CONTINENT FILE

Cryptids of South America

Amazon giants, Andean lakes and Patagonian monsters.

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Venezuela2 cryptidsBrazil2 cryptidsArgentina2 cryptidsChile2 cryptids

Cryptids of South America

Artist’s drawing of the classic Puerto Rican chupacabra: an upright gray creature with big eyes and spines along its back OTHER · 1995

Chupacabra

Canóvanas, Puerto Rico

The “goat-sucker” of 1990s Puerto Rico: a spiny, bloodsucking beast blamed for livestock deaths that spread across Latin America and Texas.

WIDELY REPORTED Actors in costume during the theatrical performance of La Llorona on the water at Xochimilco, Mexico City SPECTRAL · 16th century

La Llorona

Canals of Xochimilco, Mexico City

A weeping ghost in white who wanders rivers and canals at night crying for the children she lost – Mexico’s most famous and most widely told legend.

FOLKLORE Panoramic view of Nahuel Huapi Lake with the city of Bariloche on its shore. LAKE & SEA MONSTER · 1910

Nahuelito

Nahuel Huapi Lake, Bariloche, Patagonia

Argentina’s own Nessie, a humped serpent said to swim glacial Nahuel Huapi Lake near Bariloche, sparking a famous 1922 “plesiosaur hunt.”

REGIONAL LEGEND An illustration of the Mapinguari, a huge hairy creature of Amazonian folklore. HOMINID · Pre-colonial

Mapinguari

Brazilian Amazon rainforest

A shaggy, foul-smelling giant of Amazonian tradition with backward feet and a belly mouth – suspected by one scientist of being a ground sloth.

FOLKLORE A tall figure of El Silbón with a hat and a sack over his shoulder, displayed at a folklore theme park in Mérida, Venezuela. SPECTRAL · Mid-19th century

El Silbón

Los Llanos of Venezuela and Colombia

A towering, cursed phantom of the Llanos who carries his father’s bones in a sack – and whose whistle is most dangerous when it sounds far away.

FOLKLORE A carved and painted statue of the Trauco, a small bearded man with a hat and axe, in the municipal park of Castro, Chiloé. HUMANOID · Pre-colonial

Trauco

Forests of the Chiloé Archipelago, southern Chile

A stunted, footless forest man of Chiloé’s folklore who fells trees with a stone axe, curses men with a glance and is blamed for bewitching young women.

FOLKLORE