speaker 5: the barbers from the believers who are pissed off at you.
Speaker 5: So it's it's nice to get a couple of pets
Speaker 5: in the back, especially for skeptical words.
Speaker 4: Thanks well, you know, as a writer, it's also good
Speaker 4: to see somebody finish something they started, so that's always.
Speaker 5: Like exactly, it's easy enough to start. I mean I've
Speaker 5: I've started, you know, dozens of articles and books and
Speaker 5: finishing it. That's the rub, as they say it is.
Speaker 3: So, how did you pick the chup Ofcabre as a topic.
Speaker 5: That's a great question. I think that I think that
Speaker 5: I was intrigued by it for a number of reasons.
Speaker 5: The first one was that it seemed to be a
Speaker 5: relatively recent monster. Of course, as you know, with the
Speaker 5: case of the Lockness Monster, the sightings themselves on the
Speaker 5: date back to about the nineteen thirties, but they're the
Speaker 5: supposed mythologies behind it date back much earlier, depending on
Speaker 5: who you talk to. The same with Bigfoot, you know,
Speaker 5: that's really only been around since about the fifties, but
Speaker 5: they sort of wrote into wild man stories and you know,
Speaker 5: Native American mythologies and stuff. But in the case of
Speaker 5: the Cubicabra, that didn't really exist. It would just sort
Speaker 5: of suddenly just popped essentially out of nowhere in the
Speaker 5: mid nineteen nineties, and so I was intrigued by that
Speaker 5: because of course, real animals don't just appear out of nowhere,
Speaker 5: you know, you don't just a you know, an unknown
Speaker 5: dragon like creature suddenly appeared over you know, Boston's you know,
Speaker 5: stadium or something. So that was one of the things
Speaker 5: that really intrigued me. And then also, of course the
Speaker 5: fact that it was a vampire was interesting to me,
Speaker 5: and so there were and also the fact that I
Speaker 5: speak Spanish and I've traveled extensively throughout Latin America. So
Speaker 5: it was kind of a confluence of many different factors
Speaker 5: that led me into the mysterious realm of the cubicabra.
Speaker 2: In your words, vampire is anything that drinks blood. Is
Speaker 2: that right?
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, I'll go with that. Basically, anything that's either
Speaker 5: repeaters drink blood or or a dozen factory blood.
Speaker 4: What does it look like? What does the chop of
Speaker 4: copper look like? The original version. We'll talk about the
Speaker 4: fact that there's more than one form of it.
Speaker 5: But well, the original version of the chipicabra, and I
Speaker 5: can get into the original witness a little bit later on,
Speaker 5: but the original one was a bipedal sort of manlike
Speaker 5: creature between three and five feet tall, with had large
Speaker 5: red or black alien like eyes, sort of like the
Speaker 5: alien wrap round eyes you often see depicted on the
Speaker 5: on the on the grays, for example, had a distincts.
Speaker 4: That the gray aliens for the gray aliens.
Speaker 5: Yes, it had a very distinctive row of spikes down
Speaker 5: the back that were described as either sort of feathers
Speaker 5: or spikes or or feathery spikes, had long claws, long fingers,
Speaker 5: some some people said had wings. But basically that's the
Speaker 5: original one, and then there were sort of spin offs
Speaker 5: of that. So when you look at that, that's what
Speaker 5: the original eyewitness account and then within about well within
Speaker 5: a few months actually, other people started reporting sort of
Speaker 5: variations on that theme. And I can talk a little
Speaker 5: bit that if you want.
Speaker 4: One version of it is humanoid, yes, and what's the
Speaker 4: other version, Well.
Speaker 5: The other version is canid, you know, for what the
Speaker 5: dog like animals can include everything from dogs, foxes, coyotes
Speaker 5: and things like that. And these are they basically just
Speaker 5: look like essentially hairless, probably mangy dogs or coyotes. They're
Speaker 5: four legged, they have a prominent canine teeth, and that's
Speaker 5: that's the other version. And it's interesting you sort of
Speaker 5: you can actually create a timeline on this because the
Speaker 5: original troop of cabra was mostly seen the one I
Speaker 5: reproduced Describers is mostly seen round between about nineteen ninety
Speaker 5: five and say two thousand, almost exclusively in Latin America
Speaker 5: in a couple other places. And then the type to chipcabra,
Speaker 5: the s what I've called the Texas cubicabra, appeared in
Speaker 5: about two thousand and four to the present. So there
Speaker 5: was this there was this interesting sort of timeline where
Speaker 5: the cupicabra definitely morphed forms and you know, essentially changed
Speaker 5: changed what it was and what people were contributing.
Speaker 2: Well, let's talk about that a little bit.
Speaker 4: It sort of just popped out of nowhere in nineteen
Speaker 4: ninety five. Did it come with an origin story or
Speaker 4: did it just come with the sighting and the origin
Speaker 4: stories came later, or how did that work out?
Speaker 5: That's actually one of the most fascinating parts about it.
Speaker 5: When I was researching the book, I went to Puerto
Speaker 5: Rico and I interviewed several people there and did of
Speaker 5: course a lot of research on it. And what's interesting
Speaker 5: you have to look at the social and cultural context
Speaker 5: in which these settings emerged. What happened was that by
Speaker 5: say in the early nineteen ninety five, there had been
Speaker 5: reports of mysteriously there have been reports of things that
Speaker 5: the animals that were said to have been mystruously drained
Speaker 5: of blood in different parts around the island of Puerto Rico.
Speaker 5: And it hadn't really sort of turned into like a fever,
Speaker 5: pitch fear hysteria, but there there was there were rumors
Speaker 5: and gossip of you know, some sort of unknown vampire
Speaker 5: creature that you know that would be it would have
Speaker 5: attacked some goats in one part of the island, or
Speaker 5: some chickens here or there and UH and the the tabloids.
Speaker 5: In fact, there were two main tabloids in Puerto Rico,
Speaker 5: Elvetcetera and Elodia, and both of those were sort of
Speaker 5: like the equivalent of the National Inquirer UH. And they
Speaker 5: loved these stories. As you can imagine. Every time that
Speaker 5: you know, some farmer in some remote place said that
Speaker 5: he had, you know, dead chickens or goats, they dispatched
Speaker 5: the reporter and they got, you know, very gory, gruesome,
Speaker 5: dramatic photos of you know, of these these dead animals
Speaker 5: laying there and the farmer talking about how mysterious it was.
Speaker 5: So a lot of this was actually fueled by by
Speaker 5: tabloids and sensational oppress at the time. But nobody had
Speaker 5: really seen the creature. There had been essentially up until
Speaker 5: August or so of ninety five. There it was all
Speaker 5: just sort of rumors and gossip and sort of some
Speaker 5: sort of vague thing that may or not have been
Speaker 5: attacking things. But it wasn't until August that there was
Speaker 5: actually a face and a whole description of the creature.
Speaker 5: And that's that's sort of where the original one came from.
Speaker 2: Who gave it that face?
Speaker 5: That was a woman named Madeline Tolantino. Hers was the
Speaker 5: original description of the chepicabra that became world famous. In fact,
Speaker 5: if you if you do a Google image search for chepicabra,
Speaker 5: you'll find a lot of it different images, but there's
Speaker 5: one primary image that sort of has again this alien
Speaker 5: like creature has spikes down the back, big, has large eyes,
Speaker 5: sort of fangs, almost no nose, and bipedal things like that,
Speaker 5: And that was her original description. And interestingly enough, the
Speaker 5: original Chupacapa reports, including Miss Tolentinos, was originally investigated and
Speaker 5: I'm using I'm using scare quotes, I'm using air quotes
Speaker 5: around investigated by UFO buffs in Puerto Rico at the time,
Speaker 5: and almost almost all of the original reports investigations such
Speaker 5: as they were, were by UFO believers and tabloid reporters,
Speaker 5: So there was little or no real scientific skeptical investigation done,
Speaker 5: certainly in the nineteen nineties, and I would argue up
Speaker 5: until essentially by the time I wrote the book. But
Speaker 5: that's that's one of interesting elements to it.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so I know there's sort of a folklore aspect
Speaker 4: to the chupacabra. I've I've read accounts that it was
Speaker 4: an alien, It was an alien's pet, It was a
Speaker 4: hybrid creature created at a secret genetics lab underneath the
Speaker 4: observatory down there.
Speaker 2: Yeah and uh so.
Speaker 5: So yeah again this is this is another fascinating aspect
Speaker 5: to it is why are all of the all these
Speaker 5: origin stories. There's I can, I can. I'll give you
Speaker 5: the top say three or four. One of the most
Speaker 5: popular ones is exactly you said that it was an
Speaker 5: aliens pet, that there's a connection to extraterrestrials and UFOs
Speaker 5: and and aliens had been visiting the island of Puerto
Speaker 5: Rico and elsewhere, of course, and they, I guess sort
Speaker 5: of opened the door and just there ran out into
Speaker 5: the wilderness, and they called for it and never came back.
Speaker 5: And so since that time it's been living in the
Speaker 5: El Junk Forest. So that's one story, is that it's
Speaker 5: it's an extraterrestrial origin. Another another. The other main explanation
Speaker 5: for it is that it's the it's the results of
Speaker 5: top secret US government's genetics experiments, especially particularly in the
Speaker 5: in the El Junke rainforest, which is not too far
Speaker 5: from the capital of San Juan. And uh and so
Speaker 5: for for for many people el Junke this this sort
Speaker 5: of jungle like again rainforest area was thought to be
Speaker 5: either the origin or the and or the home of
Speaker 5: the chupicaba for many people. Other people believe that the
Speaker 5: chupicabra was the source of the AIDS epidemic, that AIDS
Speaker 5: was created by the chupicabra or by extraterrestrials through the
Speaker 5: chupacabra that were going to try and depopulate the earth
Speaker 5: a machine. But remarkable, isn't it.
Speaker 2: There's not a lot of chronology.
Speaker 5: Yeah, the chronology.
Speaker 1: Uh.
Speaker 5: Other people, for example, believe that the chepicabra was was
Speaker 5: importent of Armageddon. I did some research for the book
Speaker 5: and I was kind of came across a couple fundamentalist
Speaker 5: Christians who have written that the Chupacabra is referred to
Speaker 5: in in the Battle of in descriptions of Armageddon for example.
Speaker 5: So you've got you've got this sort of interesting End
Speaker 5: Times theology. Uh. There's a guy named James Lloyd who's
Speaker 5: the founder of the Christian Media Network Ministry, and he
Speaker 5: talks about how Revelations nine he claims described the Chupacabra,
Speaker 5: and he says that the chupacabra is in fact, a
Speaker 5: militarized weapon created by the by the US government that's
Speaker 5: you know, going to be unleashed on on evil doers
Speaker 5: or something.
Speaker 4: To me, having done several interviews on the topic of
Speaker 4: genetics and genetic manipulation here on Monster Talk, how different
Speaker 4: real genetic research is from the sort of fantasy version
Speaker 4: that the conspiracy minded public comes up with. You know,
Speaker 4: in in the fantasy world, anybody can just build anything
Speaker 4: in in you know, remote labs.
Speaker 1: Uh.
Speaker 4: Yeah, And it's like they have it's not just a
Speaker 4: funding issue. It's the it's the fact that they bring
Speaker 4: these things to life and then let them go, you know.
Speaker 2: I don't know, it's just a little odd well.
Speaker 3: You know, so there's these these stories about the tupe.
Speaker 2: Of copper, the humanoid version.
Speaker 4: Does the the the when the type two candide to
Speaker 4: put a copper comes under the scene, does it does
Speaker 4: it get into origin story or I don't want Is
Speaker 4: there any folkloric explanation for why they're calling these chuopocabras.
Speaker 5: That's another good question. I think that uh, you don't
Speaker 5: really find as much of the origin stories behind that
Speaker 5: version of choopicabra. Partly because in the other the other
Speaker 5: distinction you have to understand between the sort of type
Speaker 5: one and type two chep ofcabras is is nobody has
Speaker 5: ever found a type one chepicabra basically again the the
Speaker 5: humanoid or reptilian or kangaroo with wings or I mean,
Speaker 5: there's a wide variety of descriptions to it. These have
Speaker 5: only been cited and reported, uh that there have been
Speaker 5: photographed or anything else like that. The type two type
Speaker 5: the typetoo chip of cabras what I would call that,
Speaker 5: the Texas cheop oficabras. Uh. In these cases we have
Speaker 5: a dead body that this is, you know, we we
Speaker 5: actually have a physical specimen. And again that this this
Speaker 5: also distinguishes it from for example, a bigfoot lockness monster,
Speaker 5: a mothman, dragon's unicorns, you know, mermaids, except for the
Speaker 5: Fiji mermaid and other things like that, uh, in which
Speaker 5: these are you know, we have no hard physical forensic evidence.
Speaker 5: In the case of the cup of gabra, allegedly we do.
Speaker 5: We've got you know, half a dozen or so uh
Speaker 5: dead cupicabres that can be examined and tested. So I
Speaker 5: think that partly because uh there is uh, there is
Speaker 5: you know, the the the hard you know, hard physical body.
Speaker 4: Uh.
Speaker 5: That sort of detracts, I think from from the folklore
Speaker 5: behind it.
Speaker 4: Well, do you want to talk about some of these
Speaker 4: cases where they found these bodies?
Speaker 2: Sure?
Speaker 5: Sure, I mean there's there's been about again, about a
Speaker 5: half dozen or so. The the original, uh, not the
Speaker 5: best known, but the original I think, as far as
Speaker 5: I know, the first Chupicaba report in terms of again
Speaker 5: the type two Chupicabo, the canon type came from August
Speaker 5: two thousands in the in the village of Mafassio, Nicaragua.
Speaker 5: There was a a farmer named Jorge Talavera who it's
Speaker 5: kind of a long story and I won't get into
Speaker 5: the details here you can read in the book, but
Speaker 5: basically he claimed that some animal was attacking his, his, his, his,
Speaker 5: his livestock and goats, and he finally got tired of
Speaker 5: it and he said, I'm gonna I'm going to catch
Speaker 5: this damp thing. And so he and a ranch hand
Speaker 5: camped out overnight and they sort of waited and waited
Speaker 5: in the cold darkness, and finally they saw one or
Speaker 5: two The descriptions very's not sure if there's one or two,
Speaker 5: but one or two sort of four legged monsters. Basically
Speaker 5: that he interpreted the chubukabra that we're attacking his his animals.
Speaker 5: He shot at them, he hit one of them, h
Speaker 5: and then it sort of ran off from the darkness.
Speaker 5: A couple of days later, his ranch hand was was
Speaker 5: walking around a remote part of his ranch and he
Speaker 5: came across some vultures feeding on a carcass and it
Speaker 5: was basically reduced to a skeleton. I mean there was
Speaker 5: a little bit of meat behind it, but essentially a skeleton.
Speaker 5: And uh, he said, well, this this, this must be
Speaker 5: the chepicabra. And the story then made national news, international news.
Speaker 5: In fact, reporters were calling from you know, Japan, Italy,
Speaker 5: you know, you know, and you know New York wanting
Speaker 5: to find out, you know, had we found the chepicaba
Speaker 5: because again this was this was the very first time
Speaker 5: somebody had claimed to find an actual body of the chepicabrum. Again,
Speaker 5: it's it's kind of a long involved story of but basically, uh,
Speaker 5: he had he asked the local university to examine the remains,
Speaker 5: and uh, they came back a dog that it was not,
Speaker 5: in fact an unknown creature. It wasn't a vampire. It
Speaker 5: was as an ordinary dog. And he later disputed this
Speaker 5: account and claimed that there was a conspiracy behind it,
Speaker 5: that they had actually switched the they had actually switched
Speaker 5: the bones. But that was that was the first found body.
Speaker 5: Probably the best known is the Quero chupicabra and in Quero, Texas,
Speaker 5: found by a woman named Phillis Canyon, and I investigated
Speaker 5: that in part along with the TV show Monster Quest
Speaker 5: in two thousand and eight. And that was where this
Speaker 5: woman and this woman found a dead type two chupicabra,
Speaker 5: you know, four legs, hairless or nearly hairless, uh, near
Speaker 5: her ranch, and she, you know, she went into it
Speaker 5: and the examined it, and she ended up having some
Speaker 5: DNA tests run on it by Todd Stel among others,
Speaker 5: I believe, and that came back coyote uh. And as
Speaker 5: with mister Talavera, Phillis Canyon was not happy with this.
Speaker 5: With this, this DNA results in dispute of them. She
Speaker 5: asked for a second instead of tests, which we're done,
Speaker 5: and it came back essentially the same, but with the
Speaker 5: added caveat that there may be some some wolf in it,
Speaker 5: some red wolf. Again. In all these different cases you have,
Speaker 5: you know, somebody finds a dead weird thing basically, and
Speaker 5: if there's a body there, then then someone says, oh,
Speaker 5: I wonder what this weird thing is. And then oftentimes
Speaker 5: they'll they'll go to the Internet and they'll do a
Speaker 5: Google search for weird you know, weird monster in Texas
Speaker 5: and the chubicabo pop up, and they'll say, well, there
Speaker 5: it is, and that's it must be the chepicabra. Or
Speaker 5: other times, oftentimes, particularly in Texas, ranch hands Spanish speaking
Speaker 5: ranch hands often will will we'll call the chupacabra because again,
Speaker 5: so the chubicapra. Originally, of course, the chubicapra means goat
Speaker 5: sucker in Spanish, because it's supposed to suck the boat
Speaker 5: the blood out of goats and also livestock and cats
Speaker 5: and chickens and other things. But over the last say,
Speaker 5: ten or fifteen years, the word chup ofcabra has basically
Speaker 5: come to mean anything weird, any unusual creature, or anything
Speaker 5: else that somebody has found that may or matt have
Speaker 5: any actual relevance to bloodsucking or vampism or anything else
Speaker 5: like that. So again there's other ones there's the Blanco,
Speaker 5: Texas too, Picabo Elmendorf. There were a couple found here
Speaker 5: in New Mexico and elsewhere. But those are those are
Speaker 5: a couple of the highlights.
Speaker 4: Unlike Bigfoot or Nassi are actually most of the monsters
Speaker 4: we talked about. This is a vampire creature in its
Speaker 4: original form. Where does that come from? Where does the
Speaker 4: bloodsucking come from? Well, the blood suck because it sounds
Speaker 4: like it actually predated the actual sightings.
Speaker 5: Yeah, that's again another fascinating aspect to it. What you
Speaker 5: have to remember is that is that with the original reports,
Speaker 5: when you're looking at the original reports from for example,
Speaker 5: early nineteen ninety five Puerto Rico, the people weren't calling
Speaker 5: it the chupacabra at that time. It was just something
Speaker 5: is attacking livestock and we it appears to be drained
Speaker 5: of blood, and we think it's weird and whatever else.
Speaker 5: And it wasn't really until until around August or so.
Speaker 5: That again, in August was when the first person actually
Speaker 5: saw the creature. At that point, everyone's like, oh my god,
Speaker 5: this is what people have been this is what people
Speaker 5: have been have been seeing and reporting it, and you know,
Speaker 5: this is what's attacking the animals. Tolentino herself didn't, as
Speaker 5: far as I know, didn't actually call it the chupicabra.
Speaker 5: She didn't come up with that name. I think she
Speaker 5: just said I saw something weird, and other people, you know,
Speaker 5: put the chupacava label onto that. So again, there was
Speaker 5: definitely a vampire aspect to it that was essentially its
Speaker 5: signature form of predation. I mean, that's that's what that is,
Speaker 5: and that's that's what the chupacabra does. It sucks. It
Speaker 5: sucks goat's blood. In my book, I I I put
Speaker 5: it within the context of other vampires around the world.
Speaker 5: And so for example, I looked at h at the
Speaker 5: European vampire and the stories of the story. I looked
Speaker 5: at the European vampire and the stories of the creatures
Speaker 5: that were said to drained blood or other bodily substances
Speaker 5: from the living the oftentimes blame for bad things happening.
Speaker 5: Uh And I also looked into, for example, African vampires
Speaker 5: uh and, and some of the stories of vampiic entities
Speaker 5: and creatures and sometimes people, oftentimes white people. There's a
Speaker 5: strong element of xenophobiaan fear of foreigners in vampire stories
Speaker 5: in general and specifically in the Chepicabra as well, and
Speaker 5: also go into other Latin American vampires such as the
Speaker 5: Leikichiri creature, which I investigated in Bolivia in Peru, which
Speaker 5: which sucks the fat out of people. So there's there's
Speaker 5: a there's a whole. So that Chubicata really fits very
Speaker 5: well within the context of other vampire claims, and so
Speaker 5: that's why I spend chapter two in the book.
Speaker 2: Talking about that.
Speaker 4: Well, you think of VAMPI sorry, the sucked fat would
Speaker 4: come to America, not Peru.
Speaker 5: You would think, uh, I've written about that extent. That's
Speaker 5: a whole. That's a whole different subject. But it definitely
Speaker 5: it definitely feeds into the whole chep Oficabra story.
Speaker 2: What's your book like?
Speaker 4: What kind of style is it in? Describe it a
Speaker 4: little bit for for our listeners.
Speaker 5: It was a little bit tricky trying to figure out
Speaker 5: how I was going to cast it. I spent about
Speaker 5: five years researching it and about a year or two
Speaker 5: writing it. When I finally felt that I had I
Speaker 5: had investigated the chip Oficabra to the best of my ability.
Speaker 5: I had looked at all the carcasses as many as
Speaker 5: I could, you know, many of them I I physically
Speaker 5: went and personally examined. I went looking for the Chipicabra
Speaker 5: in Nicaragua, in the jungles of Nicaragua for for about
Speaker 5: a week a couple of years ago, and sort of
Speaker 5: doing an actual field expedition out, you know, physically looking
Speaker 5: for it, not just sort of sitting back in my armchair.
Speaker 5: But so it was. It was a little tricky trying
Speaker 5: to decide how I was going to present all the
Speaker 5: all the all the different stuffs. And so what I
Speaker 5: tried to do was I basically try to, uh bring
Speaker 5: some science to the whole thing, but also keep some
Speaker 5: of the interests in the mystery to it. So I
Speaker 5: talk about in the first in the first part to
Speaker 5: talk about the history of the chepicabra, and you know,
Speaker 5: what is it, where did it come from? What are
Speaker 5: the stories behind it?
Speaker 2: Uh?
Speaker 5: And then I go into the folklore behind it, because
Speaker 5: a lot of times when you no matter what monster
Speaker 5: you're talking about, whether it's Bigfoot or Nassi or moth
Speaker 5: man or spring heel jack or what have you, there's
Speaker 5: a there's a rich tradition of folklore and and stories
Speaker 5: behind it. That's not to say that these creatures are
Speaker 5: necessarily mythical, because there may be folklore around you know,
Speaker 5: real existing animals as well. But but to really understand
Speaker 5: the Chepicabra, because so much of it did seem to
Speaker 5: sort of trace back to folklore. I talked a little
Speaker 5: bit about the chepicapra popular culture in in how how
Speaker 5: people perceive it, again getting into the different theories behind it.
Speaker 5: You know, is it the source of the AIDS epidemic?
Speaker 5: Is it? Is it importent of of the end times?
Speaker 5: Is it an extraterrestrial what is it? And then in
Speaker 5: the in the in the middle part of the of
Speaker 5: the book, I I talked about searching for the Cupicabra
Speaker 5: and you know, actually going out and looking for it,
Speaker 5: and again getting into the the the time spent in
Speaker 5: the jungles of Nicaragua, looking into the dead cub of
Speaker 5: cabres and the carcasses and exploring some of the stories
Speaker 5: behind those. And then in the last part I I
Speaker 5: sort of bring it all together and I bring the
Speaker 5: reader back to the original questions of you know, what
Speaker 5: is the chup of cabra? Could it? Could it actually exist?
Speaker 5: Could it suck blood? Could the animals that have been found,
Speaker 5: you know, the so called type two text of Cubicabras,
Speaker 5: Could they have sucked blood? Could could they be the Cupicabra?
Speaker 3: Uh?
Speaker 5: And I sort of get into the more of the
Speaker 5: forensics and the and the the the I get into
Speaker 5: the forensics and the biology and the folk flre of it.
Speaker 5: So I sort of structured it as sort of a
Speaker 5: mystery to be solved, sort of you know, hey, here's
Speaker 5: this interesting mystery. Let me bring you along as we
Speaker 5: sort of look at all the different aspects of the
Speaker 5: cheep of Gabra and figure out, you know, could this
Speaker 5: be real? So that's that's sort of how I tried
Speaker 5: to structure the book.
Speaker 4: Well, if someone buys the book, do you actually have
Speaker 4: the solution? Is there an answer to the mystery of Chupicabra?
Speaker 5: Yes?
Speaker 3: Really?
Speaker 5: Yeah? And I I as a as an as a
Speaker 5: writer investigator, I I am very cautious about making statements
Speaker 5: that I can't back up, just because I'm I'm used
Speaker 5: to being sort of questions and intact and prodded, you
Speaker 5: know about some of the claims, and so I I
Speaker 5: do not take I do not take it lightly to
Speaker 5: say that I believe I've solved the mystery of the Chepicabra.
Speaker 5: I absolutely believe I have. I think that somebody who
Speaker 5: reads the whole book, who's who's open minded about it.
Speaker 5: I mean, if you're if you absolutely will not be
Speaker 5: convinced that the chepicabra does not exist, then you know,
Speaker 5: nothing I say or right is gonna it's going to
Speaker 5: change your mind. There's no there's no evidence that I
Speaker 5: can present that will will will change your mind on that.
Speaker 5: But I was very careful to sort of piece together
Speaker 5: all the all the elements and all the evidence and arguments,
Speaker 5: and I if there's any let me put it this way,
Speaker 5: if there are any remaining questions about the Chepicabra, I'd
Speaker 5: be happy to to feel the questions from from readers
Speaker 5: or listeners. Again, if there's I'm not being facetious. If
Speaker 5: there's anything you don't understand, let me know what it
Speaker 5: is because I can explain it to you. So uh yeah,
Speaker 5: And that's that's actually one of the things I find
Speaker 5: most interesting about is that you know, it's one of
Speaker 5: the very few high profile solved mysteries in my opinion.
Speaker 5: You know, of course readers can judge for themselves, but
Speaker 5: that that have really come out in the last you know,
Speaker 5: a few decades. It's really you know, there's lots and
Speaker 5: lots of I mean, I could never claim that I
Speaker 5: had solved the mystery of Bigfoot or solve the mystery
Speaker 5: of you know, lake monsters, because there's too much out there.
Speaker 5: There's too much information, there are too many reports, there's
Speaker 5: too many aspects to it. But in the case of
Speaker 5: the chup Oficabra, because it's only been around for about
Speaker 5: fifteen years, there are finite reports. There's only so many carcasses,
Speaker 5: there's only so many witnesses interview, there's only so many
Speaker 5: there's only so many aspects to it, and it's it's
Speaker 5: it can be a very complex and nuanced investigation, but
Speaker 5: ultimately it's sort of packaged all in one piece. I mean,
Speaker 5: there's finite information on it. And because of that, that's
Speaker 5: to my mind, what made it solvable.
Speaker 4: Your book will in the paradi of pathetic hairless animals
Speaker 4: that are being called chepacabra by the media.
Speaker 5: I'm sure it won't. I mean, that is, you know,
Speaker 5: this is this is always the problem that you know,
Speaker 5: skeptical investigators have is that you can. You can put
Speaker 5: forth explanations for things, and you can do your best
Speaker 5: to try to explain and solve them, but ultimately, you know,
Speaker 5: people are it doesn't matter how many times you search
Speaker 5: lockness and don't find anything, people are still going to
Speaker 5: think that there's something in the lake. You know, it
Speaker 5: doesn't matter how many times you search for Bigfoot or
Speaker 5: anything else. There's always going to be the believers who say, well,
Speaker 5: just wasn't in there or whatever else. So what I
Speaker 5: tried to do for my book, recognizing that the mystery
Speaker 5: was going to continue no matter what I said or wrote,
Speaker 5: I included an appendix in the book, Appendix two, in
Speaker 5: which the titlet is called how to Identify a Chepicabrum,
Speaker 5: And that, to my mind, was my bid to try
Speaker 5: and keep my book relevant to five, ten, twenty thirty
Speaker 5: years from now, so that if future investigators, researchers, or
Speaker 5: anybody that finds some dead animal, if they really believe
Speaker 5: that they found the chepicabru, I have a list of
Speaker 5: ten criterion ten questions to ask about that that you know,
Speaker 5: if you if you think you found the chepicabra, if
Speaker 5: you know, go through this list and you know is
Speaker 5: check these off and see if if, in fact, you know,
Speaker 5: it fits the criterion of what what a chupacabra must
Speaker 5: be in order to exist. Now, if it passes all
Speaker 5: these tests, that does not conclusively prove its the tupicabra,
Speaker 5: but it certainly would go much much farther in terms
Speaker 5: of establishing scientific credibility and validity of the creature.
Speaker 4: So, I know there's sort of a special treat for
Speaker 4: Muster Talk listeners. You've given us an audiobook rendition of
Speaker 4: the first chapter and the intro, so that should be
Speaker 4: in people's iTunes feed.
Speaker 2: But where can people actually find your book?
Speaker 5: Well, the book is actually it's it's it's out. I
Speaker 5: don't know that it's physically in bookstores yet, It'll probably
Speaker 5: be in bookstores in the next week or two. You
Speaker 5: can also go to my website, which is Chupacabra Mystery
Speaker 5: dot com, and I have the book for sale there.
Speaker 5: I think I include free shipping and a autographic. I'll
Speaker 5: even throwing some little cute freebies and photos and little
Speaker 5: chupicaba related to paraphin ilia as they say, So you
Speaker 5: can get it there. You can get to Amazon dot com better. Yet,
Speaker 5: you know, go to your local independent bookstores in order
Speaker 5: it there.
Speaker 4: So, as you know, as a co host, we often
Speaker 4: ask people what their favorite monster is.
Speaker 2: What's your favorite monster right now?
Speaker 5: Well, I hate to do the cop out, but honestly,
Speaker 5: my favorite monster is the chipicabre. Same. I look, I
Speaker 5: spent five years searching the damn thing. You know. I
Speaker 5: it's it is. I It's It's just a fascinating, fascinating mystery.
Speaker 2: Okay, just okay.
Speaker 4: Why do you think it captured so much of the
Speaker 4: public imagination. I mean, it was discovered in nineteen eighty five,
Speaker 4: or if you want to call it that, and then
Speaker 4: by the end of nineteen ninety six, they were filming
Speaker 4: an X Files episode about it. So how did it
Speaker 4: become so popular?
Speaker 5: Well, there's a couple of reasons. One was that it
Speaker 5: was fueled, as I touched on earlier, by tabloid press
Speaker 5: and sensationalism. You know, the every time that an alleged
Speaker 5: chupacabra was sighted or believed to have attacked some animals,
Speaker 5: the tabloids were all over it, you know, running big,
Speaker 5: you know, red headlines chupacabra attacks, blah blah blah, and
Speaker 5: photos and this and that. So a lot of the
Speaker 5: information that that many people, particularly many Puerto Ricans, were
Speaker 5: getting about the Chepicabra Saint late nineteen ninety five in
Speaker 5: nineteen ninety six, was very sensationalized and dramatic and exaggerated,
Speaker 5: and it's a it's a it's a cool creatures like
Speaker 5: this alien like blood sucking beest that you know that's
Speaker 5: supposedly attacking things and who knows it might attack people next,
Speaker 5: So that was part of it. So yeah, it really
Speaker 5: really jumped into the published consciousness after a talk show
Speaker 5: called Christina, which is essentially the Hispanics the Spanish, the
Speaker 5: Spanish language version of Oprah, did a segment on the
Speaker 5: cub Oficabra in nineteen ninety six, I think that was
Speaker 5: around March or so, and all of a sudden, like
Speaker 5: everyone is like talking about the Chepicaba, They're seeing the
Speaker 5: Chuopicabra there, there's just it just it just exploded after that,
Speaker 5: and also the Internet again in ninety five ninety six,
Speaker 5: just after Tolentino gave her her description and the most
Speaker 5: the most popular depiction of it went out there. It's
Speaker 5: it's suddenly it's on the web and people all over
Speaker 5: the world are seeing it and reading about this this
Speaker 5: mysterious new monster creature vampire thingy in Puerto Rico, and
Speaker 5: it just it captured the public's imagine nation. It just
Speaker 5: you know, it was the It was you know, a
Speaker 5: Bigfoot was old hat and Nassie was even older hat,
Speaker 5: and hey, who wouldn't be excited by this this creature?
Speaker 5: And so, as you pointed out, within several months of
Speaker 5: it of it, uh sort of jumping international borders and
Speaker 5: being cited in other places. Uh, the screenwriters for the
Speaker 5: X Files were were banging away on the script on
Speaker 5: that and uh, and you know, making making the most
Speaker 5: out of it.
Speaker 4: Do you sound like you're actually seriously passionate about it?
Speaker 4: So I assume that was not a comp out answer
Speaker 4: about your favorite monster.
Speaker 5: No, I mean, I get it's It's just there's not
Speaker 5: a compaut answer. There's just there's just so much too it.
Speaker 5: I mean, everything from you know, there's no other other
Speaker 5: cryptosological creature that I can think of that you know,
Speaker 5: is so involved in you know, conspiracy theory and and
Speaker 5: vamporism and I witness problems and testimony, different forms and
Speaker 5: different shapes, and there's just so much to it.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I was gonna say in in in the late
Speaker 4: nineties when.
Speaker 2: Coast to Coast A. M was really at his peak.
Speaker 2: Sorry George Norri, what.
Speaker 3: I really, I mean, the tup of Cobbra stories coming in.
Speaker 4: And the Internet was really taking off as a place
Speaker 4: to kind of share these kind of stories of monsters. Uh,
Speaker 4: there were some downright creepy tales of people and having
Speaker 4: these encounters with the Cup of Cabra. So I know,
Speaker 4: I know what you're talking about. I think all of
Speaker 4: these hairless dogs have kind of diminished my joy at
Speaker 4: the mystery side of this creature. But hopefully your book
Speaker 4: can help me sort of recapture that at the same
Speaker 4: time give me some answers.
Speaker 2: So I'm looking forward to reading my.
Speaker 3: Comp copy, my free comp copy.
Speaker 5: It's on the way. It's not on the way, no,
Speaker 5: but I mean it's uh, you know again in terms
Speaker 5: of uh, in terms of what I solved about it,
Speaker 5: I mean, I'll just touch on that briefly, which is that,
Speaker 5: you know, different parts of the Tupicabra story had sort
Speaker 5: of been touched on or or examined by other investigators
Speaker 5: as well. For example, the vampor ism aspect sort of
Speaker 5: you get into UFOs and animal mutilations and things like that.
Speaker 5: But the central mystery to my mind, after after having
Speaker 5: researched it for for a number of years, the final
Speaker 5: mystery was where did it come from? What? What was
Speaker 5: its origin? Even though it seemed unlikely that this was
Speaker 5: an actual living, you know, biological creature, the question still was, Okay, well,
Speaker 5: then what the hell is it? You know, if if, if,
Speaker 5: if it's if it's not real, and you know, it
Speaker 5: may may not be. I mean it's anything is theoretically possible.
Speaker 5: But if if, if, all, if most of the evidence
Speaker 5: for this is very dubious, then then what what is?
Speaker 5: You know, what is attacking these creatures? And where did
Speaker 5: it come from? And uh, you know, I.
Speaker 2: Guess that's the that's the question that you answer in
Speaker 2: the book.
Speaker 5: It is it is. It's also to be fair, I
Speaker 5: do all it is in fact, to be fair, I
Speaker 5: do include a section in my Scientific Parter Investigations book.
Speaker 5: I think the last chapter in there is about the chepicabra,
Speaker 5: and I I also in there talk about my my
Speaker 5: discovery of the chup kaibra's origin. So it's it's not
Speaker 5: a huge mystery, it's it's a little bit of a mystery,
Speaker 5: but uh, it's it's out there for people who want
Speaker 5: to look for it. And you know, again, I I
Speaker 5: hope that people will will even if they don't believe
Speaker 5: that I have totally solved the mystery. Although I think
Speaker 5: most people will. Even if they don't totally believe it,
Speaker 5: I hope that they'll recognize that I did the best
Speaker 5: I could to examine and understand and explain it.
Speaker 4: Uh.
Speaker 5: And if if I'm wrong, or if I mischaracterized something,
Speaker 5: or if you know, tomorrow they find a cheep ofcabra,
Speaker 5: that's fine, I'll be the first to eat crow and
Speaker 5: and go examine it. But until then, I think I
Speaker 5: think this one's case closed.
Speaker 4: Well, thanks so much for sharing this with us, and
Speaker 4: I look forward to reading the book.
Speaker 2: And uh, wow, what a productive year for you.
Speaker 5: Uh yeah, yeah, yeah, it's uh And you know, of
Speaker 5: course I couldn't have done as much with without Monster Talk.
Speaker 5: I mean, this has been a great experience. And just
Speaker 5: dealing with you and Karen and uh and all our
Speaker 5: fans and listeners, it's it's very rewarding to how people
Speaker 5: have have such interest in in in our in our
Speaker 5: shared passions and our our fascination with these monsters, so
Speaker 5: it's it's very cool.
Speaker 4: Well, thanks a lot, Monster thanks for listening to another
Speaker 4: episode of Monster Talk. Today, we heard about Ben Radford's
Speaker 4: latest book, Tracking the Chup of Cabra. You can find
Speaker 4: a link to bias book in our show notes or
Speaker 4: go to read for Books dot com.
Speaker 2: If you check your Monster.
Speaker 4: Talk feet you should see a free audience sample from
Speaker 4: his new book preceding this episode. If you like it,
Speaker 4: please you here with your friends. Monster Talk is produced
Speaker 4: with the supportive Skeptic magazine. If you like critical thinking
Speaker 4: and science, you should give it a read. Music for
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Speaker 4: for listening to our show.
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Speaker 5: And never came back.