Mar 23, 2011, 12:59 by John Steele
While leprechauns and bigfoots remain on the loose across the world, one mysterious monster appears to have been nothing more than folklore.
El Chupacabra, a bipedal alien-like creature nicknamed "goatsucker" was first spotted in Puerto Rico in 1995 when two goats were found drained of all their blood. Since then, this supposed being has appeared in many different iterations from Mexico to Florida to Texas, whenever livestock turn up dead.
But now, well-published writer and skeptic Benjamin Radford, author of several books on monsters and paranormal phenomena, managing editor of the journal The Skeptical Inquirer and LiveScience columnist, has released what he says to be definitive proof that El Chupacabra is not real, but rather a forgotten memory from the 1995 sci-fi film Species.
According to Gawker, Radford reported noticing a strong resemblance to the alien/human hybrid in Species. When he spoke to El Chupacabra's first reported victim Madelyne Tolentino, he asked her if the thing that she saw could have been inspired by the film. Indeed, she had seen the movie in the weeks prior to making her description.
"You can make a direct connection between the film hitting theaters, her seeing the creature in the film, seeing it in the street, making the report and entering the public conscious," Radford said.
After speaking with Tolentino, Radford went on to the other reported sightings, none of which were described nearly the same as the original. One farmer in Texas even managed to shoot a predator he believed to be El Chupacabra but it turned out to be a coyote with a severe case of mange.
"By the mid-2000s, anything weird was being called El Chupacabra," he said. "Mangy coyotes. Dead raccoons. Even a dried fish in New Mexico, which looks nothing like El Chupacabra."
But that doesn't mean the myth won't live on. Every livestock death has a scapegoat, and gives the media a fun story. The myth even has a Facebook fan club. And Radford is fine with that. In fact, he hopes he is proven wrong someday.
"If next month or next year somebody finds El Chupacabra that's sucking blood from animals, I'm happy to eat my crow and add a chapter to the book," he says.
Source: Fox News
http://onlinejournal.com/artman/publish/article_7299.shtml
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