The Island of Mystery
Today we have a guest-post from my good friend, author and researcher Jon Downes of the British-based Center for Fortean Zoology. Enjoy!
Here’s Jon:
“Essentially I am a zoologist, and whilst, much against my better judgement, I have been dragged kicking and screaming as it were into the internecine labyrinths of paranormal research, my first love within the subject is cryptozoology - the study of mystery animals.
“As I have written previously, it has become clear that not all the ‘creatures’ which are reported to me, and other researchers around the world are truly flesh and blood in form, and are not really animate, at least in the conventional sense of the word. These ‘creatures’ are known as zooform phenomena and are often reported in conjunction with other, sometimes diverse, paranormal phenomena, including ghosts, poltergeists and UFOs.
“One of the most interesting of these ‘things’ (as the legendary UFOlogist Ivan T Sanderson used to refer to them), is the Goat Sucker, a winged phantom of the hispanic world which is causing consternation worldwide amongst zoologists, UFOlogists and the farming community alike.
“As is so often the case when writing about the more bizarre quasi-fortean phenomena it is very difficult to know where to start. There have been UFO reports in the vicinity of the island of Puerto Rico for many years, and USO reports for even longer.
“In 1963, for example, a sonar operator on a destroyer taking part in an anti-submarine exercise of the island’s coast reported that one of its submarines had chased an unknown underwater object at more than 170 m.p.h. One has to remember, however that the political situation in the Caribbean at the time, with the furore surrounding the events at the Bay of Pigs and the Cuban Missile Crisis meant that the interpretation put by the US Military on Unidentified Submarine Objects was inextricably linked (at the time at least) with the Cold War rather than the alien menace.
“Puerto Rico is an island in the Caribbean to the east of the island of Hispianiola (which contains both the voodoo republic of Haiti, and the slightly less fearsome Dominican Republic). It was discovered in 1493 by Christopher Columbus and has been a self governing ‘commonwealth’ of the United States of America since the Spanish-American war of 1898.
“Although since 1917 its inhabitants have been U.S citizens they are predominantly Spanish speakers of Hispanic or mixed race descent. Both politically and geographically, therefore, it is located mid way between the Houngan led, voodoo infested, high strangeness of Haiti and the long established Colonial ethos of the Brotosh Virgin and Leeward Islands to the East. This has established a sort of cultural schizophrenia which may be important when investigating the quasi-vampiric events chronicled in this article.
“During the 1970s there were a series of bizarre and inexplicable events on the island. According to Janet and Colin Bord, writing in Modern Mysteries of The World, nine people were on a mountain called El Yunque one night in 1973. They were looking for UFOs, and two of them saw “…four entities five to six feet tall, with long arms, big eyes, pointed noses and ears. One carried a ‘little machine’ with lights on it, and they all moved by leaping.”
Click here for the rest of Jon’s article.
And later this year, check out Jon’s forthcoming book on the Puerto Rican puzzle: The Island of Paradise. The book chronicles an expedition the two of us made to the island a couple of years ago. I’ve read most of the original draft, and it’s a great addition to the mystery!
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on Wednesday, March 5th, 2008 at 7:10 am and is filed under The Redfern Files, Breaking News, Eyewitness Accounts, Alien Encounters, UFO Sightings, Evidence, Animal Mutilations, Chupacabras, Strange Creatures, UFOlogy, Beliefs, Guest Column. You can follow responses via RSS 2.0 feed.
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Mar 05 2008 
March 5th, 2008 at 1:24 pm
Writing in 1996 Professor Rafael A Lara-Palmeros drew comparisons between the Mexican chupacabra and political terrorism in the country:
“Since its first appearance in the national media, the ‘Chupacabras’, has captured the attention of everyone, from musicians to intellectuals. Numerous references to the creature have appeared in Mexico’s printed media presenting an entity which has been variously linked to Subcomandante Marcos of the EZLN, with the myth of ‘La Llorona’ and to the poverty and lack of education affecting the country. The real ‘Chupacabras’, so to speak - is the drought and the hunger affecting the country, along with the current political crisis, unemployment and lawlessness. Delirious minds have created their own myths and legends as a result of the penury which has engulfed Mexico as a nation”.
What Professor Rafael A Lara-Palmeros failed to see at that time, was that the mexican government took ample and fruitful use of the Chupacabra legend, to drive the public’s attention from the Zapatista guerrilla and political upheaval. Better let people talk about weird cattle mutilations, than discuss about Subcomandante Marcos and the terrible economic recession the country was suffering.
In the end, the banks that declared bankrupcy in the mid 90s and had to be saved by the government, proved to be far more lethal and “blood-thirsty” to the mexican people than any fortean crypto-beast…
March 8th, 2008 at 4:58 am
Further to red pill junkie’s post, I recall similar arguments being raised about the UMMO hoax/mystery/whatever being used as a cover for political dissent in Spain (under Franco I’d guess). I’m no expert on Puerto Ricans’ attitude to the US, but perhaps the paranormal angle could be drawing foreigners’attention in a similar way? For example, Timothy Good’s included a lot of detail on Puerto Rico in recent books which have been published internationally.