March 15, 2025 • 24 mins
A predator emerged in Puerto Rico that defied scientific explanation, leaving hundreds of bloodless bodies in its wake. El Chupacabra's surgical precision and unexplained abilities launched a wave of terror across two continents. Real evidence. Real bodies. Real questions that still haunt us.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:16):
Strange mysteries, unexplained phenomena.
And the shadows in between.
This is The InBetween Official Podcastwith your host,
Carol Ann!
March 11th, 1995, eight
sheep lay dead on a quiet PuertoRican farm.
(00:38):
No savage wounds, no signs of struggle.
Just small, precise puncturemarks on each neck
and bodies completely drained of blood.
This wasn't just another predator attack.
This was the beginningof a wave of mysterious deaths
that would spread across two continents,baffle scientists and give birth
to one of the most terrifying cryptidsin modern history.
(01:01):
Welcome to The InBetween.
I'm Carol Ann, and today we're enteringthe hunting grounds of El Chupacabra.
If you ask most people about Cryptids,
they'll probably mention Bigfootlurking in the Pacific Northwest.
Or Nessie swimming in her Scottish loch.
But there's one creature that's different.
(01:23):
One that didn't slowly emergefrom centuries of folklore
or ancient tribal legends.
This one burst onto the scenein our lifetime,
leaving behindnot just stories, but bodies.
Real physical evidencethat something was hunting in the night.
Most monster storiesfollow a pattern, a glimpse in the woods,
(01:45):
shadow in the water,maybe some questionable footprints.
But El Chupacabra flipped the script.
It announced itself with a body count.
And not just in some remote wilderness.
These attacks happened in people'sbackyards, in their barns,
right outside their bedroom windows.
What makes this caseso fascinating is how quick it spread.
(02:08):
Not the usual decades or centuries.
In less than a year,this thing went from a local Puerto
Rican oddityto an international phenomenon.
Farmers were finding bloodlessanimal corpses from Miami to Mexico City.
And unlike most cryptids caseswhere, descriptions vary wildly.
The witnesses all describedthe same distinctive features
(02:31):
- the spikes along its back,those penetrating red eyes,
the way it moved on two legs,like some kind of demonic kangaroo.
And the Chupacabra didn't just crossgeographical boundaries.
It started showing up in scientificjournals.
Veterinarians were documenting woundsthey couldn't explain.
Wildlife experts were finding tracksthat didn't match any known predator.
(02:55):
And for the first time in cryptid history,we had DNA evidence.
Now, what that DNA told us.
Well, that's where the storytakes a sharp turn into territory
that even hardened skepticsfind hard to dismiss.
So get comfortablebecause we're about to deep dive
into a mystery that's still unfolding.
(03:16):
And unlike those age old legendsof Bigfoot or the Jersey Devil,
this one comes with somethingthose stories never had.
Proof.
In early 1995, Puerto Ricowas about to become ground zero
for one of the most compellingcryptid phenomena of the modern age.
But the story of blood-drained livestockdidn't start there.
(03:37):
Not even close. Going back to the 1970s.
Farmers across America'sheartland were finding their cattle
mutilated in ways that defied explanation.
Kansas. Nebraska. Iowa.
Colorado. Idaho.
Reports kept streaming in of animalsfound with organs
surgically removed, but their bodiescompletely drained of blood.
(03:58):
But those cases would pale in comparisonto what was coming.
Let's get back to Puerto Rico.
March 1995, eight sheepfound dead on a single farm.
No signs of a struggle.
Just small, precise puncturewounds and bodies that looked deflated.
Within months, the body count would climbinto the hundreds.
(04:21):
Farmers were finding everything fromchickens to cattle drained completely dry,
like someone had hooked them upto some kind of vampiric vacuum cleaner.
The real game changer came in Septemberof that year.
Madelyn Tolentino, a housewifeand novelist, was looking at her window
when she saw something that would definethe Chupacabra image for decades to come.
(04:47):
According to her, thiswasn't some mangy coyote or wild dog,
which she described was straightout of a sci fi nightmare.
A bipedal creature standing 3 to 4 foottall with huge red eyes that wrap toward
its temples, spikes running down its back
and skin that looked almost alien.
(05:07):
Now, skepticslove to point out that Tolentino
had recently seen the movie Speciesbefore her sighting.
And, yeah,there are some similarities between
her descriptionand the film's alien design.
But here's the thing.
She wasn't describing somethingshe saw in the dark at 100 yards.
This thing walked right past her windowand down her street in broad daylight.
(05:32):
The media couldn't get enough of it.
UFO researcherGeorge Martin worked with Tolentino
to create that now iconic sketch.
The one that would spreadlike wildfire across the early Internet
and turn El Chupacabrainto a global sensation.
But what makes this case differentfrom your typical scripted story
(05:52):
is what happened next.
Instead of just fading into urbanlegend territory, the attacks spread.
Miami, Mexico City, Chile,
everywhere where the legend traveled,bloodless bodies followed.
We're not talking abouta handful of cases.
By the end of 1995,over a thousand animals had been killed
(06:13):
in Puerto Rico alone.
Police were escorting kids to school.
Farmers were sleeping in their barnswith loaded shotguns.
The governor had to make a publicstatement trying to calm the panic.
But perhaps the strangest partof this whole origin story
is how consistent the early descriptionswere.
Usually with Cryptids sightings,everyone sees something different.
(06:36):
But in those first months before the mediacircus really took hold,
witnesses from different partsof the island who had no contact
with each other were describingthe same distinctive features,
those red eyes, the spikes, the weird wayit moved on two legs.
Some say it was mass hysteria.
(06:57):
Others point to secret governmentexperiments gone wrong.
But one thing's for sure Whatever started
in Puerto Ricothat spring didn't stay there.
And unlike most monster storiesthat get handed down through generations,
this one was born in our lifetime,
documented in real time,and left behind a trail
(07:19):
of very real bodiesthat science still struggles to explain.
Let's look at what happenedafter those first sheep were found.
Puerto Ricoin 1995 was about to experience
something that would make The X-Fileslook tame.
Within weeks of the initial attacks,the death toll started climbing, fast.
(07:41):
We’re not talking about randompredator attacks here.
These killings followed a patternso precise that it made investigators
skin crawl.
First there was the surgical precision.
Every single victimhad the same distinctive marks
- two clean puncture wounds,usually on the neck.
No torn flesh.
No signs of a struggle.
(08:01):
Just those haunting little holes.
Like someone had used a demonic juicebox straw.
The bodies weren't eaten.
Not even a nibble.
They were just empty,completely drained of blood.
And I mean completely.
When veterinarians performed necropsies,which is just an autopsy on an animal,
(08:22):
they find somethingthat defied explanation.
The animal's circulatory systemwere bone dry,
like something had literally vacuumed outevery last drop.
By May of that year, Farmers were losing
sleep and livestock at an alarming rate.
Goats, chickens, rabbitsand even dogs weren't safe.
(08:44):
The killings would happenin the dead of night.
Silent as a shadow.
The only warning?
The eerie silence of farm animalsthat would normally raise hell
if a predator was nearby.
Local authorities tried to play itcool at first Yeah, right.
That lasted about as long as it tookfor the body count to hit triple digits.
(09:05):
Police startedgetting calls every single night.
Some nights they'd find three or four,even five farms hit in the same area.
Always the same story.
Puncture wounds.
No blood. No signs of struggle.
They even went so far as to organizesearch teams led by local police,
armed with everything from shotgunsto infrared cameras.
(09:29):
The mayor of Canóvanas, José “Chemo”
Soto, even led some of these expeditionshimself.
Picture that!
An elected officialtrading his suit for camo
gear to hunt a blood drinking monster.
But no matterhow many people were looking, no matter
how much firepower they had,they always seemed to be one step behind.
(09:51):
They'd hear about an attack,rush to the scene and find nothing
but those telltale puncturewounds and drained corpses.
It's like this thing was taunting them.
The panic spread faster than the attacks.
Parents stopped letting their kidsplay outside after dark.
Some people even hung crossesover their animals pens
calling for any kind of protectionthey could get.
(10:14):
The experts were stumped.
Wildlife officials insistedit had to be some kind of known predator.
But when pressed to explainhow a normal animal could
drain bodies completely of bloodwithout spilling a drop
or how it could kill multiple animalsin different locations on the same night,
well, let's just say their theoriesstarted sounding
(10:36):
as far fetched as the monster stories.
By the time August rolled around,the situation had gotten so bad
that the Puerto Rican government couldn'tignore it anymore.
The Department of Agriculturelaunched an official investigation.
Unfortunately, their official report
raised more questions than it answered.
(10:57):
They confirmed the unusual natureof the wounds and the complete blood loss,
but couldn't provide any explanationthat made sense.
The media coverage exploded.
Local newspapers started running dailyChupacabra watch sections.
TV crews from the U.S.
mainland flew in.
Even international news outletspicked up the story.
(11:19):
And with each new report, each new theory,
each new sighting, the fear grew.
But, let's talk evidence.
Not stories, not legends.
Cold hard factsthat scientists and investigators
have documented over the years.
Because while most cryptidsleave us nothing but blurry photos
and questionable footprints,Al Chupacabra left bodies.
(11:44):
Lots of them.
When veterinarians first startedexamining these carcasses,
they noticed something bizarre.
The puncture wounds weren't random.
They were precise, almost surgical.
Two clean holes,usually on the neck, positioned
directly over major blood vessels.
No tearing. No signs of struggle.
(12:05):
Just those perfect little incisionsthat would make a phlebotomist jealous.
Normal predator attacks are messy.
There's blood spatter, signsof a struggle, partially eaten remains.
But these kills completely clean.
And I mean completely.
When they performed necropsies,they found something that sent chills
(12:26):
down their spines.
The animal's entirecirculatory systems were empty.
Not just drained, but vacuum sealed empty.
Dr. Carlos Lopez, a veterinary pathologist
who examined several victimsin Puerto Rico, put it this way:
“In my 20 years of practice,I've never seen anything like this.
(12:49):
Even if you were to deliberately drainan animal's
blood, you'd never get this complete.
There's always residualblood in the tissues.
But these.
These were like they'd been processedthrough some kind of machine.”
The tracks found at attack sitesdidn't make any sense either.
When they could find prints at all,they showed something walking on two legs
(13:12):
with a stride patternthat didn't match any known predator.
A few plaster casts that were made showedfeet with strange web like patterns.
Not quite reptilian, not quite mammalian.
In 2007, researchersfinally got what they thought was a break.
A rancher in Texas shotwhat he claimed was a juvenile Chupacabra.
(13:34):
The body was sent to three different labsfor DNA testing.
The results?
Well, that's where this story takesan even stranger turn.
The first lab said it was a coyotewith an extreme case of mange.
Case closed, right? Nope.
The second lab found genetic markersthey couldn't identify.
And the third lab?
(13:55):
They refused to release their findingsat all.
When pressed, all they would saywas, “Further testing is needed.”
Now I know what the skeptics say.
This has to be some kind of knownpredator.
Coyotes with mange, feral dogs,maybe even big cats.
Here's the problem with that theory.
None of those animals can physically dowhat the Chupacabra does.
(14:20):
A wolf or a mountain lion.
They're going to leave trauma.
They're going to spill blood.
They're going to eat their prey.
According to wildlife biologist Dr.
Sarah Martinez, “No knownpredator kills this way.
Even vampire bats,which actually do feed on
blood, onlytake a small amount from living animals.
(14:42):
They don't.
They can't completely drain their prey.
So it's not physically possiblewith any feeding method we know of.”
And speaking of those Texas specimens,everyone likes to write off
as mangy coyote,let's look at the numbers.
The averageSouthern coyote weighs about 30 pounds.
But these creatures, multiple specimens,
(15:04):
have been weighed at over 120 pounds.
That's four timesthe size of a normal coyote.
Mange doesn't do that.
The really interesting evidence comesfrom the blood analysis of the victims.
In normal predator kills,you find clotting, tissue damage,
signs of a struggle.
But in suspected Chupacabra attacks,the remaining blood
(15:27):
cells show signs of somethingalmost like digestion.
Something was breaking downthe blood at a cellular level
before it was removed from the body.
And then there's the timing.
These attacks happen fast.
We're talking minutes, not hours.
In one documented case in Mexico,a farmer heard his goats making noise.
(15:49):
By the time he got his bootson, grabbed his rifle,
maybe 3 minutes total,eight animals were already dead.
No predator, not even a wholepack of wolves, can kill that efficiently.
Perhaps the most compellingpiece of evidence isn't what they found.
It's what they didn't find.
(16:09):
In thousands of suspected attacks
across two decades in multiple countries,
they've never found a single dropof spilled blood.
Not one.
So what are we dealing with here?
The science saysit can't beat a known predator.
The DNA tests are inconclusive at best.
(16:30):
And the physical evidence pointsto something
that kills in a waythat defies our understanding of biology.
Maybe that's why the scientific communityhas largely stopped trying to explain it.
Because sometimes the evidence doesn'tlead us to answers.
It just leads us to bigger,scarier questions.
Now whatever started in Puerto Rico didn'tstay there.
(16:53):
By 1996, El Chupacabrahad become a continental nightmare.
And as it spread, it started to change.
Miami, Florida was ground zerofor the mainland invasion.
Police responded to a scene that lookedlike something out of a horror movie.
69 animals scattered across a single yard.
(17:14):
Goats, chickens, geese, ducks.
All with those signature puncture wounds.
All completely drained of blood.
The beast had crossed the Caribbean.
But it wasn't done traveling.
Reports started pouring in from Mexico.
Each one more terrifying than the last.
In the state of Sinaloa, entirecommunities stopped sleeping at night.
(17:37):
Parents kept their kids indoors.
Armed patrols roamed the streetsand still the bodies kept piling up.
In Puebla,30 sheep dead in a single night.
The locals formed hunting parties.
We're talkinghundreds of people armed with machetes,
shotguns,anything they could get their hands on.
(17:58):
But they never caught it.
They just kept finding its victims.
As El Chupacabra moved south,the descriptions started changing.
In Brazil, witnessesweren't seeing the spiky
back aliencreature from Puerto Rico anymore.
They were describing somethingmore primal.
A beast with glowing red eyesand a rumbling growl
(18:20):
that made their blood run cold.
Chile got hit particularly hard.
One farmerlost 35 sheep in a single night.
But when authorities tried to blame iton wild dogs, the locals
weren't buying it,because dogs don't drain bodies dry.
And they definitely don't leavethose surgically precise puncture wounds.
(18:42):
As the terror spread, each region
seemed to add its own flavorto the legend.
In Mexico,they said it could hypnotize its prey.
That's why nobody ever heard the animalscry out during attacks In Brazil,
they swore it had a gelatinous body
that could squeeze through tiny spaces.
(19:03):
And in Chile, they started connecting itto UFO activity.
Speaking of which, let me tell youabout the Atacama Incident.
The Chilean militaryspent a suspicious amount of time
searching that desert, supposedlylooking for something.
They even found these weird eggsthat didn't match any known species.
(19:25):
The government tried to keep it quiet,but word got out.
Suddenly, everyone was asking,what exactly are they looking for
out there?
Some people started wonderingif this wasn't just one creature anymore.
Maybe we're dealing with a whole species.
Something that has been hidingin the shadows all along.
(19:45):
Only now making itself known.
After all, how could a single animalbe in so many places at once?
The scientific communitytried to make sense of it all.
They pointed to knownpredators, natural causes, mass hysteria.
But they couldn't explainwhy all these different countries,
thousands of miles apart,were reporting the same exact thing.
(20:09):
Those puncture wounds, the complete bloodloss,
the eerie silence of the kills.
By the early 2000s, Texasbecame a hotspot with ranchers reporting
bizarre creatures that look like crossesbetween wolves and kangaroos.
These weren't just stories anymore.
They were bringing in bodies,
(20:32):
taking pictures, demanding answers.
That's what makes this whole thingso unsettling.
Most legends get weakeras they spread, like a game of telephone.
But El Chupacabra left a trail
of physical evidenceacross two continents.
Real bodies.
Real wounds.
(20:52):
Real questionsthat nobody seems able to answer.
So maybe the real question isn'thow far this thing spread.
Maybe we should be asking why it decidedto come out of hiding in the first place.
And more importantly,what's it going to do next?
So where does El Chupacabra stand today?
Well, like any good monster story,it refuses to die.
(21:16):
But the modern chapter of this talemight be the strangest one yet.
These days, most Chupacabra sightingslook pretty different
from that spiky alien creatureMadelyn Tolentino described back in ‘95.
Instead of the scifi nightmare with red eyes and spines,
people are spottingsomething that looks more, more dog like.
(21:37):
But decidedly not your average stray.
Here's what makes the modern Chupacabraso fascinating, though.
We've got better technology than ever.
Everyone's walking around with a highdefinition camera in their pockets.
We've got thermal imaging, motionsensors, trail cams.
Yet somehow this thing keeps slippingthrough our digital nets.
(21:59):
The scientific community has pretty muchsettled on their explanation.
Some misidentified animals, mass hysteria
and good old fashioned mythmaking.
They can't explain those early casesin Puerto Rico.
You know the ones with the bloodlessbodies and those surgically precise
puncture wounds.
And that's what keeps this legend alive.
(22:21):
Because while Bigfoot and Nessieare all about what might be out there,
well, Chupacabra left us evidence,
real bodies, real wounds,
real questionsthat still don't have good answers.
Maybe that'swhy nearly 30 years later, farmers
in Latin America are still boarding uptheir barns at night.
(22:43):
Why rural communities still trade storiesabout red eyes in the darkness.
Why every few months,somewhere in the Americas,
someone finds another strange corpseand whispers that name...
El Chupacabra!
We might have better camerasand fancier tests these days,
but we still can't explain everythingthat goes bump in the night.
(23:06):
Sometimes the more technologywe throw at a mystery, the deeper it gets.
So the next time you hear somethingstrange outside your window
or your dogs start barking at shadows,just remember.
El Chupacabra got its start in somebody'sbackyard.
Who knows?
Maybe it's still out there, still hunting,
(23:28):
still waiting to remind usthat some legends
don't just live in old books.
They leave bodies.
So what do we make of this
blood drinking beast of Puerto Rico?
A monster? Mutant?
Or just another storyto keep farmers up at night?
(23:50):
I don't know about you, but I'm doublechecking my chicken coop locks.
You know, just in case.
Special note on this episode,
there was so much to coverwith just the history of the beast itself,
that we didn't have timeto include any real encounters.
But do not lament.
We will have another episodevery soon of nothing
but El Chupacabra encounter stories.
(24:14):
If you're ready for another diveinto the strange
and mysterious, click right here.
Trust me, you're definitelynot going to want to miss this one.
Be careful out there and I will see youhere again on The InBetween.
Thanks for tuning into The InBetween Podcast.
(24:36):
Enjoy the full visual experiencewith me over on YouTube.
Just search for @TheInBetweentales.
I'm Carol Ann,and until next time, be careful
out there.
Strange mysteries, unexplained phenomena.
And the shadows in between.
This is The InBetween Official Podcastwith your host,
Carol Ann!
March 11th, 1995, eight
sheep lay dead on a quiet PuertoRican farm.
(00:38):
No savage wounds, no signs of struggle.
Just small, precise puncturemarks on each neck
and bodies completely drained of blood.
This wasn't just another predator attack.
This was the beginningof a wave of mysterious deaths
that would spread across two continents,baffle scientists and give birth
to one of the most terrifying cryptidsin modern history.
(01:01):
Welcome to The InBetween.
I'm Carol Ann, and today we're enteringthe hunting grounds of El Chupacabra.
If you ask most people about Cryptids,
they'll probably mention Bigfootlurking in the Pacific Northwest.
Or Nessie swimming in her Scottish loch.
But there's one creature that's different.
(01:23):
One that didn't slowly emergefrom centuries of folklore
or ancient tribal legends.
This one burst onto the scenein our lifetime,
leaving behindnot just stories, but bodies.
Real physical evidencethat something was hunting in the night.
Most monster storiesfollow a pattern, a glimpse in the woods,
(01:45):
shadow in the water,maybe some questionable footprints.
But El Chupacabra flipped the script.
It announced itself with a body count.
And not just in some remote wilderness.
These attacks happened in people'sbackyards, in their barns,
right outside their bedroom windows.
What makes this caseso fascinating is how quick it spread.
(02:08):
Not the usual decades or centuries.
In less than a year,this thing went from a local Puerto
Rican oddityto an international phenomenon.
Farmers were finding bloodlessanimal corpses from Miami to Mexico City.
And unlike most cryptids caseswhere, descriptions vary wildly.
The witnesses all describedthe same distinctive features
(02:31):
- the spikes along its back,those penetrating red eyes,
the way it moved on two legs,like some kind of demonic kangaroo.
And the Chupacabra didn't just crossgeographical boundaries.
It started showing up in scientificjournals.
Veterinarians were documenting woundsthey couldn't explain.
Wildlife experts were finding tracksthat didn't match any known predator.
(02:55):
And for the first time in cryptid history,we had DNA evidence.
Now, what that DNA told us.
Well, that's where the storytakes a sharp turn into territory
that even hardened skepticsfind hard to dismiss.
So get comfortablebecause we're about to deep dive
into a mystery that's still unfolding.
(03:16):
And unlike those age old legendsof Bigfoot or the Jersey Devil,
this one comes with somethingthose stories never had.
Proof.
In early 1995, Puerto Ricowas about to become ground zero
for one of the most compellingcryptid phenomena of the modern age.
But the story of blood-drained livestockdidn't start there.
(03:37):
Not even close. Going back to the 1970s.
Farmers across America'sheartland were finding their cattle
mutilated in ways that defied explanation.
Kansas. Nebraska. Iowa.
Colorado. Idaho.
Reports kept streaming in of animalsfound with organs
surgically removed, but their bodiescompletely drained of blood.
(03:58):
But those cases would pale in comparisonto what was coming.
Let's get back to Puerto Rico.
March 1995, eight sheepfound dead on a single farm.
No signs of a struggle.
Just small, precise puncturewounds and bodies that looked deflated.
Within months, the body count would climbinto the hundreds.
(04:21):
Farmers were finding everything fromchickens to cattle drained completely dry,
like someone had hooked them upto some kind of vampiric vacuum cleaner.
The real game changer came in Septemberof that year.
Madelyn Tolentino, a housewifeand novelist, was looking at her window
when she saw something that would definethe Chupacabra image for decades to come.
(04:47):
According to her, thiswasn't some mangy coyote or wild dog,
which she described was straightout of a sci fi nightmare.
A bipedal creature standing 3 to 4 foottall with huge red eyes that wrap toward
its temples, spikes running down its back
and skin that looked almost alien.
(05:07):
Now, skepticslove to point out that Tolentino
had recently seen the movie Speciesbefore her sighting.
And, yeah,there are some similarities between
her descriptionand the film's alien design.
But here's the thing.
She wasn't describing somethingshe saw in the dark at 100 yards.
This thing walked right past her windowand down her street in broad daylight.
(05:32):
The media couldn't get enough of it.
UFO researcherGeorge Martin worked with Tolentino
to create that now iconic sketch.
The one that would spreadlike wildfire across the early Internet
and turn El Chupacabrainto a global sensation.
But what makes this case differentfrom your typical scripted story
(05:52):
is what happened next.
Instead of just fading into urbanlegend territory, the attacks spread.
Miami, Mexico City, Chile,
everywhere where the legend traveled,bloodless bodies followed.
We're not talking abouta handful of cases.
By the end of 1995,over a thousand animals had been killed
(06:13):
in Puerto Rico alone.
Police were escorting kids to school.
Farmers were sleeping in their barnswith loaded shotguns.
The governor had to make a publicstatement trying to calm the panic.
But perhaps the strangest partof this whole origin story
is how consistent the early descriptionswere.
Usually with Cryptids sightings,everyone sees something different.
(06:36):
But in those first months before the mediacircus really took hold,
witnesses from different partsof the island who had no contact
with each other were describingthe same distinctive features,
those red eyes, the spikes, the weird wayit moved on two legs.
Some say it was mass hysteria.
(06:57):
Others point to secret governmentexperiments gone wrong.
But one thing's for sure Whatever started
in Puerto Ricothat spring didn't stay there.
And unlike most monster storiesthat get handed down through generations,
this one was born in our lifetime,
documented in real time,and left behind a trail
(07:19):
of very real bodiesthat science still struggles to explain.
Let's look at what happenedafter those first sheep were found.
Puerto Ricoin 1995 was about to experience
something that would make The X-Fileslook tame.
Within weeks of the initial attacks,the death toll started climbing, fast.
(07:41):
We’re not talking about randompredator attacks here.
These killings followed a patternso precise that it made investigators
skin crawl.
First there was the surgical precision.
Every single victimhad the same distinctive marks
- two clean puncture wounds,usually on the neck.
No torn flesh.
No signs of a struggle.
(08:01):
Just those haunting little holes.
Like someone had used a demonic juicebox straw.
The bodies weren't eaten.
Not even a nibble.
They were just empty,completely drained of blood.
And I mean completely.
When veterinarians performed necropsies,which is just an autopsy on an animal,
(08:22):
they find somethingthat defied explanation.
The animal's circulatory systemwere bone dry,
like something had literally vacuumed outevery last drop.
By May of that year, Farmers were losing
sleep and livestock at an alarming rate.
Goats, chickens, rabbitsand even dogs weren't safe.
(08:44):
The killings would happenin the dead of night.
Silent as a shadow.
The only warning?
The eerie silence of farm animalsthat would normally raise hell
if a predator was nearby.
Local authorities tried to play itcool at first Yeah, right.
That lasted about as long as it tookfor the body count to hit triple digits.
(09:05):
Police startedgetting calls every single night.
Some nights they'd find three or four,even five farms hit in the same area.
Always the same story.
Puncture wounds.
No blood. No signs of struggle.
They even went so far as to organizesearch teams led by local police,
armed with everything from shotgunsto infrared cameras.
(09:29):
The mayor of Canóvanas, José “Chemo”
Soto, even led some of these expeditionshimself.
Picture that!
An elected officialtrading his suit for camo
gear to hunt a blood drinking monster.
But no matterhow many people were looking, no matter
how much firepower they had,they always seemed to be one step behind.
(09:51):
They'd hear about an attack,rush to the scene and find nothing
but those telltale puncturewounds and drained corpses.
It's like this thing was taunting them.
The panic spread faster than the attacks.
Parents stopped letting their kidsplay outside after dark.
Some people even hung crossesover their animals pens
calling for any kind of protectionthey could get.
(10:14):
The experts were stumped.
Wildlife officials insistedit had to be some kind of known predator.
But when pressed to explainhow a normal animal could
drain bodies completely of bloodwithout spilling a drop
or how it could kill multiple animalsin different locations on the same night,
well, let's just say their theoriesstarted sounding
(10:36):
as far fetched as the monster stories.
By the time August rolled around,the situation had gotten so bad
that the Puerto Rican government couldn'tignore it anymore.
The Department of Agriculturelaunched an official investigation.
Unfortunately, their official report
raised more questions than it answered.
(10:57):
They confirmed the unusual natureof the wounds and the complete blood loss,
but couldn't provide any explanationthat made sense.
The media coverage exploded.
Local newspapers started running dailyChupacabra watch sections.
TV crews from the U.S.
mainland flew in.
Even international news outletspicked up the story.
(11:19):
And with each new report, each new theory,
each new sighting, the fear grew.
But, let's talk evidence.
Not stories, not legends.
Cold hard factsthat scientists and investigators
have documented over the years.
Because while most cryptidsleave us nothing but blurry photos
and questionable footprints,Al Chupacabra left bodies.
(11:44):
Lots of them.
When veterinarians first startedexamining these carcasses,
they noticed something bizarre.
The puncture wounds weren't random.
They were precise, almost surgical.
Two clean holes,usually on the neck, positioned
directly over major blood vessels.
No tearing. No signs of struggle.
(12:05):
Just those perfect little incisionsthat would make a phlebotomist jealous.
Normal predator attacks are messy.
There's blood spatter, signsof a struggle, partially eaten remains.
But these kills completely clean.
And I mean completely.
When they performed necropsies,they found something that sent chills
(12:26):
down their spines.
The animal's entirecirculatory systems were empty.
Not just drained, but vacuum sealed empty.
Dr. Carlos Lopez, a veterinary pathologist
who examined several victimsin Puerto Rico, put it this way:
“In my 20 years of practice,I've never seen anything like this.
(12:49):
Even if you were to deliberately drainan animal's
blood, you'd never get this complete.
There's always residualblood in the tissues.
But these.
These were like they'd been processedthrough some kind of machine.”
The tracks found at attack sitesdidn't make any sense either.
When they could find prints at all,they showed something walking on two legs
(13:12):
with a stride patternthat didn't match any known predator.
A few plaster casts that were made showedfeet with strange web like patterns.
Not quite reptilian, not quite mammalian.
In 2007, researchersfinally got what they thought was a break.
A rancher in Texas shotwhat he claimed was a juvenile Chupacabra.
(13:34):
The body was sent to three different labsfor DNA testing.
The results?
Well, that's where this story takesan even stranger turn.
The first lab said it was a coyotewith an extreme case of mange.
Case closed, right? Nope.
The second lab found genetic markersthey couldn't identify.
And the third lab?
(13:55):
They refused to release their findingsat all.
When pressed, all they would saywas, “Further testing is needed.”
Now I know what the skeptics say.
This has to be some kind of knownpredator.
Coyotes with mange, feral dogs,maybe even big cats.
Here's the problem with that theory.
None of those animals can physically dowhat the Chupacabra does.
(14:20):
A wolf or a mountain lion.
They're going to leave trauma.
They're going to spill blood.
They're going to eat their prey.
According to wildlife biologist Dr.
Sarah Martinez, “No knownpredator kills this way.
Even vampire bats,which actually do feed on
blood, onlytake a small amount from living animals.
(14:42):
They don't.
They can't completely drain their prey.
So it's not physically possiblewith any feeding method we know of.”
And speaking of those Texas specimens,everyone likes to write off
as mangy coyote,let's look at the numbers.
The averageSouthern coyote weighs about 30 pounds.
But these creatures, multiple specimens,
(15:04):
have been weighed at over 120 pounds.
That's four timesthe size of a normal coyote.
Mange doesn't do that.
The really interesting evidence comesfrom the blood analysis of the victims.
In normal predator kills,you find clotting, tissue damage,
signs of a struggle.
But in suspected Chupacabra attacks,the remaining blood
(15:27):
cells show signs of somethingalmost like digestion.
Something was breaking downthe blood at a cellular level
before it was removed from the body.
And then there's the timing.
These attacks happen fast.
We're talking minutes, not hours.
In one documented case in Mexico,a farmer heard his goats making noise.
(15:49):
By the time he got his bootson, grabbed his rifle,
maybe 3 minutes total,eight animals were already dead.
No predator, not even a wholepack of wolves, can kill that efficiently.
Perhaps the most compellingpiece of evidence isn't what they found.
It's what they didn't find.
(16:09):
In thousands of suspected attacks
across two decades in multiple countries,
they've never found a single dropof spilled blood.
Not one.
So what are we dealing with here?
The science saysit can't beat a known predator.
The DNA tests are inconclusive at best.
(16:30):
And the physical evidence pointsto something
that kills in a waythat defies our understanding of biology.
Maybe that's why the scientific communityhas largely stopped trying to explain it.
Because sometimes the evidence doesn'tlead us to answers.
It just leads us to bigger,scarier questions.
Now whatever started in Puerto Rico didn'tstay there.
(16:53):
By 1996, El Chupacabrahad become a continental nightmare.
And as it spread, it started to change.
Miami, Florida was ground zerofor the mainland invasion.
Police responded to a scene that lookedlike something out of a horror movie.
69 animals scattered across a single yard.
(17:14):
Goats, chickens, geese, ducks.
All with those signature puncture wounds.
All completely drained of blood.
The beast had crossed the Caribbean.
But it wasn't done traveling.
Reports started pouring in from Mexico.
Each one more terrifying than the last.
In the state of Sinaloa, entirecommunities stopped sleeping at night.
(17:37):
Parents kept their kids indoors.
Armed patrols roamed the streetsand still the bodies kept piling up.
In Puebla,30 sheep dead in a single night.
The locals formed hunting parties.
We're talkinghundreds of people armed with machetes,
shotguns,anything they could get their hands on.
(17:58):
But they never caught it.
They just kept finding its victims.
As El Chupacabra moved south,the descriptions started changing.
In Brazil, witnessesweren't seeing the spiky
back aliencreature from Puerto Rico anymore.
They were describing somethingmore primal.
A beast with glowing red eyesand a rumbling growl
(18:20):
that made their blood run cold.
Chile got hit particularly hard.
One farmerlost 35 sheep in a single night.
But when authorities tried to blame iton wild dogs, the locals
weren't buying it,because dogs don't drain bodies dry.
And they definitely don't leavethose surgically precise puncture wounds.
(18:42):
As the terror spread, each region
seemed to add its own flavorto the legend.
In Mexico,they said it could hypnotize its prey.
That's why nobody ever heard the animalscry out during attacks In Brazil,
they swore it had a gelatinous body
that could squeeze through tiny spaces.
(19:03):
And in Chile, they started connecting itto UFO activity.
Speaking of which, let me tell youabout the Atacama Incident.
The Chilean militaryspent a suspicious amount of time
searching that desert, supposedlylooking for something.
They even found these weird eggsthat didn't match any known species.
(19:25):
The government tried to keep it quiet,but word got out.
Suddenly, everyone was asking,what exactly are they looking for
out there?
Some people started wonderingif this wasn't just one creature anymore.
Maybe we're dealing with a whole species.
Something that has been hidingin the shadows all along.
(19:45):
Only now making itself known.
After all, how could a single animalbe in so many places at once?
The scientific communitytried to make sense of it all.
They pointed to knownpredators, natural causes, mass hysteria.
But they couldn't explainwhy all these different countries,
thousands of miles apart,were reporting the same exact thing.
(20:09):
Those puncture wounds, the complete bloodloss,
the eerie silence of the kills.
By the early 2000s, Texasbecame a hotspot with ranchers reporting
bizarre creatures that look like crossesbetween wolves and kangaroos.
These weren't just stories anymore.
They were bringing in bodies,
(20:32):
taking pictures, demanding answers.
That's what makes this whole thingso unsettling.
Most legends get weakeras they spread, like a game of telephone.
But El Chupacabra left a trail
of physical evidenceacross two continents.
Real bodies.
Real wounds.
(20:52):
Real questionsthat nobody seems able to answer.
So maybe the real question isn'thow far this thing spread.
Maybe we should be asking why it decidedto come out of hiding in the first place.
And more importantly,what's it going to do next?
So where does El Chupacabra stand today?
Well, like any good monster story,it refuses to die.
(21:16):
But the modern chapter of this talemight be the strangest one yet.
These days, most Chupacabra sightingslook pretty different
from that spiky alien creatureMadelyn Tolentino described back in ‘95.
Instead of the scifi nightmare with red eyes and spines,
people are spottingsomething that looks more, more dog like.
(21:37):
But decidedly not your average stray.
Here's what makes the modern Chupacabraso fascinating, though.
We've got better technology than ever.
Everyone's walking around with a highdefinition camera in their pockets.
We've got thermal imaging, motionsensors, trail cams.
Yet somehow this thing keeps slippingthrough our digital nets.
(21:59):
The scientific community has pretty muchsettled on their explanation.
Some misidentified animals, mass hysteria
and good old fashioned mythmaking.
They can't explain those early casesin Puerto Rico.
You know the ones with the bloodlessbodies and those surgically precise
puncture wounds.
And that's what keeps this legend alive.
(22:21):
Because while Bigfoot and Nessieare all about what might be out there,
well, Chupacabra left us evidence,
real bodies, real wounds,
real questionsthat still don't have good answers.
Maybe that'swhy nearly 30 years later, farmers
in Latin America are still boarding uptheir barns at night.
(22:43):
Why rural communities still trade storiesabout red eyes in the darkness.
Why every few months,somewhere in the Americas,
someone finds another strange corpseand whispers that name...
El Chupacabra!
We might have better camerasand fancier tests these days,
but we still can't explain everythingthat goes bump in the night.
(23:06):
Sometimes the more technologywe throw at a mystery, the deeper it gets.
So the next time you hear somethingstrange outside your window
or your dogs start barking at shadows,just remember.
El Chupacabra got its start in somebody'sbackyard.
Who knows?
Maybe it's still out there, still hunting,
(23:28):
still waiting to remind usthat some legends
don't just live in old books.
They leave bodies.
So what do we make of this
blood drinking beast of Puerto Rico?
A monster? Mutant?
Or just another storyto keep farmers up at night?
(23:50):
I don't know about you, but I'm doublechecking my chicken coop locks.
You know, just in case.
Special note on this episode,
there was so much to coverwith just the history of the beast itself,
that we didn't have timeto include any real encounters.
But do not lament.
We will have another episodevery soon of nothing
but El Chupacabra encounter stories.
(24:14):
If you're ready for another diveinto the strange
and mysterious, click right here.
Trust me, you're definitelynot going to want to miss this one.
Be careful out there and I will see youhere again on The InBetween.
Thanks for tuning into The InBetween Podcast.
(24:36):
Enjoy the full visual experiencewith me over on YouTube.
Just search for @TheInBetweentales.
I'm Carol Ann,and until next time, be careful
out there.
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