The Chupacabras (The Goatsucker) is the name of a mythical figure who, according to urban legends, might have appeared during the early to middle 1990s, harming animals of different species.
History
The legend of El Chupacabras, as it was known in Spanish, started to grow in about 1992, when Puerto Rican newspapers El Vocero and El Nuevo Dia began reporting the killings of many different types of animals, such as birds, horses, and, as its name implies, goats. While at first it was suspected that the killings were done randomly by some members of a satanic cult, eventually these killings spread around the island, and many farms reported loss of animal life. The killings had one pattern in common: Each of the animals found dead had two punctured holes around their necks.
Some witnesses reported seeing a small, dark or green figure around the areas of the killings, giving police and news reporters the feeling that El Chupacabras could, in fact, be an extra-terrestial figure.
Soon after the animal deaths in Puerto Rico, other animal deaths began being reported in other countries, such as the Dominican Republic, Argentina, Bolivia, Colombia, Peru, the United States and most notably, Mexico. Both in Puerto Rico and Mexico, El Chupacabras gained urban legend status. Chupacabra stories began to be released several times at American and Hispanic newscasts across the United States, and Chupacabra products, such as t-shirts and baseball hats, were sold.
It is possible that the animal deaths could have been produced by satanic worshippers or by disease. However, neither of those two theories was ever proven. No hard evidence of the deaths being caused by an extra-terrestial or by a strange animal ever surfaced either, however.
