CHUPA CHUPA

Has the chupacabra been sighted in Alabama?

Well… it depends on who you ask.

The photo below was submitted to Alabama Wildlife and Fisheries after being discovered on a trail camera in the spring of 2023. I’ve attempted to uncover the approximate location, or at least general vicinity, that the photo was taken but I haven’t had much luck.

To nobody’s surprise, the AWF has said, hands down, this is not a chupcabra. Honestly, I agree.

This is a coyote with some very advanced skin/wasting disease.

There’s nothing more to be said about it.

Still, I have to include it as it’s one of only a handful of supposed sightings of the creature here in Alabama. And this has always been strange to me, that the creature hasn’t been sighted more often in the state mainly given its apparent prevalence in Florida.

Honestly, as a child, I was terrified that a chupacabra may decide to make that trek, but I seem to have gotten lucky thus far in their determination to stay further west and south of us here in the state.

You might be wondering at this point (and I really hope you are) why, exactly, people are so eager to believe that these obviously diseased canines are actually mythical, bloodsucking beasts.

It started in 2007. A Texas woman named Phylis Canion had discovered the animal (seen in the image below) deceased on her ranch.

With very little to go by, and it not resembling any animal that she regularly saw, she (and the media frenzy that followed) dubbed it a chupacabra.

Here, supposedly, was proof that it was all real.

The internet was suddenly inundated with reports, videos, and photos of these creatures. We knew then, as we know now, that they’re nothing more than mangy coyotes (and coyote-dog hybrids), but it was too late — that image had already entered the subconscious of millions.

Chupacabras were real and this is what they looked like. Science had solved yet another mystery.

High fives were had all around.

This “discovery”, however, flies directly in the face of decades of prior encounters.

See, for example, the next photo.

This sketch, created by a witness in 1995, is what most UFO and cryptid researchers have recognized as the most common (give or take a few details) chupacabra morphology.

This particular version of the creature (and I honestly hate that that has to be stipulated, there should not be multiple recognized variations of this particular cryptid) is often grey or green, capable of walking on its hind legs, has large, alien like eyes (albeit red instead of your classic E.T. black), pronounced fangs, spines running down its back, and was known for viciously attacking farmers, ranchers, and any other individual unlucky enough to be in the vicinity as it descended on its prey (most often livestock).

This is the creature that terrified me as a child, and I hope its apparent as to why.

***

You can take it back even further than the ‘90s, even though that’s the general era when the chupacabra makes its debut in pop culture.

Beginning in 1977, the citizens of Colares (a city in Brazil) were terrorized by UFOs unlike any others encountered up to this point (and possibly since)

Affected locals found themselves systematically hunted down, drained of blood (via strange beams supposedly originating from the observed saucers), and, on occasion, killed by the crafts that plagued them. Some ufologists (and I can’t verify their sources, so take this with a grain of salt) claim that as many as 400 people were killed by these crafts.

Locals came to refer to the blood-sucking saucers as “chupa-chupa”.

As this was happening, sightings of grey-skinned, red-eyed aliens were common in the surrounding area. These creatures were reportedly seen in the forests around Colares, at least once in a cave having taken refuge from a downed craft, and on local farms and ranches.

Around the same time, in Moca, Puerto Rico, a series of livestock were found dead, seemingly drained of blood via circular incisions on their necks.

The creature would be dubbed “el vampiro de Moca” (The Vampire of Moca) and would go on to kill as many as 200 pets and farm animals by the end of that decade.

As sightings continued into the late ‘90s, farmers were mass reporting hundreds of livestock supposedly killed by the creature. Similar reports were coming in all across South America and Mexico, simultaneously.

Named “el chupacabras” by a San Juan radio DJ reporting on the panic, this type of creature had finally become legendary in its own right, shedding any apparent connection to the Colares Incident or, for that matter, any part of the Brazilian UFO flap.

***

So, no, the chupacabra was not sighted in Alabama.

A dead one wasn’t recovered in Texas.

I haven’t heard reports of a classic chupacabra being sighted in at least a decade but, hey, who knows, maybe they still happen, buried underneath all those reports of diseased dogs.

Stay weird!

-Scott