The Chupacabras: A Psychological Test Come To Life?
Reading Greg’s post about what, exactly, the U.S. Government knows or doesn’t know about UFOs, reminded me of something else tangentially related: namely, the issue of whether or not some UFO-related stories are actually the creation of Government agencies themselves.
I delved into this area deeply in my Body Snatchers in the Desert book, and there’s little doubt that the military - in the late 40s and 50s - actively encouraged the spreading of bogus crashed UFO accounts. But it’s the Chupacabras that I want to discuss today.
The Chupacabras - Puerto Rico’s most famous, blood-sucking, killing-machine - is one of those cross-over mysteries that seems to have as much relevance to cryptozoology as it does to ufology. In other words, some see the beast as an unknown animal; while others suggest it has its origins with “them” - the “aliens.” But what if it was neither? What if the Chupacabras originated with the U.S. Government?
Now, before we go any further, I am not proposing that the Chupacabras is - as some have suggested - the product of some bizarre, government-sponsored “genetic experiment.” I think such possibilities are complete rubbish, and would be more at home within the pages of a bad sci-fi novel. But here is something that I do think is worth exploring further:
I have made a number of trips to Puerto Rico looking for the Chupacabras - most recently in late 2005 with Paul Kimball and his film crew. On every occasion, I have heard tales and rumors that there is no Chupacabras - at all. But, rather, that the original, first-wave of stories were spread and perpetuated by U.S. military psychological warfare planners who had an interest in determining the psychological effects of superstitions on localized populations - in the event that such effects needed to be exploited in regional, third-world warfare. And, so the stories go, Puerto Rico - as a self-contained island that could be easily watched - offered the best target-location for the creation of a modern day myth, and to monitor the effects of that same modern day myth on the populace, determine how rumors spread, and gauge how superstitious locals could be manipulated, if such circumstances were deemed necessary.
Now, I know people will say: “Well, people have seen the Chupacabras.” Granted, that’s true. But bear with me. Consider the facts: the Chupacabras is known predominantly for killing animals and draining them of blood. They don’t call it the Goat-Sucker for nothing. Indeed, many believe that monster-borne vampirism is wildly on the loose in Puerto Rico.
It transpires, however, that vampirism and the U.S. Government are not exactly strangers. Take the case of Major General Edward G. Lansdale. Born in 1908, Lansdale served with the Office of Strategic Services in WW2; in 1945 he was transferred to HQ Air Forces Western Pacific in the Philippines; and, in 1957, he received a posting to the Office of the Secretary of Defense, working as Deputy Assistant to the SoD for “Special Operations.” And that is merely the tip of the iceberg - Lansdale had a truly extraordinary career.
But, it’s something that occurred in the 1950s that I want to discuss with you: at the specific request of President Elpidio Quirino, Lansdale was assigned to the Joint United States Military Assistance Group to provide assistance and guidance in the field of Intelligence to the Philippine Army, as the latter sought to squash an uprising by Communist “Huk” rebels.
And it was while lending assistance to President Quirino that Lansdale had the bright idea of exploiting a local legend for psychological warfare purposes - namely that of the deadly Asuang Vampire.
In his own words, Lansdale woud later say: “To the superstitious, the Huk battleground was a haunted place filled with ghosts and eerie creatures. A combat psywar squad was brought in. It planted stories among town residents of an Asuang living on the hill where the Huks were based. Two nights later, after giving the stories time to make their way up to the hill camp, the psywar squad set up an ambush along the trail used by the Huks. When a Huk patrol came along the trail, the ambushers silently snatched the last man of the patrol, their move unseen in the dark night. They punctured his neck with two holes, vampire-fashion, held the body up by the heels, drained it of blood, and put the corpse back on the trail. When the Huks returned to look for the missing man and found their bloodless comrade, every member of the patrol believed that the Asuang had got him and that one of them would be next if they remained on that hill. When daylight came, the whole Huk squadron moved out of the vicinity.”
And, as a result, key, strategic ground was taken out of the hands of the Huk rebels.
Now, one doesn’t have to be a genius to see the similarities between the events on the Philippines in the 1950s and the stories that have circulated about the predatory activities of the Chupacabras on Puerto Rico. But, what about those people who claim to have seen the Chupacabras? “Surely,” you might be saying to yourself, “Nick isn’t seriously suggesting that the U.S. Government has Navy Seals running around the island in Chupacabras-stye special-effects-suits to scare the locals?”
Nope, I’m not. But what I am suggesting as a possibility is this: that when the Chupacabras craze really kicked off on Puerto Rico in the mid-1990s and gripped the minds of the population, what may well originally have been some form of U.S. psychological warfare operation mutated into something else; something far stranger.
What if the intense, collective belief in, and fear of, the Chupacabras that certainly existed in the mind’s of the Puerto Rican population at the height of the controversy, actually gave birth to a Tulpa-style “Mind-Monster”? Is it possible that what began as an ingenious psychological warfare operation inadvertently led to the creation of a “semi-real” entity of killing-machine proportions, and that has come to be known - and seen - as the Chupacabras? I think it is.
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Dec 26 2006 
December 26th, 2006 at 9:42 am
Nick:
Yes… or it could be exactly what the authorities and scientists we interviewed said it was - wild animals (mostly dogs, of which we saw many), and a local population that lets superstition get the better of them. Remember - none of the people we interviewed actually saw a chupie - the best one could do was report a dark flying shape at dusk that sounded remarkably like, well, a bird to me (again, seen at the height of the chupie craze).
As with cattle mutes, I am convinced beyond any reasonable doubt that the explanation is mundane, and the mythos itself comes from ignorance and fear.
Now, has the government perhaps used that to cover some of its own work? Possible. But they didn’t start it.
Best regards,
Paul
December 26th, 2006 at 10:20 am
Paul
I’m personally convinced that there have been misidentifications, dog attacks, etc., that have been attributed to the Chupacabras.
And although the people we interviewed who believed animals had been attacked by the Chupacabras hadn’t actually seen it, when I went to the island with Jon Downes in 2004, we interviewed a number who had seen it - including a lady named Norka who had seen this huge, bat-like/pterodactyl-style creature shuffling across the road in front of her car, which she was certain was no dog or bird.
Now, I agree with you that the mythos may stem from fear - but where I go off at a tangent is that this fear led to the creation of a “mind-monster” - a thought-form based on that very real fear that we know did exist (and still does to an extent) on Puerto Rico.
It may be that - as with Lansdale and the Asuang Vampire - psy-war planners utilized a real legend (after all, in the 70s and 80s Puerto Rico was afflicted by attacks from “Devil Birds” and an entity that became known as the “Moca Vampire”) and this mutated into the Chupacabras.
This is the thing: many skeptics would say that the fact that there is deep suspicion and fear there leads people to imagine all sorts of things. And the skeptics leave it at that.
But I believe that the fear and suspicion is all too real; but that it may be creating “something” out of the collective mindset of fear on the island.
So, the explanation - in terms of the fact that the reports have their origin in fear - is indeed correct.
But having a mundane origin (fear or a Govt. sponsored op to exploit local legends) doesn’t mean that it ends there. The mundane and the fear, I believe, has led to the literal existence (in some form or other) of a Tulpa that broadly fits the description of what the local populace believe it to resemble.
Indeed, the fact that there are various descriptions of the creature leads me to believe that each individual who sees it does so from their own perspectives - thus why there are differences from person to person.
Of course, the skeptic would say that the differences are due to people mistaking wild dogs, or big cats escaped from private collections on the island, etc.
I see it as the human mind, gripped by fear - and inflated or even begun or elaborated upon by psy-ops people - actually bringing the myth and the image of the Chupacabras to life.
Of course, this is just my theory based on my firm belief in the existence of the Tulpa - the Chupa may, for all I know, be a time-travelling reptilian from the planet Zog!
December 26th, 2006 at 1:23 pm
Nick:
You wrote:
“Indeed, the fact that there are various descriptions of the creature leads me to believe that each individual who sees it does so from their own perspectives - thus why there are differences from person to person.”
My experience tells me there is nothing odd about that - when I was with the RCMP we interviewed a series of witnesses at a hit-and-run, all of whom got the basic facts right, i.e. they saw a car hit another one and the drive off, but none of whom described the car in exactly the same way. In other words, people see things differently, usually because they’re focused on the event, not the details. In the case of the chupie, what makes it even more unreliable is the element of fear thrown in.
Paul
December 26th, 2006 at 1:24 pm
Hey guys,
What we see here is that Nick has had a personal experience of tulpas, and that will always shape his opinion. Nick, maybe you could post something about that.
The reason I buy into some of this remote viewing “nonsense” is that I have actually experienced it myself one more than one occasion. It’s almost beyond my expertise to explain what it felt like, but it sure made me take the accounts of the “professionals” more seriously.
December 26th, 2006 at 2:49 pm
Good idea, Greg.
I have indeed done a lotof research into Tulpa’s, including trying to summon up these things. I’ll work on something for later this week or next week as to how and why this has shaped many of my beliefs in this area.
December 26th, 2006 at 4:11 pm
Greg / Nick:
I live in a weird world. Here I come across as a conservative skeptic, whereas some of the older ETHers are starting to see me as a wacky New Ager!
I dismiss nothing out of hand. There is, after all, more to heaven and earth than all your philosophy (or perhaps science), and we’re really just at the beginning of understanding how the human mind works, or what consciousness is, and so forth.
I just remain an open-minded skeptic of it all.
I look forward to reading any “Tupla tales” that Nick might have!
Best regards,
Paul
December 26th, 2006 at 4:54 pm
My wife was born and raised in Colombia and has traveled to many other South American countries. She notes that folktales in that region spread readily all over the Caribbean countries, but while growing up she never heard of chupacabras. The first time she was exposed to that term was here in the US.
I think Fox Mulder invented them. In fact, Fox Mulder invented Nick Redfern, too. Think about it for a moment. Nick Redfern is an anagram for Fox Mulder. It’s not a very good anagram, but if you never made it past 2nd grade it kinda works…
December 27th, 2006 at 5:37 am
Raven:
Yeah, the Chupa - under that name, at least - did not surface in Puerto Rico until the mid 1990s. It’s not an old phenomenon.
Before that - as per the article - there were reports of the Moca Vampire and Devil Birds, but no specific Chupa reports until the last decade of the 20th Century.
Mulder? I don’t think I want - or need - to believe as badly as he did! LOL
December 27th, 2006 at 5:38 am
Paul
Tulpa Tales should hopefully be ready by start of next week.
December 27th, 2006 at 10:52 am
Nick’s Tulpa Tales should be a magazine article or even a book as well.I am looking forward to this, as I also firmly believe these things CAN be created . I would also suggest, as I do frequently and in numerous places,that all Keelian types (and Tulpa fans) get hold of “Three Men Seeking Monsters” (another for the required reading list like “Hunt For the Skinwalker”). Three men is classic Forteana, both scary and hilarious at the same time. And hey…all this stuff is possible…and Ree Jones will TELL you so!
As for the remote viewer stuff, yeah, it works. They scoped out the real Tom Clancy “Red October” submarine with it while it was still under construction.
And also: The government is ALWAYS “shutting operations down” on something or other…officially…only to play the shell game with you in truth. Just like the organization called the Cheka in the early Bolshevik era in the USSR. Names changed all the time…NKVD, MGB, NKGB, KGB, etc. Yet they were always called “Chekists” and the the same thing kept right on rolling.
Air Force here “killed off” UFO investigations via death of Blue Book in 1969. You believe that and I’ve got some prime bottomland in the Okeefenokee I want to sell you.
In the 80’s the DoD created a hunter-killer counter-terrorist group called the Intelligence Support Activity (ISA…part of Army Intelligence) that roamed around all over while the politicos all watched the CIA. They finally got wind of this in time to scream about terrorist’s rights violations, so the Army “killed” the naughty ISA.
More bottomland? They just transferred it out of MI and attached it to Spec Ops Command where it runs as the “Contingency Office” (aka “Gray Fox”) of Delta Force (and the tv show “The Unit” gets really CLOSE to depicting this thing).
Now if all this happens…what does that suggest to you re: “Grill Flame/Stargate” remote viewing ? Did it REALLY get “shut down” by The Company” a few years back? Or did it go the NORMAL route and just get redesignated, reconfigured, and relocated? My money’d be on the last scenario.
Hmmmm. Could those tricky dogs be conjuring Tulpas now?
December 27th, 2006 at 11:02 am
Nick,
I think you may be onto something here.
If the negative emotions associated with adolescence can on occasion produce startling PK effects from just one human mind, why can’t the collective negative emotion of fear in a whole community produce equally startling effects?
Whereas the polt phenomenon creates random effects, I think the situation you describe differs inasmuch as it also includes collective expectation which may not only control and direct the thought-form but give it visual substance as well.
Just a thought.
December 27th, 2006 at 11:14 am
ButterflY:
Good points re PK etc. I’m working on a posting for next week on my own experiences in this area of thought-form creation; and even how these forms can “linger” and be seen by others who know nothing of the phenomenon.
That’s where it all gets very strange, and where the thought-form gains rudimentary, “quasi” independent existence outside of its creator(s).
December 27th, 2006 at 11:18 am
Bill
If the Intel was working with Tulpas, it would not surprise me at all. In fact, I have a few things in my tulpa post for next week that touch on this - albeit briefly. Thanks for the 3 Men comments. I’ve actually written a follow-up manuscript to that book: on my first 5 years in the States and investigations here. Hopefully a publisher will bite…
December 27th, 2006 at 8:23 pm
My question is, why has this chupacabra taken off within the Latino countries and the American southwest desert, but hasn’t really moved on to other countries? Is this a Hispanic collective consciousness phenomenon? If so what sociologically would make them more susceptible to this particular entity?
December 28th, 2006 at 6:54 am
Dingo
That’s the thing: it is indeed very much a cultural phenomenon - Puerto Rico, Latin America, Mexico, parts of Florida.
I don’t think it’s so much that they are sociologically more susceptible to this imagery/entity as such. I think it’s more that this image of a weird, bat-like, vampire was the initial one created.
Had the initial image been a Bigfoot type creature, maybe everyone would have been seeing that.
I think the important thing is that when the Chupa craze began, it definitely kick-started a belief, which in turn (in my opinion) led to the literal creation of a mind-monster in the form of what the Chupa was perceived to be.
December 28th, 2006 at 8:40 am
This comment more tulpa-related than to do with UFOs, but chupas and other mystery animals (and “manimals”) have long been hypothesized as being very possibly of a “manifested” nature..thought form..as in “Cormons”, etc….by metaphysical types like the Druid John Michael Greer and others.
Among the “entities” thought “manifested” in this manner is the werewolf…because human flesh and bone cannot twist, bend, and contort (as in “An American Werewolf In London”) in the ways necessary to “transform” into such a beast in a literal manner. A visualized tulpa creation could, in theory. I say this, Nick, to “set you up” for the following synchronicity stories: in Henderson County, Kentucky, there were werewolf stories in the 1800s. Suspicion fell on a prominent family named Talbott (spelled with two “Ts”), particularly on one man (first name unrecorded) whose initial was “L”. He is buried in a local cemetery there under the marker that reads “L.Talbott”.
The first synchronicity here involves screenwriter Curt Siodmak’s 1941 Universal Pictures film “The Wolf Man”,
starring Lon Chaney Jr. His character name was Lawrence Talbot (one t) and he was from a prominent Welsh family.
This Talbott/Talbot and “L” initial association with werewolfery is amusing.
But there is more: There is a Talbot County in Georgia, with a county seat of Talbotton (formerly Talbot Town). You will note the double ‘tt” appears in the name of the town. A young woman of the local Talbot family there was sent away long years ago, to Europe, for treatment for some “malady”. When she left, werewolf stories in the county quickly tailed off (pardon the pun) and died.
Don’t know anybody named Talbot or Talbott do you?
December 28th, 2006 at 10:13 am
Bill
No, I don’t know any Talbot’s but this is very interesting. As you know, “the game of the name” as Doc Shiels once correctly described it, is prevalent throughout much of Forteana.
Places named Jefferson often have weird/fortean activity attached to them.
And, coincidentally (I mean, synchronistically, of course!), in the current issue of Fortean Times (issue 218, January 07), there is an article from Jenny Randles titled “1980: Silent Night” that reveals how the name-game comes into play in the Rendlesham Forest UFO landing case of December 1980.
December 31st, 2006 at 3:23 pm
hi Nick,
I suspect that certain elements within the United States government/military have long had more extensive roles with different phenomenon than previously speculated by most other researchers. It reminds me of the so called “MILAB” phenomenon, where abductees have reported suffering through a second abduction by military forces who interrogated them for information concerning their first abduction by non-human forces. In fact, some have even reported being interrogated while humans in alien costumes stood in the background! Assuming these accounts are true, it makes one wonder if many so called “alien abductions” are simply smokescreens for covert government operations. It is not a stretch to imagine that psywar operatives came across the legends of vampire-like beasts in Puerto Rico and decided to utilize them to their own advantage. As far as the idea of a Tulpa goes, it’s intriguing…
January 2nd, 2007 at 5:42 am
Brian
MILABS are certainly a very interesting concept and the idea that some abductions (although I suspect less than some researchers estimate) are the work of covert projects is likely.
There is definitely evidence of official interest in abductees - I included a chapter on this in my most recent book, “On the Trail of the Saucer Spies.”
Plus I do find it intriguing that certain aspects of abductions seem to involve technology that would seem far less advanced than we might expect from aliens way ahead of us…
January 3rd, 2007 at 10:50 am
Nick
Regarding official interest in abductees, I have a case on file where an abductee, after experencing multiple abduction experiences that would come out later under hypnosis, claimed to have actually observed a UFO hovering over her house in 1999. The next day, a black Toyota Camry parked outside her house and a man in a dark outfit looked up at where the craft had been the night before and began to fill out a report, making no effort to contact her. Granted, this is circumstantial, but it certainly is worthy of an eyebrow raise or two. The witness herself felt that he was “too precise with the location” and felt that some groups have the ability to track UFOs, as do I.
January 3rd, 2007 at 12:15 pm
Brian
Circimstantial, maybe. Or maybe not. This case you reference definitely fits the pattern of numerous such cases (from the UK and US) that suggest a deep monitoring of abductees that seems to extend back to at least the early 1960s.
And, also as with the witness you refer to, it seems that whoever is doing the monitoring has access to unique data to allow for such monitoring to occur - and so quickly in the immediate aftermath of a UFO event, too.
January 7th, 2007 at 3:46 pm
Nick
It brings to mind NORAD and the “Fastwalkers” that are talked about by many in the UFO community…
January 8th, 2007 at 7:37 am
Brian:
Indeed. In fact, the surveillance issue of ufology (never mind just UFOs themselves!) is one that - to me at least - may answer some of the questions.
For example, determining who is watching us and why, may give an indication of what the official world thinks is going on.
By that I mean (and the following is a hypothetical situation) is the Govt secretly sharing info on abductees with psycologists or experts in DNA related issues?
If the former, it suggests maybe the Govt thinks abductions are psychological, but if the latter, maybe they think it’s physical.
As I said, that was purely hypothetical, but determining who is speaking to who in the official world about the subjetc may be an indicatin of the mindset of the official world - and may also be an indicator of what they know too.