The Mexican Minotaur Mystery

This baffling tale of highest strangeness first appeared in the Winter 1962 issue of Ray Palmer's The Hidden World magazine - a short-lived publication that had spawned from the controversy surrounding the infamous testimony of Richard Shaver. Unfortunately only one issue of the magazine is available online, and that is not the issue from which I am drawing this story. Instead, I have found this story mentioned on several other websites, and after enough digging (pun intended) I uncovered a full transcription of this amazing account of subterranean terror! 

An Inexplicable Interior

One Frank J. Mezta of Calexico City, California wrote to the aforementioned magazine to tell of a bizarre experience he had, which he had come to believe may well have been the work of the nefarious deros (he actually says 'teros' in his account, but this would make very little sense in the context of the Shaver Mystery) after accidentally stumbling onto some previous issues of the magazine. He had apparently always lusted after answers to the mysteries of ancient history and the origins of civilisation, and he felt he had found just that through the writings of Mr. Shaver. After offering Shaver these generous compliments, he went on to tell his chilling story.

Mezta and a group of friends had decided one day in 1960 to go treasure hunting in the 'interior of Mexico'. This expedition would unfortunately yield them no joy, and would instead leave them questioning their previously-held views of reality. The group arrived at the designated entrance to the cave system, but before they could enter Mezta felt a chilling sensation of fear come over him, seemingly without cause. This was apparently a feeling quite unlike anything Frank had experienced before. He felt as if something was going to happen to him should he enter those caves. It was clearly not only him suffering under the strange sensation, seeing as neither he nor anyone else in the party felt comfortable going underground that day. Perhaps reluctantly, or perhaps with relief, the group agreed to retreat from the cave entrance and return the next day. 

When they returned, the zone of terror had seemingly dissipated - and the group descended, led by Frank. The cave was 'tremendous in size', with passages and paths leading away from it in every direction. Some of these tunnels and chambers were 30ft high and 100ft long. They eventually decided that the system was too vast to feasibly explore, and so they once again decided to leave the caves. However, when they turned around they discovered that there were now two entry tunnels instead of just the one they had come in through. Baffled, the group elected to investigate. They moved down the strange tunnel, and it seemed to go on for ever, winding away into the infinite darkness. Perhaps getting somewhat spooked at this point, the group turned back once more and fled the caves. 

Labyrinth of the Lost

When Frank's group returned to the village, they happened to strike up a conversation with two indigenous Mexicans - who warned them not to enter the 'enchanted caves'. The group was intrigued, and asked the two men just what and where these caves were. They were shocked when the pair directed them to the cave entrance they had visited just a few days earlier. In response to questioning about what exactly happened in the so-called 'enchanted caves', the men answered that people would sometimes go into them and never come back out - and that if one stayed in them for a while and then tried to leave, they would find that the entrances and tunnels had somehow changed. A chill presumably ran down Frank's back at this point - the exact same thing had happened to his group. 

However, the changing geography of the anomalous cave system wasn't the strangest thing about them divulged by the indigenous people. No, that title would have to go to the personal story of the two men. About ten or fifteen years previously, they alleged that they (as well as about twenty or thirty other Native Mexican men) had been hired by an American man to investigate the strange caves. Four or five of their number came equipped with revolvers, and the rest carried lights and tools. They had been labouring away in the cave for a while, when something bizarre and terrifying suddenly made itself known to them. All of a sudden, two figures appeared at the far end of the cave. There was a humanoid with the head of a bull - 'like a bull upright' - and a diminutive entity resembling either a little boy or a 'naked midget'. Horrified, the five armed men pulled out their revolvers only to find that they wouldn't fire, and the lights carried by the rest of the group all went out. 

In the confusion and panic that ensued after this, several of the men were killed in the mad scramble to escape the caves. Since then, nobody had been brave enough to venture into the dark labyrinth below...

The Daedalus Legacy

According to ancient Greek mythology, King Minos of Crete had ordered the architect Daedalus to construct a labyrinth so intricate that not even the builder himself could find his way out without use of a plan. This enormous structure was to be used to house the bastard child of a divine bull and Minos's own wife. Pasiphaë. This child was a monstrous blend of human and bull features, and was known as the Minotaur. Seven youths and seven maidens would be sent into the labyrinth as sacrifices to the Minotaur each year, until the hero Theseus was finally able to slay the beast.

The links between this strange tale and the famous Greek mythological story should be obvious from even a cursory glance. A bull-headed humanoid monstrosity, accompanied by a child, roaming a potentially inescapable network of tunnels and subterranean chambers. History repeats itself, does myth do the same? 

Source

'MEXICO'S HAUNTED UNDERGROUND HALLS'

Los Vampiros de Humahuaca

As they went to sleep that night, they had no idea that they would never wake again. It was nighttime in Mexico, sometime during the mid 20th Century. I can only presume that they left their windows open that night - because something awful soon entered their household. This thing had a rotund body covered in hair, and leathery wings tipped with small claws instead of arms. Large ears adorned its pig-snouted head, and it approached the sleeping couple slowly. Biting down on the woman's neck, it started to lap up her warm blood. The same fate would soon befall her male companion. Their corpses would soon be found, the telltale mark of the vampire bat upon their necks. However, these toothmarks were massive. The coroners presumably thought they must've been mistaken when they realised that the bat responsible for the two deaths would've been approximately the size of a dog! 

A Chiropteran Colossus? 

Unfortunately, hardly anything is known about the Mexican case. It is simply documented as having involved the deaths of a man and a woman at the hands (or indeed fangs) of a grotesquely oversized vampire bat - all of the rest of the details you just read unfortunately had to be extrapolated by yours truly. However, what requires less authorial extrapolation is the description of the events that occurred in the small city of Humahuaca in the Jujuy Province of Argentina in January of 1969. One Meliton Juarez, a local muledriver, told an unnamed Mexico City newspaper about his encounter with a creature of a 'horrible' aspect. He was riding his mule when an enormous winged entity passed over his head several times, terrifying his mount before apparently attacking him - forcing him to repel it by beating it several times with his whip. He would later tell the paper that he thought the creature intended to land on his mule and drain it of blood. The paper stated that the monster was thought to weigh between five and six kilograms, but unfortunately gave no other details as to the dimensions of the thing - leading me to speculate that the monster was approximately the size of a small dog. This is, obviously, far too large for an ordinary vampire bat. 

Juarez's neighbours in the Quebrada de Humahuaca valley correlated his bizarre and terrifying encounter with several unexplained livestock deaths that had taken place at local ranches in recent memory - numerous domestic fowls having had their blood drained. According to Jacques Bergier in his 1975 book Extraterrestrial Intervention: The Evidence, scientists in the area believed that the existence of such a monstrous bat was indeed possible based on the story of the couple killed by such an animal I discussed in the beginning of this article. 

Driving Me Batty 

Apologies for the shortness of this article. I found this story in the aforementioned book and figured that I should give it a bit more attention than it seems to have gotten from the cryptozoological community around the time it was published. It is disappointing that Bergier simply lists his source as 'an unnamed Mexico City newspaper', which was apparently published on January 7th of 1969. If any of my readers can find this article, I would be honoured to accept your help!