Feb 01 2008
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Goatsucker In My “Backyard”
According to a piece published on the site LAist, the Chupacabras made a few appearances at the height of its fame (mid-1990s) right here in Los Angeles. I never heard about the sightings at the time. Back in 1995, we published one of the first reports on the phenomenon in our magazine The Excluded Middle. Scott Corrales reported from Puerto Rico with accounts describing an impish-looking thing with short hair all over its body and a row of porcupine-like spines running down its back. As if to complete the cosmic joke, the creature was topped with a alien grey-like head and googly black eyes.
According to the article, there is apparently a current goatsucker scare going on north of L.A. in a town called Hesperia. One thing that worries me about the accuracy of the piece is the mention of the Charles Weitzel story, which occured in 1958 in the nearby city of Riverside. The writer, Neil Arnold, describes the creature Weitzel observed screaming and clawing at his windshield as “reptilian.” Weitzel never said any such thing. If I remember correctly, it was descibed as having a “scarecrowish” head and long, spindly limbs. He did say it had “scaly skin, like leaves.” Arnold followed up with an account drawn from Loren Coleman’s landmark book Mysterious America, and added that the secret is left in the “murky woods of Southern California,” which is also strange, as there are no woods around the site, which sits at the bottom of the Santa Ana riverbed. I visited the area a couple of years ago while writing up the story for Weird California.
How the author associated reptilians with the goatsucker is another question, but I’ll be on the lookout when I’m going through Riverside (and Hesperia.) A couple of weeks ago my buddy and former Air Force OSI Agent Walter Bosley took me out to view a strange old rock quarry in Riverside that kind of creeped me out. It looked like the perfect home for the Chupacabras, with rusted pumping equipment and a pool of poison-laden water ringed by snowy-white deposits of strange minerals.
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February 1st, 2008 at 12:52 am
I wonder if arnold is personally inclined toward the whole reptilian idea, or just inserted it for hype because of the scaly description. Although the idea of any creature (including scarecrows) with a scarecrow head is far more freaky than a reptilian and already pretty hypey.
I would take some bottled water…
February 1st, 2008 at 10:38 am
Hey, doesn’t “Choopie” have red eyes instead of black?
BTW, I found what seems an interesting use of the character for a Comic book; they even have Bigfoot and Mothman! (the name kind of blows though)
February 2nd, 2008 at 4:08 pm
Back in 1993, I was stationed temporarily at Al Dhafra Air Base in Abu Dhabi,UAE. There were some massive lizards(4′-6′) there that could climb up on their hind legs. These lizards were carnivourous and blindingly fast when trying to escape or ambushing the desert jackrabbits that were present in the desert there. They were primarily nocturnal and we’re often seen ripping through garbage to get at the remains of chicken meals. They also were famous for preying on goats as well over there They seemed to love rotting chicken for some reason. Given the description of the Chupacabras here in the Southwestern US and Mexico, I’m wondering if there isn’t some unknown reptile similar to what I saw in the UAE inhabiting the Americas.
February 2nd, 2008 at 8:13 pm
Hey Greg: I just read that David Verdesi, student of Wang, Ling Pi whose biography is “Opening the Dragon Gate: Making of a Modern Taoist Wizard,” is sucking the chi energy out of bulls so that they die. The chi is then stored in David Verdesi’s lower tan tien — his stomach.
So anyway….
February 3rd, 2008 at 3:12 am
Richelle,
I think he just wanted to make a connection (however tenuous) to his second story about the Wetzel monster.
February 3rd, 2008 at 3:16 am
RPJ,
Yeah, I think he/ it was described as having red eyes at least some of the time.
Somewhere I still have a t-shirt I picked up in Baja California with a parody “Wanted” poster of then-Mexican president Gotiari’s head on a chupacabras body with a few political comments next to it. I guess the idea was that he was sucking the life out of the body politic. It was under a pile of other shirts, and the shop owner looked a little nervous when I asked about it.
February 3rd, 2008 at 3:16 am
Drew,
Sounds worse than the t-shirt.
February 3rd, 2008 at 10:49 am
Greg,
Please, please, please, PLEASE! Post a pic of that T-Shirt!
February 3rd, 2008 at 2:07 pm
Crg,
I’ve never heard of this animal. Sounds a bit like a komodo dragon.
February 3rd, 2008 at 2:08 pm
RPJ,
…at least I THINK I still have the shirt. I’ll take a look.
February 3rd, 2008 at 8:23 pm
It was some form of monitor lizard. The books say they max at 4′ but I know we measured one at over 5′ and it wasn’t the biggest one seen there. Pretty aggressive,too.
February 23rd, 2008 at 3:42 am
A Hispanic friend of mine at work told me about some foothills in Mexico where his relatives have seen a vampire like creature swoop down and kill goats by draining them of blood.
April 25th, 2008 at 3:50 pm
Whatever happened to hot space chicks wanting to drain a guy’s semen?!?