MVP's WTF? Paranormal

The Chupacabra - w/ Special Guest Ben Radford Part 1 (S8 E6)

• Military Veterans Paranormal (MVP) • Season 8 • Episode 6

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Throughout parts of the Southwestern United States, Mexico, Latin America, and Puerto Rico, tales of the legendary Chupacabra run rampant. Folks share tales of sightings of the creature with glowing red eyes and large fangs, who lurks in the forest and preys on livestock and farm animals. Many residents are fearful the Chupacabra, which translates to “Goat Sucker”, is an animal vampire, sucking the blood out of its prey. However, is the Chupacabra real and why were sightings only reported as far back as the 1990s?

Our special guest, Benjamin Radford, is the world’s leading authority on the Chupacabra. He is literally an expert on the topic as he spent over 5 years researching the Chupacabra, traveling to all parts of the world to conduct interviews, field research, and forensic analysis. He authored the most  authoritative book on the Chupacabra, Tracking the Chupacabra: The Vampire Beast in Fact, Fiction, and Folklore (2011).

As always, more information on Ben and the Chupacabra are listed below:

MORE INFORMATION ON BENJAMIN RADFORD

"Modern Myths" - American Museum of Natural History

"The Mythical Creature Known as the Chupacabra Walked Out of a Movie" - J. Jarry

"Chasing chupacabras? You may find something even more extraordinary here." - National Geographic

"Chupacabra: What's the story behind the legendary creature?" - L Calvario/USA Today

"Are the strange creatures found around Cuero the legendary Chupacabra?" - K. Cabrera/Texas Standard

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Please visit our website: www.militaryveteransparanormal.com for access to more information about this episode and others, as well as other research and investigations we've done.

Evan:

Welcome back to MVP's what the F***? Paranormal Podcast, where we talk about, well, everything the paranormal encompasses. So you ready? Let's f***ing do this. All right, what's up and welcome back everyone. This season we've been discussing all those creepy crawly cryptids that go bump in the night from monsters to mythical legends. This week, we're analyzing one of the world's best known beasts, the chupacabra oh, what chupacabra what was that?

Wes:

chupacabra, chupacabra, chupacabra chupacabra.

Mell:

He doesn't know how to say chupacabra tonight's episode is a very special one.

Evan:

Joining us this fine evening is Mr Benjamin Radford. If you are in any way familiar with the topic of cryptozoology, you've probably seen his name pop up more than a time or two. Ben is the deputy editor of Skeptical Enquirer Science Magazine and is the world's most prominent expert on the chupacabra phenomenon. He is an award-winning author of over 20 books, countless articles and has contributed to numerous other books and research. He is also one of the very few science-based investigators of the unexplained phenomena in the world. So, needless to say, if ben is talking about cryptids and monsters, you better listen up, because this man knows his shit. We can't thank him enough for taking the time out of his busy schedule to drop some knowledge on our dome pieces. So, without further ado, let's get into it.

Ben:

Wow, I'll take it, thank you.

Mell:

Yeah, sometimes people think that they're talking to chupacabras, and it's not. They're not, it's just us.

Wes:

Man fucking speak for yourself, Shit. I'm a beautiful man.

Evan:

Well, Ben, thanks for coming on here with us tonight, man, and discussing all this crazy stuff with us.

Ben:

Thanks for inviting me. It's good to be on.

Evan:

We are anxious to learn some things that we probably don't know about this topic out there. Uh, if you haven't heard of the chupacabra, it's known by many different, I guess, variations and and looks. Depending on where who you talk to, it looks different than other people claim it to be, but anyways, chupacabra means goat sucker in spanish, as far as I'm aware right that's correct.

Ben:

Don't google that, by the way. That's uh. If you're putting together a powerpoint, just go with chupacabra, don't Google learn from my mistakes, that's probably a good call.

Wes:

Just delete that out of my search bar now.

Evan:

So goat sucker I mean I'm assuming that they're referring to like it's vampire, like quality qualities where it sucks the blood of animals or something.

Ben:

Yeah, actually it's interesting. There's a, there's a whole uh, there's a mini debate, um, among, uh, among the very small niche of people who actually give a shit about this myself prominently um, it's, it's actually.

Ben:

It's actually interesting because, uh, in the tv show bon, there was a reference to a chupacabra and this has made some people think that the chupacabra actually dates back to the 60s or 50s or even earlier. But actually, if you look closely at that episode of Bonanza, it's referring to a whippoorwill bird. And according to whippoorwill oh, okay, yeah, according to legend, uh, the whippoorwill bird sucks milk, not blood milk out of goats, uh, which is why it's called the goat sucker. Um, so that's, that's sort of one of the. Sometimes you'll hear someone say oh well, the chupacabra was mentioned in Bonanza, different chupacabra, as weird as they may sound, actually different chupacabra. Well, what is it?

Evan:

That's a good question. Yeah that is a damn good question.

Ben:

Let's start at 101. Chupacabra 101. Okay, so the chupacabra, it's probably, by this point it's either probably the second or third best known cryptozoological monster in the world after Bigfoot. Bigfoot is, of course, the Marquis, and then you probably have Nessie, the Loch Ness monster, and then Chupacabra, sort of jockeying for second position, and then you have sort of tertiary monsters Jersey Devil, mothman, lizardman, you know, take your pick. And one of the things that I find interesting about the Chupacabra one reason I spent so much time researching it and writing a book on it and things like that is that, as was alluded to earlier, it's a vampire.

Ben:

Bigfoot is not a vampire. Nessie is not a vampire, mothman is not a vampire. The Chupacabra is specifically a vampire.

Mell:

Like a bat with wings.

Ben:

Well, this is what's cool about it, right? So that's what really intrigued me, because I'm like, well, you know, yeah, if it's a vampire, then it leaves dead bodies, right, that's kind of what they do, or presumably there should be some, you know, sort of forensic evidence of these sorts of things. So the morphology of the chupacabra is. I mean, we could spend a half hour on that specifically, but basically the chupacabra changed form dramatically. So this is another sort of fascinating angle to it, right, if you look at Bigfoot, the Bigfoot that people conceptualize and think about is pretty much the same as it was in 1970s, 1950s and so on.

Mell:

Right.

Ben:

Same thing with the other creatures, but the Chupacabra is different in that if you look online or in magazines or wherever else, you'll find quite a wide variety. So initially the sort of early Chupacabra was sort of a spiky-backed bipedal figure with sort of large alien wraparound eyes spikes down the back, but otherwise bipedal.

Evan:

It looked more or less like human form and then Sorry to cut you off, this was the Puerto Rican Chupacabra, like a.

Clip:

Puerto Rican in his hair. I spell Puerto Rican. Y'all know I love Mr Puerto Rican. I spell Puerto Rican in this Rican.

Evan:

Exactly. This is the original.

Ben:

Yeah, so this is the original Chupacabra. So it sort of breaks down to different stages. So the very original chupacabra was the one that I just described. Um, it was cited by a woman named madeline tolentino, uh in august of 1995, uh in in puerto rico. This is what she described. She didn't call the chupacabra because it was not known before that. She just said she saw this weird ass thing basically outside of her front door and other people sort of made up the name and attached it to that figure. So that version of Chupacabra basically went from 1995 to 2000. And what happened in 2000 was when all of a sudden we have the quadruped. This is where we have the chupacabras. Look like dogs and coyotes and mangy things like that so it started in the 90s yep 1995 you know that don't make no sense though it.

Ben:

It don't make no sense unless you, unless you sort of go back to the, the origin of it and sort of piece together, which which I did in my book tracking chupacabra um, I was trying to figure, okay, well, why did it appear in 1995? I mean, why not? Why not 1982 or 1975 or 1800? Um, so that was sort of the one of the key parts of the mystery. I was trying to look at the dead bodies, eyewitnesses, what did people say it was? What would you think it was? And then, and then, basically, after I had looked, I interviewed medical forensics examiners, uh, talking about, like you know, if an animal's attacked, there's basically what I call the illusion of vampirism, where an animal can look like it's been had his blood sucked out, but it actually hasn't. So there's like forensics involved, uh. And then I was trying to look back okay, well, where where did this, where did this thing emerge? You know, in in august of 95. So that's what. That was sort of the fun part of sort of piecing it all together I have a question.

Mell:

So you were saying you know your book tracking the chupacabra. If I'm not mistaken, that took five years of research, right? It did so how do you research an urban legend when there's no evidence of his of his existence?

Ben:

that's an excellent question. Um, basically, I began, uh, by assuming the premise that it was real, right, so I didn't know it was real. I I'm a skeptic, obviously, but I'm like, well, if these chupacabras and keep in mind, like Bigfoot, that can't just be one of them. I mean, there has to be a breeding population if they're actually animals.

Wes:

Yes, exactly.

Ben:

So I began my book by trying to well, I actually began my book by talking about the vampire aspect, and what did people think the vampires were? So I was looking, for example, at vampire legends in the 1800s in Europe and, as Melanie knows, part of my background is in folklore, so that was basically so. I began by sort of looking at, by placing the Chupacabra in the context of vampires generally. The reason I did that was because, if you look at the history of vampires typically, the reason that the vampires are created that is why people or societies think that vampires are real is because there's something weird that they can't explain. And, oh shit, who knows this vampire or witches?

Ben:

Witchcraft is another example, right? Yeah, you know some. You know that some lightning strikes a house or there's a stillbirth. Hundreds of years ago, in the pre-scientific era, they didn't know who to blame, so they blame the witch down the road, they blame a vampire, they blame some supernatural cause. And the same thing happened, I argue, in my book with the chupacabra, where you had these unexplained animal mutilations that they didn't have an explanation for. So they're like well, it must be that chupacabra thing, and so that's the connection that I make.

Evan:

Now, were any of these animal mutilations actually drained?

Ben:

of blood? No, they weren't, and that's one of the most common misconceptions. What you find is that, typically, when somebody finds an animal that they think has been drained of blood and keep in mind that in these cases, these aren't professionally autopsied, right. So what you find is that in most of the chupacabra victim cases, there will be an animal. The animal will almost look like it's sleeping. It's not ripped up, it's not bleeding out, there's not blood everywhere. It seems to just be sitting there by itself and if you look closely, there's two puncture marks on the neck. Well, of course, you're going to think vampires, because that's the classic vampire.

Evan:

Hell yeah, that's what I would think.

Ben:

Right, but in fact, what happened was that you know it was typically these are. This is ordinary predation. So these are dogs and coyotes that will attack at the neck, they'll crush the neck and then the animal will die of internal hemorrhaging. Who started it? Who started it? What happened was Let me tell you a story, jonathan. So here's the thing. So, just like you have to place the vampire, you have to place the chupacabra in the context of vampires. You have to place this predation in the context of the chupacabra. So there were some ordinary predation going on in Puerto Rico, but in this case, a woman named Madeline Tolentino, who you mentioned earlier, saw something weird.

Clip:

Oh my God, what is that? Oh my God, what is that? Oh my God, what is that?

Ben:

I actually interviewed her so she actually told two different versions of the story and if you're interested I'll parse them out later on. But basically the main version that she told was that it was broad daylight, she didn't remember the day, but she said it was the second week sometime, the second week of August of 95. And she was living with her mother. And I went back to the house where this whole encounter happened and she said that she was there with her mother and she looked out the window and it was broad daylight early afternoon. She looked out the window and she saw this creature that she had no idea what it was. She described it as, as I mentioned, sort of it had three fingers and toes, it stood like a human, it had big eyes, it had very distinctive spikes going down the spine, it had no nose, just two little slits and a small mouth. And she describes seeing this thing and, but she doesn't freak out, she's right, which I find odd, frankly.

Mell:

I had to shit myself. I'm not even.

Clip:

Yeah, I would speaking of shitting yourself, I shit my pants. I don't know why I ever took that chance.

Ben:

Speaking of shitting yourself, she is very You're wondering where this is going to go. Right, Speaking of shitting yourself? Let me tell you folks. So, Tolentino, in the interviews that she gave me, and also other ones I dug up that she gave in 96, she gave this very elaborate, detailed description. She said that she was looking for genitalia.

Clip:

What is she doing? I'm not under there.

Ben:

She's looking for my balls.

Clip:

Hey, if anyone's seen Decton's balls, let me know. They're about this, big but a lot tinier. They're like a pea or like a ball bearing or like if you've ever seen a mouse ball About half that size, incredibly tiny. They're like really, really tiny little girl balls If little girls had balls. So if you find little tiny girl balls that are so fucking tiny and shriveled up, let me know, because I'll put them right back up his scrotum.

Ben:

Obviously that's the first place, I'd look.

Ben:

Of course. Right, she's like hey, let me, is it a boy or a girl? I don't know Where's the junk? Right, look at his balls. Right, can you get a load of the chupacabra's balls? So she's describing copper's balls. So she's describing. So she, she says it was, uh, the word she used. Well, it was in spanish, but basically it was sealed that they had. No, it didn't have a, it didn't have a butthole, didn't have a dick, didn't have a vulva. It was just basically smooth and I mean, I don't know whatever, I don't want to get all weird on

Ben:

you. So I know that ship has sailed, but so anyway. So she's, she's talking, but she's talking to her, her mother, about this creature that they're apparently both seeing again just outside her window. And then she says, well, she said it skipped away, but then she said it kind of flew away and then she said it sort of hopped. So she gave slightly contradictory descriptions of how it left the area, and the very first people that interviewed her about this was a group of UFO buffs in Puerto Rico.

Mell:

So this is a monster and she's reaching towards alien buffs.

Ben:

Well, right, so there's a strong presence of UFO believers in Puerto Rico. So what happened? Was they heard about this? They're like this woman saw this weird thing, maybe it's alien related. So they went and interviewed her and they basically put their own spin on her sighting. So she never said it was alien, she just said that she saw this weird thing. So the group of UFO believers, including it, was led by a guy named Jorge Martin. He's the head of this local UFO group. He interviews her and he basically elicits these connections to extraterrestrials and UFOs. And that's why, later on, one theory is that when aliens were visiting Puerto Rico, rico, uh, it was an alien pet, like, like a dog or dog dog, that's like it ran out. They couldn't get it back. So the, the flying saucer showed up in puerto rico. Uh, the aliens are looking for somebody to put something up their butts, whatever. Uh, the chupacabra is their pet who, like, ran out the door when they weren't looking and escaped into the, into the forest.

Mell:

Oh no, I got to stomp the brakes and put the idea right through the fucking windshield. On that one, I'm sorry, I just can't.

Wes:

You can't picture an alien dog just no escaping into the force. Puerto Rico. No all smooth like a.

Evan:

Ken doll Buster got away out on another damn planet. We got track him down.

Wes:

Yeah, like what the fuck is this shit? I told you to put a collar on him.

Ben:

Right, right. Yeah, they can come all the way across the universe, but they can't keep track of their pet.

Wes:

Yeah, what kind of shit is this?

Ben:

So okay. So if you don't buy that theory he said advisedly then there's another theory, which is that no, no, it's not extraterrestrial, it's actually the product of top secret experiments gone wrong, like, like now, we're talking Now see, there you go this is.

Mell:

this is more of the group that's what I heard Like they had. They were just research monkeys on the Puerto Rican Caribbean Primate Research Center and that they somehow bounced and escaped.

Ben:

Right. So in Puerto Rico, the main places that's identified as the origin or the home of Chupacabra is called the El Uque Rainforest. The rumor is that somewhere deep in the jungle there is a top secret underground base and this is where the Chupacabra was being experimented on until there was a um, a hurricane, and so that that's. One of the stories is that the Chupacabra is this Frankenstein engineered, uh, military monster that the hurricane came through it, it blew out a window or you know, I don't know, did something, and this is when it escaped.

Wes:

It's fucking crazy. Just some straight island of Dr Monroe stuff happening.

Mell:

Exactly. Why do you think so many people think that it's real though?

Ben:

Well, there's a couple of things here. Part of the reason that some people believe in it is that you look at folklore, right, and so if you look at who believed in Chupacabra at first, this is primarily a rural thing. So this is where you have farms, you have ranchers, you have for lack of a better word not well-educated people not looking down on them, but just ranchers. And so what you find is that, for the ranchers and farmers, they had a reason to believe in Chupacabra because to them it was a real threat. If something is attacking your animals, you're given an explanation. If you're given a pseudo explanation, then you're going to pay attention to this.

Ben:

It was, as I mentioned, often the subject of tabloids. The mainstream newspapers in San Juan weren't reporting on it because they thought it was bullshit. One one. One way that that that sort of translated into the real world was that it tended to be more rural folks um, in many cases less educated who were sharing these, these stories about the chupacabras. You know, if you're, if you're a lawyer or a doctor in san juan, you don't give a shit. The chupacabra isn't, it's not relevant to you, right? If you're a rancher in rural Puerto Rico, you need to best you know, if you might only have, you know, 15 head of cattle and two goats and if they, if they die, that's your livelihood. The other thing that happened was that the reason that people believed in it was that there was local, local politician who was who was telling people that if you vote for me, I'll protect you from the chupacabra shut up?

Wes:

damn no way, fucking course, jesus.

Ben:

Hey, man, the opportunity's there, you know, dive on it right and and it sounds weird, but like using boogeyman and politics, this is standard procedure, of procedure. This has happened.

Wes:

It's happening right now.

Ben:

In this case he's like again he's playing to his base If you vote for me, I'll protect you from the Chupacabra. Like well, shit, you got my votes, damn.

Mell:

That's some straight mob shit. That has shown that when people have high anxiety or a lot of stress about whether it's politics or like a real threat, then if they can focus onto a specific target it will reduce their stress levels when they're thinking about their own government. So I can see how he could use this chupacabra to try and take their stress away from what's going on in politics onto this. It kind of gives them relief.

Ben:

Yeah, and even if you don't believe in it, you know there's no harm. I mean, yeah, maybe someone made fun of him, but he got reelected. He was the mayor of Canovas, I think, for like 20 years or something.

Mell:

That's insane.

Ben:

No, you're exactly right, and that's actually one of the reasons why Texas specifically has such a high number of chupacabra reports, for a reason you just mentioned, which is that when you're looking at animals with sarcoptic mane, typically what happens is that and this is actually due in part to global warming that's weird. Exactly here's how this works. Is that, basically, you have animals because here in the southwest and other places as well, they're getting warmer and warmer. Animals are living longer, whereas they would have died during the cold snaps, right? So an animal has mange and typically, because it loses its fur, its insulation, they would die off more quickly because during the harsh winters, but because the winters are getting milder, more of them are surviving, even with sarcoptic mange, and they're looking weirder and creepier because they're losing more and more hair. So there's actually a climate link to why there's more and more chupacabra reports over the last, say, 10, 15 years.

Evan:

Isn't that what they determined with the chupacabra specimen that they found? That Texas rancher found the Phyllis Canyon?

Clip:

Is that how you say it?

Evan:

Yeah, canyon, okay, canyon, is that how you say? Yeah, canyon, okay. And they? They had that. Uh, that chupacabra alleged chupacabra body, uh, dna tested at the tsu, didn't they? They did, yeah, they did and from what I understand it came back. It was like a a coyote, or a coyote mixed with a mexican wolf, or something yes, that was so.

Ben:

That's an interesting story. So I, I, so Phyllis Canyon was, as you mentioned, she was a ranger out in Cuero, texas, actually, for the TV show Monster Quest. They flew me out there to, to, to, to meet Phyllis Canyon and look at her chupacabra. And it was interesting because the night before in the hotel I was meeting with the TV show producers. I was like I can explain, I can explain this to you if you, if you want, if you want me to explain sort of the context of the chupacabra here, I'm happy to do it. Uh, he's like no, no, we already have the script. Just, you know, we call time 7 30.

Ben:

We'll pick you up, we'll take you there. I'm like okay, well, if you decide you want to actually understand this, let me know they're not interested in that.

Mell:

No, no, no no no we got it covered already.

Ben:

Yeah, we know the script. We already know what we want to say Thanks, but no thanks. You wrote a book, whatever.

Ben:

So, I'm like whatever. I mean, I'm used to this. I've done enough TV. I'm like whatever, Although I've done enough TV, and like whatever, Although I will. I will give a shout out to Josh Gates. I was on his show, actually Destination Truth or Destination Unknown. I was on both of them and he had me out there in Puerto Rico. It was actually a pretty good show. We ended up in a cave, knee deep in batshit.

Mell:

Oh guano, good times, good times.

Ben:

That was fun, um, but to his credit, uh, even though it was a little more sensationalized than it would have liked, it was actually a pretty good show. So shout out to him, but so so. So we for for phil's canyon, the one that you mentioned. So we go out there for the camera crew. They want you to meet somebody. Like five times. They're like knock on the door, pretend that we're not here, okay oh hi, never didn't see you there.

Ben:

No, do it again. So so, uh, so we meet with her and she's like do you want to see the chupacabra? I'm like, yeah, that's why we're here, obviously. So she takes us in from the living room, out the back, into, uh, the garage, and she opens up a freezer. So she opens up the freezer and, like, she takes out ice cream and then, like you know, some chicken wings, and then there's a severed dog head no, no wrapped in plastic don't, don't, oh yeah, that's my kind of lady dude okay, all right.

Ben:

Well, here's the severed coyote head. So she takes it over. So of course the camera wants her to take it out four or five times we get to that. So I actually got a chance to look at this thing and examine it. So she's telling the story and I'm not in the shot, but I'm hearing her talk and she's telling the camera guys and telling the producer. Well, you know I saw this thing and you know she talked about how she found this chupacabra and you know she cut the head off and it was so strange because it didn't. She's like it has no hair on it. It's the weirdest thing. She's like it can't be mange because mangy animals have some hair on it and she's like it doesn't have any hair. So I mean I'm hearing her say this and I'm looking at the and I'm like I see hair right here. It's literally like I I don't have any hair, but there's hair. I I can that thing that she's saying it doesn't have it obviously has it you just pan right over here if you don't right here.

Ben:

It's right fucking here. You don't need to zoom in, you can get it from that just man, we got to stick to the script, you know, right?

Wes:

we?

Ben:

got a script dude, so I'm like whatever. So. So we we wrapped up and then later on in as I talk about in in my book. So basically, what happened was that, um, it was halloween I forget what year, but it's halloween and as part of a Halloween special, a local TV station I thought it was San Antonio I think it was decided they were going to do a DNA test on the chupacabra. Ooh, I know right, I'm like finally some actual science. So they did the DNA test and, as was alluded to earlier, the answer came out coyote Big surprise.

Ben:

Phyllis didn't like that answer, so she's like well. She says well, I'm a doctor. Can you guess what kind of doctor she is?

Wes:

She's a naturopath. You fucking crazy man you sound insane.

Evan:

Do you realize that you should be medicated?

Wes:

elaborate what the fuck is that. Yeah, hold on, hold on. Yeah, pump the brakes.

Ben:

Someone needs to explain that the point is that she was making it sound like her background had some bearing on genetic analysis, which of course did not.

Mell:

No, no, it's a holistic doctor pretty much yeah, that's yeah, it's not.

Ben:

Is that what it is?

Mell:

they kind of mix some science and natural therapy and then they take some sort of like holistic approach to treating, rubbing essential oils on your body and eating chickpeas, kind of thing it's like step up from that.

Wes:

It sounds like a good time so.

Ben:

So she's like okay, well, I'm gonna pay for my own dna test, because you know the government is, you know she agreed to the dna test. It comes back and answers she doesn't like. She's like well, I'm gonna submit it again on my own, I'm going to pay for it. This time they're like it's your coyote, do whatever you want. So she sends. So she she's like this is bullshit. So she sends it off to another, another lab. She pays for this and it comes back the the same. At this point she's like well, maybe it's a coyote, but it's also a chupacabra.

Wes:

Oh, interesting, yeah, that checks, out.

Mell:

She wanted it to be.

Ben:

So, no matter what you said, it was going to be a chupacabra. Well, so I asked her. I said well, Phyllis, I mean I'm trying not to sound condescending, but you know I'm like well, Phyllis, what you did, what you did, I'm like okay, you admit that it's at least half coyote, but you say it's a chupacabra. How does that work? He's like well, I think the chupacabra is a coyote mixed with a wolf. I'm like Phyllis, here's the thing we already know what a coyote and a wolf mix is like. They're called coy wolves. They exist, they're not unknown to science, they don't suck blood and they're nothing like this mangy dog yet.

Mell:

And then she's like well, you know the, the animals. Uh, their eyes glow in photographs of course, so do mine.

Ben:

Thank you, thank you. So I'm like phyllis. Again, phyllis, here's the thing. Do you know why they only reflect in photographs? Here's why Because they're flashes, because there's a flash reflection. This is not a thing, and that's why it's only in photographs, because it's the same with everybody else. It's called red eye. This has been known. Phyllis, you didn't discover anything new. This has been known. Phyllis, you didn't discover anything new. This has been known for millennia. Well, again, I'm trying to be nice, but it's just sort of like uh, uh, but she, she was nice.

Ben:

Uh, I bought a t-shirt from her, I bought a beer cozy, which I have hold, on hold, on hold, on hold on, like chupacabra t-shirt and beer koozie yes, yes, yeah, so she's, she sold merchandising the shit out of that huh oh, yeah, she was she, she so that explains the second testing yeah, yeah, because, well, because she, she literally called herself the chupacabra lady, so she had a vested interest, literal financial.

Ben:

Yeah, she had financial gain yeah she's like's like so and I mean I don't blame her for it, but I mean it's like so. Yeah, I mean I, I she signed things for me. I mean she was nice so I wasn't going to argue with her. I mean I'm not there to like we're in a parade. Looks like right, that that is a known thing, you can google it, it's, it's real and it's nothing like what you found. And and besides that, she kept saying there's no, there's no hair on this, on this major chupacabra, and I can fucking see the hair. I'm like, look, it's right there. It's literally in the photograph you gave me. You're petting it. That's not a shadow that's hair.

Wes:

So, ben, before all the testing was done, right when you were there and you watched her pull, pull this head out, when you seen it were you just in the back of your mind like that's a fucking coyote, like did you know?

Ben:

I suspected pretty early on. But what was interesting was that again she in her mind, in phyllis's mind, she had these sets of reasons why it couldn't be a coyote, despite the genetics she's like. Well, but the mouth is different, because, for example, the mouth looks bigger than a coyote. Well, what happens is that that's actually a function of the sarcoptic mange. So when animals have mange, mange, the skin tightens and then that pulls back, yeah, the flesh around the mouth. So again all the things that she was like saying, well, what about this, what it is, what about this? I'm like this is all. This can all be explained. I mean, I'm not trying to be mr debunking skeptic here, but you gotta give me more than this, because this is clearly coyote yeah, also where.

Evan:

Also, where's the rest of the body? Why'd you just cut the head off?

Wes:

Well, she probably couldn't get their ice cream in there.

Ben:

Phyllis said that she found I think two, two, two chupacabras, so one of them, as I recall. So in her house there's lots of taxidermy. So I'm not a tax, I'm not a hunter, I mean whatever, but I she, yeah, you go in her house, she's, you know, antelope and deer and bear, and God knows it's such a. So at some point I think there was a chupacabra coyote in her house.

Mell:

You would just see that. Yeah, you would think, if she caught a chupacabra she would mount that bitch right, you know as soon as you walk in the door.

Ben:

That's probably why she had the head in the freezer. That makes sense, well, actually. So there's a funny story, just as a quick aside. So there was in not not in Cuero, texas, but in Blanco, texas there was a guy named Jerry Air and he actually taxidermied an alleged chupacabra. So I talked to him and I was like you know, you're an expert, right. He's like, yeah, I was like did you see anything unusual about this? I mean this. I'll be honest, this looks a lot like a coyote. He's like it looks like a coyote to me, but the guy that paid me to taxidermy it he wanted it to be, chupacabra.

Ben:

Hey, he's like I'm not, I'm not getting paid to identify it.

Wes:

I'm getting paid to stuff it. I saw the pictures of that thing.

Ben:

It looked creepy as shit, though. It did look creepy, yeah, but did he make it look that creepy? Uh, I think I don't. I didn't ask him whether he made it creepy, it was, it was kind of weird anyway. But so the guy that bought it was a creationist named, uh, john adolf. The reason he wanted the Chupacabra was because he has a creationist museum and he thought the Chupacabra disproved evolution.

Evan:

Oh, Smart guy huh.

Ben:

So his logic is well, those egghead scientists, those evolution scientists, they say the Chupacabra can't exist. Yet here it is Obviously obviously. If they're wrong about that, then they're wrong about evolution too. Oh yeah, of course of course, that makes sense why didn't I see it?

Mell:

I don't know. You know we're slacking. That's what's. That's the problem with us? Yeah, if there isn't any tangible evidence, should that preclude the possibility of its existence at all? Like, is there leeway for possibility just because, because you know, absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, according to william wright, sure?

Ben:

no, I I would agree with that. I mean so the the chupacabra, it's, the again there's. There's a couple aspects to it that are distinctive. I've talked about a couple before. Again, it's a vampire, it's a vampire dog right, Well, again it.

Wes:

Sometimes, sometimes, no butthole.

Mell:

That's the most important thing. Doesn't have the chocolate starfish.

Ben:

Not only do we not have scat, we don't have bones, we don't even have tracks. This is really killing, right? Yeah, bigfoot is known for being blurry but also leaving tracks, yeah, so blurry. So let's say there's I don't know. Let's say there's 10 000 chupacabras out there. They have four legs. So, uh, every with every step, uh, every two steps, they're creating exponential, like there should be literally hundreds of thousands of chupacabra tracks across North America, south America or whatever. There's not even one.

Ben:

And besides that, again, once you recognize that their alleged prey are not in fact drained of blood, I mean, again, in the rare cases where somebody has actually gone and said, you know, you say this is a chupacabra victim. Yes, cut it open, there's blood there, right? So we know for a fact. So what are they drinking, right? So all these things sort of come together. But it's certainly true that in my research and as Melanie, as you know and you know, I've done this for a long time 20 years or so and I look into a variety of things curses, ghosts and all sorts of things and, for example, every now and then there'll be someone who will say well, you're just a debunking skeptic. You say Bigfoot don't exist.

Ben:

I said no, or ghost. I said I have never, ever said say bigfoot don't exist. I said no, or ghost. I said I have never, ever said the bigfoot can't exist. I have never, ever claimed the ghost cannot exist, right? I? I've searched all you want interviews, books, articles. I've never said that. Why haven't I said that? But the reason you bring up is like I can't that scientifically I don't know. We can't say you can't, you can't prove a universal negative. That being said, what I can say is that the all the evidence that I've seen points to these not existing. Tomorrow, next week, next month, next year, there could be better evidence, but as of now, I have looked at this and in some cases I've done field research. I mean, I've, I've, I've done it. Uh, yeah, I've spent, I've spent time in the jungles of nicaragua. I've, I've been in, I've traveled around south america. I spent five years on this. I'm not just some armchair debunker saying this is bullshit.

Mell:

I, I was right, you did the research and you had boots on the ground.

Ben:

And look, my position is always if I'm wrong, then show me.

Mell:

And, on that note, this seems like the perfect spot to take a break in our interview with Ben Radford, the world's foremost expert on the chupacabra. He literally wrote the book. Next week we'll finish our interview with Ben as well as share our final thoughts on this legendary beast. So until then, spoke at you later.

Evan:

Good night everybody.

Mell:

Bye.