Our eyes locked. Each one of us trying to stare down the other. A mortal man versus a cryptological enigma. My goal – satisfying scientific curiosity. His goal – to hide in the shadows until his blood rage send him into the night in search of more prey. In the end, he would win. But not without a sacrifice.

For the first time we present a Weird Things exclusive. Photo and video of the Chupacabra taken by me when I went on a walk in a South Florida park.

We’ve decided to not reveal the location of the park in order to protect this creature’s habitat. Should he prove a nuisance and begin to prey upon household pets or children, we reserve the right to take action. Until then, he’s free to prey upon whatever comes into his domain, including the elderly.

I came upon the creature in broad daylight. The hairless body, odd gait and features that harken back to a time when mammals and reptiles were much more closely related, immediately struck a cord. 30 yards in front of me, I knew what I was looking at: The Legendary Chupacabra. Sensing another hunter, it darted into the bushes. I gave chase and followed him into his lair.

Despite the tangled brush I managed to take out my iPhone and capture several photos and video you to see.

Some of you may look at these photos and claim it’s just a mangy raccoon. I suggest an alternate hypothesis: The Chupacabra is a shape shifter and he chose the form of a mangy raccoon. The burden of proof is on you.

This is the path where I first saw him as he tried to stealthily avoid my notice.

A chameleon like predator, he has the natural ability to blend into his background. Can you see him?

Here’s a close up shot of the beast we’ve nicknamed ‘Chupy’. Notice the cunning look to his eyes.

Andrew Mayne is publisher of WeirdThings.com. His latest book, The Grendel’s Shadow is available for the Kindle at Amazon.com.

Wim Hof is called the Iceman.

He runs up mountains like Kilimanjaro in only shorts, he sits in buckets of ice for record amounts of time and is genuinely a worldwide, five-star badass. Now, you might be able to add scientific proof that our brains have staggering control over our immune system as part of his resume.

According to Science Daily, initial test trials have shown that Hof’s body indeed suppressed natural immune system response by 50% when injected with endotoxin. Hof applied a meditation ritual during the experiment. The injection normally triggers flu-like symptoms.

Yet not so in Hof, who says the secret to his chilly feats of endurance is being able to turn his own thermostat up by using his brain. Scientists caution not to get too excited yet, we still need to see larger trails. And we need more endotoxin.

[Science Daily]

Apparently el Chupacabra looks even more like a coyote when still alive.  I love how the article describes them as the “legendary hairless creature.”

[ABC 15]

Normally I would write up an overly dramatic intro to a story like this. However, the article on Mysterious Universe for which it’s based on does it so well, I am just going to paste it here:

You look up from your steering wheel or cautiously pull back the curtain to see… wait for it… a pair of thin, trendily dressed, usually olive skinned teenagers.

Sounds pretty anti-climatic, right?

These aren’t your average, ordinary scallywags. These adolescents have something horribly wrong with them — something almost none of the witnesses notice at first glance — it’s their eyes. These “creatures” have no white corneas, no colorful irises, just a pair of big, black, shark-like eyes that inspire abject horror in all who have claimed to have seen them.

What’s worse is that these bizarre younglings aren’t content to scare you and continue on their merry way; no they are insistent that you help them. They stare through you with those dull ebony orbs and demand you let them in your car and give them a ride home or that they be allowed into your house to use your phone. The most horrifying aspect of all of this is that those who claim to have encountered these sinister kids swear that they’ve had to actively resist the temptation to do their bidding, as if their voices carried some sort of hypnotic influence.

Here are the common characteristics.

• Young
• Tan
• Lifeless eyes, black eyes. Like a doll’s eyes.
• Some degree of mind control
• A desire to enter your house, car, tent
• An inability to just walk in without an invitation

Stories catalogued include kids waiting outside the tent of a lone camper, a startled Marine on a military base who ends up slamming the door on two 10 year olds, an elderly woman terrorized by a pair of them who roll up in a new van and a child skateboarder who is physically accosted by two Black Eyed Kids

The creepiest thing about all these stories is that we have no examples of what happens if you agree to these creepy teens wishes. This leads us to two possible conclusions. A) They have the worst form of mind control in the world. B) What happens to those who fall for their tricks is so horrific, no word escapes past the void.

Also interesting is the speculation on what the Black Eyed Kids could be. Vampires? Lost Souls? Demons? Kids Who Really Need To Use Your Bathroom?

Archaeologists have recently unearthed a 2600-year-old human skull from a bog in the United Kingdom, and the skull contained what is believed to be one of the oldest known intact human brains. The skull belonged to a man in his thirties, who was hung,  and then had his head cut off and thrown in the bog.

“The brain-containing skull was found at Heslington, Yorkshire, in the United Kingdom. O’Connor and her team suspect the site served a ceremonial function that persisted from the Bronze Age through the early Roman period. Many pits at the site were marked with single stakes. The remains of the man were without a body, but the scientists also found the headless body of a red deer that had been deposited into a channel.”

The brain had no evidence of fungal or bacteria and they described it as being “odorless…with a resilient, tofu-like texture.” Delicious.

[Discovery News]

Fun new video from Russia showing a really small, mangled alien corpse.

“Russia, the republic of Buryatia, Kabanskiy district, an urban type Kamensk! The guys in the woods behind the village, obnaruzheli UFO!”

[GhostTheory]

At zero degrees elevation, this thing went 7 kilometers downrange – AFTER punching a hole in a steel plate.

[Gizmodo]

We really need to stop teaching robots how to fight us. Side note: it has a “berserk” mode.

[Geekologie]

Something bad is coming (probably). Whether it is plague, zombies, alien invasion, doomsday comets, magnetic pole shifts, or just the general end of the world, and Larry Hall has the perfect opportunity ready for those who want to be prepared. He shelled out $250,000 for a decommissioned Atlas F Missile Base in Kansas and is now selling condos starting at $900,000. Hey, that price includes five years worth of food too. You better hurry up, three of the seven floors are already taken.

“I thought, wow, I can transform it into an ultrasafe, energy-efficient fortress,” Hall says. Then he figured that other people might also sleep better 200 feet underground within epoxy-hardened concrete walls. And with a custom retrofit featuring GE Monogram stainless-steel appliances and Kohler fixtures, they could also eat (and flush) in style. So Hall announced a “condo suite package”—starting at $900,000—that includes a five-year food supply (think hydroponics and aquaculture) and “simulated view windows” with light levels calibrated to the time of day to keep you from going crazy.

[Wired]

Ollie Frisk and  four of his friends were skiing in the backcountry at the Härjedalen ski resort, located in northern Sweden, when Ollie unknowingly skied over a bear den which collapsed and sent him sprawling into the bear that was living there. The bear woke up and mauled Ollie, but he survived to tell the tale.

“But Ollie didn’t die. Instead, he says, he quit struggling as he accepted the inevitability of his fate, and when he did so, the bear simply stopped attacking him. A few moments later she wandered out of the lair, where Ollie’s friends made loud noises to scare her away. They then helped Frisk from the den, and back down the hill to safety.”

[Gadling]

Post-Katrina, there is only one gang that rules the once-flooded streets of this suffering city. You can hear their affiliation calls bounce off the battered houses through all hours of the night:

Cluck. Cluck.

Chickens rule this town! Feral ones that don’t scare from humans no more. So far they haven’t become violent. So far.

[NOLA]

Imagine you were far away from home and you found a monster. Not a metaphor, but a genuine, grotesque oddity.

What would you do with it?

I have in my possession a copy of Modern Reports: Or Select Cases, Adjudged In The Courts Of King’s Bench, Chancery, Common Pleas And Exchequer. Volume The Third, printed in Dublin in the year 1794. Thanks to the magic of the internet, you can read along at home.  This volume includes:

“A Collection of several Special Cases adjudged in the Court of King Bench in the last Years of the Reign of Charles the Second in the Reign of King James the Second and in the first and second Years of King William and Queen Mary. Together with the Resolutions and Judgments thereupon.”

Don’t worry; this is not an English history lesson, all you need to know from this paragraph is that this book covers legals cases from roughly the 1680’s – 1691. While doing some research I came across Case 81: Sir Thomas Grantham’s Case.  But, before we get into the details of the case – who was Sir Thomas Grantham?

Sir Thomas Grantham was your typical bad-ass 17th century British naval commander. He was an English tobacco trader and naval officer, commander of the naval fleet of the British East India Company. In 1676 he helped put down Bacon’s Rebellion in Virginia, and in 1684 he put down another insurrection in Bombay. He helped build forts and was made Admiral and knighted by King Charles II. Oh yeah, and he wrote a book about his adventures called An Historical Account of Some Memorable Actions, Particularly in Virginia; Also Against the Admiral of Algier, and in the East Indies: Perform’d for the Service of his Prince and Country. Also available due to the magic of the internet!

If an “s” looking like an “f” makes you want to punch something, here is the modern “translation”.

Sir Thomas Grantham’s Case
He bought a monster in the Indies, which was a man of that country, who had the perfect shape of a child growing out of his breast as an excrescency, all but the head. This man he brought hither, and exposed to the sight of the people for profit. The Indian turned Christian and was baptized, and was detained from his master.

The master brought a homine replegiando.

The sheriff returned, that he had replevied the body, but did not say, the body in which Sir Thomas claimed a property; where-upon he was ordered to amend his return.

And then the Court of Common Pleas bailed him

Enough history and legal jargon; what does this actually mean? Well apparently old Sir Thomas was travelling around the East Indies, trading and putting down rebellions, when he came across a man with a perfectly formed child’s body growing out of his chest – minus the head. I am having a hard time visualizing this. Did it have arms and legs? I am having strong Quato flashbacks right now. Sir Thomas decided to supplement his Admiral’s income and start his own private one-show circus around England.

Then one day, the man converted to christianity and was baptized, and Sir Thomas had him taken away. It doesn’t really say who took away the man, but I am thinking that there is a connection between the conversion and the taking. Not to be outdone, Grantham dropped a writ of de homine replegiando in the court. Homine replegiando is latin for “replevying of a man” and was used to regain possession of property, goods, or services wrongfully taken or detained; it was also regularly used to protect parental rights.  The sheriff replieved the man and then the Court of Common Pleas bailed him out from custody of the sheriff and returned him to Sir Thomas Grantham.

I should note that my knowledge of English common law is limited to what Google can tell me, so I may be interpreting this passage completely wrong. However, it seems to me that Sir Grantham got his “monster” back and I can only imagine that he continued his circus act around the country.