Chupacabras and other Mysteries
Scott Corrales
1997, Greenleaf Publications
280 pp
Puerto Rico has a long history of paranormal activity. This is a good reference book for reports on the chupacabra phenomena, however, it is disjointed and the author does not attempt to extract meaning out of the information or put it into context. It’s mainly just translation of the Spanish articles from the time when the chupa legend was forming. A careful reading of the accounts show there were lone witnesses, no direct documentation and the stories could be a result of stress, sleep deprivation, or mass sociogenic illness (“mass hysteria”). Corrales typically writes on UFO topics so this book is heavy on the UFO angle and “high strangeness” characterization. Other related topics addressed include vampires, bigfoot, flying humanoids, aliens, animal mutilation events, and religious beliefs. The explanation we are led to here takes us very far away from reality and is built on assumptions and speculation and the premise of literal cryptozoology – that the witnesses were extremely accurate and an actual physical thing accounts for their claims. That approach is unscientific and unreliable. Radford’s Tracking the Chupacabra followed this book years later and satisfyingly solves the mystery making this volume less useful.
-Sharon Hill
Modern Cryptozoology 