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Terror in the Northeast Ing. Marco A. Reynoso B. is the president of
FUNDACION COSMOS A.C. and a MUFON State Director for Nuevo Leon, Mexico.
His research has included such controversial areas as the Zone of Silence
and the "Birdmen" seen in the Monterrey area. We welcome Ing. Reynoso to
INEXPLICATA with his first contribution, this time on the subject of the
Chupacabras. A few months ago (February 1996), we began hearing about a mysterious being that attacked sheep, goats, pigeons, chickens and horses, draining them of their blood. This reminded me of the infamous cattle mutilations that occurred several years ago, particularly in Texas, U.S.A., the locality of Matamoros, Mexico, and the island of Puerto Rico. But these new mutilations presented a different pattern altogether, since the old mutilations appeared to affect beef and dairy cattle exclusively and involved the removal of eyes, tongue and genitals, with the only common factor between them being the total absence of blood. On Tuesday, February 27, 1996, during a meeting of the Fundación Cosmos A.C., one of the members, Javier Alonso, mentioned that a family friend had just arrived in Monterrey from the town of Carmen, municipality of Gremes, in the state of Tamaulipas. The friend informed them of a number of events that were transpiring in the vicinity of Carmen, such as attacks upon animals and several UFO sightings to which he himself had been a witness. The next day, we interviewed Mr. Juan Salaz, who discussed the events that have the towns of El Barretal, Las Conchitas and Las Crucitas in a state of unrest (all of this within a 10 kilometer perimeter) due to the multiple attacks by the Chupacabras. By sheer coincidence, UFOs have been sighted prior to the attacks. One of Mr. Salaz's narrations is noteworthy: a dance that was taking place near a river bed had to be suspended by a tremendous noise produced by a disk that flew by at low altitude. Salaz himself has witnessed 2 UFO events and knows of a Chupacabras witness who'd described it as an ape-like being that walks on two legs, bent forward, with three claws and three toes on its feet, covered in brown fur and having large red eyes. A smell akin to burned wood seemed to issue from it. In the light of such an interesting case, and with the latest attack having occurred less than a week earlier, we made ready to visit the region. On Friday, March 2, 1996, a research team composed of Jose Cabriales, Leopoldo Zambrano, Javier Alonso, Miguel Mosqueda, David Marcos and this author, reached Carmen at around midnight. We were welcomed at the home of Javier Alonso's uncle, who offered us lodging. The following day we visited R. Juan Salaz, who took us to the home of Gregorio Grimaldo, the owner of a dog accused of having perpetrated at least three attacks upon sheep and having sucked their blood. Gregorio--known as "Don Goyo"--was forced to pay for the sheep, since their owner claimed the dog had developed a taste for blood from the chickens sacrificed by its owner to sell at his butcher shop. After the second event, Don Goyo was also asked to make restitution. We were able to tell that the dog was by no means fierce and appeared to be quiet and very tame. The accusations visited upon Don Goyo were highly illogical, not only given the dog's demeanor, but in light of the fact that it would be unable to drink the sheep's blood, since each sheep holds approximately a liter an half of blood. Between the first and second attacks, with a total of 37 slain sheep, this would amount to 55 liters of blood. We also felt the accusation was childish in considering that a dog's bite would rend the skin and that blood gushing from such a wound would have poured to the ground. However, these animals only betrayed three orifices of 1 cm. in diameter each, which cannot be dog bites and which show no blood traces whatsoever, neither within the carcass nor on the skin. Don Goyo, who challenged the accusations, ordered an autopsy performed on 19 sheep, which was recorded on videotape. This autopsy was performed by a specialized butcher in the presence of the state judicial police, and we were able to see the holes in animals' hides. Some of them present only two puncture marks with a diameter of between 1 to 1.5 cm. and are located on the spinal region, not presenting the tear marks that would be made by a dog or any other known predator. When the hide was removed, enormous holes with missing muscle tissue and broken bone became evident. The injuries went deep into the thoracic cavity, which upon being opened showed missing organs --the kidney on some occasions -- which would have inflicted severe trauma on the animal. Most shocking of all is the utter absence of blood. One of these attacks took place in the early morning hours of February 17, 1996 at the Martha R. Gómez Secondary School #5, located in El Barretal, Tamps.. We visited this location to verify and collect possible evidence. The school was empty when we arrived and were able to inspect the premises calmly. We noticed scratch marks on the walls of a classroom being used as a holding pen. The glazing on the windows betrayed three fingered marks near where the creature entered the room, and its possible escape trajectory presented a very clear three-toed mark left in mud, much larger than a human hand. This reinforces our belief that a dog could not have been the cause of the attacks, since dogs have five toes and their paws are much smaller than a human hand. When the school caretaker arrived, he remarked that the autopsy report had been made by an institute in Ciudad Victoria, Tamps., which claimed that a pack of dogs had attacked the sheep penned inside the classroom. Only one of the sheep survived and it had a scratch on its head that left the skull exposed. We then visited the home of Mr. Leonel Reina, who lost 18 sheep during the first attack on February 13, 1996. This attack presents the same pattern as the first ones, except that a cow and its calf, as well as a pig in a nearby pen, remained unharmed. Mr. Reina has a German Shepherd dog which did not bark on that night-- it left paw prints of its mad rush to escape the site which disappear abruptly upon reaching a barbed wire fence and do not resume on the other side. Mr. Reyna showed us newspapers dated 2.28.96, showing an exsanguinated dead mare in Hidalgo, Tamps.. According to Mr. Reina, the attacks upon animals began in Soto La Marina, Tamps. and moved on to Abasolo, Tamps. We began to project a trajectory that might continue on to Linares, Nuevo León. As we ended the interview, he told us that exactly 7 days before (Sunday, 2 Feb '96), a UFO had landed in a communal property known as Nuevo Centro de Población Dolores in Abasolo, Tamps., setting fire to a swamp. We immediately took to the road again in order to drive the extra 70 kilometers to the destination. Arriving at 3:00 p.m., we asked for the site at a food store and were told how to reach it and given the name of a witness, Prof. Guillermo Serna, who along with his family retold the events they had experienced. The family spoke all at once, obviously excited at recalling the experience and reliving it as they did so. The Abasolo Case started at 4:00 in the morning a few nights earlier, when one of the professor's daughter's Marlen Serna, was unable to sleep and went to sit on one of the chairs in the small restaurant adjacent to the house. She suddenly noticed a light through the window and was surprised to see a small red sphere measuring some 40 cm. in diameter which floated noiselessly. The object drifted away and around the corner of the house, where it was noticed by one of Marlen's brothers. On February 23, 1996, at around 10:00 p.m., dogs began to bark furiously and the family went outside to see what was going on. They were surprised to see a dome-shaped, reddish-orange object measuring some 5 meters in diameter (16.4 ft) hovering above a copse some 50 meters away from the house. A small being, approximately 1 meter tall, emerged from the craft, bouncing around in a comic manner as it floated around. This thrilled the younger children, who believed it was the character known as "Alpha" from the "Power Rangers" due to its great similarity. The drawing of the creature shows it producing a blue light from a belt-like device. At this point, the professor's wife, Luisa Saldierna de Serna, interrupted to say that the light-emitting being was similar to one she had seen in a video shown by Jaime Maussan in connection to the experiences of Mrs. Shara Cuevas of Metepec, state of Mexico, whom I would have the pleasure of meeting a year later during the 1st International UFO Congress held in Mexico City in August, 1995. This is an extremely important fact, since it corroborates the debated morphology of this video. Continuing with her story, Irasema informed us that the sighting lasted over 20 minutes until the creature returned into the craft which rose skyward to meet with another similar artifact, both of which disappeared toward a nearby swamp. Upon seeing this, the family made the decision to follow both artifacts in their van, but not before informing the rural police, which also sent a car in pursuit of the objects. They reached a ranch from which they were able to witness a brilliant light issuing from a dense thicket. Aside from the intense orange-red color, an enormous plume of purplish-grey smoke rose into the sky, filling the air with a smell described as "burning cardboard". Upon seeing this, the professor returned told his family that he would venture into the thicket alone, which connected to an enormous swamp of tule plants. There he met a ranch hand who had been looking at the vehicles since their arrival. At that very same moment, they noticed that the rural police had arrived at the other side of the swamp and both men withdrew immediately, just in time to see two humanoid creatures floating over the tule plants: one of them, some 2 meters tall, accompanied by the smaller one reminiscent of "Alpha". The professor and the ranch hand witnessed their maneuvers for a long time, finally tiring since the creatures showed no intention of stopping their activities any time soon. The ranch hand remained and the professor returned to his family. On the following day, February 24, 1996, the professor returned to the site, where he could see that all of the tule plants had been burned from above, forming three large circles with a promontory of tule plants whose tips had merely been singed. [...] A whitish-purple foam filled the centers of some of the circles, and the professor was able to find a three-toed, 30 cm. footprint among the ashes. This left us petrified, since we thought it might represent a link between the sightings and the "Chupacabras" attacks. When we checked Serna's drawing and the video we had seen at El Barretal, the prints turned out to be similar in shape but not in size: the Barretal one was smaller. Could it have belonged to a larger beast who was roaming the area at the time and also witnessed the object's descent? Or could it have been a passenger aboard the craft? Were the "crewmen" perhaps looking for it? These are mere speculations. The truth will not be known until research has progressed further. After being told the story, we were impatient to be taken to the scene of the events, for which Professor Serna had to sacrifice attending a religious service with his family. He took us to the location of his CE3K and showed us the site where the vehicle and the occupants had been, as well as where the footprint -- now blown away by the wind, unfortunately,--- had been found. The experience of witnessing the enormous burned circles was indescribable: one measured 40 meters, the other 30 meters, and a smaller one some 20 meters, with all the tule plants burned from top to bottom, trees and palm trees with their boughs singed. We were also able to notice that certain plants outside the burned areas had been affected while others had not. The perimeter of the small circles on solid ground had been well delineated and controlled, made not through the use of fire but by means of intense radiation or irradiation from infrared or ultraviolet rays, which is characteristic of this phenomenon. Professor Serna's face was reddened as if he had spent a considerable number of hours at the beach. Unfortunately, we lacked a Geiger counter to verify the existence of radioactive residue provoked by some kind of gamma-ray emission. Serna led us to the far side of the swamp to compare the burned vegetation with the one at the other end, which had been burned by a small aircraft collision long ago, and the tree trunks were normally burned from the bottom to the top. We returned to the professor's house by nightfall, where he kindly allowed us to remain for the night. We kept a series of watches to see if it was possible to see something in the sky. The first watch ran until 2:00 a.m. and fell to David Marcos, Leopoldo Zambrano and Miguel Mosqueda, while the following one fell to Javier Alonso and myself. Around 3:00 a.m., we entered into the van and in a state between sleep and wakefulness, instinct caused me to turn around and to my right, where I could see a strange whitish light zig-zagging in the night sky. Getting my camcorder going, we woke the others, who were also able to see the event until it vanished into the horizon. After this, a deep, heavy sleep came over us until around 5:00 a.m., when I became aware of a voice telling me that the dogs were barking. I struggled to open my eyelids and noticed dawn was breaking; the sound of barking dogs filled the air, but we were still unable to wake up. Later on, we learned that the professor and Mrs. Serna had gotten out of bed to see a spherical object flying at low altitude, which apparently bathed our van in orange light. Were we subjected to some kind of scan? Were the researchers researched themselves? That morning we returned to the site at the swamp to gather water, plant, stone and ash samples for analytical purposes, perhaps through MUFON...During the course of our stay at the swamp, a worker arrived and we asked to speak to the ranch hand who had also witnessed the event. We were told that the man had gone missing that very same night, which alarmed us greatly. The owner of the ranch appeared later, ready to reach the heart of the swamp to investigate the burned circles. We took advantage of the meeting to inquire after the missing worker; the owner replied that we shouldn't concern ourselves with the matter -- he had sent the man to another ranch to carry out other tasks. Relieved to hear that this was the case, we departed, hoping to return and interview the witness. Before leaving, the ranch owner told us that only a few days before our arrival, two military men and a civilian from a government agency had turned to investigate the event, thinking it might have been involved the collision of a drug smuggler's small aircraft. Having confirmed that the event bore no relation whatsoever to the drug trade, the men left. We left the area, begging the professor to please keep us abreast of any further developments. I'd like to take this opportunity to thank the Serna family for their kindness and help. On Tuesday, April 9, 1996, we received a phone call from Professor Serna in Abasolo. He informed us that on Tuesday, March 5, 1996, two days after our visit to the area, a group of foreigners dressed in special white-and-blue suits, face masks and considerable sophisticated equipment. They made the ranch hand who had witnessed the event lead them to the burned swampland, forced him to take a liquid along with a pill and subjected him to an interrogation. After that, the foreigners entered the swamp to reach the middle of the circles and the domes formed by tule plants. The ranch hand told all of this to the professor, who asked them if the foreigners had been Americans. The ranch hand replied that they weren't, and while he didn't speak any English, he thought that the men seemed like Russians to him. The farm worker indicated that since his experience with the foreigners, a number of strange words and numbers were occupying his mind, which he found highly distressing. Professor Serna advised me of this information in case we were able to divine its significance. We are currently working on it and we hope to return soon, given the case's importance. On Thursday, March 21, 1996, I received a phone call at home from one of the members of the Fundación, telling me that his wife had just heard a local T.V. show that a strange animal attack had occurred in a municipality not far from Monterrey. I immediately got in touch with Monterrey's Channel Two's news department to request information; reporter Clemente Almariz provided us with the particulars that would lead us to the town of El Faisan in the municipality of Villa Santiago, state of Nuevo Leon, scarcely 30 kilometers from Monterrey. Our group interviewed a number of local women who were highly alarmed by the events, since they had learned of the infamous "Chupacabras" through television programs detailing its exploits in the Caribbean, Miami, Los Angeles and that very same week, San Antonio, Texas. One of the women, a relative of the affected party, told us that very strange sounds had been heard on the night in question, as if something very heavy had fallen from the sky. It was followed by three footsteps and the sound of furiously barking dogs, which caused the family to bolt themselves inside their home. One of the woman's daughters told us that she worked for the Secretaría Federal de Protección al Ambiente (Mexican EPA) and that her supervisor had stated that investigations were currently underway in other cases in Linares, Nuevo Leon and in this very zone itself -- thus confirming the trajectory I had supposed that the attacks would follow. From there, we visited Mr. Javier Badillo, who was not in at the moment, but whose family very kindly showed us the pen into which the creature had penetrated. The intruder would have found it necessary to move a handle crossbar and a heavy block that held the door shut in order to kill eleven chickens, then go under a wire fence to kill a goose and a duck, leaving alive only one hen with a scratch on its back and a duck with a broken leg. Three-toed scratch-marks were found on the ground and one of the family members told us that another footprint had been found, but rains had washed it away. We were then shown where the dead animals had been dumped. Their carcasses showed almost no decomposition at all, and were intact: no other predators had touched them. Incisions could be seen along their spine, and they appeared bloodless. No blood was found in the pen, either. We asked to take a chicken carcass with us for autopsy purposes...the family showed us a copy of the autopsy performed by a Monterrey-based institute, indicating that the deaths had been caused by an owl -- something which country folk know only too well not to be true. Our own autopsy showed that the decomposition rate was very slow with barely any noticeable changes in pigmentation; the specimen presented two puncture marks measuring 1 to 1.5 cm. in depth and with a separation of 5 cm. by our caliper. The fangs on dogs, coyotes and apes only have a separation of 1 to 1.5 cm. The trajectory of these wounds went through the heart, destroying vital organs such as liver, lungs, intestinal area and leaving the animal completely exsanguinated. In short, a very precise and selective attack that affected the vital organs and destroyed the heart -- a tremendous trauma for a small animal. Cases Involving Families Accosted by the Goatsucker At nightfall, the frightened family bolted itself behind the doors of the ranch house. Something had followed the children home and spent the entire night forcefully scratching the main door. No attempt was made to look at the source of the sounds, much less go outside and investigate. At dawn, one of the adults managed to see a silhouette some 1.20 meters tall outside; the cars in which they had arrived were covered with the same gelatinous, slimy substance. A subsequent visit to the ranch yielded the discovery of two dead tlacuaches in the swimming pool. None of the family members was willing to discuss the frightening experience; the details were learned from a neighbor who got in touch with the author, and who tried to convince them to discuss the situation. All efforts were in vain. The Cerro Pajarito, Chihuahua, Case The case involves the experience of a group of teenagers during the month of December '89/January '90 as they traveled to visit a series of caves located in Cerro Pajarito following the road leading from the Casas Grandes archaeological site to Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua. The odyssey was retold by Alvaro Villareal: they found along their path two dead, 3 point deer and one doe. The carcasses were not rigid and the eyes had been eaten by ants. Three perforations, spaced at 3 cm., were on their necks forming a triangle. Footprints similar to those of a puma were seeing in the area. When the group entered into one of the caves, they heard squealing sounds and smelled an odor of burned wood; standing on an outcropping 15 meters away was an entity resembling the one described as the "Chupacabras", which advanced toward them. Seized by panic, one of the would-be speleologists drew his pistol and fired an entire clip at the creature, which was impervious to the hail of bullets. The group ran out of the cave, uncertain if the creature was dead or not. They also claim having encountered a thin, metallic green entity standing some 80 cm., which they took to be an "extraterrestrial". Drawings were subsequently made of both creatures. The Juárez, N.L. Case 55 dead goats and sheep died in a strange manner and were left with only watery blood in their bodies. The owners of the ranch in question held a festivity on April 10, 1996, and one of the owner's sons noticed a figure standing above the house; those inside were able to hear footsteps. Subsequently, 2 roosters, 1 hen and 40 goats at a neighboring farm were slain. An inspection of the premises yielded no evidence, since the incident had occurred long ago. Hypothesis on the Unknown Biological Entity (UBE): My personal hypothesis, generated through the observation of the rigid steps indicated by the scientific method, which are observation, experimentation and formulation of a hypothesis, it is possible that the entity is a sentient being using sophisticated organic collection equipment, a pair of flexible, harpoon-type metal probes by means of which it can suck blood and parts of organ tissue, perhaps for use in some kind of genetic experimentation [...]. It could also be a new species of unknown predator produced by some kind of genetic deterioration. |