El Chupacabra

Imagine: You have a milk pail slung in the crook of an elbow and the tropic sun is just melting the chill from the night away. A faint mist hangs in the air and you can hear the cluck of chickens, the lowing of the cow in the barn. But wait, something isn't quite right. There is a tension in that shifting, a shrillness to the clucking. Blatting sheep. Panicked sheep. The mist hides the ground of the sheep pen. You walk toward the pen, toward the strange silence of it. Then you see strange hills in the mists, like foreign snow drifts. You walk closer and wonder why all the sheep are sleeping. But they're not sleeping. They're dead. You drop the milk pail, hurtle the fence, and find eight of your flock is dead. And each dead sheep as three puncture wounds in the chest. You look at the ground, and through the ever thinning mist you see no blood. Just a tiny dot of spilled crimson on the old ewe's chest. A spot a scarlet in this white morning. You look over your shoulder and see something dart behind the barn. Blue-gray. A ridge of hair on the spine and a whip like tail. Claws. Eyes the color of blood.

So it may have happened in March of 1995 in Puerto Rico. That was the first sighting of el Chupacabra (meaning Goat Sucker, which, despite the first incident, seems to be it's favorite snack). Sightings and animal exsanguinations were reported solely in the Americas for the next ten years or so. Farm animals and pets were reported to have been exsanguinated through one-three holes in the chest or neck, as well as the corpses of what are believed to be el Chupacabra. The nasty little critter migrated, apparently, for Chupacabras where reported in Russian-Mar '05-and the Philippines-Jan '08. In August of 2007, however, Phylis Canion brought our buddy Chupa to the international limelight when claiming to have a dead specimin in her possession. DNA testing revealed this, and most others, to be a mangy-ass coyote with deformed teeth (or a Chow mix, as the case in Maine). This makes sense, the dead coyotes being mostly hairless but for a ridge along the spine with gray blue skin. The things were probably horrendously sick with mange, as well as not quite sane. But the exsanguination still peaks my interest.
But let's just put it down to mange ridden coyotes and Satanists, hm? Satanists make wonderful patsies.
I think that the coyote connection is the most interesting. In Native American and Mexican mythology, the coyote is a wily trickster, both hero and villain. A powerful critter, either way. He made man, was tricked by hens, slew monsters, and bedeviled mankind. Yet, in our technological age, there is no room for Coyote. He has been replaced by logic and reason and science. Just as the Age of Miracles has passed. Yet today we have Stigmatics (is that what one would call them?) and visions of the Virgin at the bottom of our teacups and alien abduction. Modern life denies mythology and faith, but does not eradicate-or fill-the need. Where coyote used to be a God, he is now relegated to the status of minor monster, terrorizing livestock and livelihood. I think too much denial of our interior lives has made it get our attention in a rather gruesome fashion.
That, and mange.

Family Ghosts

Ghosts are real! My grandma says so. Her maternal uncle, Martin B., was a real jerk. He was demanding, selfish, cruel, and despised by his daughters. According to Grandma, he is now enjoying the fruits of his time on earth doing laps in a fiery lake.
After his death in the old family house in Boston, his wife moved from their old room to another part of the house. The room was, stripped, clean, and painted. Yet, Martin's lingering scum of nastiness could not be scrubbed away or painted over. The crucifix in his room would not stay attached to the wall. Anytime someone would enter the room, the crucifix would be on the floor, near the opposite wall from which it hung. Being good Irish Catholics, they'd replace the crucifix; being the site of Martin's death, the crucifix would not remain replaced. Not until the family priest totted his bible and holy water into the room, did his groove thing, and pronounced the room, finally and truly, clean, did the manifestations of Martin's mean personality cease.

Ghosts are real! My mother says so. When I was very small, two or so, we lived in an old pioneer house with my other grandma. The first floor has one foot thick stone walls and enough history to choke a horse. In the sixties, it was partially burned, the only reason it has not received an historical plaque from the city. Before my grandma, grandpa, and the four boys started living in the house, Mrs. O lived there with her husband. He died in the house, along with who knows how many more. Pioneers were not known for their impressive life spans.
One day, my mom put me down for a nap. She walked down the stairs to lock the front door as she intended to nap as well. After performing this simple duty and heading back up the stairs stretch out on her own bed, she heard me shrieking from my crib "Scary guy! Scary guy!" she rushed into the room (lion-hearted little woman that she is) to find me wide awake and pointing back into the hall. She made sure I was alright, then went to investigate. As she descended the stairs, she saw the front door ajar. The door she had just locked. She relocked it, made certain it was locked, then went back upstairs to get me to lie down again. Alas, more shrieking. This happened two more times, before she finally left the door unlocked. She got her nap.

Rationality tells me the supernatural exists only in the imagination and horror movies. My heart (and my mother and grandmother, god help me), tells me there are things on this Earth that exist whether or not we understand them. Just because something is not understood by science, or universally accepted as fact, does not make it unreal. To be honest, I don't think it matters. I'm sure ten different people could give you one hundred rational explanations of the above stories. But I'd rather believe in ghosts and bugbears and mummies' curses because the world is much more interesting with those things in it.