Chupacabra Horror: A Puerto Rico Cryptid Encounter Nightmare

Hm, a veteran camp counselor, arrives at a brand new summer camp in Puerto Rico. Then something begins howling in the jungle. By morning, the cabins are shattered, blood covers the dining hall and everyone is whispering the same name, Chuba Cabra. What's that? You want to be scared? Come with me. You will experience tales over opera, ghosts. And death camp. He does not recommended for the week at our listeners in the dark. It's more fun at that way. This is Weekly Speaking. Hello, my spooks, It's Wednesday, and you know what that means. It's time for a little spooky in your weekly.

I'm your host and narrator, Henrique Couto, and tonight we're heading to camp. And while there's a lot of fun and hiking to be had, there's also an ancient monster that's very hungry. But before we get to that, I want to say a huge thank you to all you spookies for joining us, especially in the summer months. This is the time of year. We're only the diehards who truly believe Halloween is a frame of mind more than a time of year. Show up and I am happy to provide, So make sure you're subscribed on your favorite podcast app, and while you're at it, leave us a five star rating on apple pot Podcasts or Spotify because it really really does help the show.

And if you have another spooky friend who loves all things Halloween regardless of the time of year, send them this scary story. Show them you care with a scare. Yeah. I like the sound of that. I don't know about you. But now, as for tonight, Every summer camp has rules. Stay on the marked trails, never leave a fire unattended, keep food sealed, listen to your counselor, and when darkness falls, remain inside your cabin. But Camp Clemente has another rule, one no one remembered to write down. Never build your camp over something that was meant to stay buried.

Jonathan Edwards has spent twenty years surviving in the wilderness, but no amount of training can prepare him for the howl that rises from the Puerto Rican jungle or the creatures that come running when they hear it. The locals call them el vampiro de moca. The rest of the world knows them as chupacabra, and beneath the mountains. An ancient well has opened its door. So zip your sleeping bag up tight and get ready for a thrill. Camping with Chupacabra by Douglas Waltz. I'm what you might call a professional camp counselor. Started about twenty years ago when I was eighteen.

I started out at a back water little town called Kalamazoo and the place was Camp Roda Kawan. It was a boy scout camp for decades before it fell into disrepair. Then a local fella bought it and brought it back as a campground. I spent three years learning about first aid, hiking, fishing, wilderness survival, the whole deal, and I was good at it and picked things up pretty fast. By the third year, I was basically running the place because the new recruits would show up thinking it was a vacation babysitting kids in the woods. Yeah. No, it's a lot of work, and we had our fair share of people jumping ship and never returning.

But I loved it, just not at that camp. Left the next season in hitchhike my way across the country. After that, I'd show up at a camp, give them my credentials, and stick it out. For a season or two. Then I was back on the highways and byways of America with my thumb out the wilderness survival training came in handy never paid for a motel room, easier to pitch my tent and sleep under the stars. That's not entirely true. I somehow found myself in Minnesota in the dead of winter. I got a room for that night.

Felt weird sleeping on the bed after years of hard ground, but I managed, which brings us to now, with me in a beat up, old pickup truck being driven by a madman, Ernie Tucker was headed for Key West, and so was I. No not for summer camp. It was the middle of December. Of course, you couldn't tell by the weather. It was gorgeous. Two weeks ago word got to me about a new summer camp being started in Puerto Rico. The owner, Paul Williams, No Not the singer, had heard of my reputation and offered me a permanent position at Camp Clemente, named after Roberto Clemente, the famous Puerto Rican baseball player.

He was the first Latin American inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame. He was also a great humanitarian who died in nineteen seventy two in a plane that crashed delivering aid to earthquake victims, a real tragedy. Then, in the first time in one hundred miles, Ernie spoke up. Hey, so, uh, Puerto Rico, Right, yep, that's right, good way to save money, right, What do you mean, Well, a lot of these foreign countries have pretty nice exchange rates. What is it for Puerto Rico. There isn't one. What do you mean there isn't one, Ernie. Puerto Rico is an American territory.

They're part of the United States, so a dollar is worth a dollar? Really weird? Not really, It's no different than going from New Jersey to Ohio, except it's an island and you're going to teach kids how to camp. Well, it's kind of more than that. We'll do other things like fishing and wilderness survival. Aren't you a little old to be camping? Ernie? You have no idea? That seemed to satisfy him, and we reached Key West in record time. See, Ernie was a fisherman who had gotten a gig On trawler, and they got close enough to Puerto Rico to let me tag along as long as I worked to pay my fare.

Two weeks on a fishing boat for a free ride to Puerto Rico, how bad could it be. On the second day, I began kicking myself for not just flying in. If you camp everywhere and don't own a house or a car, all of your money tends to just sit in a bank. You don't get rich being a camp counselor unless you don't have a lot of expenses. My only vice was the occasional cigar and food. Of course, any money I made was direct deposited into my bank, and I used a credit card for everything, which wasn't much.

I had it set up to pay my entire bill every month, so ironed points and paid zero interest. The fishing boat was packed with men who had signed on, and it smelled pretty bad. Sometimes I wasn't sure which was worse, the fish or the men. When we were one day out of Cabo Rojo, I used the radio to let Paul know I would be there. It put me a couple of days ahead of schedules, so Paul was happy. I said my goodbyes to Ernie and made a silent oath to never step foot on another fishing boat.

It wasn't difficult to spot Paul, a giant of a man at six foot five and dressed like we were going on safari. No pith helmet but a big floppy hat. He saw me and smiled and walked towards me, hand out huge smile. Jonathan Edwards, glad you made it. How was the trip detestable? First thing I'll need is a hot shaft. Paul was standing downwind of me, and his nose wrinkled when it hit him. The camp has hot running water, and your councilor cabin has its own shower. Maybe we stop and get you some new clothes.

You're going to want to burn those. It'll be my treat. We both climbed into his jeep and headed off down the road. The trip to camp was uneventful, and when we arrived I was very impressed. A set of freshly built cabins near a man made lake, mountains behind it, and a forest surrounding the edges. In all my time as a camp counselor, I had never been fortunate to be at a brand new camp. Paul sent me off to my cabin, where I stripped my backpack down to bare essentials. I hung my one man tent on the railing outside my door, and after a very long and very hot shower, I threw all my clothes out the door to be burned.

Later, I decided to scope the place out and get a feel for the layout. The cabins still had that fresh wood smell, and I was really excited to start work. Of course, we had no campers yet, but Paul told me it would be a few weeks while I whipped the new recruits into shape. He said he had hired ten people to work as counselors under me, so I just had to figure out how green they were. As I entered the huge dining hall, I found out that I had a lot of work to do. Five guys, five girls, none of them over the age of nineteen.

They were all locals, and while they were familiar with the territory, they were all city kids looking for an easy job, poor bastards. After introductions were over, Paul had me meet the camp cook, a giant of a man named Rafael. He brought out huge platters of mufungo, a native dish of fried green plantains mashed together with garlic, broth and pork cracklings, topped with huge, thinly sliced piles of slow roasted beef and a mountain of garlic shrimp. After we were all too stuffed to move, Rafael brought us a huge dish of tembleq, which is a creamy coconut pudding.

With my sweet tooth, it felt like I was in heaven. In the outdoor meeting place, I put my newbies to one of my favorite tests. Since some had already dug a nice sized fire pit circled with stones, I just told them to split up into teams of two and each of them would build a small fire. The catch they got one match each. After fifteen minutes, I found my experienced team and in Diego and Elizabeth. Diego didn't even use the match. He had a flint and steel in one of the many pockets in his cargo shorts.

The rest had a long way to go, but we had time. Once the fire was big enough, I went and grabbed my fishing boat clothes and they went up in an incredibly smelly cloud of smoke. We were all sitting around the fire as the night air moved in and brought the chill with it. There was the typical laughing, sharing stories, you know stuff. Then an unholy howl filled the air. What the hell was that? I asked to no one in particular. While dogs one of the councilors spoke up, Really, that must be a big dog.

It's not a dog. Diego spoke up. It's all vampiro democa vampire. You have howling vampires here? No signor another counselor one spoke up. That's just an old superstition. You probably would recognize them by their other name, Chupacabra. A palpable silence filled the air at the mension of Chupacabra. Sure, I've heard of chupacabra once in Mexico. I was told that they inhabited that area. Did you see one angela? One of the girls asked her eyes were as big as saucers. No, nothing like that. Pretty sure. The man who told me about them was drunk, almost in unison.

All of them nodded in agreement. We finally put out the fire and went to bed. I sniffed my bedroll hanging outside of my cabin and was glad I had a bed with a mattress inside. If I couldn't air out that bag, it was going to be the next candidate for the fire. The next day, I came up with a rotation schedule of things we needed to get done for the next two weeks. Most of it was training for the Greenhorns. I thought the best thing to do was to take them on a hike. I was impressed that we made it three miles before any complaining came from the group.

I was amazed at the trails that went through the forest. I made a mental note to ask Paul if he had had them done, but some of them felt old. It was a beautiful place. Once we reached the five mile mark, I made the decision to head back to the camp. The well marked trails made sure we didn't get lost. I wasn't too familiar with the plants in Puerto Rico, but a forest is a forest, so it wasn't really that odd. I did discover some poison IVY, and we had a little lesson on what to look for and what to avoid.

All in all, a really successful hike until night fell. I was sound asleep when the storm came. A crack of electricity followed by the concussive blast of thunder sat me straight up in bed. That was close. I went outside to see if anything had been damaged. That's when I heard it, the sound of fast moving feet and the huffing of something breathing hard with every step. Right towards the camp. The dinner bell was closest, so I used it to make some noise. Ten counselors came running pretty sure. The thunder woke them up. For me get in my cabin.

Without a thought. They all came running. What is that noise, Raoul asked. Diego looked terrified. I have no idea, I said, but you hear that sound like something is coming for us. They all nodded quickly. Whatever it is, it'll be here in minutes. Help me barricade the door, prop the bed against one of the windows for the other one. Help me move this locker. Elizabeth close the bathroom door. She looked at me with an odd expression. There's a window in there. We need to block all the doors. The noise got closer and closer. Something hit the door hard.

I heard one of the counselor's whisper choop acabra, but I didn't see who or what it was. Then the onslaught came, multiple things hitting the door. The window windows glass shattered, but the window was contained by the bed and the locker. Everyone pitched in, holding whatever was out there from entering the cabin. I was proud of all of them. No one lost their shit. They just pushed with grim determination. They didn't have much of a choice. We all knew that if that got in, we were all done for. It felt like an eternity, and the sheer noise that came from the onslaught was deafening.

And then as quickly as it began, it was silent, not a peep. Sounds like they're gone. I looked at the ashen faces of my poor counselors. Maybe we should give it a few minutes before before we check ten heads nodding in unison like they'd practiced it. So we waited and waited a little more. Finally, I needed to know, so I carefully moved the locker just an inch or so until a piece of the window was visible. I saw nothing and heard less. I went for the poor battered door and carefully opened it. When one of the hinges squeaked from the abuse, I let out a little noise, and the hair on the back of my neck stood straight up.

I relaxed when I realized where the noise was coming from the camp was clear. My cabin looked like it had been hit with a hurricane of coconuts, but that was it. Nothing else had been touched. It was like they knew where we were. We were the target of the attack. Now what, Boss Diego asked. I looked at my watch. It was two am. Son would be up at six. Okay, let's all move to the men's cabin. If you're able to sleep, do it. If you can't, stand watch, we'll block the windows like before, and in two hours we wake up whoever is sleeping, and they stand watch.

What if they come back, asked Zulma, one of the women counselors, Make some noise and wake everybody up. I must have knotted off, because when my eyes opened there was suns streaming through the windows, and the face of Javier with a huge grin was in my field of vision. Whatever it was didn't come back. Excellent. All right, let's see what needs to be cleaned up while I get a hold of Paul and tell him we'll need some repairs. I went to use the landline in the dining hall, and my eyes saw that the front door of the hall had been torn off its hinges.

Raphael had told me he was heading home after we ate dinner. I ran into the hall and realized whatever had been behind the attack had destroyed all the furniture in the telling. It was ludicrous. There was so much blood on the walls, the ceiling, the floor. Behind an overturned table, I found what was left of Raphael. El Vampiro Democha, came a voice. I turned to see a very old man, skin brown leather, probably lived most of his life outside. Excuse me, this terrible thing happened because of el Vampiro Democha. You may know them as chupa cabra.

You're telling me a pack of chupacabra, a cryptid attacked us last night. Cacophony. Excuse me, a group of chupacabra is called a cacophony. Remembering the noise from last night, I had to agree with the man. Then he proceeded to fill my head with so much lore I thought I might go a little mad. It all sounded insane. Apparently, deep in the jungle, near the base of the mountains is a huge cavern where bats make their home. They are guardians of something deeper in the bowels of the cave, the Well of Chupacabra. The well acts as a way for Chupacabra to enter our world.

After an incident in the nineteen seventies where a village was attacked by the later to be named Chupacabra, an ancient medicine man created a huge sigil in the ground to keep the well sealed. Seems the sigil resided right where the camp was located, because of course it was, so I called Paul and told him what needed to be done. He asked if I was drunk, so I invited him to the ca m to see the damage. I also made him promise to bring a case of dynamite. I was no medicine man, but I could seal a well shut.

When Paul arrived, he gasped when he saw all of it. He started telling the wild dog story, and I stopped him dead in his track when I handed him something I pried out of my cabin wall, a tooth approximately two inches long with a wicked curve to it that came to a razor sharp point. We both agreed that no dog had teeth like that. I was ready to go and found the old man talking to the counselors. So can you lead me and my friend here to the cave? What now? In daylight? Well? Yeah, right now.

That cave is filled with thousands of bats. You walk in there right now and you're done. You afraid of bats, Gringo? No, I lied, he saw the lie in my eyes. We wait until night. I'll take you right to the mouth of the cave. Paul spoke up. You aren't coming in with us, old man, no signor I also am not afraid of bats, he said, and winked at me. Have you ever had to carry a case of dynamite before? Well, as luck would have it, there was no way to drive to the cabin. We had to go by foot.

Paul carried the box on his massive back with no complaints. He had a strange look on his face when we finally he reached the cave. It was pitch black. Our flashlights barely pierced the gloom. The old man needed no light. Here you go, gringo, front door. As promised. Before he left, he handed each of us a small piece of knotted rope with pieces of glass and some shiny thread in it. He explained they were to protect us from the other worldly. I asked him if he had ever had to test them. He stared right into my eyes for a brief, uncomfortable moment, and then disappeared into the night without a sound.

It was a pretty big cave. The floor was covered in white guano. I heard, this stuff is worth a four for fertilizer. If you want to grab some on your way out, that would be fine. Paul smiled, and we kept going deeper into the cave until we saw a faint blue glow in front of us. I had heard of bioluminescent algae forming in cave, so I was a little excited to see it in person. It was not glow in the dark cave moss in a round vaulted cavern was a well. It was only three feet high, but it was at least twelve feet in diameter.

That's where the light was coming from. Paul set the crate on the lip of the wall. He looked down the well and made a face pretty deep. I'll light it before I toss it over. What do you mean. I braided all the fuses in the crate and left one outside of it. We light it before we push it in. I can shorten the fuse so it'll blow at twenty. That should take care of it, and we will need to run. I was beginning to hate this plan. Then a high pitched wail from the darkness aimed right at us.

The creature leapt at Paul. It was about the size of a German shepherd, with smooth lizard skin instead of fur. There was a row of nasty spikes running down its spine, and with a snarl and entire set of teeth that matched the one I found embedded in the cabin wall. Gleaming in the blue light, it leapt toward us. Paul grabbed it by the scruff of its neck, barely missing the spikes. The beast twisted and snarled, snapped at Paul's throat, light it. He yelled, trying to keep from getting mauled. I ran to the crate, lit it with my ever trusty Zippo.

Everyone should have one. Mine never failed me. The fuse flared and I pushed it into the well. Two seconds later, a chupacabra flew over my head from behind me. I turned to see Paul grinning. Let's go, he shouted. My feet got the message before my brain, and we went as fast as we could, scraping our poor arms and hands on the cave walls as we tried not to fall down from various rocks and things. I saw the entrance, a lighter blackness hovering in front of us. I smiled, knowing we would make it. There were only fifteen feet to the opening.

Then the crate delivered its payload and everything got very, very loud. The concussion from the blast flung us out the cave and set us violently on the ground. For a minute, I just laid there, groaning. John Paul's voice came from the darkness. Yeah, Paul, you dead pretty much? How about you? Yep? Totally dead. We both lay there in the cool night air, laughing like madmen. Later we stumbled back to an empty camp. My counselors had abandoned ship, and I couldn't blame them. Paul wanted to keep the camp open after repairs, including a new sigil carved from a single slab of marble centered in the direct center of the camp.

I have no idea why I decided to stay, but I figured the absolute worst had already happened. It couldn't get any better, right, So there I was sitting in front of my newly repaired cabin, waiting for my new recruits to arrive, when the old man reappeared from nowhere. Hello signor, Hello yourself. I never got your name, Useppe Sennor well, Useppe, thank you for all your help. We couldn't have done it without you, I know, Senor. I laughed at that and reached in my pocket. Did you want your charmback? Yuseppe? No, Signor you should keep that.

Keep you safe, safe, safe from what we destroyed? The well of the chupacabra a Senor, not the what Yuseppe? Are you telling me? Yes? Signor? These islands hide many secrets, and one of them is the locations of more than one Well, oh no, you're not getting me to do that again. Find someone else to do the dirty work, alas I cannot Signor. You have been marked by the gods. You and your large friend there should have died in the attempt. Did you not wonder how your friend was able to beat one of the most dangerous creatures on earth by hand?

Or not receive a scratch from the explosion that hurled you from the cave. I hadn't considered that how did we manage that? It seems that now I was more than just a professional camp counselor moonlighting pardon the pun, as a monster hunter. The risks were at the same. Well, my spooky is camp Clemente may still be hiring, but I feel like must be comfortable with bats, explosives and interdimensional livestock vampires should probably appear somewhere in the job description. Thank you all so much for joining me on Weekly Spooky. I'm always happy to tell you a brand new scary story every single Wednesday for seven years in county right here.

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And they are Johnny Nicks, Kate and Lulu, Jessica Fuller, Mike Eskewey, Jenny Green, Karen we Met, Jack Kerr, and Craig Cohen. Thank you all so much, And if you want to hear your name at the end of every episode of Weekly Spooky, just Headweeklyspooky dot com slash join and sign up at fifteen dollars a month or higher. It makes a huge difference and I really really appreciate it. Now it's time for me to get back to work because there's so many more scares to come right here at Weekly Spooky, So make sure you're subscribe for myself, for my executive producers Rob Fields and Bobbletopia dot Com, my producer Dan Wilder, and of course my creepy composer Ray Maddis.

I will talk at you tomorrow. Don't forget the sunscreen. Thank you for listening. Make sure to find your way back next week. But for now you are safe. Trust me.