Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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9 of 10 people found the following
review helpful:
 ..., July 13, 2003
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3 of 3 people found the following
review helpful:
Very enlightening look into the
Chupacabra phenomena, March 17, 2006
I must admit that
I didn't really know that much about the Chupacabras phenomena
before reading this book and what little I did know was apparently
wrong (thanks to the "El Mundo Gira" episode of the X-Files).
Although some of the phenomena shown in that episode does bear a
very loose resemblance to some of the things which people witnessed
and were reported on this book. This is a well written and very
enjoyable book on a very complex topic. Here's a way to generalize
the topic: imagine the Jersey Devil phenomena plus all the W.V.
Mothman happenings occuring in Puerto Rico with John Keel reporting
on it. The author writes in a style similar to Keel and much like
The Mothman Prophecies, there are a lot of highly strange things
going on in a relatively isolated area. I read "Phantom in the
Pines" about the Jersey Devil prior to reading this book and was
surprised at the similarity between the Chupacabra and the Jersey
Devil. I am a cautious skeptic on some of these sightings and about
Cryptozoology in general; but, I very strongly feel that the
majority of people do "see" something. I'm not sure whether it's
perceptional differences between persons or that some people truly
have the ability to see things that others can't see. Then again,
the Chupacabra phenomena could be the result of military
experiments....the entire time that I read this book I could hear
"Biotech is Godzilla" by Sepultura playing in my head. Regardless,
this is a very good read and well worth the time.
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2 of 2 people found the following
review helpful:
 A great work on the chupacabras,
straight from the source, December 31, 2006
The most outstanding feature of this book
is, undoubtedly, the source of the information. The events detailed
here occurred primarily in the South and Central Americas, in what
are predominantly Spanish speaking countries. We English speaking
earthlings from the north face two levels of difficulty in obtaining
these extraordinary reports: The first, and most obvious, is that
the accounts are natively documented in Spanish. Furthermore, there
is a general lack of interest demonstrated by the northern media in
publishing such events occurring in other parts of the globe. To put
it another way, the stories here are rather unlikely to reach the
English speaking nations of the world, and even if they did, you
would need to speak Spanish to read them! Well, thanks to Scott
Corrales, these barriers have been lifted. His work concentrates on
translating and interpreting this valuable information into easily
readable English. These are not your old rehashed tales from the
States; these are fresh accounts which should grab the interest of
any paranormal researcher. Furthermore, the text does not feel like
a rough translation; it holds its own on a technical level and
appears to be well edited.
The depth of information in the
book certainly adds to its value. It includes data from a variety of
sources: indirect reports from researchers, first hand interview
quotation, and direct entries from local news publications. At over
200 pages, this is not a cursory treatment of the chupacabras. The
book really leaves you with a feel for the phenomena, and cements a
lot of the bizarre details that are only often touched upon in more
terse texts. Thankfully, the author trys to cover all the bases, and
presents plenty of varying theories about the phenomenon at hand.
Rather than telling you what to think, Corrales just presents as
wide a body of information as he can, and lets you do the critical
thinking. The inclusion of a few photos are a nice touch, although I
wish they had a couple more pictures of the actual victims of the
chupacabras (morbid as that may be, as evidence it's invaluable).
A final point worthy of merit is that Mr. Corrales is not
your run of the mill armchair investigator. He has worked on
location as both an investigator and an interviewer. Although the
majority of the book's text is the result of the direct research of
others, it speaks to the character and qualification of the author
that he has dedicated his time and talents to researching the field
of which he's now writing.
As good as the book is, it also
had a few shortcomings, none of which were major, but which I felt
worth noting here. First of all, the wealth of information mentioned
above gets dry in a few places. One chapter focuses exclusively on
chronological snippets from a news publication that documented the
day-by-day exploits of the chupacabras, usually telling little more
for a given day than the victim and what animals were attacked.
Although it has the positive effect of giving the reader an
unprecedented view of the breadth of the phenomenon, it gets pretty
redundant after the first couple pages.
Furthermore, the
book does not flow very well between chapters, and it is hard to
discern order from the arrangement of the information. Each chapter,
as a self contained entity, is valuable and usually moves smoothly,
but I often found myself wondering how I got from one chapter to the
next. A couple chapters focused on specific months of the year, but
none of the other chapters are chronologically organized. One
chapter is snippets from a news source, another is an interview with
witnesses, and yet others span events over longer time periods or
locations.
My final complaint is the "Other Mysteries"
portion of the title. As it suggests, Corrales dedicates a couple of
the final chapters to paranormal events other than the chupacabras
itself. Again, the information in itself isn't a bad thing. In fact,
as it too is from the hard to access southern nations, it is
actually interesting and fresh material for the reader. My qualm is
that it's just plain out of place in a book that's 85% dedicated to
one beast. It has the feeling of being padding to the text, and
personally I wish Corrales would have created a separate book for
these stories, rather than tacking it on here and making it feel
like an afterthought.
All in all, Chupacabras and Other
Mysteries is a highly recommendable read. It brings previously
inaccessible information to the English speaking public in a way
that is comfortably readable. Any paranormal researcher is likely to
get something new and interesting here. If you think you know the
chupacabras from reading a page or two here or there, chances are
you've got a lot to learn!
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