A camera-trap video from the Juárez Valley in Chihuahua has given Mexico’s best-known ufologist, Jaime Maussan, a new mystery: a pale, long-limbed creature that he describes as an agile, intelligent, humanlike predator capable of walking on two legs.
To online commenters, the figure looks more like a pigment-deficient iguana, an albino lizard or an escaped exotic pet.
Maussan’s team said the footage was recorded Oct. 14 between 7 and 8 p.m. in the rural farming area southeast of Ciudad Juárez, along the Rio Grande near the U.S.-Mexico border.
The images show what the group describes as a hairless, reptilian-looking creature with a long tail and elongated limbs.
The team says it has documented or received reports of three sightings since July. In the latest images, the creature appears to climb a brick wall and descend a tree.
Researchers working with Maussan estimated it measured about 1.8 meters (nearly 6 feet), including a tail they said was about 90 centimeters (3 feet) long. However, their estimates were reportedly based on the comparative size of the wall in the video.
Maussan has called the being “El Ser del Valle de Juárez” — the Creature of the Juárez Valley. His team has linked it to reports of dead chickens, rabbits, roosters and other animals, including two horses in the Samalayuca area.
He compared it to “El Ser de Metepec,” a purported alien creature said to have been caught in a rat trap near Toluca in 2007 — and later identified as a taxidermy-altered squirrel monkey.
All of this has revived talk of the chupacabra, a folkloric creature blamed for attacking animals, especially livestock. The name means “goat sucker” in Spanish, although no scientific evidence has established the existence of such a being.
Maussan also floated the unsupported possibility that the being in the footage is an interdimensional being.
“It’s a predator,” he told NetNoticias.Mx, according to the El Paso Times. “I’m not saying it’s extraterrestrial, but it is something scary.”
However, publicly available evidence so far consists only of blurry video, photos and unidentified witness accounts. No carcass, DNA sample or other biological evidence has been released for independent examination.
Juárez Civil Protection director Sergio Rodríguez said his agency had received no official reports or evidence of a mysterious animal attacking livestock or pets in the valley. The department’s recent responses in the area have been related to rain damage, not animal attacks.
The El Paso County Sheriff’s Office told the El Paso Times it had received no reports on the Texas side of the border involving unusual farm-animal deaths or sightings of a strange creature.
Maussan, a journalist and self-described ufologist, has spent decades promoting UFO and paranormal claims. His fame in Mexico is such that Mexican pop star Belinda enlisted him this week for a mock emergency broadcast from a “spaceship” to announce that her annual Beliween Halloween party will have an extraterrestrial theme this year.
Maussan hosts “Tercer Milenio,” a long-running Mexican TV program focused on UFO sightings, extraterrestrial claims and other paranormal phenomena. In 2024, he was part of a promotion offering guests an overnight Airbnb stay at his home and research bunker in the forest.
In 2023, he appeared twice before the lower house of Mexico’s Congress, the Chamber of Deputies, with mummified remains he claimed were nonhuman. Experts challenged the extraterrestrial claim, pointing to studies of similar specimens that found assembled human and animal remains.
With reports from Infobae, El Paso Times, La Opción de Chihuahua and Daily Mail