Folklore

Internet’s First Cryptid: Chupacabras

Let us celebrate the 11th anniversary of the first cryptid of the Internet Age: Chupacabras. In August and September 1995, the chupacabras (Spanish for "goatsucker" – the singular and plural forms) seemed to erupt on the cryptozoological landscape. I’m not talking about the mangy dogs that have been mistaken for Chupacabras in recent years. No, I mean the sightings – as if out-of-the-blue – of large, upright, goat-sucking, spiked creatures that were seen in Puerto Rico in increasing numbers a mere eleven years ago. Researchers such as Scott Corrales and Jorge Martin have since backtracked the critters through Indian lore [...]

Sun Journal: Creature Looks Like A Canine

Click on image for full-size version Photograph by Michelle O’Donnell. Used by permission. The body of the dead animal found in Turner, Maine, according to DNA tests conducted on behalf of and paid for by the Lewiston newspaper, the Sun Journal, belonged to a member of the genus Canis, not a Tasmanian devil, not a rodent, not a Chupacabras, not a hyena, not a werewolf, not an Eastern Bigfoot, and/or not from any wild species speculations that were heard over the last ten days. Nevertheless, it is important to understand, the real Mystery Beast is still out there! Readers of [...]

New Giant Peccary

I’ve always liked the idea that a man named Ralph Wetzel discovered one of the newest large mammal species, the Chacoan peccary, quite recently. In Cryptozoology A to Z, I wrote: This “rangy big pig,” as University of Connecticut biology professor Ralph M. Wetzel characterized his 1974 discovery, was a big surprise – a Pleistocene Epoch survivor of a species thought to have died out 10,000 years ago. The Chacoan peccary, a relative of pigs, boars, and warthogs, weighed in at more than 100 pounds, the largest and most unusual of the three known peccaries. Wetzel found it in the [...]

Monkey Man Is Back?

“‘Monkey man’ causes stir” announces the headline, and one might think that another possible cryptozoological wonder (at least, the more cryptid one above) was out and about again in India. But not so fast. The media report from June 21, 2006, reveals another kind of “Monkey Man,” as it turns out, unfortunately named as such. Thousands of people are flocking to an impoverished Indian village in eastern West Bengal state to worship a man they believe possesses divine powers because he climbs up trees in seconds, gobbles up bananas and has a “tail”. Devotees say 27-year-old villager Chandre Oraon is [...]

Flashback: Houston Bat Man

Fifty-three years ago on this date in 1953, a mysterious encounter occurred at 118 East Third Street, Houston, Texas. The sighting will forever be characterized as the “Houston Bat Man.” Is it more bat or man? Even thoughts of Mothman flitter about, as the thing was first compared with a moth. The story has been mixed up in the lore of “winged weirdies” and, probably inappropriately, within the David Grabias 2002 documentary, In Search of the Mothman. * * * According to witness testimony, at 2:30 a.m. on June 18, 1953, Mrs. Hilda Walker, Judy Meyers and Howard Phillips were [...]

Storsie To Resurface

The forthcoming Storsjoyran Great Lake Festival on July 27-29, 2006, will have the local “president” Ewert Ljusberg of Jämtland making his annual speech to the region, again marked by a new imaginative and spectacular entrance. According to John Gammon’s June 17, 2006, Pollstar article, the idea is to top last year’s stunt: In 1996 [Ewert Ljusberg] rode in on a seven-ton elephant, which was making a guest appearance while en route from a Spanish to a Swedish circus, but he topped that in ’99, when he tried to float down in a huge air balloon. He missed the main 20,000-capacity [...]