Chupacabra

In March of 1975, fear was beginning to build in the small town of Moca, located on the northwestern tip of Puerto Rico.

The first incident had been unsettling enough: a cow had been found dead in Barrio Cruz, but now there had been dozens of similar incidents, and the residents were starting to get spooked. Goats and chickens were increasingly becoming targets.

The reports increasingly came to resemble those of a vampire, leaving a small circular incision or two and draining the animals of their blood. Naturally, paranoia fed into storytelling and vice versa, and a self-perpetuating cycle was created. Local newspapers named the cause of these incidents the vampire of Moca.

There was even one “eyewitness report” from a woman who claimed that she saw a dark figure fly and land on top of her roof, scratching and trying to get in before flying away.

Then, these mysterious events simply stopped happening.

Exactly twenty years later, they started back up again. This time, it was the town of Canóvanas on the northeastern corner. Eight sheep were found dead with puncture wounds on their chests, all drained of blood.

Once again, stories of livestock deaths began to spread across the island. Once again, there was a person who claimed to see this terrible monster with her own two eyes.

Madelyne Tolentino lived in Canóvanas with her mother. In August of 1995, she gave a detailed description of the creature she claimed was killing all the animals. This creature, she insisted, was around three or four feet tall, walked on two legs, and had long spikes along its spine.

If I had heard about this news story at the time, this description might have sounded eerily familiar, thanks to my kickass job working at a movie theater that served beer.

That’s because this is a pretty good description of the creature in the movie Species.

Tolentino’s description goes on.

The alien chupacabra has long, thin arms and legs, dark eyes, and an oblong head.

There were some movies that I saw a dozen times at the Movie Cafe. This wasn’t one of those, but I did get to see the creature up close and on the big screen. I’m pretty confident that Madelyne Tolentino did, too.

Today, the legend of the chupacabra lives on, propagating the same misinformation that led the residents of Moca to envision a demonic, blood-sucking creature. Why did Tolentino’s obviously silly depiction survive, in spite of being inspired by a subpar version of Alien?

I think the answer is simple: the internet.

Around 1995, everything changed. Those AOL discs were everywhere, and I lived in a place that had dial-up internet access. The young internet was starving for stories, and a rumor about a bloodsucking cryptid (a supposed living creature purported to exist with no actual evidence) in Puerto Rico was absolutely ripe for the rumor mills.

Thirty years later, the legend lives on.

Internet legends today are like this, where the rumor can spread a little faster than the fact checking, and then by the time the facts are thoroughly checked, the legend lives in everyone’s minds. What are some of your favorite (or least favorite) examples of cryptids and internet legends?