Evil Creatures of the Night | Evil Sunday - World Religion, Culture, People

Many strange animals and creatures exist in the world of mythology. Almost every culture in the world has stories about some sort of mythological animals. How could people defend themselves against these blood-hungry creatures when they also had the ability to shapeshift into bats, wolves, and luminous fogs? And then there were the supernatural beings, such as the incubus and the succubus, who were more interested in seizing human souls than in sucking human blood. Such creatures were painted by Stone Age artists more than 10,000 years ago and represent some of the world’s oldest cave art—and they probably precipitated some of the world’s first nightmares. There is no known culture on this planet that has not at one time or another cowered in fear because of the savage attacks of a nocturnal predator known as a therianthrope, a human-animal hybrid such as a werewolf, “werebear,” “werelion,” or a “were-something.” It is difficult for those living in the modern world to imagine the night terrors of our ancestors as they prepared to face the demon- and monster-riddled world after sundown.

Chupacabras

The chupacabras  ( from chupar  “to suck” and cabra “goat”, literally “goat sucker”), is a legendary cryptid  (a creature whose existence has been suggested but is regarded as highly unlikely) rumored to inhabit parts of the Americas. It is associated more recently with sightings of an allegedly unknown animal in Puerto Rico, Mexico, and the United States, especially in the latter’s Latin American communities.

 

The name comes from the animal’s reported habit of attacking and drinking the blood of livestock, especially goats. Physical descriptions of the creature vary. Eyewitness sightings have been claimed as early as 1990 in Puerto Rico, and have since been reported as far north as Maine, and as far south as Chile. It is supposedly a heavy creature, the size of a small bear, with a row of spines reaching from the neck to the base of the tail. Biologists and wildlife management officials view the chupacabras as a contemporary legend.

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 Evil Creatures of the Night | Evil Sunday - World Religion, Culture, People