Extraordinary claims. Ordinary investigations.

The “Chupacabras” is similar, both in appearance and on its background story, to a contemporary videogame character, ‘Sonic, the hedgehog’. While this short essay does not intend to claim that the electronic character was the origin for the Chupacabras, it will try to explore these curious similarities. Others have already noticed this link between the two, but usually with a tongue-in-cheek. There is however some room for serious speculation about it.

Appearance

The most widely known representation of the Chupacabras is related to its genesis with this name in Puerto Rico. If you have ever read something about the subject, it’s very probable you have seen some version of the original sketch by Jorge Martin for the sighting of Madelyne Tolentino. It was created in December 1995, and one notable thing about it are the curious pointy appendages running along the spine of the creature.

This is exactly the trademark of Sonic, created in 1991 by Naoto Oshima and turned into the official mascot for the Sega videogame company. As a stilized hedgehog, those spikes are easily understood.

 The Sonic games franchise, which extend to this day, reached its peak success exactly in mid 1990s. Online websites mention that at this time, Sonic was more popular among american children than icons like Mickey Mouse, Abraham Lincoln or Mario (from rival Nintendo).

In the original description by Jorge Martin above, the “spine-like apprendages” are described as having colors that “change  constantly from red to blue, to yellow, to green, to orange, to violet”.

When Sonic jumps and spins to turn into a kind of ball to roll away or combat his enemies with his spikes, he is also involved on a bright sphere of multiple changing colors.

Story

“At first I believed these animals to be the result of some genetic or bionic experiment“, wrote Jorge Martin. This was among one of the first speculations about the origin and nature of the Chupacabras, though other stories emerged after a while. “I now believe that they are not of terrestrial origin“, Martín added.

The culprits of the “genetic or bionic experiment” were, of course, the Americans, who have military bases in Puerto Rico. People speculated that one or more genetic monsters had just escaped. This particular version is an almost exact parallel to the background story for the Sonic videogames:

“Once upon a time there was a peaceful world called Mobius that is threatened when Dr. Kintobor, a kind scientist who was researching the Chaos Emeralds, is transformed into an evil megalomaniac after a lab accident. All the beautiful animals of the planet are transformed intro evil robotic beings, Badniks — except for Sonic the hedgehog, a friend of Kintobor that was too quick to be captured. Now Sonic must find the Chaos Emeralds, rescue his friends and defeat Kintobor before it’s too late”.

Dr. Kintobor, turned into evil Robotnik, transforms gracious animals into bionic robotic slaves, poluting and destroying the planet on his way. The whole game was “Captain Planet” style.

Discussion

The Chupacabras didn’t appear from nothing in 1995. It didn’t came from the blue videogame character either. The origins of the Chupacabras can be traced back to “animal mutilations” in USA almost three decades earlier, and to the “Moca Vampire” of the very same Puerto Rico in 1975. These coincidences between the appearance and stories for Sonic and the abominable sucking creature may well be just that. Coincidences.

Representing spines or “appendages” the way Martin did in his drawing does not necessarily proves that it was based on a Sonic drawing. Any child, if asked to draw a hedgehog or an animal alike with spines, may draw something similar. The Chupacabras, furthermore, despite having being described as a color-changing creature, was also described and more usually portrayed as having more dark tones.

Obviously a multi-colored character is more appropriated for fun child characters than scary monsters.

Having made all of these points, and noting that probably are many reasonable others, we cannot help but to also suggest that maybe these are not just coincidences.

Both the Chupacabras and Sonic may have been cultural products that emerged and reached huge success at around the same time. They are both always referred to as a single character, as if there was only one of them – this is not very evident in English, but in Spanish countries where the language clearly differs between singular and plural forms, the Chupacabras is always referred to as a single creature. This was emphasized by Argentinian Max Seifert at the time as an indication that the phenomenon was about a myth, and not the effects of an unknown species of animals.

While Sonic in the end may not be the origin for the Chupacabras, the same cultural references and influences could explain both of them.

And then, in the end it’s always possible that Jorge Martín was playing with his children’s Sega Genesis. Or not, maybe it was just a Master System.

References

There are great in-depth dossiers in Spanish about the Chupacabras over at MarcianitosVerdes. They cover the arrival of the monster in Mexico, Argentina and Chile.

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Star Wars is specially interesting because a magical (or “paranormal”) universe was adapted to a futuristic context which still depends on technology, and one assumes, science. The saga is not actually science fiction, it’s just a nice fantasy, but there’s a notable effort to give some logic to this universe where one can predict the future, use telekinesis and hope the “Force is with them” at the same time that they travel through hyperspace to get to Death Stars powered by giant nuclear reactors.

The most visible and curious incoherence in Star Wars is that in this high-tech world, a warrior elite represented by the Jedi use swords instead of weapons like pistols or machine guns. Granted their “swords” are über cool lightsabers, a more “civilized” weapon, but as that infamous scene in Indiana Jones taught, Indiana may not be that civilized but he ended up alive. And maybe just as cool looking.

In the end, everything is explained simply because George Lucas was largely inspired by Kurosawa’s Jidai-geki samurais for his Jedi, but delving into the Star Wars fantasy, we may find a very interesting and far reaching Jedi logic for the lightsaber preference.

It’s all because the Jedis can predict the future. Just ask yourself how would you kill someone who could predict the future. Shooting at him? He does not even need to be a skilled warrior to deflect your shot, he can just easily avoid being your target by not being in the place to start with. Or he may even shoot you first – poor Greedo obviously didn’t have precognition, maybe Han Solo did.

Think of any way to kill someone who can predict the future, it’s impossible. He would always predict his own assassination and avoid it. You can try elaborate plans and dilemmas alike involving his loved ones, ideals and so on, but the fact remains that unless the future-predicting bastard lets you kill him, you wouldn’t ever be able to do it. That’s technically suicide.

That danger avoiding bastard would be pretty boring, we could have some drama at most. But things get more interesting when these future-predicting bastards are not cowards, and if their future-predicting is not equivalent to knowing with certainty everything that will ever happen (which may well be logically impossible if he plans to interfere with that). Just like the Jedi.

In such a Star Wars Universe, where some people can predict the future with progressively less certainty, it would still be very difficult to kill one of them, but not impossible. At the same time, if they were not cowards, they could train themselves to be able to foil assassination attempts without having to be always running away from them.

For instance, if you shot at one of them, even multiple times, they may predict where the shots would be (with reasonable certainty as the moment approaches) and actually train themselves to be able to either deflect or dodge them. They would be able to do that even if the shots were quicker than their “normal” reflexes. As they are predicting in some advance where the shots will be, they can plan a sequence of possible movements that will save them.

But there’s one way to kill them in which their precognition will be almost useless. And that’s close combat. If your first attack — either by hand, sword, whatever — can be predicted, your second one will depend on his reaction. Reaction that was based on his first prediction of your attack, which has just been altered when he interfered with it. And so on.

Which is, in close combat, because the predictions are being used and interfered with many times and their consequences are being felt almost instantaneously, precognition is not worth much more than plain old martial skills. That’s even more true if both fighters are capable of predicting the near future.

And that’s the wonderful reason why the warrior elite of this universe chooses lightsabers, the ultimate martial arts weapon, over more predictable weapons like guns or even bazookas. That’s the Jedi logic.

Reality would be very different if there were indeed people capable of predicting the near future like the Jedi. The whole logic of how everything works would be different. As it is, in real life we have just plain boring so-called “psychics” who can’t even win the lottery. That’s our real world logic. May the Reason be with you.

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Click on the image for the original post on Loren Coleman’s Criptomundo. The photo was sent to him with this report:

Loren, hopefully you can shed some light on this thing. The thing has many human qualities I can see under a scope. [It] appears to have clothing, however the burnished bronze color throws me off. [It was] photo[graph]ed by a 15 year old American girl. She was on tour with a group from Michigan. Supposedly the temp. is 100+.

Loren, the photo was taken in July 2007. The story behind it is this little 15 year old girl was attacked by this [thing]. How it happened is unclear. I met personally with the girl and her parents; I felt imposing since I had just met these people for the first time. It was a large family gathering and I was an outside guest invited. Still not sure why I was invited other than they had motorcycles and needed answers to questions. I was their answer guy.

Her father plainly said she’d not be going on anymore trips out of his sight. Supposedly this thing grabbed her and attempted to hold her and put mud in her face and hair. She said she couldn’t get away from it by pulling so she got a firm hold and tackled it causing it to lose balance thus allowing her escape.

Supposedly there are other witnesses; I am still trying to get more info.

The area is: Porto Seguro, Bahia, Brazil.

Surely, someone there knows of this incident.Two-Cam McLaren, August 9, 2007.

Coleman thinks it’s “intriguing, if not curiously prosaic”, and remarks that “anything is possible as an origin of any new photo”. It turns out that though anything is possible, the most prosaic explanation indeed must be the answer to this. And it’s so prosaic any Brazilian, like me, would find it not only obvious but slightly revolting.

That mud area we can see in the photos is what is called “manguezal“, and it’s a very  important ecosystem in Northeastern Brazil, not only for the environment but also for the locals. The image at left of very happy people are some tourists bathing in mud, but the  second and third one are from locals earning their life. They mostly catch crabs in the mud, and end up almost completely covered in mud.

It’s obvious the original photo sent to Coleman is of a local covered in mud, probably a man. You can see that he’s wearing a T-shirt and pants. The “horns” are the same as we can see in the tourists above: it’s just something you can do with your hair when it’s covered in mud.

The “Manguezal” culture was even promoted in the 1990s in Brazil as a nice cultural movement, the “Mangue Beat“, leaded by band “Chico Science”.

Now, Coleman may not be blamed for sharing this pic, warning about it possibly being fake and asking for input. People outside Brazil may not be used to see homo sapiens covered in mud — though even Americans my have watched somewhat similar “Give it Away“.

But those who sent the photo and called that guy, very probably a poor local earning his life, a “Beast”… I don’t know which is worse: that they were indeed “attacked” by “it”, and did not realize it was a human being; or if they knowingly called a local a horned Beast.

Update: Coleman quickly and kindly posted our explanation on Criptomundo.

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Shortly before those amazing Haitian/Dominican videos, one of the biggest Youtube UFO sensations of 2007 was this one, allegedly from a source within the Italian Air Force. That was quickly dismissed by the actual publicizer, Paola Harris, on UfoUpdates:

This old Film Footage I have been showing for 3 years and It was given to Us Italian Researchers… not By the Air force. It is our Technology.

I had a cassette examined in Hollywood by my friends Rob and Rebecca Gordon who had the connections and money to do it. It was a 7th generation – copied 7 times – cassette. It was given to us with no explanation. It is a real object in the film. It has been shown in my MUFON and Laughlin Presentations and someone put it on U-TUBE [sic] and Google!

This all takes place in the Veneto region of Italy at a place called Ponte di Giulio. Near Aviano NATO Base. It is a dry river bed where the military does maneuvers and the photographer was on a tripod waiting for the object to come out of the woods. I doubt aliens appeared there!

Though the claims about it being real and “our technology” couldn’t be verified to this day, the ones about its origin could. Italians Antonio Pischiutti and Stefano Saccavino visited the location, near Ponte de Giulio, in Pordenone, and took this photo from roughly the same spot:

Many Italian ufologists received the video from the anonymous source some years ago (more on this below), but apparently only Harris started to promote and sell it abroad on a DVD. Somehow, that resulted in two versions of the video (one converted directly from the DVD, at the beggining of the post, and the other filmed from a projection/screening of it) being recently uploaded to Youtube, and the rest is history. That we will tell here.

Given the anonymous source and the poor quality of the Youtube versions, it was expected that no definite proof of “authenticity” or of the probable hoax would be found, but people worked on it anyway and endless debate ensued. One of the most interesting evidence of hoaxing was pointed out by “onthefence” on the OpenMindsForum:

The alleged UFO has a very different blur from the background. Though it has been reasonably suggested that that was the result of poor rendering of the 3D model on a computer, I think it has more to do with the simple difference in contrast between the flying saucer and the background in the original footage. Because the video versions initially on Youtube have such poor quality, I don’t think this “pulsed” blur artifact from a quick rendering of the 3D model would show up. One can barely discern details in the craft. Either way, it’s clear evidence that the flying saucer and the background are two very different things. One is real, the other is not.

Further evidence of hoax include the so convenient and extremely lucky cameraman (who according to Harris was using a tripod (!!!)). He had the saucer hovering near that chimney that turns out to be from the nearby power plant and which makes a nice detail. But do not make much sense because in the real geography of the place, the saucer at that point was actually hundreds of meters away from it. Only the cameraman at that point had the illusion that the saucer was near the power plant — and only if he had no depth perception.

But if things remained at this point, only skeptics would be satisfied to consider such soft evidence on such bad quality, anonymous video, a case closed for hoax. Fortunately, another Italian ufologist who received the original footage years ago decided to step up.

Antonio Chiumento, contrary to Paola Harris, allegedly chose not to publicize the video he received because of the anonymous, unknown origin. Wise decision. It remained archived for years, but after the international Youtube sensation and subsequent echoes in his very own country about it, he finally spoke about it. And we are glad that he did.

In the videoclip above you can watch the best version of the infamous video yet available on the internet. That’s probably because they are showing the original video that Chiumento received directly from the anonymous source. You can see clearly that the flying saucer is fake, as it clearly stands out against the background many times. As it was made three or four years ago, the CGI is not near as good as the Haitian/Dominican videos — in which, we must note, the UFOs blended well with the scenery because everything was computer generated.

Not only that, but the local TV station received a phone call from the alleged authors of the video, who confessed it was created with Adobe’s After Effects post production software. Though this confession cannot be confirmed (as the original source was anonymous), we don’t have so many reasons to doubt it since there’s such clear evidence already that allows us to conclude this one is indeed a hoax.

[This post is heavily based on the original dossier at ufofu]

UPDATE: I became aware that in the interview, Italian researcher Chiumiento actually tells much more than what I described above, at times incorrectly. He received the video from an anonymous source and after seeing it immediately considered it a hoax, given the evident difference in sharpness between the UFO and the background. He then received an email confession from the author, at the time, who made the video as part of a Computer Graphics class. He repeatedly emphasizes that no video, photographic evidence, no matter how good, is valid without a good supporting testimonial evidence. In this case it was also anonymous, so that’s another reason that he ignored the video.

This was all allegedly clarified long before the video became famous on Youtube recently, and Paola Harris claimed it was declared authentic by Hollywood experts.

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Turn down the volume (unless you are into loud Arabic music) and check the video above. A few months ago, infamous paper Pravda reported that “Russian fishermen catch squeaking alien and ate it“. The video clearly shows the same “alien”. As Mexican weblog MarcianitosVerdes wrote at the time, it’s another Garadiavolo case.

As you can read on our entry about those abominable creatures, they are just common rays, skates and species alike. What look like evil eyes are actually nostrils. The real eyes are on the other side of the fish.

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