National Geographic Tales of the Weird

by David Braun

  Critics declared the men’s story a bold hoax after the pair refused to show the body and following the disclosure that genetic tests from the alleged remains revealed only human and opossum DNA.

  Stumbling Upon Sasquatch

  Matt Whitton and Rick Dyer spoke to a packed room of reporters in Palo Alto, California, about their discovery. Joining them on stage was controversial Bigfoot hunter Tom Biscardi. Whitton told a compelling story of how he and Dyer found the body of the dead Sasquatch—as the creature is also called—next to a stream while hiking in the Georgian woods in late spring.

  Whitton said he stood guard by the body for nine hours while Dyer went back to get a truck. When Dyer returned, the pair dragged the hairy 500-pound (230-kilogram) corpse through the woods to the truck—all while being shadowed by three live Sasquatch.

  “As we were bringing it out, they were paralleling us,” said Whitton, a Georgia police officer on administrative leave. Whitton said that after reaching their truck, they refrigerated the Bigfoot body and soon after contacted Biscardi.

  Weak Evidence

  At the press conference, the self-proclaimed “best Bigfoot hunters in the world” declined repeated requests to display the Sasquatch remains. Instead, they handed out photographs purportedly showing the creature’s mouth and tongue, and a blurry image of a hairy figure strolling through the woods. Reporters and other Bigfoot investigators were underwhelmed by the group’s evidence. “When I first heard about this, I was optimistic and hopeful,” said Jeff Meldrum, an anthropologist and Bigfoot investigator at Idaho State University. “But when I heard [Tom Biscardi] was involved, that optimism quickly evaporated.”

  Within the community of amateur and professional Bigfoot hunters, Biscardi has a “reputation of ill repute,” Meldrum said. Meldrum is also extremely skeptical about the authenticity of a photograph released in the days leading up to the press conference showing what appears to be a hairy corpse in a refrigerator.

  “It looks like a heap of costume fur. It doesn’t look like natural hair,” Meldrum said. “The gut pile looks like it was dumped on there just for effect.”

  “They believe in a race of giants, which inhabit a certain mountain off to the west of us … They are men stealers. They come to the people’s lodges at night when the people are asleep and take them … to their place of abode without even waking … If the people are awake, they always know when they are coming very near by their strong smell that is most intolerable.”

  Elkanah Walker

  American missionary to the Spokane Indians in Washington State, 1840

  DNA Results

  Casting further doubt on the group’s claim are mixed DNA results from the purported body. The DNA sample was analyzed by Curt Nelson, a molecular biologist at the University of Minnesota, who described it as a mixture of human and opossum.

  Biscardi’s “suggestion was that the tissue sample was from the intestine of the animal, and that the animal had eaten an opossum,” Nelson told National Geographic News. “That seems improbable to me.”

  Jason Linville is a forensics expert at the University of Alabama at Birmingham who was not involved in the DNA analysis. If the group had instead sent in hair samples from the body, it would have been relatively simple to confirm that it belonged to an unidentified primate species, Linville said.

  “In theory, you could analyze that DNA and it would come up as something that didn’t quite match human and didn’t quite match primate, but was something pretty close to it,” Linville said.

  Big Controversy

  Matthew Moneymaker is the president of the Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization, an international network of Bigfoot investigators. Moneymaker called the press conference an elaborate “profiteering scam” engineered by Biscardi.

  “They know there’s tremendous interest in seeing photographs of [Bigfoot], and they’re trying to get people to pay to see hoaxed photos,” he said. Moneymaker’s organization tracks Bigfoot news in the media, and he says Biscardi really scored with his latest exploit.

  “There’s been at least a thousand stories in newspapers across the world,” Moneymaker said. “Before this, the highest record was about 200 articles in newspapers.” Moneymaker predicts that the mass exposure could actually hurt Biscardi in the long run.

  “Now he’s really a famous con man,” Moneymaker said. “He was a con man known in Bigfoot circles for years, and now it won’t be long before everybody knows it.”

  Biscardi, Whitton, and Dyer remain undeterred, however. The trio said they plan to conduct an autopsy of their Bigfoot corpse in the near future. “I want to get to the bottom of it,” Biscardi said. “What I seen, what I touched, what I felt, and what I prodded was not a mask that was sewn on a bear hide, OK?”

  Modern Sightings

  The Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization maintains a national database of Bigfoot sightings that dates back to the 1980s with sightings reported as recently as 2011. Reports have come in from all over the world—from Malaysia and the Himalaya with the bulk of reports coming from Canada and the United States.

  PARASITES AND MONSTERS

  Chupacabra Science

  How Evolution Made a Monster

  Tales of a mysterious monster abound in Mexico, the U.S., and even China since the mid–1990s, when the chupacabra was first “sighted” in Puerto Rico. Now, scientists say that evolutionary theories can explain the truth.

  Flesh-and-blood chupacabras have allegedly been found as recently as 2010—making the monsters eminently more accessible for study than, say the Loch Ness Monster or Bigfoot. The legend had its origins in Puerto Rico, but sightings have spread to southwestern United States and Mexico. In many recent cases in Mexico, the monsters’ corpses have turned out to be coyotes suffering from very severe cases of mange, a painful, potentially fatal skin disease that can cause the animals’ hair to fall out and skin to shrivel, among other symptoms.

  For some scientists, this explanation for supposed chupacabras is sufficient. “I don’t think we need to look any further or to think that there’s yet some other explanation for these observations,” said Barry O’Connor, a University of Michigan entomologist who has studied Sarcoptes scabiei, the parasite that causes mange.

  Animal Attacks

  In winter 1995, Puerto Rico was besieged with reports of alleged chupacabra attacks:

  1. In Orocovis, eight sheep, completely drained of blood, were found with puncture wounds.

  2. In Guanica, chickens and cows died of blood loss with single puncture wounds to the neck.

  3. In Torrecilla, Baja, a woman found a chicken dead of perforations in the neck, her cat dead with its genitals missing, and the throats of her guinea pigs slit.

  A Texas woman holds a photo of what she believes is a chupacabra. (Photo Credit 5.3)

  Mangy Varmints

  Likewise, wildlife-disease specialist Kevin Keel has seen images of an alleged chupacabra corpse and clearly recognized it as a coyote, but said he could imagine how others might not. “It still looks like a coyote, just a really sorry excuse for a coyote,” said Keel, of the Southeastern Cooperative Wildlife Disease Study at the University of Georgia.

  “I wouldn’t think it’s a chupacabra if I saw it in the woods, but then I’ve been looking at coyotes and foxes with mange for a while. A layperson, however, might be confused as to its identity.”

  The Problem With Parasites

  Sarcoptes scabiei also causes the itchy rash known as scabies in humans. In humans and nonhuman animals alike, the mite burrows under the skin of its host and secretes eggs and waste material, which trigger an inflammatory response from the immune system.

  In humans, scabies—the allergic reaction to the mites’ waste—is usually just a minor annoyance. But mange can be life threatening for canines such as coyotes, which haven’t evolved especially effective reactions to Sarcoptes infection.

  The University of Michigan’s O’Connor speculates that the mite passed from humans to domesti
c dogs, and then on to coyotes, foxes, and wolves in the wild.

  His research suggests that the reason for the dramatically different responses is that humans and other primates have lived with the Sarcoptes mite for much of their evolutionary history, while other animals have not.

  “Primates are the original hosts” of the mite, O’Connor said. “Our evolutionary history with the mites helps us to keep [scabies] in check so that it doesn’t get out of hand like it does when it gets into [other] animals.” In other words, humans have evolved to the point where our immune systems can neutralize the infection before the infection neutralizes us.

  The mites too have been evolving, suggested the University of Georgia’s Keel. The parasite has had time to optimize its attack on humans so as not to kill us, which would eliminate our usefulness to the mites, he said.

  The Trouble With Mange

  In nonhuman animals, Sarcoptes hasn’t figured out that balance yet. In coyotes, for example, the reaction can be so severe that it causes hair to fall out and blood vessels to constrict, adding to a general fatigue and even exhaustion. Since chupacabras are likely mangy coyotes, this explains why the creatures are often reported attacking livestock. “Animals with mange are often quite debilitated,” O’Connor said. “And if they’re having a hard time catching their normal prey, they might choose livestock, because it’s easier.” As for the blood-sucking part of the chupacabra legend, that may just be make believe or exaggeration. “I think that’s pure myth,” O’Connor said.

  “Evolution” of a Legend

  Loren Coleman, director of the International Cryptozoology Museum in Portland, Maine, agreed that many chupacabra sightings—especially the more recent ones—could be explained away as appearances by mangy coyotes, dogs, and coyote-dog hybrids, or coydogs.

  “It’s certainly a good explanation,” Coleman said, “but it doesn’t mean it explains the whole legend.” For example, the more than 200 original chupacabra reports from Puerto Rico in 1995 described a decidedly uncanine creature.

  “In 1995, chupacabras was understood to be a bipedal creature that was three feet [about a meter] tall and covered in short gray hair, with spikes out of its back,” Coleman said.

  Monster “Facts”

  Name: Chupacabra

  Aliases: El Vampiro de Moca, Goatsucker

  Description: Varies. At times said to resemble a large dog or a spikey-backed lizard with big, red eyes. Stands anywhere from 4 to 5 feet (1.2 to 1.5 meters) tall.

  Methods: Kills animals by sucking their blood.

  Victims: Livestock, including goats, chickens, cows, and horses.

  Sightings: Puerto Rico; Mexico; southwestern United States; Miami, Florida.

  But, as if in a game of telephone, the description of the chupacabra began to change in the late 1990s due to mistakes and mistranslations in news reports, he said. By 2000 the original chupacabra had been largely replaced by the new, canine one. What was seen as a bipedal creature now stalks livestock on all fours.

  “It was actually a big mistake,” Coleman said.

  “Because of the whole confusion—with most of the media reporting chupacabras now as dogs or coyotes with mange—you really don’t even hear any good reports from Puerto Rico or Brazil anymore like you did in the early days. Those reports have disappeared and the reports of canids with mange have increased.”

  Government in Action!

  In 1995, livestock deaths reached into the hundreds in Canovanas, Puerto Rico, and locals blamed the chupacabra. The mayor, Jose “Chemo” Soto, began weekly hunts armed with rifles and a caged goat as bait to catch the creature. He never caught it. He was, however, re-elected.

  Monkeys or Movies?

  So what explains the original chupacabra myth?

  One possibility, Coleman said, is that people imagined things after watching or hearing about an alien-horror film that opened in Puerto Rico in the summer of 1995. “If look at the date when the movie Species opened in Pue Rico, you will see that it overlaps with the first explosion of reports there,” he said. “Then compare the images Natasha Henstridge’s creature character, Sil, and you will see the unmistakable spikes out the back that match those of the first images of the chupacabras in 1995.”

  Another theory is that the Puerto Rican creatures were an escaped troop of rhesus monkeys on the island, which often stand up on their hind legs. “There was a population of rhesus monkeys being used in blood experiments in Puerto Rico at the time, and that troop could have got loose, Coleman said.

  “It could be something that simple, or it could be something much more interesting, because we know that new animals are being discovered all the time.”

  DECLASSIFIED BY THE CIA

  Exclusive Area 51 Pictures

  Secret Plane Crash Revealed

  No word yet on alien starships, but now that many Cold War-era Area 51 documents have been declassified, veterans of the secret U.S. base are revealing some of their secrets.

  After a rash of declassifications, details of Cold War workings at the Nevada base, which to this day does not officially exist, are coming to light—including never before released images of an A-12 crash and its cover-up.

  Area 51 was created so that U.S. Cold Warriors with the highest security clearances could pursue cutting-edge aeronautical projects away from prying eyes. During the 1950s and ’60s, Area 51’s top-secret OXCART program developed the A-12 as the successor to the U-2 spy plane.

  In an undated picture, a mock-up of the A-12 spy plane sits perched upside down on a testing pylon at Area 51. (Photo Credit 5.4)

  Secret Weapon

  Extensive testing was performed to reveal how visible, or invisible, the A-12’s design was to radar. Area 51 staff had to regularly interrupt such tests and hurry prototypes into “hoot-and-scoot sheds”—lest they be detected by Soviet spy satellites.

  The A-12 was about 93 percent titanium, a material then unheard of for aircraft design. Most of the men who built the craft are still wondering today where that metal came from—some sources say it was secretly sourced from inside the U.S.S.R.

  Nearly undetectable to radar, the A-12 could fly at 2,200 miles an hour (3,540 kilometers an hour)—fast enough to cross the continental United States in 70 minutes. From 90,000 feet (27,400 meters), the plane’s cameras could capture foot-long (0.3-meter-long) objects on the ground below.

  But pushing the limits came with risks—and a catastrophic 1963 crash of an A-12 based out of Area 51. A rapid government cover-up removed nearly all public traces of the wrecked A-12—pictured publicly for the first time on National Geographic Daily News, thanks to the CIA’s recent declassification of the images.

  TRUTH:

  YOU CAN SEE SATELLITE PICTURES OF AREA 51 ON THE INTERNET BY ENTERING ITS GPS COORDINATES (37°14′36.52″N, 115°48′41.16″W) INTO GOOGLE EARTH.

  The Pilot Speaks

  Things went horribly wrong for test pilot Ken Collins (flying under his Area 51 code name Ken Colmar) when testing the plane’s subsonic engines at low altitude. At 25,000 feet (7,620 meters), “the airplane pitched up and went up and got inverted and went into a flat incipient spin,” Collins has said.

  From such a position, “you just can’t recover. So I thought I’d better eject, so I ejected down, because I was upside down.” U.S. officials later asked Collins to undergo hypnosis and treatments of sodium pentothal (a “truth drug”) to be sure he relayed every detail of the incident truthfully and correctly.

  Crash Cover-Up

  After pilot Ken Collins had parachuted to the ground, he was stunned to be greeted by three civilians in a pickup, who offered to give him a ride to the wreckage of his plane. Instead, Collins got them to give him a ride in the opposite direction, by telling them the plane had a nuclear weapon on board—a prearranged cover story to keep the Area 51 craft a secret.

  Soon a team of government agents appeared to direct a complete cleanup—and cover-up—operation. “There was some debate over whether to dynamite the l
arge sections of wreckage, to make identification by unauthorized personnel more difficult,” said independent aerospace historian Peter Merlin.

  By the next morning, recovery crews had begun loading the wreckage on trucks for the return trip to Area 51 in Nevada. No one else approached the wreck site or even learned of the crash during the next half century.

  National Security

  “At the time of the crash, the OXCART program was a very closely kept secret, and any exposure of it—such as through a crash that got publicized—could have jeopardized its existence,” CIA historian David Robarge said.

  “If U.S. adversaries used that disclosure to figure out what the program was about, they might have been able to develop countermeasures that would make the aircraft vulnerable. The U.S. government had to make sure that no traces of the 1963 crash might be found and give hostile powers insights into the engineering and aeronautical advances the program was making.”

  Secret No Longer!

  Area 51 remained hidden for decades until 1988, when a Soviet satellite photographed the base. The photographs were published, and the secret was out!

  Decision to Declassify

  Today that secrecy has outlived its use, according to the CIA’s Robarge, explaining why the crash photos have been declassified. “CIA records managers review [information requests] case-by-case to determine whether the information sought is still sensitive on national-security grounds. In their judgment, the photos of the 1963 crash no longer are, and so they were declassified and released,” Robarge told National Geographic News.