NEIL ARNOLD: Zooform Classics Part Two: The Four-Legged Rugby ball!

Zooform phenomena really is a surreal void of monsters, long ago cast from the Ark and projected onto our terrain like grotesque holograms. We never understand them, never catch them, and yet continually lump them into the cryptozoology bracket despite their clear phantasmal characteristics.

Take for example the terror of the four-legged football, which prowled, for such a short time, the Villa San Rafael area of Chile. On January 12th 2002 at 11.45 pm two teenagers, named Jean and Nelson, of Calama, had a bizarre encounter after Jean’s pet snake had escaped its enclosure. Both boys searched for the missing reptile outside but were hesitant to do so as half an hour earlier they had been spooked by the unsettled growls of the pet dogs. Whilst searching for the snake they saw a creature, which at first they took to be s stray dog and so to deter it, they threw stones at it.

Instead of moving away from them the creature began to approach, hopping like a rabbit, and then standing to face them on its hind legs. The two witnesses noted an almost electrical surge, which they felt strongly in their stomachs. The beast had an awkward gait and resembled a “rugby ball with legs”.

Jean backed away from the creature but Nelson felt compelled to move towards it and once within two metres of the animal he noticed it gave off a luminosity. Nelson stated that the creature had a head like a dog, a flat nose, red, slanted eyes, and large, flat ears. Nelson also claimed that a voice came into his head and whispered, “Don’t stare, just run away”.

The arms of the creature were short and both hands had three fingers, as did the rear ‘feet’ which also seemed to be webbed. The creature was covered in short, grey hair and the spine of the monster was bristled. The animal had a short tail with a white tip.

Both witnesses eventually fled the area.

Upon looking into the report I noticed that some researchers had connected with account with the many encounters with the ‘goatsucker’ or chupacabra, which has littered South American folklore for a few decades. However, what this encounter proved to me was how one man’s goatsucker is another man’s ‘something else.’

Chilean folklore is rife with legends of hair-covered troll-like monsters, as well as winged dogs and we are all too quick to give them a label, in the same way Mothman, Owlman, Jersey Devil were created. Of course the legend of the ‘four-legged rugby ball’ doesn’t sound as dramatic or as frightening as the already mentioned comic-book anti-heroes.