Chasing Chupacabras:Why People Would Rather Believe in a Bloodsucking Red-eyed Monster from Outer-

Space than in a Pack of Hungry Dogs

by

Anna E. Strachan

B.A. Cognitive NeuroscienceHarvard University, 2001

SUBMITTED TO THE PROGRAM IN WRITING AND HUMANISTIC STUDIES IN PARTIALFULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF

MASTER OF SCIENCE IN SCIENCE WRITINGAT THE

MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY

SEPTEMBER 2003

02003 Anna E. Strachan. All rights reserved.

The author hereby grants to MIT permission to reproduce and to distribute publicly paper andelectronic copies of this thesis document in whole or in part.

Signature redactedSignature of Author:

Program in Writing and Humanistic StudiesJune 9, 2003

Signature redactedCertified by:

* B.D. ColenLecturer, Program in Writing and Humanistic Studies

Thesis AdvisorSignature redacted

Accepted by:Robert Kanigel

Professor of Science WritingDirector, Graduate Program in Science Writing

MASSACHUSE S INSTITUTEOF TECHNOLOGY

JUN 2720

ARCH.VES LIBRARIESLIBRARIES

Chasing Chupacabras:Why People Would Rather Believe in a Bloodsucking Red-eyed Monster from Outer-

Space than in a Pack of Hungry Dogs

by

Anna E. Strachan

Submitted to the Program in Writing and Humanistic Studieson June 9, 2003 in Partial Fufillment of the

Requirements for the Degree of Master of Science inScience Writing

ABSTRACT

In the tangled depths of its tropical rainforest, the Caribbean island of Puerto Rico is said tohide a monster. Part alien, part vampire, part kangaroo-bat-demon, this monster has beensupposedly sucking the blood of animals since 1995. Though reports of the monster's allegedvictims and eyewitnesses have since spread to eleven countries and made headlines worldwide,no scientific investigation to date has found any evidence supporting a paranormal predator.But like Bigfoot, ESP, and UFOs, this phenomenon-known to Spanish-speakers as theChupacabras-has no shortage of believers.

In the face of little, no, or often-times contrary scientific evidence for the paranomal, peoplecontinue to believe. Why? The following thesis attempts an answer from the study ofanthropology, psychology, and biology.

Thesis Advisor: B.D. Colen

Title: Lecturer, Program in Writing and Humanistic Studies

2

Acknowledgements

This work would not have been possible without the help of many people. I would like tothank my reader Professor Alan Lightman, for giving me such sound advice on my first draft,and Professor Robert Kanigel, for his teachings on how to approach a work of such scope. AndI could not have completed this thesis without the help and patience of my advisor, B.D. Colen;he managed to trudge through four drafts of this work and come out (apparently) intact.

I would like to thank Ruth Merino of the El Nuevo Dia, Alex David of the Primera Hora, ProfessorArthur Steinberg of MIT, Professor Juan Flores of Hunter College, Professor Robin Derby ofUCLA, Professor David Wilson of Binghamton University, Eduardo Coll of the Institute ofPuerto Rican Literature, and Professor Mercedes L'pez-Baralt of the University of Puerto Ricofor giving me generous interviews and research advice. A special thanks to the people ofPuerto Rico, for being so warm and friendly as to indulge a stranger with stories during mysurvey. And of course, Mayor Jose Chemo Soto of Canovanas, for his time and borrowedcollection of research materials.

I would also like to thank Sarah Merrow, Academic Administrator for the Program in ScienceWriting, for her kindness and understanding, and my family, friends, and classmates for theirsupport during this lengthy process.

Finally, I would like to thank my stepfather, Michael Thompson, for his crystal-clear edits,probing questions, and continued encouragement. And my mother, Myriam Borges Thompson,for the idea that began this work in the first place.

3

para mi mamd

4

a

AA

(At It

Ai...r\ ...qo$

5

hirteen cameras focused on him. The night air was thick with the hum

of a thousand voices and the damp of hurricane season. The Mayor

was sweating through his fatigues. He flashed a large knife under the

lights of the reporters, briefing them on tonight's plan.

It was Sunday, October 2 9 th, 1995, the night everyone in

Can6vanas had been waiting for. Finally, the mayor of the Puerto

Rican town was going to put a stop to this mystery. For over a month his office had been

flooded with worried citizens and frantic phone calls. Something was killing the animals, and

not just killing them, but sucking the blood from their bodies. The carcasses were piling up:

five, ten, twenty at time-goats, chickens, dogs, rabbits, sheep, calves, pigs and geese-all with

two mysterious puncture wounds in the neck. People were calling the killer the Chupacabras, or

the "Goatsucker," for its apparent taste for goat's blood. Now it had killed over 150 animals.

So the Mayor, the Honorable Jose Chemo Soto, a former policeman, organized a hunt.

"I am pleased with the turnout," theMayor announced. His audience of two hundredcivilian volunteers nodded and cheered. Somelaughed nervously, shuffling in crisp newfatigues. Others readied nets and tranquilizerguns. Those who came straight from home orwork looked around for others armed with simplemachetes. A baby goat bleated from a woodencrate. It was 8 p.m.; the sun had just set, and itwas time.

Followed by reporters, camera crews, andcurious citizens, the posse turned away from thecity lights and marched towards the blackness ofNorth America's only tropical rainforest, ElYunque. As the crunch of wet bramble grewlouder, the squawking of onlookers faded into thehushed talk of hunters. Soon the only voice in thedarkness was that of the tiny Puerto Rican treefrog, Ko-kee! Ko-kee!

The steepening slopes of the Campo Ricoregion signaled that it was time to set the trap.Chemo Soto ordered Civil Defense workers toload the bait. The baby goat trembled as she wasshoved into a five by five foot iron cage. MayorSoto was checking the lock mechanism when aflash of light pulsed over a nearby ravine.Someone opened fire; then another, and another,until the air was exploding with gunshots. "Holdyour fire!" shouted the Mayor, "We want thiscreature alive." A man ran up to them.

6

"I saw something . . . near the gorge ofCalle Nueve," he panted. "It was so fast.... like agazelle."

"It" has been described as a 4-foot fangedmonster with the torso of a man and the haunchesof a kangaroo. Huge, bulging red eyes, a demonicalien countenance. Spines running down its back.Bat wings and three-toed claws, hairy, scaly greydinosaur skin. A darting tongue. Some have saidit has the ability to fly, float, or change color like achameleon, perhaps even control minds. Andthey say it leaves a sulfur stench in its wake.

Whatever the Chupacabras (Chew-pah-kah-brah) may be, it was blamed for over 2,000animal deaths in Puerto Rico in 1995 and 1996alone. But the creature didn't stop there. In 1996it went on to terrorize the Dominican Republic,Mexico, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Chile,Argentina, Brazil, Texas, Florida, New York, SanFrancisco, New Jersey and even Moscow. Onehand-written letter from Cambridge,Massachusetts, warns, "To the very esteemedgovernor of Puerto Rico . . . This letter is to giveyou some very important information regardingnational security. . . . You can find theChupacabras near Pampas restaurant at 927 Mass.Ave. in Cambridge ... I saw it drinking the bloodof a cat . . . I await your help in this matter." Thetwo-page plea describes one the thousands of

attacks reported during the"Chupacabramania" of 1996.

As the Chupacabras's rangeexpanded from the tropics of the Caribbeanto the arid plains of northern Mexico andthe metropolitian areas of Miami andManhattan, so did its popularity. Suddenlythe monster was the subject of TV talkshows and weekly political cartoons. AChupacabras Psychic Hotline started takingcalls. Crisp white t-shirts hung in shopdoorways featuring the Chupacabras as agourmet chef, the Chupacabras as alifeguard, the Chupacabras as a straw-sipping party animal. A small town inTexas inaugurated an annual Chupacabrastheme barbeque. Children in Puerto Ricofought over who got to have a Chupacabrastheme party. Restaurants and candy shopsopened in Florida in the monster's name,hoping to attract the hungriest customers.Even a new cocktail made its debut in SanJuan, which its inventors said was namedChupacabras because "nobody knowswhat's in it."

By late spring of 1996, the U.S. andworld media could no longer restrain itself.The New York Times, the Washington Post,the Miami Herald, the Boston Globe, theToronto Star and the London Daily Telegraphran creature-features between April andJune. "Animals Killed; An Island isAbuzz," reported the Times; "Mexicans GoBatty when Vampire Gets their Goats,"read the Star. By mid-summer, the monsterhad seduced the X-files, National GeographicExplorer, and Unsolved Mysteries.

But while some munched away onChupacabras special sandwiches or sangalong to "Chupacabrafragilistic-expialidotious," others boarded up theirhomes and pleaded with their teenagers tostay home from the prom. In Can6vanas,the town of 50,000 just fifteen miles east ofthe metropolis of San Juan, residents stillhesitate letting their children go out aloneor their pets roam outdoors at night. Afterall, attacks of the Chupacabras have beenreported as recently as this past February8'h, 2003 in Fajardo, Puerto Rico andJanuary 9 th in Isabela, not to mention theattacks last year in Mexico and Chile. Whytake a chance?

"It's serious, it's real, it's killing andit's going to keep killing," said MayorChemo Soto to the Tampa Tribune after hislast hunt in 2000, "This thing is difficult to

catch. It hunts during the day and night.-!C It flies, it walks, and it's getting bolder."

Now nicknamed "Chemo Jones"A for his Indiana Jones-like adventures, the

Mayor keeps an emergency cell phone atthe hip in case someone spots the beast inthe surrounding hills.

The results of his last four hunts?"Inconclusive," he replies.

EmI

chupacabramania.In 1996 theGoatsucker wasboth a fear and afad. T-shirts, toys,books, mugs,movies, and musicabounded.

CIENCIA Y CREENCIA

"These are classic caninepunctures from dogs," announced theMiami zoologist to a group of local TVcameras on March 21", 1996. The nightbefore, something left 69 goats, chickensand geese "vampired dry" and strewnacross two backyards in Sweetwater,south Miami. Residents blamed theChupacabras. Zoologist Ron Magill of theMetroDade Zoo blamed a dog. "I tookout a knife and cut into the carotid arteryand blood came out of the carcass," Magilltold the St. Petersburg Times. Not onlywere the animals full of blood, he said, butthe surrounding dirt was stamped withdog prints. He even pointed localresidents and the media to a place whereit looked like a dog dug its way under afence. "It was classic dog digging," hesaid, "You could see all the dirt pushedback and dog hair on the bottom of thefence."

Even so, when an elderly womanapproached the cameras and startedacting out her sighting of the Chupacabras("It stood up on two legs and washunched over like this with big arms andlooked at me with these red eyes..."),Magill noted, "As soon as she did thatevery news media camera zoomed in onher. That was the footage they playedover and over again." And the factualevidence he pointed out that day? "Theywere just totally not listening," thezoologist said.

Until then, the Chupacabras hadnever attacked outside Puerto Rico. Butjust three days before the animals werekilled in Sweetwater, the Miami-based TVtalk show Cristina broadcast a special onthe Goatsucker to 100 million Spanish-speaking viewers worldwide. "I used tolaugh every time someone mentioned theChupacabras," host Cristina Saraleguitold the Boston Globe, "but after doing the

7

show and listening to many serious, crediblepeople, I have to tell you . . . I don't think it's anormal animal at all." The credible Puerto Ricansinvited were Mayor Chemo Soto, a.k.a. ChemoJones, Jorge Martin (a well-known Puerto RicanUFOologist), and "Dr. Chupacabras," aveterinarian who claimed the wounds "weren'tcompatible with the bite of a dog, a monkey orany animal I've ever studied."

By the time the Cristina show aired inMarch 1996, more than 30 people in Can6vanashad reported close encounters with theChupacabras, despite the fact that Puerto Ricanscientists had found nothing out of the ordinaryin any animal they had examined. One of thedirectors of a public autopsy, Dr. Hector Garcia ofthe Department of Agriculture's CaribbeanVeterinary Laboratory, insisted after twentyautopsies that not only had all the examinedanimals been full of blood, but they lacked anyperforations of the jugular vein-the likeliest spotfor a bloodsucker to strike. Instead of aparanormal predator, he stated, the more likelycause of death was infection of animal bites.

But what animal? To date, scientists fromthe Division of Terrestrial Resources in theDepartment of Natural Resources and theUniversity of Puerto Rico have not identified aculprit because most of the evidence was ruined

United States government will always keep themsecret, and everyone else will make people believeit doesn't exist."

In Mexico, where the Chupacabrasreportedly ran rampant in eleven northern statesbeginning in May of 1996, the Secretary of theEnvironment held nightly Televisa broadcasts withzoologists and veterinarians in hopes ofpersuading the public that the predator wasnothing but a pack of hungry wild dogs facedwith one of the worst extended droughts inMexican history. Ironically, some believed thatthe government itself was fostering belief in theChupacabras to distract them from more pressingeconomic and political concerns. Despitegovernment advice, Mexican citizens set fire toseveral caves in pursuit of the Chupacabras,killing thousands of endangered bats.

Two years ago, a shepherd in Nicaraguaclaimed to have finally killed the Chupacabras.The vulture-picked corpse was brought to thebiologist Pedrarias Davila of the University ofNicaragua, where the scientist told several localand U.S. papers, "There's no doubt about it, this isa dog, not a Chupacabras." Two days later theshepherd complained to Nicaragua's Diario LaPrensa, "They must have switched the animalaround at the university."

It doesn't matter what scientists say,"says Eduardo Coll, "people will still believe."

before scientists arrived. Dr. Garcia suspects feraldogs. Biologist Dr. H ctor Orta blames rhesusmonkeys-it is well known that escaped labmonkeys have been living on the island since thelate 70's (In fact, one policeman in the west part ofthe island shot a rhesus monkey five times,thinking it was a Chupacabras). But Dr. Jos6Chabert, director of the Division of TerrestrialResources insists that many animals, includingferal dogs, pet pit bulls, monkeys, and exotic pets(many wealthy Puerto Ricans are known to keepsome) have each been responsible for attacks.

Inconclusive results, however, prove tosome the existence of a mysterious entity: "Do weever see the final conclusions of these studies?"asks Roberto Nogal, an affluent citizen of SanJuan, "No: They investigate and then the casesare shut tight. Here we have a lot of secret thingskept secret because of the panic of the people.These are things that are happening, and the

8

ow can people believe in abloodthirsty vampire kangaroo?Are they crazy? Ignorant?

Seeking attention? Are hungry mongrels toomundane for the imagination? Public necropsiesby scientists in Puerto Rico, Miami, and Mexicodid little to change people's minds: "I want to sayto the people who claim the Chupacabras is a dogor monkey that I will laugh in their faces," saysLuis Angel Guadalupe, one of the firsteyewitnesses in Puerto Rico. "There is no one whosays to me that this monster I have seen could notbe real. I saw it with my own eyes, and I am notcrazy."

Not crazy. Then what is he? What arethe other thousands of believers in Latin Americaand the United States? Perhaps the same questioncould be asked of the tens of millions ofAmericans who believe in alien abductions,

GallupPolls1978-2001

1978

ESPThe DevilAstrologyWitchesClairvoyanceGhosts

51%39%30%10%24%11%

Believers in Pseudoscience

and the Paranormal

ESP 49%The Devil 55%Astrology 25%Witches 14%Clairvoyance 26%Ghosts 25%Extraterrestrial contact 22%Communication with the dead 18%Reincarnation 21%Atlantis 33%

astrology, ESP, Bigfoot, and the Loch Nessmonster. Like Luis Guadalupe, millions of peopleignore scientific evidence all the time, choosinginstead to believe in pseudoscience and theparanormal. Rather than accept the probable,people cling to the improbable. This past decade,when the primary pieces of "evidence" for theLoch Ness monster and Bigfoot were admitted tobe hoaxes, neither Scotland's Loch Ness Lake norBigfoot tourist sites in the Pacific Northwest sawany dip in their half a million-plus visitors eachyear. One street vendor in Miami is said to havemade more money selling plaster-cast dog printsas Chupacabras prints after city zoologistsdebunked the bloodsucker on TV. And for manyin Puerto Rico, the proximity of the AreciboObservatory-the world's largest radio telescopethat has spent a fraction of its time every yearsince 1975 listening for extraterrestrial life-isenough proof that the Chupacabras is a result ofan alien encounter. In fact, some believe thevampire must be an alien probe designed tocollect blood samples of Earth livestock. Theleading UFOologist Jorge Martin, however, editorof Evidencicia OVNI (UFO) and author of LaConspiracion Chupacabras, thinks the Chupacabrasmust be a "pet" left behind by a passing crew ofextraterrestrials.

According to Gallup polls and othersurveys taken over the past three decades, beliefin the paranormal has been rising amongAmericans despite the growing dependence onscience in daily life. More and more people areconsulting New Age gurus and astrologists,palmists and channelers, numerologists andcryp tozoologists-self-proclaimed "scientists"who study creatures that may or may not exist.The number of books in print on the occult andpsychic has jumped from 131 in 1965 to well over3,000 today, and approximately 1,200 of thenation's 1,750 daily newspapers featurehoroscopes. Today people in Malawi aremurdering their neighbors, accusing them of

being syringe-toting "vampires," alien encountersare being reported all over the earth, and psychicsurgery and folk remedies are on the rise in"civilized" nations.

The Chupacabras casts its shadow overLatin America, but its pseudoscientific siblingsgrip the world.

Like many skeptics, attorney EduardoMorales Coll, director of the Puerto Rican Instituteof Literature, blames belief in the unbelievable onlow intelligence and poor education. But contraryto most skeptics' instincts, several psychologystudies and Gallup polls have repeatedly foundthat levels of education and intelligence areunrelated to most beliefs in pseudoscience and theparanormal (with the exception of ESP, whichpeople with higher education and intelligencetend to believe, and astrology and hauntedhouses, which people with lower education andintelligence do). Two floors down and one blockfrom Coll's office on San Francisco Street, theadvanced degree-holding multimillionaireRoberto Nogal says, "I think the Chupacabras hasto be an alien, because it's nothing like what wealready know." And Adelaida Oquendo, amother of three in the small mountain town ofJayuya, holds a Ph.D. in education and yet fearsfor her children at night-she believes her fatherlost his 8 chickens to the Chupacabras lastNovember. Michael Negron was finishing his B.S.in engineering when he says he first encounteredthe Goatsucker face-to-face. And of course, theNew York-born and raised Mayor Chemo Sotoholds three advanced degrees and says in a lowvoice, "I don't tell reporters this, but I think it isan extraterrestrial being."

But these well-educated Puerto Ricans arenot alone. In his bestsellers Abducted and Passportto the Cosmos, Harvard Medical School psychiatristJohn Mack defends alien abductees. Jane Goodallbelieves in Bigfoot. Emory professor CourtneyBrown "remote views" missile silos and aliensfrom the Farsight Institute he founded in Atlanta.

9

2001

ESP 50%The Devil (1994) 65%Astrology 28%Witches 26%Clairvoyance 32%Ghosts 38%Extraterrestrial contact 33%Communication with the dead 28%Reincarnation 25%

Possession by the devil 41%Channeling 15%Telepathy 36%

Hillary Clinton relied on a psychic guru to"speak" with the dead Eleanor Roosevelt, whilethe Reagans cleared their every decision in theWhite House through an astrologist in SanFrancisco. In 1995, the CIA made public its top-secret Stargate program, a twenty-million dollartwenty-year pursuit of psychic remote viewing.When the American Institute for Researchreviewed the literature over the past few decades,they discovered that there had never been anyscientific evidence backing remote viewing allalong. So why the investment?

"It doesn't matter what scientists say,"says Eduardo Coll, "people will still believe."

The question is why.

BLINDED MINDS

In his last book, The Demon-HauntedWorld, the late Carl Sagan wrote that peopleembrace pseudoscience in proportion to theirmisunderstanding of real science. In January of2003, I approached fifty Puerto Ricans on thestreet-half from the metropolis of San Juan, halffrom Can6vanas, half of them men, half of themwomen-and asked, "Do you believe theChupacabras exists?" Twenty-four answered"Yes." Nine of those twenty-four people said theybelieved because of the "evidence" or the "deadanimals they found." Five of the twenty-four saidthey believed because "people have seen it," andanother five said they believed because the"news" or "science" said the Chupacabras exists.

But the "evidence" they cite-the deadanimals, the eyewitnesses, the science and the

news-never led any authorities to suspect abloodsucking monster. So why do these peoplebelieve? Sagan would have blamed a superficialunderstanding of science; people are fed thefindings of science in soundbites and textbooks,but the process of science rarely gets on the menu.When Puerto Rican scientists were quoted in theisland's media, reports tended to emphasize thescientists' speculations of what the attacker couldbe (it's a dog! It's a monkey! It's dogs andmonkeys!), while few emphasized what theautopsy reports proved the attacker could notbe-a bloodsucker. This allowed some people,like Roberto Nogal, to assume that the studieswere never carried to conclusion, that "the cases

were shut tight," when in reality, science-inSagan's words-"gropes and staggers" towardtruth. Still, the different speculations offered overseveral weeks of media coverage may haveallowed people to roll the "Chupacabras" into thesame mental drawer with every trashed model ofthe universe and "cure" for cancer, concludingthat scientists haven't got a clue. But even thatdoesn't explain why believers would still chooseto believe in the highly improbable-a super-intelligent bloodthirsty biped-over the probable:hungry stray dogs.

One possible explanation for people'sbelief in the Chupacabras is a phenomenonpsychologists call the "confirmation bias," whichholds that people tend to selectively notice orignore things according to their already-heldbeliefs. For example, hypochondriacs are at themercy of the confirmation bias, interpreting everyache as indicative of a serious illness. Butpsychologists have found that the confirmation

10

bias is a fundamental tendency in human

thinking. An example can be seen in MayorChemo Soto's analysis of the Goatsucker attack"patterns":

"Now, listen there's something about this:there's something about bodies of water. Itappears near water, little creeks, waterfalls.Every time it appears there is a big noise, adeafening sound, a sound of a turbine. Itnever appears close to the houses, but in thehills. We have run after it when we heardthat noise, and when we get there, there is aterribly strong smell of sulfur. That'severywhere that the Chupacabras hasbeen-sulfur. A violent stink in the placewhere the noise had been. It's very strange.The other day, a meteorite fell by themountain and when it fell, there was a terriblesmell of sulfur too. So I started thinking,analyzing .. . so it has to be from outer space.Because of the smell and the noise."

How about the times when peoplereported a "wet dog" smell instead of sulfur, ordidn't notice any smell at all? Or the reports ofsilent attacks beside people's homes? What didhe think of the Goatsucker attacks reported inarid, waterless environments such as those incentral Puerto Rico, Mexico, or Texas? No, hereplies, he hadn't considered those. But he insiststhey weren't important. He does, however, havea keen memory for the details and events thatconfirm his hypotheses: "When it was attackingaround here, you could always smell that terriblestink. You would go to the hills, and you wouldknow it had been around there, because of thatterrible stink of sulfur."

In one psychology experiment conductedby researchers at Iowa State University, ESPbelievers and skeptics read a scientific papereither supporting or debunking ESP. Then theywere tested on their memory of the paper'scontent. The ESP believers who read the paperundermining ESP not only remembered very littleof it, in some cases they "remembered" that thepaper upheld ESP rather than challenged it! And"normal" beliefs are subject to the same bias. In asimilar experiment at Stanford University, peoplewere asked to read studies arguing for or againstcapital punishment, and they consistently judgedthe one c mtLng their own view as "betterconducted" and "more convincing." Everyonewas more critical of the study attacking theirpreviously held belief, regardless of which beliefthey held.

The confirmation bias is so powerful thatlawyers are known to build their cases around itby swamping juries with confirming evidence. A

startling example of the bias comes from a studyby Columbia University psychologist DeannaKuhn, who observed people listening to an audiorecording of a real murder trial. She found thatinstead of evaluating the evidence objectively,most people first composed a story of whathappened and then sorted through the evidenceto see which facts confirmed their story.Alarmingly, the people that focused most onfinding confirming evidence for a single story (asopposed to those who considered at least onealternative scenario) were the most confident intheir decisions.

Seeing is not always believing; many ofus, like Mayor Chemo Soto, see what we want tobelieve: "After the [first] search, we continuedlooking," says the Mayor, "but we have not foundit. People were saying to me, 'Oh Chemo you're

"What we propose is a fair and equal arrangement ...Nobody will steal all the publicity: Each gets a hemisphereand we'll decide which with a coin toss!""PSSST! Which hemisphere has Chemo Jones?"

Between Little Green Men and Chupacabras, I prefer thefirst, with or without Chemo!

11

k ~/7

10MO

Y1c

LC5 MASMr sQ

~~J\ \

crazy!' This and that, but then when it startedattacking again-well you know-'It's true whatChemo says/ they say, 'It's true."'

And yet, why would Puerto Ricans blamea bloodsucking monster if a pack of hungry dogswas the more likely culprit? Another possibleexplanation is our tendency to use whatpsychologists call an "availability heuristic," or arule-of-thumb to base a decision on how

"sucking the life-blood" of Latin Americancommunities in the form of cheap labor andcommodities. Citing NAFTA and other U.S. tradenegotiations, the historian writes that "the LatinAmerican vampire provided a face, howevergruesome" behind the suffering of the domesticeconomy overshadowed by a booming globalmarket. But Derby, the only academic so far toexplain the Chupacabras, does not provide any

"The Chupacabras was created by cloningexperiments, and [the scientists] could not

overpower it.

frequently we've heard of something. Forexample, many people are terrified of flying butfew are afraid of driving, despite the fact thatdriving is approximately 65 times more deadly.This is because people have heard of many morefatal plane disasters than fatal car accidents.When an airplane crashes, many people die atonce, and the event receives national mediacoverage. Because the images of flying disasterscome more readily to mind-are moreavailable-they have greater influence on thethoughts and emotions associated with flying. InLatin America, images of animal-bloodsuckers areubiquitous in the modern literature and history ofa region where blood rituals used to be practicedby many native peoples. Images of dogs ashunters, however, are relatively rare. So whenuneaten dead animals were found in backyards,Latin Americans blamed the only animal thatcame readily to mind: a bloodsucker.

SUCKERS FOR SCAPEGOATS?

"I think that a lot of these people justwant to blame these animals' deaths onsomething outside their power," San Juanresident Alejandra Martin told El Ntu'vo Dia.Martin's thinking is not unique. History professor

Robin Derby of UCLA argues in her soon-to-be-published book chapter, "Vampires of Empires:Why the Chupacabras Stalks the Americas," thatthe Chupacabras is not only a scapegoat, but amanifestation of socioeconomic fears of U.S.domination in Latin America. According toDerby, the Chupacabras is a "fetish" born of adesire to blame U.S. market capitalism for

12

surveys of Latin American feelings towards theU.S. nor any interviews with believers oreyewitnesses.

One of the most often-heard narrativesfrom Puerto Rican believers suggests instead afear of science: "The Chupacabras was created bycloning experiments, and [the scientists] could notoverpower it," explains a believer fromCan6vanas. "There are people that doexperiments with animals and other things so thatthey can create different species," says another."I think that the 'Chupacabras' could be an'experiment' that escaped from someone, or theyreleased it on purpose," says a young man in SanJuan. Rather than a scapegoat for economic woes,perhaps the Chupacabras is a scapegoat for fearsof modern science. Certainly Puerto Ricans havehad plenty to fear from the scientific community:as early as 1932 doctors from Europe and theUnited States were injecting cancer cells intoPuerto Ricans to trace the progression of thedisease; U.S. eugenics polices in the 1950'senforced a human sterilization program on theisland; and in 1984, scientists pushed throughCongress legislation requiring that all PuertoRican pigs be slaughtered to prevent hoof andmouth disease from spreading to the mainland.And residents of the small Puerto Rican coastalisland of Vieques, a U.S. military test site, haveone of the highest rates of cancer in the world.Who wouldn't mistrust science?

"I live in the country, and I'm not joking: Ihear the Chupacabras every night, and you know,it's scary," says one man in Old San Juan, his littledaughter perched on his shoulders, "I don'tbelieve in anything like that, but when you hearall this stuff going on, and things are flying

around you, well, something is going on outthere."

The idea of the scapegoat, whether linkedto a fear of science or fear of the economy, is notnew to anthropology. At the turn of the lastcentury the English anthropologist, Sir JamesGeorge Frazer, wrote a volume entitled "TheScapegoat" as part of The Golden Bough, his ninebook survey of ethnology. In "The Scapegoat" hedescribes the rituals of many peoples all over theworld casting blame, sin, guilt, or fear ontovarious animals and inanimate objects. Dr.Neftali Olmo-Terron, director of the StatePsychiatric Hospital in Puerto Rico says theChupacabras may be the typical scapegoat: "Someof us are able to maintain a hold on life only bykeeping things in separate compartments. We arethe good, the bad needs to reside somewhere else,outside. This projection is very useful in creatingthe scapegoat-we are good guys here in PuertoRico. The bad thing is that alien from Mars thatsucks the blood of our pets and farm animals!"

And yet that alien from Mars, noted theSmithsonian's curator for Hispanic history, Dr.

Marvette Perez, in the San Juan Star, "hasmigrated only to places where people speakSpanish."

THE MYTH WITH A THOUSAND FACES

"What happens is that people hear thesethings, and based on their culture, they get thisidea," says one middle-aged woman, sitting at apark chess table in the Old San Juan. Does theChupacabras have a particular resonance withPuerto Ricans and other Spanish-speakingpeople?

History professor Ricardo Alegria at theUniversity of Puerto Rico says yes, pointing to atrail of similar modern monsters. The"Chupacabras" may not have appeared until1995, but the beast does have a family of nearlyforgotten relatives.

In March of 1975, reports from the tinytown of Moca in western Puerto Rico told of abloodsucking bird-beast. Ninety animals werefound dead in two weeks, all with puncture

13

wounds in the neck. Local tabloids quicklyadopted the story as the "Moca Vampire." Theregular media jumped on a "killer snake" theorywhen one farmer shot two six-foot Puerto Ricanboas about to "attack" his 700-pound heifer. Butlocal herpatologists dismissed the possibility ofboas attacking such large animals, and peoplecontinued to blame the Moca Vampire for severaldozen deaths through late April. After the attacksdied down, officials discovered that severalalligators had been illegally introduced nearMoca.

Later that decade, a sea monster called theGaradidbolo surfaced on Fajardo's Black Water

superficial differences in characters and settings.But few anthropologists have analyzed modern"mythical" creatures like the Loch Ness monster,the Yeti, and the Chupacabras in the same contextbecause they are still the focus of scientific andpseudoscientific controversy. When asked aboutthem, however, anthropologists say that the samecyclicality of myth is probably at work in modernhuman society, despite the influence of science indaily life. "I think people like stories," saysArthur Steinberg, anthropology professoremeritus at MIT, "People like to believe in thesupernatural." And once you get outsidemachines and medicine, suggests Steinberg, and

4I think people like stories," says ArthurSteinberg, anthropology professor at MIT,

"People like to believe in the supernatural.

Lagoon, a murky beach-swamp on the east coastof the island. The demon was said to have thebody of a man, the skin of a shark, the face of thedevil and a snake's tail. A few months later afterspawning an action figure, the Garadidbolo wasfound to be a mutilated manta ray from aCalifornia circus.

Then in the early 1990's came theCoinecogollo from Guaynabo. Few Puerto Ricansclaimed to have seen the four-foot monkey-likecreature with a taste for cogollos, the tender shootsof baby plantain trees, and most authoritiesthought the sightings were connected to thegrowing numbers of rhesus monkeys on theisland-over 2,000 by the mid-nineties since theirescape from the Caribbean Primate ResearchCenter twenty years before.

While some believers in the Chupacabrasclaim that all these monsters were the Goatsuckerall along ("It's been around for thousands ofyears!" says one believer in San Juan), mostPuerto Rican anthropologists find themselvessuffering from monster dejA vu.

In his book The Hero with a Thousand Faces,Joseph Campell tells how the hero's journey andtriumph echoes a thousand ways in a thousandlanguages all over the earth. The fact that certainkinds of stories are told and retold in humansociety has been recognized by anthropologistssince Claude Levi-Strauss at the turn of thecentury. Monster-slayers, floods, and oraclescontinue to resound in the collective narrativewith similar themes and structural patterns, albeit

14

into questions about life and our place in theuniverse, "People don't believe in science-thereare different ways to structure the world."

Anthropologists have long tracked thecyclic merging and creation of deities and sacredthings at the intersection of cultures. In LatinAmerica, anthropologists study the fusion ofCatholic saints with indigenous gods, sacredanimals, or African deities. But these fusionsaren't confined to religion. The Translyvannianvampire was part Chinese bloodsucker Giang Shi,part eastern European bat lore, and part real-lifetyrant Vlad the Impaller. Today people in Malawiare killing their neighbors suspected of being halfvampire, half mad scientist. And theChupacabras is a blend of vampire andextraterrestrial (some even say thatextraterrestrials are the new folklore of the 2 1 'tcentury). But the reemergence of certain creaturesgoes beyond vampires.

Bigfoot is not the only giant humanoidprimate reported to wander forests today. Nepalhas the Yeti, Russia the Mecheny, Argentina theUcumar. India has the Monkey Man, Vietnam theNguoi Rung, and Australia the Yowie. Bigfootwas once the Sasquatch, and the Yowie was oncethe Yahoo. Over the years, names change, but themonsters remain. The Ogopogo of Canada'sOkanagan Lake and the Mokele Mbembe of riversin central Africa are just two lake monsters of the300 worldwide recognized by cryptozoologiststoday.

4

Even the Chupacabras breed goes beyondthe Garadidbolo, Comecogollo, and the MocaVampire when the kaleidoscope turns over theUnited States. Mothman still scares in the South,the Jersey Devil and the Dover Demon still visitthe Northeast, the Momo leaves its footprints inthe Midwest. In fact, cryptozoologists track overa thousand different "cryptids" claimed to roamthe United States today. Pan back further and thescope catches all the bloodsucking monsters ofMexico and the Caribbean like the DominicanGallipote and the Haitian Loiupgaroiu-bothcreatures able to fly, suck blood, and transmogrifyinto other animals.

"But those are all different," saysanthropologist of Puerto Rican and Caribbeancultures Juan Flores of Hunter College, "TheChupacabras was news. There were lurid photosof victims, everything. It was an everydayreality." Unlike other modern monsters, themedia pumps life into the Chupacabras withregular coverage of alleged attacks. "That is whatmakes it eerie, and yet in a funny way. . . . Itbecomes inexplicable, but people don't try to findan explanation," says Flores. For example, no onequestions the unique feature of Chupacabras-itsdescription.

OF CHIMERAS AND IMAGERY

Something strange happens when you askbelievers in Puerto Rico what the Chupacabraslooks like. Instead of describing the imagecirculating on more than thirty thousand webpages, book covers, and film, people describesomething that sounds like a zoo. "I think it's likea lion," says one believer on San Francisco Street.

"It has gills, scales, a hump, and hooves," says abeliever in Can6vanas. "It's an animal with fourpaws, a tail, and horns," says another. "A type oflizard, clever, agile, and sneaky," says a man in aSan Juan shoe store. "It looks like a type ofmonkey about five feet tall," says a woman inCan6vanas; "I believe it's a spiritual force, like anevil spirit," says a San Juan policeman in the rain."Like a dog," says a believer from Can6vanas."Like a little monkey," says a young blondwoman.

This menagerie of reports doesn't surpriseone of the world's leading hidden-animal"scientists," cryptozoologist and professor LorenColeman at the University of Southern Maine: "Ihave found that the closer you get to where thefirst eyewitnesses are, the further from a singleimage you will be," says Coleman, an author ofseventeen books on cryptozoology and a frequentappearance on documentary series such as theDiscovery Channel's "In the Unknown." In fact,laments Coleman, it starts to "look like a zoo ofcryptozoology." Scientists might guess it'sbecause the creature never existed in the firstplace. But people seem to have no problemsteering past the different descriptions andgetting straight to the belief.

Going back to the original eyewitnessreports of the Chupacabras in Can6vanas, PuertoRico, the descriptions of the monster are nothingshort of an animal alphabet soup. MadelyneTolentino saw a spotted, hairy beast that lookedlike a tailless, grey-eyed kangaroo. MichaelNegron said it was like a fish-faced scaly"dinosaur" with red eyes and multi-coloredspikes. Luis Guadalupe saw a flying demon witha face of the devil. Today the classic image of theGoatsucker incorporates all-of-the-above, and the

The Many Faces of the Chupacabras. When Puerto Rican believers describe the Cdescribe the classic image that appears on over thirty thousand web pages, book covers and condescribe something that sounds more like a monster menagerie.

hupacabras, they don'tic strips. Instead they

15

initial discrepancies apparently didn't matter:When Mayor Chemo Soto was asked about them,he said, "What discrepancies?"

At least one woman in San Juan isskeptical of the Chupacabras because of thesereports: "People have chased it. People have seenit. But everyone sees something different!" shesays with a laugh. According to cryptozoologistLoren Coleman, the classic image of theChupacabras "doesn't mean what people actuallysaw paralleled it. I have found that whenconsulting eyewitnesses, it's like the Blind Menand the Elephant-each person sees a differentpart exaggerated." Perhaps the reason, writesreporter John Marino in the San Juan Star, "for thevariety of descriptions of it given by'eyewitnesses,' is that it looks different to each ofus-like a mirror reflecting our personaldemons."

Anthropologist Juan Flores of HunterCollege came to a similar conclusion. "What Ithink is the least interesting part is trying to findout whether it [the Chupacabras] physicallyexists, to prove or disprove it exists."

Perhaps when legend lodges itself, there'sno turning back. Science no longer matters.

IRRATIONAL RATIONALITY

"I think that the factual versus practicalreality has been neglected in many ways," saysleading evolutionary biologist David S. Wilson ofBinghamton University, "Even massivelyfictitious beliefs can be adaptive as long as theymotivate behaviors that are adaptive in the realworld."

In his recently published book Darwin'sCathedral, Wilson resurrects the idea from

"Even massively fictitious beliefs can beadaptive as long as they motivate behaviorsthat are adaptive in the real world."

To attorney Eduardo Coll, president ofthe Puerto Rican Institute of Literature, "Theyincorporate everything into one big myth. This ishow they create monsters."

And for some reason, people don't seemto notice the discrepancies. Instead theChupacabras is a modern chimera. It's an alien-kangaroo-vampire-dinosaur-bat-demon. Perhapsa confirmation bias is molding people's belief, butMIT anthropologist Arthur Steinberg has adifferent idea: "I think there's something to thesemixed monsters, chimera-like creatures, part thispart that. They're like mixed-world creatures....Maybe they help make your place in the world,like mediators between this world and the next."Indeed, one of the few repeated descriptors of theChupacabras from recent interviews was, "I thinkit is a creature not of this world."

"But why these chimeric creatures?" asksSteinberg. "People have a need to move out of thepurely rational, empirical world. It's hard to getto the divine world . . . except through death.Perhaps this in-between world . . ." his voice trailsoff and returns, "if they are mediators betweenworlds, then you wouldn't have to test thesethings, you hunt them (and if you catch them yougain its powers). But proving or disproving isoutside the mindset of what it's all about."

anthropology that beliefs, no matter how far-fetched, can function as a motivating force foradaptive behaviors. The new spin Wilson puts onthe idea (first introduced by the anthropologistEmile Durkheim in 1912) is group selectiontheory-the idea that puzzling individualbehaviors such as altruism can be explained at thegroup level of natural selection.

When asked about belief in theChupacabras and its pseudoscientific siblings,Wilson says it's not a question of whether thebelief is true, rather, "the question is could thesebaffling or goofy beliefs, departing completelyfrom factual reason do good work for people?"

Rationality, according to the biologist, isnot the gold standard against which all otherforms of thought should be judged. Rather,adaptation is the gold standard against whichrationality must be judged, along with all otherforms of thought. "In our country," an olderwoman in Can6vanas says, "there are manylegends and histories without basis in reality."And according to Wilson, there are manysituations in which it can be adaptive to distortreality. For example, the people of Bali believe ina hierarchy of water gods that watches over eachfork in an aqueduct from the mountains to thesea, and though this belief may not represent"reality," the belief coordinates the efforts of

16

thousands of people to share scarce resources thatmight otherwise be squandered. Stories are atleast as important as logical arguments inorchestrating the behavior of groups, says Wilson,and supernatural agents and events can providebetter blueprints for action that "far surpassfactual accounts of the natural world in clarityand motivating power."

In fact, writes Wilson, there is no evidencethat reason ever replaces faith in modern cultures;America has become more faith-invested over thecourse of its history, not less, despite the influenceof science.

"The question is about this 'silly' end ofthe continuum," Wilson says, referring toGoatsuckers and their kin. "Could it be shearentertainment?"

THE TASTE FOR TABLOID

It was 1:30 in the afternoon last ChristmasEve when little Angel Oquendo found somethingthat would draw reporters to the tiny mountaintown of Jayuya, Puerto Rico.

Adelaida Oquendo, Angel's mother, wasbasting the Christmas pork roast when he shoutedfor her. "He called me saying, 'jMami, ven aquf!There's a dead mouse!' and I ignored him, but hekept calling, and I asked my husband to take overthe preparations while I went to take a look," shesaid. No sooner had she seen what her son found,than Adelaida Oquendo called for her husband.

There, between the supports of theirnewly built house, lay a small, dusty skeleton.

Six-year old Angel and his older brotherSixto thought it was a rat or a mouse. But their

parents knew it had to be something else-it wastoo big to be a rodent. They slipped a piece ofcardboard under it to bring it out into thesunlight.

"Upon seeing it, we wondered if it couldbe the Chupacabras," said Adelaida Oquendo. Ithad powerful-looking hind legs approximatelythe same length as the two-foot-long body. Thehind feet each ended with three claws, and itsupper limbs appeared to be missing. A fourteen-inch tail curled behind it. It had no traces of hair,fur, or feathers left on its well-preserved skin.The skull's closely-spaced eye-sockets andpointed fangs indicated a taste for meat.

Adelaida's husband insisted on callingthe paper the next morning-perhaps they wouldsend an expert. Either that or they will make uslook ridiculous, said his Ph.D-holding wife. ButAdelaida's concern was tempered by her beliefthat her father had lost eight chickens and a largerooster to the Chupacabras two months ago. Notto mention the three neighbors that had lost thirtychickens combined to the Goatsucker since lastOctober.

After a fuss of visits and calls from therespected El Nuevo Dia and National Geographic tothe Hispanic Journal of UFOology, one reporterlingered. Alex David of San Juan's Primera Horawanted to do his own investigation. He broughttwo biologists to the small town in the mountains.

"Look, it's not a cat; it's not a rat; it's not asquirrel," said one of the biologists uponexamining the skeleton. Conducting their ownresearch, the two biologists and the reporteragreed that the skeleton was most likely that of ajittia, a small carnivorous mammal native to the

The Jutia or the Chupacabras? The jutia is a rare carnivorous mammal native to the Caribbean. A few still inhabitCuba and Haiti, but they are thought to be extinct from Puerto Rico.

17

74

Caribbean but thought to be extinct from PuertoRico.

That same week, Puerto Rico's Channel 4announced that the alleged "Chupacabras"skeleton belonged to a cat, despite the fact that aforensic specialist never analyzed the remains."They were satisfied with that conclusion becausethey didn't want to go along with this [jutia]evidence," says David. "In television, they dealwith the "right-now"-they didn't want to dealwith an exhaustive investigation."

But by yielding to the cat claim withoutfurther study, says David, they were allowing the

believers in Sweetwater, believes in UFOs andalien abductions: "I'm not one of those purescientists who say, 'No, we are the only ones withthe truth and all that stuff is ludicrous." AndAlex David, the reporter confident that the"Chupacabras" is an ordinary animal, says, "thisdoesn't mean I don't think that there areinexplicable things in the world." In fact, says thereporter, "I had a strange encounter once . . ." andtells a story from childhood about meeting a wish-granting spirit.

Do we have a need for mystery?Debunking rarely fails to make the believer's face

"They don't want to solve the mystery,"says the reporter. "So keep it alive. Keepit a monster! 9

monster to slink back into the imagination. If theinfamous Goatsucker was the juttia all along, saysDavid, what would become of the myth? Whatwould happen to the creature that so manypeople have invested their time, money, andanimated emotions in? According to David, thepast "debunkings" of the Chupacabras as a dog oranother ordinary animal only increased itsnotoriety. But if the monster was found to be thejuttia, somehow the "Chupacabras" disappears.Suddenly the t-shirts and the toys are no longercool; the cartoons are not funny; the horror flicksand documentaries are no longer entertaining.

"They don't want to solve the mystery,"says the reporter. "So keep it alive. Keep it amonster!"

The world would be a more

interesting place, wrote Carl Sagan,if such mysteries lived-if UFOs

lurked in the deep waters off Bermuda, if deadpeople communicated with the living. It wouldbe fascinating, wrote Sagan, if adolescents couldmake phones rocket off their cradles just bythinking at them, or if supernatural creaturesreally do slip between the shadows. "People likethe feeling of the supernatural," says a woman inSan Juan, waiting for the Saint Sebastian paradewith her family. Another woman across thestreet, gray-haired and soft-spoken, says, "Peoplelike to believe things that aren't real-they like touse their imaginations and believe."

Even Ron Magill, the skeptical Miamizoologist who rolled his eyes at the Chupacabras

18

droop in disappointment, whether the debunkedis fairies, dragons, or the Bermuda Triangle.Perhaps such disappointment hatches from thesame place as our collective disgust of sciencefiguring out what makes us laugh or love. Somewould say that to dissect and predict theexperience is to ruin it, that the only way to have aprofound experience, writes Joseph Campbell, is"to have a profound sense of the mystery."Maybe we don't want everything explained.

Perhaps the real surprise ofChupacabramania is that it isn't. As thecryptozoologist Loren Coleman himself pointsout, the explosion of the internet andsensationalist reporting contributed to the spreadof the phenomenon, but the media was only

A taxonomist's model of a "realChupacabras

responding to what readers and listeners liked tohear. Who doesn't enjoy headlines like theToronto Star's "Mexicans Go Batty When VampireGets Their Goats?" Who doesn't crack a smilereading the front of last February's Weekly WorldNews, "Farmers Grow Monster Crops With SpaceAlien Poop!" and "Human Race De-volving BackInto Monkeys?"

If MIT anthropologist Arthur Steinbergwas right, that "people have a need to move outof the purely rational, empirical world," do weconcoct Chupacabras to entertain and transfix ourimaginations? Do we all have a taste for tabloid?Behind our wide-eyed intrigue and chuckles atthe Chupacabras stories, Professor Juan Flores ofHunter College says, "You're supposed to beafraid [of the Chupacabras], but you're secretlyrooting for it, hoping it evades the clutches ofreality."

And maybe we are. Maybe we are allhoping, wishing, and rooting for the weird andthe extraordinary, the bizarre and theinexplicable. Last October, a caller to NPR'sScience Friday asked guest Jane Goodall about herbelief in Bigfoot. The primatologist answered,"Well, I'm a romantic, so I always wanted them toexist. . . . Of course, the big, big criticism of all thisis, 'Where is the body?' You know, 'why isn'tthere a body?' I can't answer that, and maybethey don't exist, but I want them to."

El Yunque rainforest. An artist's concept of aChupacabras family.

19

A Note on the Writing

My first and primary sources for this work were the many varied voices of the Puerto Ricanpeople. The stories they told me in interviews, casual conversation, and during a survey I conductedgave me an initial picture of the Chupacabras phenomenon. From the tales of mad scientists and a Mocavampire to the Chupacabras's mischief on the friend-of-friend's farm, I began to see what thephenomenon was, where it was going, and how it got to be here in the first place. I conducted seventy-three tape-recorded interviews for this work, fifty of them within an anonymous survey. Without thesestories, I would not have been able to get a glimpse of the space the Chupacabras inhabited in theimaginations of millions.

This knowledge allowed me to use my second major source with more efficiency: the archives ofPuerto Rico's major daily newspapers, El Nuevo Dia, El Vocero, and the Primera Hora. The daily coverageof Goatsucker "attacks" in the then tabloid El Vocero and the more thoughtful responses to thephenomenon in El Nuevo Dfa enabled me to see not only the range of attitudes towards the Chupacabras,but also its level of cultural impact, a key element necessary to learn why people believe. I was alsoguided in my research by the personal stories told to me by reporters Tom~s de Jesds Mangual of ElVocero, Alex David of the Primera Hora, and Ruth Merino of the Dia.

Lexis-Nexis was also an important resource for this work, enabling me to obtain dozens ofarticles on the Puerto Rican predator in major newspapers worldwide. Another indispensable source wasthe web, which was especially rich in Chupacabras websites, homepages, images, and eyewitness stories.Tracking all of these and noting their patterns on paper allowed me to map a timeline and see just howglobal the Goatsucker came to be, not to mention how the media can be a powerful, often unintended,contagion for such a phenomenon.

One major decision I had to make was how broad or deep I wanted to take this work. TheChupacabras phenomenon, as mentioned in the thesis, spanned several countries and cultures. Would Isearch the Chilean and Mexican news and television archives? Which controversies over the "evidence"would I cover, and which would I not? For example, Nicaragua, Mexico, and Chile had extensivescientific and pseudoscientific debates running in the major news media between 1996 and 2002-would Idelve into these? What about the several dozen books, films, and paraphernalia emerging from thesenations all over the Spanish-speaking world? Would I need to gather and reference these? A coupleweeks into field work, I decided for three reasons to limit my research mostly to Puerto Rican sources:

1) The Chupacabras phenomenon began on that island;2) I was physically located on the island for research, giving me a much richer and complete

environment to write from and about;3) Doing so tethered the writing to a specific place in time and space, rather than letting it float

blandly in abstraction.Another major decision that guided my writing was the decision to avoid discussion of other

paranormal beliefs outside the Chupacabras. While it may seem counterintuitive, I hoped to betteraddress why people believe in UFOs, Bigfoot, and channeling (for example) by more closely adhering tothe Chupacabras narrative. Like focusing a traditional camera, I hoped that by shrinking the aperture onthe subjecf, more of the background would come into focus. For the same reason, I avoided the "alienangle" on the Chupacabras. Many books and psuedoscientific "theories" have been published claimingthat the Goatsucker is a part of a whole unseen alien invasion or experiment. But because my thesis wasabout why people believe and not what people believe, I felt the need to limit the amount of descriptionfor the sake of ideas.

The research and writing of this work was like being the bruised target of worm-filled canslabeled Religion, Superstition, Magic, and Myth. I quickly learned that I couldn't cover everything, andwith the help of my advisors, I realized just how few ten thousand words really is. Even so, I hope thatthis thesis will someday contribute to a book.

A.E.S.June 9 th 2003

20

Selected Bibliography

Campbell, Joseph & Bill Moyers. (1988). The power of myth. New York: Doubleday.

Coleman, Loren. (1999). Cryptozoology A to Z: The encyclopedia of Loch Monsters, Sasquatch, Chupacabras,and other authentic mysteries of nature. New York: Simon & Schuster.

Coleman, Loren. (2002). Mothman and other curious encounters. New York: Paraview Press.

Derby, Lauren. (2002). Vampiros del imperio, o por qu6 el Chupacabras acecha las Am ricas. In R.Salvatorre, (Ed.), Repensando el imperialismo: experiencia y cultura en Amfrica, Africa, y Asia. Buenos Aires:Editorial Temas.

Frazer, James G. (1935). The scapegoat. The golden bough; a study in magic and religion. (Vol. X-XI). NewYork: Macmillan.

Piattelli-Palmarini, Massimo. (1994). Inevitable illusions: how mistakes of reason rule our minds. New York:Wiley.

Redacci6n Noticisa sc. (1996). La verdadera historia del Chupacabras. San Juan, Puerto Rico: Editorial Libra,S.A. de C.V.

Shermer, Michael. (2002). Why people believe weird things: pseudoscience, superstition, and other confusions ofour time. New York: H. Holt.

Strenski, Ivan. (1987). Four theories of myth in twentieth-century history: Cassirer, Eliade, LUvi-Strauss, andMalinowski. Iowa City: Iowa UP.

Sagan, Carl. (1996). The Demon-haunted world: science as a candle in the dark. New York: Ballantine Books.

Schott, Bob. (Director). (2001). Adventures Beyond: Chupacabra. [DVD]. Chatsworth, California:Woodhaven Entertainment.

Tellez, Arturo. Chupacabras. (1996). Mexico City: Editorial Libra, S.A. de C.V.

Vyse, Stuart A. (1997). Believing in magic: the psychology of superstition. New York: Oxford UniversityPress.

Wilson, David S. (2002). Darwin's cathedral. Chicago: University of Chicago UP.

Wynn, Charles M. and Arthur W. Wiggins. (2001). Quantum leaps in the wrong direction: where real scienceends-and pseudoscience begins. Washington, D.C.: Joseph Henry Press.

Selected Websites:

"El Chupacabra Online"http://www.elchupacabra.com/

HowStuffWorks: "How Chupacabras Work"http: / /science.howstuffworks.com/chupacabra.htm

About.com: "The Goatsucker"http://paranormal.about.com/cs/chupacabra/

I

21

About the Author

Anna Lee Strachan was born and raised in Tennessee. She graduated from Harvard University with anhonors degree in Cognitive Neuroscience in 2001. Following graduation, she worked as a science writerfor the NASA Astrobiology Institute. In the fall of 2002, she joined MIT's new Graduate Program inScience Writing. She is currently an intern for National Public Radio's Talk of the Nation: Science Friday.Anna Lee loves running, drawing, cooking, and making people laugh. Her family recently moved to SanJuan, Puerto Rico, where her mother is originally from. They see Chupacabras all the time. Usually inthe form of hungry little brothers.

22

-7