David Adams

When the chupacabras first hit the public consciousness in the fall of 1995, this mysterious livestock—killing animal was a phenomenon relegated almost exclusively to the little island of Puerto Rico. People there reported seeing a small kangaroo—like beast with glowing red eyes and a spiky spine. The creature was said to leap over fences and to kill its prey with a puncture wound to the neck.

Within months of the island's first sightings, chupacabras encounters were being reported in Mexico, Central America, and the United States, mostly in Hispanic communities. Something was viciously killing animals, but was it really the weird creature that many witnesses said they saw? Investigators examined what evidence they could find- mainly the wounds on the dead animals and markings on the ground nearby-and some concluded that the killer...