Cryptid Origins
THE STORIES BEHIND BIG FOOT, THE LOCH NESS MONSTER, El Chupacabra, AND THE NEW JERSEY DEVIL
INTRO
In 1925, John Burns was a school teacher at the Chehalis Indian Preserve deep in the Coast Mountains of British Columbia. He heard stories from his students of a strange giant lurking in the forest. It was a tale handed down for generations among the Indians.
Burns became curious - were these stories true? The Indians insisted it was just a myth. But one night an Elder admitted they were hesitant to be truthful with him, fearing the “white man” would mock their beliefs. So Burns kept digging. He worked to earn their trust. And it became clear this was no myth.
Many of the Indians had seen this creature themselves. First hand. And not from a distance. The creature had chased them. One Indian showed Burns the house this mountain giant destroyed with its bare hands as the Indian’s family ran for safety. They had a name for the giant – it was hard to pronounce. In the native Salish language it was spelled s-e-s-q-e-t, and it meant “Wild Man”. Mainstream media anglicized the pronunciation and called it Sasquatch.
And a legend was born.
BIGFOOT
In June of 2020 a husband and wife were on a long distance hike in the wilderness of Trinity County in California. It was a clear day, just after 10AM, when they approached a creek. And they heard an unfamiliar high pitched animal call - could have been a bird. But it wasn’t. They saw an animal crouching down at the edge of the creek licking in water. They were about 20 feet away. All they could see for sure was the round black head. There were no ears visible as you’d expect on a bear. Then the animal sensed their presence and looked up. Their eyes met. When investigators followed up with the couple later, the wife said the creature’s eyes were “more human-like than ape-like” and dark in color.
The creature seemed afraid. According to the couple, it ran up a steep hill to escape, first on all fours trying to stay low. Then - when it reached the mountainside on the opposite bank - it stood on two legs and ran with long strides up the mountain. They said it seemed to run like a human. And it gave a horrific yell, maybe out of fear, or maybe warning others. They knew it wasn’t a bear or a deer or any common animals seen in the area. In fact, they were certain they’d seen a Bigfoot. Because by 2020, this animal - disavowed by Mainstream Science – was wildly famous. And people saw them all the time. To date, there are over 3,000 of these encounters logged and followed up on by investigators. Including over 100 tracks encased in plaster and archived.
In fact, it all started with a footprint.
In August of 1958, Jerry Crew worked a construction job building a timber access route near Buff Creek, deep in the woods of Northern California. He was working alone at the far end of the site, a quarter mile beyond camp. He noticed animal tracks pressed into leveled Earth at the end of the road. When he climbed in his tractor and saw the tracks from above, he saw they weren’t ordinary animal paws. These were human-like feet, and they were huge. Sixteen inches long, when they were later measured. Which suggested a beast at least eight feet tall. Crew told his Boss. And slowly, other workers said they’d seen footprints as well. In fact, over twenty workers reported seeing footprints by the nearby Mad River.
Then it occurred to the Boss: this may be the answer to some odd disturbances around camp. The other day, a 450 pound drum of diesel fuel went missing. Not something that could be easily moved. And later it was found at the bottom of a gully. Only the foliage on the hillside was unbroken – it really looked like the drum was tossed down there. But what could possibly have the strength to do this? And there was the spare tire of their road grading machine found thrown in a ditch - the thing weighed 700 pounds. Was the creature leaving giant footprints the culprit?
Crew realized the prints he found needed to be saved for investigation. He teamed up with a local taxidermist to encase the giant prints in plaster. And they informed the local newspaper what they found, which printed the story. Suddenly, this local incident became a national sensation. Reporters from all the wire services arrived, representatives from the New York Times, the LA Times, the San Francisco paper - and many more. In fact, within two weeks the national television game show “Truth or Consequences” offered $1,000 to anyone who could explain how the tracks got there. Bigfoot had become a celebrity. Of course, plaster feet didn’t convince everyone it was real. The nation wanted hard evidence. Maybe even a photograph.
They got much more than that.
THE ICON IS BORN
Roger Patterson was among the many Americans obsessed with Bigfoot in 1967. But he took his passion further than most. He lived in Yakima, Washington right where these creatures were most often seen. And he was determined to prove they existed. So he got a film camera and hunted for tracks and interviewed witnesses. He wrote a book in 1966 called “Do Abominable Snowmen of America Really Exist?” with detailed accounts of sightings and footprint finds.
Then, in 1967, he got a phone call about some new tracks found in the Blue Creek Mountain area. It was a grouping of three “Bigfoot” creatures – large tracks of a male, next to smaller tracks likely female, and then a juvenile. He asked his friend Bob Gimlin to join him on a two week trip to investigate the tracks. And in October of ‘67, the two of them got way more than they bargained for.
A few days into their trip, they were exploring a remote region of Bluff Creek on horseback. They had a packhorse with them, thinking they might camp out there. Both Patterson and Gimlin were armed. Patterson had the film camera in his saddlebag. Their trek into the canyon was blocked by a pile of fallen trees, so they stopped to find a way around.
That’s when they saw it.
About 80 feet away, the sasquatch was crouched by a creek. It was massive, bulky with black hair and a thick torso. And it sensed they were watching it. The sasquatch stood abruptly and stared at them.
Patterson’s horse started bucking. He managed to pull the film camera out of the saddle bag before the horse ran off downstream in fear. Gimilin’s horse got agitated too. The sasquatch began to walk off along the creek bank, heading for dense forests that lined the canyon. Patterson turned on his camera and directed Gimlin to “cover me”. Gimlin got off his horse and readied his rifle, only to see his horse escape downstream as well. There was no time to waste. The sasquatch was making its way toward the trees. Patterson ran toward it with the camera filming, trying to keep the creature in the shot. Then his foot hit a fallen limb, he tripped and fell.
The sasquatch turned to stare at him. To them it looked 7 feet tall, though in the last few years lidar scans of the area matched with landmarks on the film would reveal it was six foot three. It looked female.
Gimlin aimed his rifle but - like so many hunters before and after - couldn’t bring himself to fire at something half human. Patterson re-focused his camera as the sasquatch walked off again. The creature turned to look at the two men one last time, but did not break its stride and disappeared into the woods. And it is this last “look back” mid-stride that has become iconic - the image we all recall when we think of Bigfoot. But Patterson’s experience didn’t end when the film stopped.
They followed the tracks for 600 yards into the canyon and saw that the prints went uphill. They didn’t pursue, fearing the female might be protected by an even larger male. They did take casts of the footprints. Based on the depth and size, scientists estimated the creature weighed 600 pounds. But even better - they had film footage. Patterson told friends about it even before it was developed. And when the film was finally shown, it confirmed everything Patterson said.
And to this day, the footage has not been debunked. In fact, experts have analyzed the footage over and over, and the details remain compelling - this just doesn’t seem like a guy in a costume. The creature in the film has contracting calf muscles. Its arms longer than a normal human, and its legs shorter – consistent with an ape. It had a peak on the back of its head like the sagittal crest of a Gorilla. And there’s more.
When it walks, it flexes its midfoot like an ape. And one compelling detail a prankster wouldn’t likely think of – the fur on its back below the head is darker and standing up - just like it would on a gorilla who is agitated or afraid. So why don’t we just say it’s an ape? Because ape’s don’t walk upright - not like humans. And Bigfoot clearly does. Not to mention there haven’t been apes or primates in the wild of North America for 26 million years.
This was a real, upright-walking hominid sasquatch in the wild.
To this day, Patterson’s film is the most important piece of evidence of the creature’s existence. So what is this elusive half-human half-animal creature? Some speculate it’s from a different dimension. Or a kind of shape shifter. Some correlate Bigfoot sightings to UFO landings. But we don’t need to speculate. We know alot about their behavior. Because the sightings haven’t stopped.
OKAY, BUT WHAT IS IT?
Every witness account of Bigfoot - and again, there have been over 3,000 logged by investigators - describe a creature between 6 and 8 feet tall. But the creature’s behavior is remarkably similar in these accounts as well.
The creatures are curious and often watch us from afar. Like the sasquatch seen in 2013 by a hunter in the Cispus River area of the Cascade Mountains. The witness was using his car as a blind to hunt game. He used his game call which let out a squeal like a rabbit to attract predators. And 60 feet away, behind a tree he saw a sasquatch take notice - and watch for nearly a minute before walking away. Bigfoot had impressively long strides, covering distances impossible for humans. As witnessed by a Father and Son fishing in Sakamania County Washington in 2002. They saw a sasquatch from 100 yards away. It was startled by the engine of their truck and they watched it move in 6 foot strides straight up a hill and disappear up a mountain. We know its eyes are disturbingly human, as consistently described by those who’ve come face to face. Like the former U.S. Army Infantry Sergeant camping in the Mount Adams Wilderness in July of 1991. He was walking up to a river and froze when he saw it across the bank, twenty feet away. He described it in all the familiar ways - between 6 and 8 feet tall, broad shoulders, and long arms. But like many who’ve been that close, he added that the sasquatch had “human-like eyes”.
And there’s the scream. A hunter heard it on November 16, 2014 in the woods of Winlock, Washington. He described it as yelling mixed with a growl. He watched deer run away from the sound and said the scream was something “I never want to hear again.”
Campers in Humbolt County in 2007 reported prolonged screams from Bigfoot every morning for two days - they reported it sounded like a wild animal but with added enunciation and human-like vowel sounds. Skeptics pointed out that after the 1967 film became famous, all the other accounts could just be copy cats. So Researchers scoured newspapers before the 1958 plaster feet were made public, looking for any reports of strange creatures that might match our modern Bigfoot.
Turns out, they found way more than they expected.
Isolated reports of mountain giants matching Bigfoot went back decades - even centuries. The first published report found was from 1846 - a 22 inch long footprint was found in eastern Arkansas. But there were actual sightings every year since, matching exactly the familiar details we now know is Bigfoot. The local paper in Vermont in 1851 reported an encounter with a creature horrifying at the time - but the details are very familiar.
Two men were hunting when they saw something “bearing the unmistakable likeness of humanity” chasing a herd of cattle. They described this creature as “gigantic” in stature, body covered in hair, head with hair that “fairly enveloped his neck and shoulders”. The hunters said this creature stared at them for a few moments before it ran into the woods, “with great speed, leaping twelve feet at a time”. The newspaper went on to explain that sightings of the Wild Man had been reported in neighboring counties since 1834.
Clearly, Bigfoot had been running into humans for a long, long time. But despite all these examples, Mainstream Science refuses to acknowledge Bigfoot exists. Let alone identify what species it might be. Zoologists were not happy calling these living creatures “monsters”. It was disrespectful. So in 1985, Zooologist J.E. Wall coined the more scientific term Cryptid - taken from the branch of study called cryptozoology. Which was taken from the Greek word Krypto, meaning hidden. Cryptid has become the accepted term for any animal that remains unexplained by Science. Why the need to create a name for a whole category of mysterious, unexplained creatures?
Because Bigfoot is far from the only one.
THE LOCH NESS MONSTER
In 1933, there was a major change around Scotland’s biggest freshwater lake. They built a road. For the first time, a large volume of people were passing through. Some would vacation in lake houses. Some would go on hikes and have picnics around the shore. Tourists would visit Urquhart Castle on the north end. And that’s when it started. People started reporting they saw something out on the water. One group of witnesses was staying at the Balnafoich house overlooking the northeast end of the lake, 600 miles from shore.
A woman named Miss Gracey saw it first - it was about 1,250 yards off, swimming towards Fort Augustus on the southernmost end of the long lake. And it was loving fast - the group figured it was going about 15 miles an hour. They watched it for a full four minutes as it swam away. Another witness said it looked like a huge caterpillar. It moved with an up and down motion which was odd; an eel would move in a lateral motion. But this creature propelled itself by bending its long body in a series of humps. With water spaced between each one. The group counted seven humps visible several feet above the water. This thing was long. Finally it submerged around 2,000 yards away. Reports like this kept coming into the local paper. Nearly all mentioned the dark humps. Some saw a head and neck.
B.A. Russell didn’t buy into the rumors there was some creature out there. He figured it was probably a seal, or a boat distorted by the sun on the waves. Then he paid a visit to the lake. He was walking on the rocks near Fort Augustus. He was 100 feet above the lake with an unobstructed view. And he clearly saw a snake-like head not much bigger than its long neck, cutting through the water. It was 800 yards out, swimming slowly by. Occasionally it would turn its head side to side. It had dark skin which appeared to have a rough texture. The creature swam in a straight line. Birds flew low around it as it swam. Then it submerged and disappeared.
This was no seal. He told the newspaper he never expected something as remarkable as what he witnessed that day. He had just seen the Loch Ness Monster.
BEST PICTURE GOES TO...
You might think it would be easy to find a giant sea creature in a lake. But Loch Ness is not your typical lake. It’s the largest freshwater body in the British Isles. It stretches 24 miles long and in some places it is 2 miles wide. And it’s deep - between 700 and 900 feet before you hit the bottom. Plenty of room for a creature whose natural habitat is in the depths, living in the many narrow, deep inlets cut into underwater cliffs. During the 1930’s - and for decades after - this creature would make appearances on the surface. And banks of people armed with telescopes and binoculars - and sometimes cameras - would be there to see it. The Official Loch Ness Register grew to over 1,140 sightings.
By 1957, a book collecting eyewitness accounts and photos was published called More Than a Legend: The Story of the Loch Ness Monster . The book included that iconic image of the serpent head and long neck rising up from the surface, in silhouette against the lake water – known as the “surgeon’s photo” after the Doctor who took it in 1934. But the thousands of eyewitness accounts and photos were not enough for Mainstream Science this giant marine mammal seriously. Fortunately, there was one individual who believed enough to dig further.
Tim Dinsdale would soon become the most important figure in the Nessie saga.
He was a British biologist, and he was obsessed with the creature. He interviewed witnesses personally. Ultimately he collected over a hundred accounts on his own and became certain there were large unknown animals in that lake. So in April of 1960, he went to see for himself. He focused on the south end near Fort Augustus where he had perfect visibility of the lake. He scanned the surface every day. And Nessie was a no show.
On the fifth day he was driving back to his hotel, and something on the lake caught his eye. It was a large object – seemed cone shaped. It was just sitting there. Was it a rock? He stopped the car and got out his binoculars for a closer look. He knew it wasn’t a floating log, because it stayed in the same place against the current on the lake surface.
Then it started to move.
Dinsdale immediately got out his 16 millimeter Bolex film camera with its telephoto lens attached and began filming.
And what he saw was astounding.
The thing had a wide, V shaped wake – much different than a boat – he’d seen plenty of those on the lake to know the difference.
And there was no sign of a propeller wash you’d expect from an engine. There were humps coming out as it moved, high above the water. He noticed a swirling in the water on each side, as if it was paddling below the surface. He estimated it was going at least 10 miles an hour. And as it reached the far shore and turned west, the creature did something no boat could do – it submerged. Tim decided at that moment to stop the camera before he ran out of film, and run to a closer spot. He was hoping to get more detail when the creature reappeared. It never did. But he was left with 60 seconds of film showing the elusive Loch Ness Monster.
And the film was a sensation. It was shown on British Television and captivated the nation. Britain’s Joint Air Reconnaissance Intelligence Center examined the film to test its authenticity and confirmed it showed an animate creature, with humps 3 feet above the water. The film led to the launching of the Loch Ness Investigation Bureau. Crowds arrived from around the globe to hunt for a glimpse of Nessie. Yet Mainstream Science remained skeptical. Photos and films could be faked. They wanted something more definitive.
And that’s exactly what they got.
ONE PING ONLY
The Academy of Applied Science came up with a high tech plan to prove there was a giant animal in the depths of Loch Ness. They began with a sonar array dropped from a single boat to a depth of 200 feet. Sonar used single pulses of sound, pinged at regular intervals, that bounced off objects. The echo was analyzed by a receiver. Depending on the timing of the echo’s return and the frequency, they could identify the size and distance of objects below the surface. And on this first mission, they had several contacts in mid water with something too large to be classified as a fish.
So they upped their game.
Scientists planned a new mission combining sonar with underwater photography. They would plant a sonar unit behind an underwater camera with a powerful flash unit at the bottom of the lake, 120 feet deep. The sonar would run non-stop. The camera would take a flash photo every 55 seconds. And on August 8, the camera caught something. Two enormous creatures swimming by. But the image was dark - the waters of Loch Ness are murky at best. It was impossible to make out any detail. So they sent the photos to NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
Some of the most advanced computers in the world were put to work on the images. They adjusted the contrast on the different shades detected in the photo, slowly lifting the fog of blurs and darkness, until the detail was revealed. And the results were mind boggling. Scientists were looking at the flippers of a huge animal - over six feet long. And in each picture the flipper was at a different angle - as the creature swam by. Encouraged, they launched another expedition with the sonar-camera combination.
This time, the sonar did not detect anything. But the camera caught a blurry image that looked pretty compelling. It seemed like a large body of a creature. And this time there appeared to be a small head perched at the end of a long neck. They checked the next picture in the sequence. Same giant object, this time the head had more definition - one scientist said it looked like a crocodile. There was one more picture that caught the creature passing by - and this was the stunner. A detailed head with a pair of small horns and what looked like eyes. It was dark and blurry, sure, but it had the bilateral symmetry of a face unheard of in rocks. This was an animal’s
head.
Convinced there were creatures down there, scientists at the Loch Ness Project decided a single sonar placed at the bottom of the lake wasn’t good enough. They were no longer satisfied hoping for a random sighting with a stationary camera. So they launched the most extensive search of Loch Ness ever taken. Which at the time was the largest scientific expedition undertaken of any kind. It was called Operation Deepscan, and it was launched on October 9th, 1987.
For two days, scientists arranged for a flotilla of 24 boats to cover the main body of the lake. They had enough boats to reach from one side of the width of the lake to the other. Each boat had advanced sonar arrays capable of finding objects 1300 feet away, as small as a foot long, and with separation between objects as small as an inch. If there was anything down there, they would find it. The operation attracted reporters and television crews from around the world. On the first day, the boats made their way across the lake, taking sonar readings from nearly all of the 24 miles of Loch Ness.
Everyone awaited the results. And they were not disappointed. One of the boats reported three strong sonar contacts, recorded between 250 and 590 feet. Something was down there. The readings suggested a creature larger than a shark but smaller than a whale. And the contact was not just a flash. The object was tracked for over two minutes. The next two days of the operation brought no more readings. Whatever it was had retreated into the shadows. The sonar array was not capable of reaching all the underwater caves of Loch Ness. What was this creature? Based on the descriptions it matched nothing else on Earth – at least not now. But if you go back to the Jurassic Period, these creatures were thriving.
NESSIE BONES
Up until the 1800’s, we figured all the animals on Earth were, well, all the animals ever on Earth. We didn’t realize there were entire worlds of dinosaurs walking the planet. Until we found the bones.
One of the first fossils discovered was the Plesiosaurus - named in 1821. This creature was a marine reptile with a long flat body, four flippers, and, yes, a long neck and serpent head. Matching exactly the thousands of sightings of the monster in Loch Ness. Only the Plesiosaurus lived 200 million years ago. Could any have survived the ice age? And made their way from the ocean up the River Ness which connects to the lake? Mainstream Science remains skeptical. Because they have fossils from the Plesiosaurus. But Nessie has left no bones we know of. Yet the sightings continue.
There were ten official sightings of the Loch Ness Monster in 2023 alone.
On April 5th of 2023, a woman driving to visit her parents was passing Loch Ness in the morning. As she passed the end by Uquhard Castle she saw a dark shape emerge from the surface. She saw humps rise from the depths, like the back of a whale. She watched it move by for thirty seconds before it submerged. And like so many who witness the creature these days, she took a picture. You can see it on the Official Loch Ness Sightings Registry.
They even have a live webcam at the Lake. You can check it out online. Maybe you’ll catch a glimpse of Nessie yourself. That’s the thing the Loch Ness Monster and Bigfoot have in common: people can’t wait to see them. To this day, people come from all over the world hoping to catch a glimpse of these creatures.
But there is another kind of Cryptid no one wants to see. No one in their right mind.
THE GOAT SUCKER
On March 11, 1995 workers arrived for work on a farm in central Puerto Rico, prepared for a day of cultivating soil. And they found a massacre.
All the sheep on the farm were dead. There were eight bodies, clearly attacked by something in the night. The workers examined them closer - something was strange. It wasn’t obvious what killed them. There were no signs of struggle, no wounds or bites you’d expect from a typical predator. And there was something off about their skin - it seemed translucent and strangely loose and wrinkled. One of the farmers figured out the horrific reason. Each corpse had a wound on its torso. Two small incisions, like from fangs. And every single sheep had the blood drained from its body. Every drop.
The local authorities were notified, and their first instinct was to play it down - there had been livestock killings over the years. One more wasn’t that alarming. Then there was another, and another. That first month more than 40 animals were slaughtered in night attacks. A construction worker lost five sheep he’d raised since he was a kid. All the bodies had neck perforations from the fangs of the creature. He told the newspaper, “dogs have never attacked my animals”. Another victim found her dog and her sister’s two cats dead, telling a local reporter, “It sucked the animal’s blood and took out their guts and ate them”.
People boarded up their homes in panic. Guards were hired to protect livestock and escort children to school. Authorities tried to calm fears, but the people of Puerto Rico wanted this thing caught. They weren’t afraid of rumors or blurry photos - there were actual animals getting killed. They were under attack. No one could rest as long as they knew out there somewhere was “the goat sucker” - or, as it was known in Spanish – El Chupacabra. What kind of vampiric beast could possibly cause such wide scale, gruesome slaughter? Nothing they imagined was more horrific than when - six months into the attacks - someone actually saw one.
Madelyne Tolentino was a housewife in the town of Canovanas, just east of San Juan. She lived in the heart of the Chupacabra’s attack zone. She was sitting at her window in the early afternoon when she saw the bizarre creature moving down her street. It was between three and four feet tall, walking on two powerful legs with small slender arms. It moved like a human, with its skinny hands drawn back, as if poised to attack. It’s eyes were dark. They looked damp. And they ran up to its temples and up to the side, like alien eyes. She described the feet as like a goose, and said the Chupacabra had no nose, just two breathing holes. Its mouth was shut, hiding what had to be fangs inside. And spikes of feathers ran from the top of its back down its spine.
She screamed at the sight of it. Her Mother freaked out and made a bizarre choice in her state of panic - she actually tried to grab the monster. But when she ran outside, the Chupacabra used its massive legs to leap into the nearby woods. A neighborhood boy was watching the whole thing. He chased after it. And when he caught up to it in the woods, the Chupacabra opened its mouth and threatened with its long fangs. The boy froze. And the Chupacabra escaped. Tolentino’s encounter resulted in the most detailed description of the beast. But there were many other sightings.
One resident saw it sitting on a rock, then suddenly leap into the trees. A woman watching from her balcony saw it move away from bright light in her backyard. She confirmed it was four feet tall with skin like a dinosaur. She said it had red eyes, spikes down its neck and back, and long fangs. And when she checked out the yard in the morning she found the family goat drained of blood from the neck and disemboweled.
Another witness was walking with his brother-in-law when it leaped through the air above them. They ran for their lives. A 29 year old witness told the newspaper the beast was “four or five feet tall and had huge elongated red eyes.” He saw “a pointy, long tongue come in and out of his mouth.” He said its skin was gray but its back changed colors like a chameleon. He summed it up for the reporter by saying, “It was a monster." At least two dozen Puerto Ricans reported seeing the vampire-like predator.
But since Tolentino had the longest sighting, she wanted to share her description with her fellow terrorized citizens. She worked with UFO researcher Jorge Martin to develop a sketch of the creature and had it published in the San Juan newspaper. The image quickly spread around the world. To this day it is the iconic image of the Puerto Rican Chupacabra. Mayor Jose Soto had to take action. He led armed search parties to track down the beast. They lead nightly forays into the rural farmland with guns and bats and anything the locals could grab.
They never found the beast. But the Mayor insisted it was important to show the beast the humans knew it was there. He told reporters, “Whatever it is, it’s highly intelligent. Today it is attacking animals, but tomorrow it may attack people.” By the end of 1995, the Chupacabra caused more than 1,000 animal deaths, all resulting from blood loss through the infamous puncture wounds. People around the world were riveted by the story of the Puerto Rican attacks. But they were relieved this was happening on an isolated Island nation.
Then El Chupacabra got off the island.
ISLAND HOPPING
In March of 1996, police in Miami, Florida responded to reports of a violent incident. They arrived at a family home in the hispanic neighborhood of Sweetwater. They later told reporters they had never seen such carnage. There were 69 animals strewn across the the yard - a mix of goats, chickens, geese, and ducks. All with their blood drained. Until that moment, the Chupacabra had not been seen outside Puerto Rico, where it spent the last six months terrorizing the island. Now, it was announcing its debut to the wider world. In Mexico, sheep and goats were found attacked, with the tell tale signs of the Chupacabra’s work. Associated Press reports indicated the dead animals all had two tooth marks about a third of an inch across their necks, and appear to be drained of blood.
Then another incident saw eight hens and a turkey killed with their blood drained. Panic spread among the rural population. Vigilantes hunted the streets at night armed with poles and machetes looking to kill the Chupacabra. Investigators staked out farmyards but never caught the elusive beast.
In Brazil, 9 pigs were found dead in Sao Paulo. Again the newspapers reported carcasas drained of blood with no sign of tracks on the scene.
Not far from the pig massacre, a housekeeper on a ranch heard loud noises outside the main house. She went outside – the sounds were clearly coming from the corral. As she approached the gate, she could hear the sheep bleating – but there was another sound – a loud rumble of a growl she’d never heard before. By the time she unlocked the gate and entered the pen, the twelve sheep were dead and the beast was gone.
In Chile, a farmer heard dogs howling on his ranch at midnight. The next day he found 35 sheep dead, again drained of blood with bite marks on their necks. Footprints were discovered at the scene. The government had them investigated – researchers claimed they belonged to dogs. But of course, dogs aren’t known for sucking blood. Chilean UFO researchers had a different explanation. They had been keeping watch on the Chilean military. Because the military was spending a suspicious amount of time searching the Atacama desert in Northern Chile. The researchers heard rumors of a hidden secret facility out there. One apparently their own military didn’t understand.
But the military found something else, something unexpected. They uncovered three eggs with odd coloring, looking nothing like any bird eggs they knew. According to the UFO researchers, the military was forced to turn the eggs over to NASA. Because these were the eggs of a chupacabra. And NASA was well aware of their existence. Because they were the ones who cultivated them. The secret facility in Atacama turned out to be a genetic lab where NASA worked to create genetically modified creatures able
to survive Mars.
Was the Chupacabra an experiment gone wrong? It would explain its sudden appearance on the planet.
El Chupacabra remains a terrifying mystery, no matter how it was created. But there is another Cryptid which is terrifying because of how it was created.
It was made by the Devil.
THE DEVIL IN JERSEY
In 1993, off-duty park ranger John Irwin was driving home from a date. He took a road that ran through a desolate stretch of New Jersey’s Pine Barrens. The Barrens was seventeen hundred square miles of unpopulated forest in southern New Jersey. The area is isolated despite being in a very populated area. But Irwin, being a ranger, was accustomed to the isolation of the woods.
Only he wasn’t alone at all that night.
His headlights caught sight of a deer, which appeared from the forest and moved into the road. He slowed to a stop. The animal was blocking the road. And something about it wasn’t right – it didn’t look like a deer exactly. The ears were short and pointed out of the sides of its head instead of the top. He was about to get out of his car when the animal did something completely unexpected - something no deer could even do. It stood up on two legs. The beast was at least six feet tall. It stared at him with eyes that seemed to glow red, nothing like the reflective yellow he’d seen with deer staring into headlights.
This was no deer.
Before Irwin could do anything else, the beast walked to the opposite side of the road and disappeared in the brush. And while its small hands seemed to have some sort of claws, its feet clearly had hooves. The beast made no biological sense. When he told his supervisor about this insane encounter, he was told he had just met the 13th son of Mrs. Leeds. Known for generations as the Jersey Devil.
This otherworldly creature had been making appearances in the area for two hundred years. As recently as the 1960’s there were organized hunts trying to track down the beast. But it was the 1800’s when people truly felt terrorized. They blamed the Jersey Devil for crop failure, droughts, even cows not producing milk. It was said, to satisfy his appetite for fish, the beast boiled streams with his fiery breath. Sometimes he would deaden the water with the fetid smell of his breathing. Witness accounts of his appearance would change a bit with every visit. But certain elements would usually remain. The Jersey Devil combined the body of a kangaroo with the head of a dog, the face of a horse, with leathery bat wings, a reptilian tail, and intimidating claws. And it was witnessed by some notable people.
Commodore Stephen Decatur - an early 19th century American naval hero - was at a firing range on the Pine Barrens testing cannon balls. He witnessed the Jersey Devil flapping its wings across the range. Since he was a hero, he did not hesitate to aim and fire a cannon ball directly at it. And it left a gaping hole in the beast. Everyone watching were stunned to watch the beast fly off as if nothing happened.
In 1814, Joseph Bonaparte - former King of Spain and brother of that other Bonaparte, Napoleon - lived in America after abdicating his throne. He was on a hunt when he spotted strange tracks. He later said they looked like the tracks of a two-footed donkey. And the tracks ended abruptly - as if the creature suddenly took flight. He paused, trying to make sense of this. And heard a strange hissing noise. He turned around. And found himself face to face with a horse-like head, only it wasn’t a horse – it had bird legs. Bonaparte was in shock, forgetting he was holding a rifle. The Jersey Devil escaped, flying away into the woods.
But the Devil was always returning. An 1840 rampage left a heavy loss of chickens and sheep, followed by chilling screams and strange tracks. In the 1880’s, the Devil was blamed for carrying off anything that moved in the Pine Barrens. In 1894, the Devil was seen lurking about five different towns in the area. In 1899 people reported ungodly screaming from a nearby bridge. When a witness went to investigate, they saw the Devil described as a flying serpent. As the century came to an end, a prominent folklorist of the time made a bold prediction. He said this Jersey Devil had run its course, hoping the people of New Jersey would move on from obsessing over the beast. He wrote, “with the advent of the new century many worshipful commoners of Jersey dismiss, for good and all, the fear of the monster from their mind”. And when the new century arrived, the Jersey Devil responded with a rampage to beat all rampages.
1909
In 1909, the Jersey Devil emerged from the Pine Barrens forest and wandered through the Delaware valley. Residents were terrorized for days. Never before or since had he been seen by so many. Thousands saw the bizarre beast - they called him “kangaroo horse”, or “flying death” or – and this nickname was not so scary – “cow bird”. But whatever the name used in the moment, the population of the dozens of towns he visited soon realized they were all seeing the Jersey Devil.
This was no joke - for days schools and factories closed and people hid afraid behind closed doors. Because if they went outside, they were likely to see a flying beast with glowing eyes. As a witness in Woodbury reported. Another saw the beast standing on the banks of the Delaware Canal. A police officer in Bristol saw the winged beast hopping like a bird, and heard its horrible scream. He tried to chase it down and even took a shot at it. The creature soared up and out of site into the night. Many attempts to capture and kill the Devil were made. Farmers set out steel traps. But of course no one was able to stop it.
A resident of Gloucester City saw it standing on a shed at two in the morning. He watched it for ten harrowing minutes. He shared a detailed description from the encounter. He said it was “about three and a half feet high, with a head like a collie dog and a face like a horse. It had a long neck, wings about two feet long, and its back legs where like those of a crane, and it had horse’s hooves. It walked on its back legs and held up two short front legs with paws on them. Eventually it flew away.” The rampage continued for a full week. Hoof print sightings were reported all over south Jersey. Witnesses reported seeing it in yards, on bridges, down streets. Walking erect and flapping its big wings. It finally ended its travels in Salem, where a resident saw the beast and watched its dog drive the Devil away. There were hundreds of these sightings before the Jersey Devil returned to hide in the Pine Barrens. The stunning events of the week meant that the entire Delaware Valley knew first hand the existence of the beast. And its reign of terror solidified its legend for centuries to come. So why does the Jersey Devil make appearances, wandering and terrorizing the people? What is it after? Turns out, it may just be looking for its mother.
BIRTH OF THE DEVIL
Jane Leeds was known as “Mother” by her community in New Jersey. This was 1735, and it was common at the time to have a lot of children. But Mother Leeds took this further than most. She had twelve kids. And she was under tremendous stress trying to support them all. She had very little means and was struggling to survive. That’s when she discovered - to her horror - she was pregnant yet again. It’s the last thing she wanted. She cried out, “I am tired of children! Let it be a devil!” Some would later say she must be a witch. Because her curse actually worked.
The night she went into labor, a group of old women from the community gathered around the bed to help. They worked diligently in the candle lit room to guide Mother Leeds, and help her get through the pain and trauma of childbirth. Well before dawn, there was success. Mother Leeds gave birth to her 13th child, a beautiful baby boy. Once the baby was cleaned, the old women laid it on Mother Leed’s chest so she could look into its eyes.
And suddenly the women watched in horror as the baby began to transform. Its human features gradually disappeared. Its body elongated into a serpentine shape. Its feet were replaced with hooves. Its pink chubby face fell into a long bony structure of a horse. Bat wings sprung from its shoulder blades. Finally, the newly born beast stood up on the bed, larger and more powerful than a grown man. The old women were transfixed in shock. Mother Leeds just stared. Then the beast broke the silence with a rasping snarl. And it proceeded to beat the old women with its forked tail. Then it gave an ear piercing scream and flew through the window and out into the night. In the days and weeks after, the Jersey Devil would visit Mother Leeds. Sometimes it would perch on the backyard fence. Mother Leeds would try and shoo it away. Clergymen attempted to exorcize the demon. And they appeared to succeed. For a time the Jersey Devil remained absent. But the exorcism they performed was only intended to last a hundred years. And when the Devil did finally return, he had no home left to visit. He was left to wander and terrorize people – and take his place among the most disturbing Cryptids on the planet.
END
Scientists have identified over 700 species of dinosaurs. And the number grows every year. How do they know all these animals existed? Through fossil findings. Bones. Hard evidence. Exactly what they don’t have when it comes to these elusive Cryptids. For all the compelling stories and sightings, we’ve never found hair or bones or DNA or, you know, poop from these Cryptids. When scientists were able to test hairs people claimed came from Bigfoot, they turned out to be from deer or other familiar animals every time. In short, there’s actually nothing beyond the accounts of witnesses and plaster feet and blurry images to prove their existence. And that film of the Loch Ness Monster? As soon as we had the technology to increase the contrast in his black and white 6 mm film, new details appeared that were invisible in the original film. Including the nose of a boat and the head of a man at the helm. But the fact remains, these Cryptids have not been completely debunked. And we do uncover the bones of new species every year. So it may be worth it to take a glance at that live webcam in the forests of the Pacific Northwest, or on the shores of Loch Ness. You know, just in case.
