July 30, 2024 • 31 mins
We're back with part two of the legend of the Chupacabra. Ben Radford, the world's leading expert on this cryptid, explains his current offer of $10,000 regarding the Chupacabra. He also nails down exactly when, where and how the Chupacabra legend came into existence. You do NOT want to miss this!
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Episode Transcript
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Ben Radford (00:05):
Welcome back to MVPs.
What the f**k, what the f**k,what the f**k, what the f**k?
Paranormal Podcast, where wetalk about, well, everything the
paranormal encompasses.
So you ready?
Let's f**king do this.
Mell (00:21):
Hey, welcome back everyone .
We're going to finish ourinterview of Ben Radford, the
world's foremost expert on theChupacabra.
Remember, this is the dude thatactually traveled to Puerto
Rico and throughout SouthAmerica to conduct witness
interviews, investigate sitesand alleged evidence and
extensively researched theChupacabra for five years.
(00:42):
He left no stone unturned.
Ben Radford (00:44):
So, without further ado, ben, take it away my
position is always if I'm wrong,um then, uh, then then show me.
Like, for example, I talkedearlier about how the chupacabra
only dates back to 95.
Yeah, this comes as a shock tomost people because they're like
, how could that be?
Like, I Like I, and so I, when,when my book came out and I've
(01:06):
I've talked about this, uh, inin interviews and written
articles, I've had people comeup to me and say you're wrong.
I know for a fact that you bookcover exists because you know I
heard about it in the 1970s inTexas.
Or or you're wrong because mygrandfather told me about it in
the 50s, or else.
And my answer is always proveit Right, show me.
(01:29):
And I actually have a standingreward of $10,000.
It's a legitimate reward.
I got the money, it's all there.
It's a legitimate reward, I gotthe money, it's all there.
I said, if you can show me apre-1995 or pre-1990s reference
to a chupacabra that sucks blood, not milk.
(01:52):
So we're not talking about thewhippoorwill bird, we're talking
about the chupacabra that weall recognize bipedal, quadruped
, whatever else that sucks blood.
Find me a reference in amagazine, a newspaper article,
something that I can go tothat's dated not.
I remember my mom sayingsomething, not you know.
(02:14):
They say that because that'snot how these things work.
So right, even.
Even if.
Even if you tell me that youremember your grandfather
telling about the chupacabras inthe 1970s, what did he hear
about?
Some folklorist, someresearcher, some newspaper
article?
Somebody must have written thatword down somewhere.
(02:36):
So that's been my standingoffer and that's always been my
response.
Like you think I'm full of shit, you think I got it wrong.
That's fine.
What do you got?
Do your research, show me whatyou got.
Mell (02:46):
And so far no one's come up with anything but it could be
that some people think thatthey remember their grandparents
telling them something likewith the mandela effect.
Like I swear, I rememberwatching the chinese guy in
tiananmen square getting runover by a tank and, lo and
behold, here I am 50 years old,real, finding out that, no, that
(03:07):
shit never happened.
But I can remember it like it'syesterday and we did an episode
on the Mandela effect.
So I'm thinking, you know,maybe they think, maybe they do
have a memory of something thatnever happened.
Ben Radford (03:20):
I think that's.
That's the case.
I mean again, I, you know I,when people tell me, I don't
think they're lying, I don'tthink they're trying to pull one
over on me.
I believe they're sincere, Ibelieve they genuinely believe
that they remember that.
And I tell people I'm notsaying you're wrong, You're
wrong and you're a grotesquelyugly freak.
Thanks, If you're right, thenyou can earn yourself $10,000.
(03:43):
I'll be happy to credit you inmy book.
I'll add a new chapter.
You're not wrong.
Yeah, so there's that.
I don't think that's going tohappen.
Mell (03:56):
We always say there is no expert in the paranormal, but
this is one time where I canhonestly say this fucker is the
expert on this topic.
I mean, he wrote the fuckingbook, literally, literally, on
this topic.
I mean he wrote the fuckingbook literally, literally after
five years.
When you came to the conclusionthat, yeah, this was just
bullshit, were you disappointed.
Well, a little bit maybe, justlike this, like just a tiny,
(04:17):
just a skosh.
Ben Radford (04:18):
I don't know if I was disappointed because to, to
my mind and this is going tosound kind of cheesy, but it's
true, it's like to my mind, thejourney was the value.
You know what?
Let me, let me, just, I'm gonna, just, I'm gonna read you like
the last, because I I wrote it.
Well, I might as well justquote myself, if, if you'll, if
you'll, forgive me yeahabsolutely.
(04:41):
Why, then, write this book?
Why spend considerable time,effort and money to disprove
something that skeptics neverbelieved existed in the first
place and which believers willignore?
There are two answers.
The first is that this book waswritten for people with open
minds, not those closed withcertainty on either end of the
spectrum.
I've done my best to research,understand and explain the
(05:01):
entire Chupacabra phenomenausing logic and scientific
analysis.
Ultimately, readers will makeup their own minds.
The more important answer isthat my research is not really
about the Chupacabra.
The vampiric beast almostcertainly cannot and does not
exist.
This book is instead aboutfolklore made real, how ancient
(05:21):
superstitions inherent in thehuman mind gave the European
vampire a fearsome new face atthe end of the 20th century.
It is about how sincerelyrespected eyewitnesses who claim
to have seen monsters can becompletely wrong.
It is about how carefulinvestigation in science can
solve mysteries created by rumor, speculation and sloppy
research.
It is about how rumor combinedwith sensationalized news
(05:44):
reports helped create a monsterand about how the Chupacabra
label fills the gap between whatlay people guess and what
scientists know.
So that's Fuck.
Yeah, that was awesome.
Damn it, boy.
Thank you, I worked on that.
Mell (05:58):
He's like thank you.
Thank you very much.
I'll be here all week.
Ben Radford (06:04):
I mean it's weird, being sort of like the expert.
I mean you can look at this andsay, dude, you spent five years
on this, what the fuck is wrongwith you?
And I get that.
I mean it's like you know.
It's like it's like if you Imean it was a lot of time, it
was money, it was research, butit was something that I was
passionate about church, but itwas something that I was
(06:25):
passionate about.
And I love mysteries, I reallydo.
And this is one of the coolthings, for you know, as you
said, I mean I'm literally I'mnot bragging, I just no one else
put in the time and the effortto do this.
And so you know and I say thisa lot about my investigations
and I'm sure Mel has heard mesay this before it's not that
I'm the smartest guy in the room, it's not that I have some
special talents or knowledge orelse it's just that I put in the
(06:49):
time and the effort and put inthe legwork and piece it
together.
Any one of you could have donethat if you had put in that time
and the effort.
Mell (06:56):
So well, no, because there's a lot of people.
Let's be honest.
Okay, let's just keep this shitreal for right now, and our
listeners know this too, becausethey've watched these shows on
tv.
Ben Radford (07:10):
I think there's a lot of people who like to use
the term researcher orinvestigator, but they've got
the research skills of a bowlingball yeah, the frustrating
thing I find is that the peoplewho claim to be the most
interested in these things don'tseem to give a shit about
whether it's real or not.
They don't want to put in thetime and the effort.
(07:30):
They want the mystery they want.
Oh, this is spooky, this isweird, I'm shit in my pants,
this is crazy.
That's all well and good, butthen I've had a conversation
with these people and I'll sitdown.
It's like we're both interestedin Bigfoot, we're both
(08:02):
interested in ghosts, we boththink these are cool.
I'm trying to help you dobetter research.
Here's how you can do it.
I'm not trying to be mean toyou.
Or ghost or paranormal is toostupid or silly to investigate,
because I do that.
My position is if you want to dothis, then try and solve the
mystery, like weed out the wheatfrom the chaff, you know.
Try and you know, discredit thebogus evidence and go with
(08:24):
what's actually there.
And that's what I findfrustrating is that so many
people who, who should careabout the truth.
They either don't know or theydon't care, or they they're just
.
They're just content to havethis mystery, whereas I'm like,
yeah, this is cool, but is itreal?
Let let's make a little morefucking effort to actually solve
(08:45):
the mystery.
Ignorance is bliss, isn't thatwhat they say?
I still say that anybody coulddo this If you just put in the
time and the effort.
I mean, I've got degrees ineducation, public health, and
I'm also a folklorist and allthat.
Mell (09:02):
So it's a case of where I mean my MPH from Dartmouth
didn't help me solve theChupacabra mystery, no, but it
also.
But you have to agree that itdoes help frame the way that
you're able to do sound research.
That's, I mean, that's what youknow, my master's.
It changed the way that I didresearch and how I pulled data.
(09:26):
And I see that's so distinct inyour work, as opposed to other
people who are just, you know,pulling it from their ass and
making it up, because they'repulling it from website after
website after website.
There's a stark difference.
Ben Radford (09:40):
No, you're right and I do appreciate your saying
that.
Mell (09:43):
Do you want to believe in it?
When you first approached thetopic, did you want it to be
real?
Ben Radford (09:48):
Well, I mean I would like all these to be real.
I mean I, you know I would.
I would love if Bigfoot wasfound tomorrow.
I mean I'd be celebrating, I'dbe on the first plane out there.
I mean this is not same thingwith ghosts.
I mean, you know, I, I don'thave a vested interest in them
not existing at all.
And it always baffles me when Ihear people who think, oh,
(10:10):
you're a skeptic, you don't wantthem to exist.
What are you talking about?
I would love for these thingsto exist.
I would be celebrating.
It would be a whole newparadigm in science.
Look, if they found a chupacabratomorrow, that was could
actually be documented as achupacabra, I would be overjoyed
.
And I say that in all sinceritybecause I'd be like this is so
(10:33):
cool.
And one of my first things washow did I get it wrong?
I'd want to research it.
Like why did I think thatthere's no tracks?
Why did I think X, y and Z?
So I would be self-reflectingand trying to figure out for my
own purposes, like how did I getit so wrong?
What was that if they could beproven real scientifically, and
(10:54):
so on.
Then the question to me is youknow, where did all the evidence
suddenly come from, and howwasn't that known before?
Mell (11:06):
Why were we fucking it up?
I'm, I'm a hopeful skeptic.
I have and I think everythinghas to be taken case by case.
I can't, I don't think thatit's fair to say across the
board you know, nope, none ofthis is real, this can never
happen, oh yeah but, in thiscase with chupacabra.
So far, if, if I'm not mistaken, every case and every incident
that you've looked into, it's,you've been able to for lack of
(11:28):
a better term debunk it yes.
Ben Radford (11:31):
Yeah, I mean I actually in in my book I have
appendix two is literally calledhow to identify chupacabra.
Mell (11:43):
I saw that on your website too.
Ben Radford (11:45):
Yeah.
So again, it's totally serious.
It's like you know.
I'll just read it real quickpart of it.
Since the true nature of thechupacabra, if it exists, is
unknown, there's of course noway to conclusively identify an
animal as a chupacabra.
However, there are scientificways to tell whether or not a
given live or dead animal couldpossibly be an alleged
chupacabra, based on the reputedcharacteristics.
(12:08):
This list, derived from a closeanalysis of alleged chupacabra
discoveries, will help futurefarmers, ranchers and others who
find an unusual animal todecide whether or not their
animal could be a chupacabra.
And then I have 10 things.
For example, was it actuallyseen attacking other animals?
Was it seen sucking blood?
Did the pathologist orveterinarian conclude that blood
(12:32):
was actually drawn from theanimal?
Has sarcoptic mange or otherskin disease been ruled out, and
so on?
So I put that in the bookspecifically to give other
people tools to prove me wrong,basically, and look for
themselves.
That's awesome.
Mell (12:50):
I saw there was an article in the Christian Science
Monitor where you were able totrace it to the 1995 sci-fi film
El Chupacabra, you know.
Ben Radford (13:04):
Yes, yeah, so that was sort of my species, right,
yeah, so that, that, so that wassort of an interesting thing.
So so you know, as I wasfinishing the book, I again I'd
been researching this for almostfive years at that point and I
had pretty much, I had prettymuch answered most of the
questions that I had.
(13:25):
So, for example, you know, isit really vampirism?
Could these animals and thatwas the other part in going back
for a second to how do we knowthat these animals aren't
chupacabras, for example, again,the chupacabra sucks blood.
That's by definition what itdoes.
But if you look at the mouthstructure, for example, from the
(13:45):
coyote that Phyllis Canyonfound, it can't suck blood.
It literally, anatomically can'tsuck blood because it can't
create a vacuum.
You and I can suck out ofstraws or rubs because of the
way our cheeks are made, butdogs and cats, they literally
can't suck blood yeah so I meanthey use their tongue to lap it,
(14:08):
yeah exactly so.
But so you, they can lap it upthere, they it's.
It's physically impossible forthese things to suck anything,
uh, except time.
This is how we know, forexample, that that can't be
chupacabra.
About three, four years into itI had basically all the big
questions I had were pretty muchanswered to my satisfaction,
(14:29):
but the remained.
Well, where did it come from?
Why couldn't I find a 1982reference to Chupacabra, or 76
or 1892?
I mean, what was it about 1995?
Puerto Rico that made it appearthere, and so that was sort of
(14:52):
the big mystery.
So I would humbly say that thatwas sort of my biggest
contribution was connecting thedots.
So I mean the other stuff, thefact that these animals weren't
actually drained of blood.
You know, you can poke aroundand find that there's all those
other things, but the bigquestion, the $10 million
question, as I was finishing myresearch, was well then, where
(15:13):
the fuck did it come from?
I recognize that I need to goback to the original sources,
original eyewitnesses, becauseby this time most of the
Chupacabra stuff it's all thishalf-baked, half-assed, poorly
researched, tabloid,sensationalized shit that most
of it's just badly done.
Nobody solved the mystery.
(15:34):
It was all this sensationalizedstuff that most of it's just
just badly done.
No, nobody put in the, nobody'stried to solve the mystery.
It was all this sensationalizedstuff, mystery mongering.
So I said, okay, well, if I'mgoing to, if I'm going to figure
out where it came from, then Ineed to go track down the first
person that saw it.
And again this this woman metMadeline Tolentino, who by this
point was pretty much ignored.
Everybody had forgotten abouther because she wasn't part of
(15:58):
the story anymore.
Nobody cared about her becauseshe wasn't relevant anymore.
But I'm like, hold on, she isrelevant and she's alive and I
want to talk to her.
So I tracked her down and Iinterviewed her and I also found
a 1996 interview with her,written by a guy named Scott
Corrales.
So as I'm talking to her, Irealized that there was one very
specific phrase that I noticedin this book Again, this is a
(16:21):
1996 interview with her, so Ihadn't come into it until 15
years later and in that book shesays she's quoted.
She says you know what she sawthat day that became the
Chupacabra looked a lot likethis monster in this movie
Species and if you've seenSpecies, it's, of course, pretty
(16:44):
well-known film.
I had a couple of sequels.
It stars Natasha Henstridge,the beautiful, hot Canadian
model.
Hell yeah, brother.
Hell yeah, yeah, you know, I'llgo for that.
Uh, but so that in her, that'sin her human form, in her alien
form, uh, she's a creaturecalled sil s-i-l.
(17:05):
And so she, she literally saysyou should watch this movie
species, because that's what themonster that I saw look like.
I'm like, ah, that's convenient.
I'm like hold on.
So but what was what?
So what was interesting to mewas that what I could tell.
Everybody who had who'dmentioned that thought it was
(17:26):
just a coincidence.
I'm like, no, there's, this isnot a coincidence, she's right,
she's telling you.
So I asked her, I said did yousee the movie Species?
Because she said she saw it.
And I said did you see themovie Species before her
sighting?
And she said yes, ah, andthat's when the light bulb went
off in my head.
I'm like, holy shit.
(17:47):
It's like she's literallytelling me and us when she got
it from.
That's where she got it fromright.
And at first I'm like, well,people are going to think that
this is me sort of retrofittingher words to my hypothesis.
No, she told that to somebodyelse, a believer, 15 years ago
(18:11):
in an interview.
I didn't make this up, that'swhat she said.
She literally said that itlooked like the thing.
So what was fascinating to mewas that once I made that
connection, all the pieces fittogether.
Because if you've seen Speciesthen you know what did I mention
are the two theories about theorigins of the Chupacabra.
Number one are the two theoriesabout the origin of the
(18:31):
Chupacabra.
Number one it's anextraterrestrial.
Well, syl is anextraterrestrial.
That's what the movie is about.
It's about an extraterrestrial,yeah.
And the other theory about whatthe Chupacabra was is that it's
some sort of top-secret geneticexperiment gone wrong that
escapes.
That's what the movie Speciesis about.
(18:52):
It's in the script.
I'm like, holy shit, this isall it's like having a puzzle
and there's one, one big chunkin the middle, and then I, I
find this chunk.
I'm like, oh my god that thereit is.
It fits, but it's very, veryclear, not only in its anatomy
and what it looks like adescription, but also in its
(19:13):
backstory.
So she she admits that she didsee the movie Species shortly
before she saw the Chupacabra,which again, no one else saw.
Again, going back to my mydegree in psychology, if you
don't know anything about howmedia influences work or
psychology, you might think thisis a known thing.
This is people confuse thingsfrom films and TV.
(19:34):
It't happen all the time, butit does happen.
It's not pathological.
The fact that no one else sawthis and she said it, that's
where it came from.
To my mind, that sort of thatwas the final piece of the
puzzle.
That's uh, that's, that'shilarious, that's awesome.
So earlier, mella, you'd askabout wings.
So one of the aspects ofChupacabra is, if you look at
(19:54):
the original report, like afterTolentino told her story to the
tabloids, rumor, gossip, peopleare telling, you know, of course
people are hearing about it,and then they see something out
of the corner of their eye.
It's dark and they think, oh,there's wings.
So you'll find a handful ofsightings that have like a tail,
wings.
You know sort of littleadditions here or there, but the
(20:18):
first time that the Chupacabrawas said to actually be
four-legged was in 2000.
So something interestinghappened was Tolentino's
sighting again in August of 95.
She described this weird thing.
There were lots of uhdepictions in in on tv, so you
had a case of where people wereseeing it but not finding it.
(20:40):
In other words, people wereseeing things, or, you know,
influenced by her description,and they would they say I saw
something weird like that, butthere's no bodies.
It was always this somethingseen but not found.
That changed in 2000 whensomething was found and not
really seen, and that happenedin Nicaragua, in a ranch outside
(21:02):
of Managua, the capital.
There's a rancher named JorgeTalavera and he, something was
attacking his, I think, cattleand goats and things like that.
So he one night, he and hisfarmhand stayed up all night
with guns waiting to shoot atwhatever was attacking his
animals.
And sure enough, they came onenight and something in the
(21:25):
darkness again this is ruralNicaragua they shot at something
that was attacking animals andthey ran off.
So a couple of days later hisfarmhand found a skeleton of
some some distance away, acouple miles away on the, on the
farm, on the ranch, and he sawthis and and Talavera assumed
(21:46):
that this was the Chupacabra.
He thought this is theChupacabra he'd been hearing
about because, again, by thispoint, for five years there had
been stories out of Mexico,stories out of Puerto Rico.
It was in the news, peopletalking about it, weird mystery,
blah, blah, blah.
He's like holy shit.
He didn't get a good view of it, but you know it was.
He shot something in thedarkness.
(22:07):
Here's this dead thing Now.
Had he thought more about it,he might have realized that it
wouldn't be a skeleton afteronly a couple of days.
I mean, it might be, butprobably not.
Mell (22:17):
Anyway, Decomposition is like a real thing.
Decomposition Right, exactly.
Ben Radford (22:20):
So it probably wouldn't have been picked clean.
But anyway, he tells everybodylike I found the chupacabra, I
shot the chupacabra.
We've all been hearing aboutthis, rumors about this, rumors,
gossip.
I actually shot one.
So he claimed to be the firstperson in the world that had
actually killed a chupacabra.
Of course the media come inlike, oh my god, we have, we, we
finally have a body with bonesand we're wrong.
(22:41):
So all of a sudden, likechupacabra actually found this
is the whole thing.
So he takes it over to theuniversity in nicaragua uh, the
university in managua and theylook at it.
They're like dude, it's a dog,that's just a fucking dog bro.
So he pulls the phyllis canyon.
He's like no, no, you switchedthe bones on me of course, oh
(23:03):
yeah, give him back his bones,right you?
This is, this is what you gaveus.
Mine had no butthole, it was alltaint what is a taint and where
does the term come from?
Technically, a taint is thespace between your genitals and
your anus, otherwise known asthe perineum, and the origin of
(23:25):
the term is that it taint yourballs and it taint your butthole
.
Supposedly, it's taint all theway down, just like the turtle.
So they give him the bones backand he's like's like no, no,
you know, these aren't the bonesI gave you, you switched them.
So he brings in this conspiracytheory and then they're like we
didn't switch fucking dog bones, dude we don't have an extra
set of dog bones laying aroundthe lab just to fool you into
(23:49):
thinking that it's notchupacabra.
So finally he admitted that yeah, maybe it was a.
Maybe it was a dog maybe, maybeI shot the neighbor's dog, maybe
I shot the neighbor's dog, butanyway, the the significance of
that in the chupacabra story wasthat that was the the first
time that marked the transitionfrom the bipedal spiky backed
(24:09):
sill alien species creature to,uh, Reiki-backed sill alien
space creature, to, to this,this dead dog, mangy quadruped.
And at that point, because ithad been fixed in in people's
minds, oh, this is, you know, Iguess, the Chupacabra.
We didn't know what it was foryears.
We now have one.
Mell (24:26):
It must be now we know, yeah, yeah.
Ben Radford (24:28):
So that sort of got locked into the public
consciousness and then later on,sort of the definition of
chupacabra became more broad.
So this is when you startgetting the raccoons, the random
stuff like that that basicallybear no connection to the
original chupacabra.
Mell (24:45):
You mentioned to me something that the chupacabra
was used as a politicalboogeyman.
What did you mean by that?
Ben Radford (24:53):
uh, I touched on a little bit before, like, for
example, I mentioned, uh, uh,jose quinozoto, the, the mayor
of canovas.
That basically was like votefor me, I'll protect you for the
chupacabra, right, okay?
But what you find is that, um,pretty quickly, the chupacabra
was being talked about, ofcourse, in mexico and elsewhere,
which is why, to this day, alot of times when people talk
(25:14):
about, the chupacabra was beingtalked about, of course, in
Mexico and elsewhere, which iswhy, to this day, a lot of times
when people talk about thechupacabra, they think it's
Mexican, they assume it's,they've always assumed it's
Mexican.
It's actually, of course,american, because America is,
puerto Rico is part of America,but it just, it makes sense that
it's Mexican, right?
I thought that yeah, a lot ofpeople do it's, it's, it's
pretty common.
(25:34):
So because it's associated with, you know, spanish, and and and
mexico.
But what happened was that the,um, the president at the time,
uh, president, uh, salinasgattari, um, he, he was started
being called the chupacabra.
There was like like, there waslike street graffiti and
editorial cartoons and thingslike that where, where the
(25:58):
president was being identifiedas the Chupacabra Now, probably
mostly sort of in joke and jest,but but the, the the connection
was that he was widely hatedand so so the the popular
perception was that, in the sameway that chupacabra is draining
the blood, uh, and the sort ofmetaphorical resources and
(26:20):
things like that from the puertorican public, the president was
draining resources and money,corruption, this and that.
So the president's a goatsucker got it.
Mell (26:30):
That's interesting, though , man.
Ben Radford (26:32):
Yeah, it's a.
I mean there's other parts aswell.
The thing is like these daysthe Chupacabra has been
homogenized Like there's a moviecame out last year, I think.
The Chupacabra is like one ofthe.
It's like there's an animatedcartoon, I forget which one.
My interest, as you mightimagine, is in the early
Chupacabra, like 90, 95 to 2000,.
Because that's the sort of moreauthentic original stuff, not
(26:56):
after it goes sanitized andcommercialized by X-Files.
So I have a collection of aboutmaybe 20, 15 or 20 T-shirts
from Puerto Rico and Mexico fromthe late 90s and it's
fascinating to sort of look atthese and sort of see, um, see
the political commentary, um.
(27:17):
One of the shirts I have is um,it has a chupacabra and he's
got a straw sucking the bloodout of a chicken.
It's like it's a cartoon um,and there is a um.
It looks like a warthog, likefrom the lion king, but I guess
it's a goat or something.
Anyway, it's running and it hasthis sort of dark thing where
(27:38):
there's two of them running awayfrom the chupacabra and one of
them says yo tengo diabetes.
So he's saying don't suck myblood, I have diabetes.
The other one says don't suckmy blood, I have AIDS.
Oh shit, god damn.
Mell (27:52):
They went there.
They went there.
You know they weren't themiddleman, they just went right
for the nads.
Ben Radford (27:57):
Well, and again it goes back to to the the cultural
context of these things.
Right, so if you look at whatwas happening in in in the mid
90s in puerto rico, uh, therewas hurricanes, as I mentioned.
Uh, you, there was a politicalcrisis.
There's always been an economiccrisis, and AIDS was hitting
the Caribbean especially hard.
(28:17):
You have this connection ofAIDS, tainted blood, vampirism,
all sort of packaged togetherand that's what you get Damn
goat suckers.
Mell (28:28):
I mean, I didn't believe in it before, but now that I've
heard you explain it, even moreso it's not real.
It's a no-go for me, dog, yeah,straight up.
Ben Radford (28:41):
I love the process.
Again, it was a lot of work.
It was a lot of effort writingand research, but it's cool that
it's I mean, in my obituarythey're going to mention
chupacabras and evil clowns, soI guess I'll take it.
Mell (28:56):
I guess I'll take it, but you know, there's got to be some
sort of like, I know for uswhen we can whittle things down
and find the root of somethingand be able to definitively say
that's, that's not what happenedhere, this is no.
There is that feeling ofsatisfaction, of closure?
Yes, do you feel you have thatby now that you finished your
(29:18):
book?
Ben Radford (29:20):
I do, I do.
I am satisfied with it.
I'm I'm happy that people arestill talking about it.
Mell (29:25):
It's kind of it's interesting, I'm not going to
lie.
It is fascinating to me.
Ben Radford (29:31):
And again, I'm still finding weird ass angles,
like politics, Right.
So you know, I wrote the book.
I'm still.
There's still weird littleavenues and shit that I find
interesting.
Whether people do or not, Idon't know, but I do, so I'm
going to keep writing about it.
Oh yeah Again, if I look, Imean if I, if I was absolutely
certain that these things didn'texist, I wouldn't waste my time
(29:51):
.
Mell (29:51):
I mean I, just trying to look for the truth.
Ben Radford (29:54):
I'm just trying to look for the truth wherever it
takes me and I'm trying to solvesome mysteries along the way.
And if somebody can take someof the lessons of like what I've
done and apply it to their ownmysteries or apply it to
something else, all the better.
Mell (30:08):
Do you still come across like cases or cryptids where
you're just like holy shit, letme look into this.
Ben Radford (30:16):
That still interest .
Yeah, I mean it's I every nowand then I'm finding I'm so busy
with stuff.
I mean my podcast Squaring theStrange.
I'm doing the articles formagazine.
So you kind of got a lot goingon, maybe a little bit yeah, I'm
doing the documentary in thechupacabra that may be coming
(30:37):
into to fruition.
I just I've always got stuffand and people send me stuff all
the time and I appreciate it,but I just like I only got so
many hours in the day and I wantto catch up on uh, on netflix,
so yeah, hell yeah.
Mell (30:53):
You're awesome.
Never-ending task there.
We appreciate you coming on somuch.
Ben Radford (30:59):
You have no idea well, it's very kind of you.
Thank for having me this hasbeen awesome.
We really hell yeah I promiseI'll have a cool avatar next
time fan fucking task we'regonna hold you to it.
Mell (31:10):
so on that note, all right , well right, well listen up
kids at home.
Ben Radford (31:14):
Don't keep your ice cream in the same freezer as
your chupacabra heads.
It's probably not good for yourhealth.
Mell (31:19):
And if your dogs don't have a taint contact Ben.
Ben Radford (31:24):
Good night everybody.
Welcome back to MVPs.
What the f**k, what the f**k,what the f**k, what the f**k?
Paranormal Podcast, where wetalk about, well, everything the
paranormal encompasses.
So you ready?
Let's f**king do this.
Mell (00:21):
Hey, welcome back everyone .
We're going to finish ourinterview of Ben Radford, the
world's foremost expert on theChupacabra.
Remember, this is the dude thatactually traveled to Puerto
Rico and throughout SouthAmerica to conduct witness
interviews, investigate sitesand alleged evidence and
extensively researched theChupacabra for five years.
(00:42):
He left no stone unturned.
Ben Radford (00:44):
So, without further ado, ben, take it away my
position is always if I'm wrong,um then, uh, then then show me.
Like, for example, I talkedearlier about how the chupacabra
only dates back to 95.
Yeah, this comes as a shock tomost people because they're like
, how could that be?
Like, I Like I, and so I, when,when my book came out and I've
(01:06):
I've talked about this, uh, inin interviews and written
articles, I've had people comeup to me and say you're wrong.
I know for a fact that you bookcover exists because you know I
heard about it in the 1970s inTexas.
Or or you're wrong because mygrandfather told me about it in
the 50s, or else.
And my answer is always proveit Right, show me.
(01:29):
And I actually have a standingreward of $10,000.
It's a legitimate reward.
I got the money, it's all there.
It's a legitimate reward, I gotthe money, it's all there.
I said, if you can show me apre-1995 or pre-1990s reference
to a chupacabra that sucks blood, not milk.
(01:52):
So we're not talking about thewhippoorwill bird, we're talking
about the chupacabra that weall recognize bipedal, quadruped
, whatever else that sucks blood.
Find me a reference in amagazine, a newspaper article,
something that I can go tothat's dated not.
I remember my mom sayingsomething, not you know.
(02:14):
They say that because that'snot how these things work.
So right, even.
Even if.
Even if you tell me that youremember your grandfather
telling about the chupacabras inthe 1970s, what did he hear
about?
Some folklorist, someresearcher, some newspaper
article?
Somebody must have written thatword down somewhere.
(02:36):
So that's been my standingoffer and that's always been my
response.
Like you think I'm full of shit, you think I got it wrong.
That's fine.
What do you got?
Do your research, show me whatyou got.
Mell (02:46):
And so far no one's come up with anything but it could be
that some people think thatthey remember their grandparents
telling them something likewith the mandela effect.
Like I swear, I rememberwatching the chinese guy in
tiananmen square getting runover by a tank and, lo and
behold, here I am 50 years old,real, finding out that, no, that
(03:07):
shit never happened.
But I can remember it like it'syesterday and we did an episode
on the Mandela effect.
So I'm thinking, you know,maybe they think, maybe they do
have a memory of something thatnever happened.
Ben Radford (03:20):
I think that's.
That's the case.
I mean again, I, you know I,when people tell me, I don't
think they're lying, I don'tthink they're trying to pull one
over on me.
I believe they're sincere, Ibelieve they genuinely believe
that they remember that.
And I tell people I'm notsaying you're wrong, You're
wrong and you're a grotesquelyugly freak.
Thanks, If you're right, thenyou can earn yourself $10,000.
(03:43):
I'll be happy to credit you inmy book.
I'll add a new chapter.
You're not wrong.
Yeah, so there's that.
I don't think that's going tohappen.
Mell (03:56):
We always say there is no expert in the paranormal, but
this is one time where I canhonestly say this fucker is the
expert on this topic.
I mean, he wrote the fuckingbook, literally, literally, on
this topic.
I mean he wrote the fuckingbook literally, literally after
five years.
When you came to the conclusionthat, yeah, this was just
bullshit, were you disappointed.
Well, a little bit maybe, justlike this, like just a tiny,
(04:17):
just a skosh.
Ben Radford (04:18):
I don't know if I was disappointed because to, to
my mind and this is going tosound kind of cheesy, but it's
true, it's like to my mind, thejourney was the value.
You know what?
Let me, let me, just, I'm gonna, just, I'm gonna read you like
the last, because I I wrote it.
Well, I might as well justquote myself, if, if you'll, if
you'll, forgive me yeahabsolutely.
(04:41):
Why, then, write this book?
Why spend considerable time,effort and money to disprove
something that skeptics neverbelieved existed in the first
place and which believers willignore?
There are two answers.
The first is that this book waswritten for people with open
minds, not those closed withcertainty on either end of the
spectrum.
I've done my best to research,understand and explain the
(05:01):
entire Chupacabra phenomenausing logic and scientific
analysis.
Ultimately, readers will makeup their own minds.
The more important answer isthat my research is not really
about the Chupacabra.
The vampiric beast almostcertainly cannot and does not
exist.
This book is instead aboutfolklore made real, how ancient
(05:21):
superstitions inherent in thehuman mind gave the European
vampire a fearsome new face atthe end of the 20th century.
It is about how sincerelyrespected eyewitnesses who claim
to have seen monsters can becompletely wrong.
It is about how carefulinvestigation in science can
solve mysteries created by rumor, speculation and sloppy
research.
It is about how rumor combinedwith sensationalized news
(05:44):
reports helped create a monsterand about how the Chupacabra
label fills the gap between whatlay people guess and what
scientists know.
So that's Fuck.
Yeah, that was awesome.
Damn it, boy.
Thank you, I worked on that.
Mell (05:58):
He's like thank you.
Thank you very much.
I'll be here all week.
Ben Radford (06:04):
I mean it's weird, being sort of like the expert.
I mean you can look at this andsay, dude, you spent five years
on this, what the fuck is wrongwith you?
And I get that.
I mean it's like you know.
It's like it's like if you Imean it was a lot of time, it
was money, it was research, butit was something that I was
passionate about church, but itwas something that I was
(06:25):
passionate about.
And I love mysteries, I reallydo.
And this is one of the coolthings, for you know, as you
said, I mean I'm literally I'mnot bragging, I just no one else
put in the time and the effortto do this.
And so you know and I say thisa lot about my investigations
and I'm sure Mel has heard mesay this before it's not that
I'm the smartest guy in the room, it's not that I have some
special talents or knowledge orelse it's just that I put in the
(06:49):
time and the effort and put inthe legwork and piece it
together.
Any one of you could have donethat if you had put in that time
and the effort.
Mell (06:56):
So well, no, because there's a lot of people.
Let's be honest.
Okay, let's just keep this shitreal for right now, and our
listeners know this too, becausethey've watched these shows on
tv.
Ben Radford (07:10):
I think there's a lot of people who like to use
the term researcher orinvestigator, but they've got
the research skills of a bowlingball yeah, the frustrating
thing I find is that the peoplewho claim to be the most
interested in these things don'tseem to give a shit about
whether it's real or not.
They don't want to put in thetime and the effort.
(07:30):
They want the mystery they want.
Oh, this is spooky, this isweird, I'm shit in my pants,
this is crazy.
That's all well and good, butthen I've had a conversation
with these people and I'll sitdown.
It's like we're both interestedin Bigfoot, we're both
(08:02):
interested in ghosts, we boththink these are cool.
I'm trying to help you dobetter research.
Here's how you can do it.
I'm not trying to be mean toyou.
Or ghost or paranormal is toostupid or silly to investigate,
because I do that.
My position is if you want to dothis, then try and solve the
mystery, like weed out the wheatfrom the chaff, you know.
Try and you know, discredit thebogus evidence and go with
(08:24):
what's actually there.
And that's what I findfrustrating is that so many
people who, who should careabout the truth.
They either don't know or theydon't care, or they they're just
.
They're just content to havethis mystery, whereas I'm like,
yeah, this is cool, but is itreal?
Let let's make a little morefucking effort to actually solve
(08:45):
the mystery.
Ignorance is bliss, isn't thatwhat they say?
I still say that anybody coulddo this If you just put in the
time and the effort.
I mean, I've got degrees ineducation, public health, and
I'm also a folklorist and allthat.
Mell (09:02):
So it's a case of where I mean my MPH from Dartmouth
didn't help me solve theChupacabra mystery, no, but it
also.
But you have to agree that itdoes help frame the way that
you're able to do sound research.
That's, I mean, that's what youknow, my master's.
It changed the way that I didresearch and how I pulled data.
(09:26):
And I see that's so distinct inyour work, as opposed to other
people who are just, you know,pulling it from their ass and
making it up, because they'repulling it from website after
website after website.
There's a stark difference.
Ben Radford (09:40):
No, you're right and I do appreciate your saying
that.
Mell (09:43):
Do you want to believe in it?
When you first approached thetopic, did you want it to be
real?
Ben Radford (09:48):
Well, I mean I would like all these to be real.
I mean I, you know I would.
I would love if Bigfoot wasfound tomorrow.
I mean I'd be celebrating, I'dbe on the first plane out there.
I mean this is not same thingwith ghosts.
I mean, you know, I, I don'thave a vested interest in them
not existing at all.
And it always baffles me when Ihear people who think, oh,
(10:10):
you're a skeptic, you don't wantthem to exist.
What are you talking about?
I would love for these thingsto exist.
I would be celebrating.
It would be a whole newparadigm in science.
Look, if they found a chupacabratomorrow, that was could
actually be documented as achupacabra, I would be overjoyed
.
And I say that in all sinceritybecause I'd be like this is so
(10:33):
cool.
And one of my first things washow did I get it wrong?
I'd want to research it.
Like why did I think thatthere's no tracks?
Why did I think X, y and Z?
So I would be self-reflectingand trying to figure out for my
own purposes, like how did I getit so wrong?
What was that if they could beproven real scientifically, and
(10:54):
so on.
Then the question to me is youknow, where did all the evidence
suddenly come from, and howwasn't that known before?
Mell (11:06):
Why were we fucking it up?
I'm, I'm a hopeful skeptic.
I have and I think everythinghas to be taken case by case.
I can't, I don't think thatit's fair to say across the
board you know, nope, none ofthis is real, this can never
happen, oh yeah but, in thiscase with chupacabra.
So far, if, if I'm not mistaken, every case and every incident
that you've looked into, it's,you've been able to for lack of
(11:28):
a better term debunk it yes.
Ben Radford (11:31):
Yeah, I mean I actually in in my book I have
appendix two is literally calledhow to identify chupacabra.
Mell (11:43):
I saw that on your website too.
Ben Radford (11:45):
Yeah.
So again, it's totally serious.
It's like you know.
I'll just read it real quickpart of it.
Since the true nature of thechupacabra, if it exists, is
unknown, there's of course noway to conclusively identify an
animal as a chupacabra.
However, there are scientificways to tell whether or not a
given live or dead animal couldpossibly be an alleged
chupacabra, based on the reputedcharacteristics.
(12:08):
This list, derived from a closeanalysis of alleged chupacabra
discoveries, will help futurefarmers, ranchers and others who
find an unusual animal todecide whether or not their
animal could be a chupacabra.
And then I have 10 things.
For example, was it actuallyseen attacking other animals?
Was it seen sucking blood?
Did the pathologist orveterinarian conclude that blood
(12:32):
was actually drawn from theanimal?
Has sarcoptic mange or otherskin disease been ruled out, and
so on?
So I put that in the bookspecifically to give other
people tools to prove me wrong,basically, and look for
themselves.
That's awesome.
Mell (12:50):
I saw there was an article in the Christian Science
Monitor where you were able totrace it to the 1995 sci-fi film
El Chupacabra, you know.
Ben Radford (13:04):
Yes, yeah, so that was sort of my species, right,
yeah, so that, that, so that wassort of an interesting thing.
So so you know, as I wasfinishing the book, I again I'd
been researching this for almostfive years at that point and I
had pretty much, I had prettymuch answered most of the
questions that I had.
(13:25):
So, for example, you know, isit really vampirism?
Could these animals and thatwas the other part in going back
for a second to how do we knowthat these animals aren't
chupacabras, for example, again,the chupacabra sucks blood.
That's by definition what itdoes.
But if you look at the mouthstructure, for example, from the
(13:45):
coyote that Phyllis Canyonfound, it can't suck blood.
It literally, anatomically can'tsuck blood because it can't
create a vacuum.
You and I can suck out ofstraws or rubs because of the
way our cheeks are made, butdogs and cats, they literally
can't suck blood yeah so I meanthey use their tongue to lap it,
(14:08):
yeah exactly so.
But so you, they can lap it upthere, they it's.
It's physically impossible forthese things to suck anything,
uh, except time.
This is how we know, forexample, that that can't be
chupacabra.
About three, four years into itI had basically all the big
questions I had were pretty muchanswered to my satisfaction,
(14:29):
but the remained.
Well, where did it come from?
Why couldn't I find a 1982reference to Chupacabra, or 76
or 1892?
I mean, what was it about 1995?
Puerto Rico that made it appearthere, and so that was sort of
(14:52):
the big mystery.
So I would humbly say that thatwas sort of my biggest
contribution was connecting thedots.
So I mean the other stuff, thefact that these animals weren't
actually drained of blood.
You know, you can poke aroundand find that there's all those
other things, but the bigquestion, the $10 million
question, as I was finishing myresearch, was well then, where
(15:13):
the fuck did it come from?
I recognize that I need to goback to the original sources,
original eyewitnesses, becauseby this time most of the
Chupacabra stuff it's all thishalf-baked, half-assed, poorly
researched, tabloid,sensationalized shit that most
of it's just badly done.
Nobody solved the mystery.
(15:34):
It was all this sensationalizedstuff that most of it's just
just badly done.
No, nobody put in the, nobody'stried to solve the mystery.
It was all this sensationalizedstuff, mystery mongering.
So I said, okay, well, if I'mgoing to, if I'm going to figure
out where it came from, then Ineed to go track down the first
person that saw it.
And again this this woman metMadeline Tolentino, who by this
point was pretty much ignored.
Everybody had forgotten abouther because she wasn't part of
(15:58):
the story anymore.
Nobody cared about her becauseshe wasn't relevant anymore.
But I'm like, hold on, she isrelevant and she's alive and I
want to talk to her.
So I tracked her down and Iinterviewed her and I also found
a 1996 interview with her,written by a guy named Scott
Corrales.
So as I'm talking to her, Irealized that there was one very
specific phrase that I noticedin this book Again, this is a
(16:21):
1996 interview with her, so Ihadn't come into it until 15
years later and in that book shesays she's quoted.
She says you know what she sawthat day that became the
Chupacabra looked a lot likethis monster in this movie
Species and if you've seenSpecies, it's, of course, pretty
(16:44):
well-known film.
I had a couple of sequels.
It stars Natasha Henstridge,the beautiful, hot Canadian
model.
Hell yeah, brother.
Hell yeah, yeah, you know, I'llgo for that.
Uh, but so that in her, that'sin her human form, in her alien
form, uh, she's a creaturecalled sil s-i-l.
(17:05):
And so she, she literally saysyou should watch this movie
species, because that's what themonster that I saw look like.
I'm like, ah, that's convenient.
I'm like hold on.
So but what was what?
So what was interesting to mewas that what I could tell.
Everybody who had who'dmentioned that thought it was
(17:26):
just a coincidence.
I'm like, no, there's, this isnot a coincidence, she's right,
she's telling you.
So I asked her, I said did yousee the movie Species?
Because she said she saw it.
And I said did you see themovie Species before her
sighting?
And she said yes, ah, andthat's when the light bulb went
off in my head.
I'm like, holy shit.
(17:47):
It's like she's literallytelling me and us when she got
it from.
That's where she got it fromright.
And at first I'm like, well,people are going to think that
this is me sort of retrofittingher words to my hypothesis.
No, she told that to somebodyelse, a believer, 15 years ago
(18:11):
in an interview.
I didn't make this up, that'swhat she said.
She literally said that itlooked like the thing.
So what was fascinating to mewas that once I made that
connection, all the pieces fittogether.
Because if you've seen Speciesthen you know what did I mention
are the two theories about theorigins of the Chupacabra.
Number one are the two theoriesabout the origin of the
(18:31):
Chupacabra.
Number one it's anextraterrestrial.
Well, syl is anextraterrestrial.
That's what the movie is about.
It's about an extraterrestrial,yeah.
And the other theory about whatthe Chupacabra was is that it's
some sort of top-secret geneticexperiment gone wrong that
escapes.
That's what the movie Speciesis about.
(18:52):
It's in the script.
I'm like, holy shit, this isall it's like having a puzzle
and there's one, one big chunkin the middle, and then I, I
find this chunk.
I'm like, oh my god that thereit is.
It fits, but it's very, veryclear, not only in its anatomy
and what it looks like adescription, but also in its
(19:13):
backstory.
So she she admits that she didsee the movie Species shortly
before she saw the Chupacabra,which again, no one else saw.
Again, going back to my mydegree in psychology, if you
don't know anything about howmedia influences work or
psychology, you might think thisis a known thing.
This is people confuse thingsfrom films and TV.
(19:34):
It't happen all the time, butit does happen.
It's not pathological.
The fact that no one else sawthis and she said it, that's
where it came from.
To my mind, that sort of thatwas the final piece of the
puzzle.
That's uh, that's, that'shilarious, that's awesome.
So earlier, mella, you'd askabout wings.
So one of the aspects ofChupacabra is, if you look at
(19:54):
the original report, like afterTolentino told her story to the
tabloids, rumor, gossip, peopleare telling, you know, of course
people are hearing about it,and then they see something out
of the corner of their eye.
It's dark and they think, oh,there's wings.
So you'll find a handful ofsightings that have like a tail,
wings.
You know sort of littleadditions here or there, but the
(20:18):
first time that the Chupacabrawas said to actually be
four-legged was in 2000.
So something interestinghappened was Tolentino's
sighting again in August of 95.
She described this weird thing.
There were lots of uhdepictions in in on tv, so you
had a case of where people wereseeing it but not finding it.
(20:40):
In other words, people wereseeing things, or, you know,
influenced by her description,and they would they say I saw
something weird like that, butthere's no bodies.
It was always this somethingseen but not found.
That changed in 2000 whensomething was found and not
really seen, and that happenedin Nicaragua, in a ranch outside
(21:02):
of Managua, the capital.
There's a rancher named JorgeTalavera and he, something was
attacking his, I think, cattleand goats and things like that.
So he one night, he and hisfarmhand stayed up all night
with guns waiting to shoot atwhatever was attacking his
animals.
And sure enough, they came onenight and something in the
(21:25):
darkness again this is ruralNicaragua they shot at something
that was attacking animals andthey ran off.
So a couple of days later hisfarmhand found a skeleton of
some some distance away, acouple miles away on the, on the
farm, on the ranch, and he sawthis and and Talavera assumed
(21:46):
that this was the Chupacabra.
He thought this is theChupacabra he'd been hearing
about because, again, by thispoint, for five years there had
been stories out of Mexico,stories out of Puerto Rico.
It was in the news, peopletalking about it, weird mystery,
blah, blah, blah.
He's like holy shit.
He didn't get a good view of it, but you know it was.
He shot something in thedarkness.
(22:07):
Here's this dead thing Now.
Had he thought more about it,he might have realized that it
wouldn't be a skeleton afteronly a couple of days.
I mean, it might be, butprobably not.
Mell (22:17):
Anyway, Decomposition is like a real thing.
Decomposition Right, exactly.
Ben Radford (22:20):
So it probably wouldn't have been picked clean.
But anyway, he tells everybodylike I found the chupacabra, I
shot the chupacabra.
We've all been hearing aboutthis, rumors about this, rumors,
gossip.
I actually shot one.
So he claimed to be the firstperson in the world that had
actually killed a chupacabra.
Of course the media come inlike, oh my god, we have, we, we
finally have a body with bonesand we're wrong.
(22:41):
So all of a sudden, likechupacabra actually found this
is the whole thing.
So he takes it over to theuniversity in nicaragua uh, the
university in managua and theylook at it.
They're like dude, it's a dog,that's just a fucking dog bro.
So he pulls the phyllis canyon.
He's like no, no, you switchedthe bones on me of course, oh
(23:03):
yeah, give him back his bones,right you?
This is, this is what you gaveus.
Mine had no butthole, it was alltaint what is a taint and where
does the term come from?
Technically, a taint is thespace between your genitals and
your anus, otherwise known asthe perineum, and the origin of
(23:25):
the term is that it taint yourballs and it taint your butthole
.
Supposedly, it's taint all theway down, just like the turtle.
So they give him the bones backand he's like's like no, no,
you know, these aren't the bonesI gave you, you switched them.
So he brings in this conspiracytheory and then they're like we
didn't switch fucking dog bones, dude we don't have an extra
set of dog bones laying aroundthe lab just to fool you into
(23:49):
thinking that it's notchupacabra.
So finally he admitted that yeah, maybe it was a.
Maybe it was a dog maybe, maybeI shot the neighbor's dog, maybe
I shot the neighbor's dog, butanyway, the the significance of
that in the chupacabra story wasthat that was the the first
time that marked the transitionfrom the bipedal spiky backed
(24:09):
sill alien species creature to,uh, Reiki-backed sill alien
space creature, to, to this,this dead dog, mangy quadruped.
And at that point, because ithad been fixed in in people's
minds, oh, this is, you know, Iguess, the Chupacabra.
We didn't know what it was foryears.
We now have one.
Mell (24:26):
It must be now we know, yeah, yeah.
Ben Radford (24:28):
So that sort of got locked into the public
consciousness and then later on,sort of the definition of
chupacabra became more broad.
So this is when you startgetting the raccoons, the random
stuff like that that basicallybear no connection to the
original chupacabra.
Mell (24:45):
You mentioned to me something that the chupacabra
was used as a politicalboogeyman.
What did you mean by that?
Ben Radford (24:53):
uh, I touched on a little bit before, like, for
example, I mentioned, uh, uh,jose quinozoto, the, the mayor
of canovas.
That basically was like votefor me, I'll protect you for the
chupacabra, right, okay?
But what you find is that, um,pretty quickly, the chupacabra
was being talked about, ofcourse, in mexico and elsewhere,
which is why, to this day, alot of times when people talk
(25:14):
about, the chupacabra was beingtalked about, of course, in
Mexico and elsewhere, which iswhy, to this day, a lot of times
when people talk about thechupacabra, they think it's
Mexican, they assume it's,they've always assumed it's
Mexican.
It's actually, of course,american, because America is,
puerto Rico is part of America,but it just, it makes sense that
it's Mexican, right?
I thought that yeah, a lot ofpeople do it's, it's, it's
pretty common.
(25:34):
So because it's associated with, you know, spanish, and and and
mexico.
But what happened was that the,um, the president at the time,
uh, president, uh, salinasgattari, um, he, he was started
being called the chupacabra.
There was like like, there waslike street graffiti and
editorial cartoons and thingslike that where, where the
(25:58):
president was being identifiedas the Chupacabra Now, probably
mostly sort of in joke and jest,but but the, the the connection
was that he was widely hatedand so so the the popular
perception was that, in the sameway that chupacabra is draining
the blood, uh, and the sort ofmetaphorical resources and
(26:20):
things like that from the puertorican public, the president was
draining resources and money,corruption, this and that.
So the president's a goatsucker got it.
Mell (26:30):
That's interesting, though , man.
Ben Radford (26:32):
Yeah, it's a.
I mean there's other parts aswell.
The thing is like these daysthe Chupacabra has been
homogenized Like there's a moviecame out last year, I think.
The Chupacabra is like one ofthe.
It's like there's an animatedcartoon, I forget which one.
My interest, as you mightimagine, is in the early
Chupacabra, like 90, 95 to 2000,.
Because that's the sort of moreauthentic original stuff, not
(26:56):
after it goes sanitized andcommercialized by X-Files.
So I have a collection of aboutmaybe 20, 15 or 20 T-shirts
from Puerto Rico and Mexico fromthe late 90s and it's
fascinating to sort of look atthese and sort of see, um, see
the political commentary, um.
(27:17):
One of the shirts I have is um,it has a chupacabra and he's
got a straw sucking the bloodout of a chicken.
It's like it's a cartoon um,and there is a um.
It looks like a warthog, likefrom the lion king, but I guess
it's a goat or something.
Anyway, it's running and it hasthis sort of dark thing where
(27:38):
there's two of them running awayfrom the chupacabra and one of
them says yo tengo diabetes.
So he's saying don't suck myblood, I have diabetes.
The other one says don't suckmy blood, I have AIDS.
Oh shit, god damn.
Mell (27:52):
They went there.
They went there.
You know they weren't themiddleman, they just went right
for the nads.
Ben Radford (27:57):
Well, and again it goes back to to the the cultural
context of these things.
Right, so if you look at whatwas happening in in in the mid
90s in puerto rico, uh, therewas hurricanes, as I mentioned.
Uh, you, there was a politicalcrisis.
There's always been an economiccrisis, and AIDS was hitting
the Caribbean especially hard.
(28:17):
You have this connection ofAIDS, tainted blood, vampirism,
all sort of packaged togetherand that's what you get Damn
goat suckers.
Mell (28:28):
I mean, I didn't believe in it before, but now that I've
heard you explain it, even moreso it's not real.
It's a no-go for me, dog, yeah,straight up.
Ben Radford (28:41):
I love the process.
Again, it was a lot of work.
It was a lot of effort writingand research, but it's cool that
it's I mean, in my obituarythey're going to mention
chupacabras and evil clowns, soI guess I'll take it.
Mell (28:56):
I guess I'll take it, but you know, there's got to be some
sort of like, I know for uswhen we can whittle things down
and find the root of somethingand be able to definitively say
that's, that's not what happenedhere, this is no.
There is that feeling ofsatisfaction, of closure?
Yes, do you feel you have thatby now that you finished your
(29:18):
book?
Ben Radford (29:20):
I do, I do.
I am satisfied with it.
I'm I'm happy that people arestill talking about it.
Mell (29:25):
It's kind of it's interesting, I'm not going to
lie.
It is fascinating to me.
Ben Radford (29:31):
And again, I'm still finding weird ass angles,
like politics, Right.
So you know, I wrote the book.
I'm still.
There's still weird littleavenues and shit that I find
interesting.
Whether people do or not, Idon't know, but I do, so I'm
going to keep writing about it.
Oh yeah Again, if I look, Imean if I, if I was absolutely
certain that these things didn'texist, I wouldn't waste my time
(29:51):
.
Mell (29:51):
I mean I, just trying to look for the truth.
Ben Radford (29:54):
I'm just trying to look for the truth wherever it
takes me and I'm trying to solvesome mysteries along the way.
And if somebody can take someof the lessons of like what I've
done and apply it to their ownmysteries or apply it to
something else, all the better.
Mell (30:08):
Do you still come across like cases or cryptids where
you're just like holy shit, letme look into this.
Ben Radford (30:16):
That still interest .
Yeah, I mean it's I every nowand then I'm finding I'm so busy
with stuff.
I mean my podcast Squaring theStrange.
I'm doing the articles formagazine.
So you kind of got a lot goingon, maybe a little bit yeah, I'm
doing the documentary in thechupacabra that may be coming
(30:37):
into to fruition.
I just I've always got stuffand and people send me stuff all
the time and I appreciate it,but I just like I only got so
many hours in the day and I wantto catch up on uh, on netflix,
so yeah, hell yeah.
Mell (30:53):
You're awesome.
Never-ending task there.
We appreciate you coming on somuch.
Ben Radford (30:59):
You have no idea well, it's very kind of you.
Thank for having me this hasbeen awesome.
We really hell yeah I promiseI'll have a cool avatar next
time fan fucking task we'regonna hold you to it.
Mell (31:10):
so on that note, all right , well right, well listen up
kids at home.
Ben Radford (31:14):
Don't keep your ice cream in the same freezer as
your chupacabra heads.
It's probably not good for yourhealth.
Mell (31:19):
And if your dogs don't have a taint contact Ben.
Ben Radford (31:24):
Good night everybody.
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