Vampires (12 page)

In the Middle Ages, Lilith was said to have married the King of Demons, Asmodeus, spreading chaos and misery at every opportunity. If a man became impotent, or a woman was found to be infertile, or a child died in infancy, Lilith would be blamed. Up until the eighteenth century, this superstition persisted: a magic circle would be drawn around the bedroom when a mother gave birth, and both mothers and babies would be given amulets to protect them. The names of the three angels who had tried to take her back to Adam – Sanvi, Sansanvi, and Semangelof – would also be invoked to keep her away.

Later, in the Romantic period, the German writer Goethe returned to the subject of Lilith in his great play
Faust
, characterizing her as a sorceress who suffocates men by winding her long hair tightly around them. In the Victorian period, the poet Robert Browning took a different approach, emphasizing that Lilith has an abject attachment to Adam, crawling like a snake to him and promising to be his slave.

In contemporary times, there has been a re-evaluation of Lilith. Some view her as an early mother goddess overseeing and celebrating an essentially feminine sphere of sexuality and fertility, on a par with positive nurturing deities such as the Egyptian goddess Isis. According to this view, the rise of patriarchy provoked a demonization of women, so that instead of being an essentially benevolent female force, Lilith becomes a destructive demon. Perhaps the most balanced way to view her, from our current perspective, is as a counterpart to such deities as the Indian goddess Kali, who has great sexual power that can be wielded for both positive or negative use. Significantly, this more subtle interpretation links with today’s approach to the vampire myth, which stresses the creature’s sympathetic, as well as destructive, aspects.

Unlike most of the mythical creatures described in this section, the Chupacabra is not part of ancient folklore. Rather, it is a monster of modern times, what we might describe, in contemporary terms, as an ‘urban legend’. From the 1970s on, there were rumours of a goat-eating beast roaming the remote areas of the world and killing small animals, but reported sightings of this mysterious vampire-like animal reached their height in the 1990s. At this time, the Chupacabra, as it came to be called, was blamed for killing various kinds of livestock in many parts of the Americas, as far as Mexico in the south and Maine in the north.

To date, there has been no confirmed scientific evidence that such a monstrous creature exists. However, some animals have been seen (and in some cases shot, or their corpses found) and identified as aberrant types of coyote or dog. Nonetheless, in many communities, particularly those of Latin America, the Chupacabra continues to be feared as a horrifying monster that will attack smaller animals such as goats, emptying their entire bodies of blood.

In Spanish, Chupacabra literally means ‘sucker of goats’. The name has been attributed to Silverio Perez, a well-known TV host, comedian, and musician from Puerto Rico. He coined the term after seeing reports in the newspapers about the deaths of livestock and the suspicion that a vampire-like creature had been responsible for killing them. The name caught on, and today, it has become much used throughout the Americas.

In the early 1990s in Puerto Rico, there were rumours of a strange beast that had been seen in remote parts of the country. It was said to be a large, lumbering creature the size of a bear, with a row of spines along its entire back, from neck to tail. It also, according to some reports, had large, vicious-looking fangs. Other accounts described the animal as a reptile-like creature with leathery greenish-grey skin and quills running down its back. In other descriptions, the reptile’s body was covered in scales.

The Chupacabra was thought to be a creature standing about one metre high with long back legs and shorter front ones. It hopped about like a kangaroo or dinosaur. Some reports alleged that when disturbed or frightened, it emitted a screeching noise, and also began to hiss. In addition, it left a revolting smell behind it, as of sulphur. Furthermore, its eyes glowed red in the dark, and could cause the onlooker to succumb to waves of nausea.

As well as being likened to a bear and a reptile, the Chupacabra was sometimes compared to a dog. In this description, it was a hairless wolf-like animal with deep eye sockets, large fangs, and claws. The characteristic spine of quills running down its back was also evident.

In March 1995, eight sheep in Puerto Rico were found to have died. Each one of them reportedly had three puncture wounds near the neck and had been entirely drained of blood. Subsequently, near the town of Canovanas, around 150 farm animals met a similar fate. No one knew the reason why until an eyewitness named Madelyne Tolentino reported that she had seen a peculiar animal lurking in the street where she lived, watching her as she hung out her washing to dry. She and her husband tried to capture it, but it beat a hasty retreat. Another eyewitness, Michael Negron, also claimed to have seen the beast hopping about in the dirt outside his house. ‘It was about three or four feet tall, with skin like that of a dinosaur,’ he reported. ‘It had eyes the size of hens’ eggs, long fangs, and multicoloured spikes down its head and back’. Convinced that these reports were true, the mayor of the town, Jose Soto Rivera, mounted a hunt for the animal, but it was never found.

Two decades before, in the town of Moca, there had been similar killings of livestock. These had been attributed to a vampire, named ‘El Vampiro de Moca’. There had also been rumours that the livestock killed were victims of a satanic cult. Each of the animals had been bled dry, through small incisions in the neck and chest area.

Not surprisingly, the new spate of killings near Canovanas renewed anxiety that there was an evil, vampire-like creature stalking the area, and that it was merely a matter of time before human victims, especially small children, would be targeted. As similar animal deaths began to be reported in other Latin American countries – including Honduras, the Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Peru, Argentina, Panama, Nicaragua, Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Chile, and Mexico – panic began to mount.

The next development to cause a stir was in July 2004, when a rancher named Devin McAnally in Elmendorf, Texas, shot an animal that he saw attacking his livestock.

This time, the dead body of a supposed chupacabra was available for inspection, and the media rushed to cover the story. The corpse did indeed look grotesque. It was that of an emaciated, hairless dog with leathery blue-grey skin, long ears, and large pointed teeth. There were also small scales on the skin. The corpse was promptly dubbed the Elmendorf Beast and taken to the laboratory for tests. Various speculative theories then emerged as to its provenance.

One scientific opinion claimed that this was a Mexican Hairless Dog, a breed that is naturally devoid of hair, and that the unfortunate animal had undergone profound changes in appearance as a result of malnourishment, sickness, and possibly congenital abnormalities sustained at birth. Others suspected that it was a hybrid animal, possibly a cross between a wolf and a coyote. There was also a theory that the dog was suffering from severe sarcoptic mange, which would have caused all its hair to fall out. There were even suggestions that the animal might have been created in a laboratory, as part of a government medical research programme, and that the animal had somehow escaped into the wild.

In order to gain a rational explanation of the animal’s appearance, attempts were made to extract DNA from the corpse. The results showed that it was indeed some kind of dog. However, the corpse was too decayed for the tests to reveal more than that. Thus it was that the mystery was never resolved.

Whatever the truth that lay behind the mystery, it must be said that the pictures of the Elmendorf Beast’s corpse showed it to look more like a forlorn mangy coyote than the terrifying predator imagined in stories of the Chupacabra. To further bolster this impression, not long after this incident, two similar corpses were picked up in Texas and discovered to be coyotes suffering from severe cases of mange.

But the Chupacabra panic was not over. A year later, reports began to come in from Central Russia, where dozens of turkeys and sheep had mysteriously been killed overnight. As with the sheep in Latin America, there were bite marks on their necks and chest, and they had been completely drained of blood.

Next, residents in rural areas of Maine in the US began to complain of similar attacks on chickens. In addition, several dogs were reported to have been mauled by a larger creature.

At this point, a clue to the mystery suddenly came up. Back in Texas, a woman named Phylis Canion, who had lost many chickens to the supposed beast over the years, came across three unusual animal corpses near the perimeter of her farm. She photographed the corpses and put one of the heads into her freezer for identification. Experts were called in to view it, but their opinions were divided. The state mammologist, John Young, deemed it to be a grey fox suffering from mange. But biologists who studied the corpse’s DNA determined that it was a coyote. Yet, as many people pointed out, this beast was not like any coyote seen before. It had big fangs, grey-blue skin, and no hair.

In the years that followed there were other sightings from countries all over the world. In the Philippines, one farmer saw a dog-like animal attack his chickens, while once again in Texas, Brandon Riedel, a county deputy, filmed a hairless animal with a long snout loping along the back roads of the area. It had short front legs and long back ones. Once again, the animal was identified as a coyote, although it did seem very different from the rest of the species.