The Lizard Man of Scape Ore Swamp

A real, documented 1988 report and media panic; no supporting evidence

In July 1988 the Lee County sheriff's office took a call from Browntown, outside Bishopville on the edge of Scape Ore Swamp. A car parked overnight had been mauled, apparently by an animal, and left with tooth marks, scratches, hair and muddy footprints. Sheriff Liston Truesdale asked anyone who knew anything about the damage, or about a strange creature, to come forward.

On 16 July Tommy Davis brought in his 17-year-old son, Chris. Chris said that about two weeks earlier, heading home from his night shift at McDonald's, he took a shortcut down a rural road and got a flat. After changing it he saw a green creature about seven feet tall, with three fingers, red eyes and skin like a lizard. When he drove off it leapt onto the roof of his 1976 Celica, and he shook it loose by swerving. Truesdale believed him, and Davis passed a polygraph.

More sightings followed, some plausible, some plainly made up. Armed parties searched along the swamp, the sheriff made plaster casts of three-toed prints, shops sold Lizard Man T-shirts and the chamber of commerce called the attention good for the community. Radio station WCOS offered a $1 million reward for the creature captured alive. Truesdale was interviewed by Good Morning America and by Dan Rather, and newspapers as far away as South Korea ran the story. On 5 August an airman from Shaw Air Force Base reported shooting and wounding the Lizard Man on Highway 15 and produced scales and blood; two days later he admitted the hoax. Reports tapered off at the end of the summer, and local officers suspected a bear.

The skeptic Ben Radford found that Davis's story changed over repeated tellings, from scales to a creature packed with mud, and that no photographs show damage to his car; one local paper quoted him as escaping with no more than a scratch on his fender. Radford suggested the polygraph may have been a publicity stunt by the firm arranging Davis's appearances. Investigator Alicia Lutz offered a plainer answer: a butterbean farmer, Lucious Elmore, was guarding his shed against thieves that night, heard a tyre blow and walked out to the road, and when Davis saw him he screamed and took off.

Bishopville has kept the creature anyway. Plaster Lizard Man prints and T-shirts are on display at the South Carolina Cotton Museum, the state Emergency Management Division told Lee and Sumter counties to remain vigilant during the 2017 solar eclipse, and John Stamey started a Lizard Man festival modelled on the Mothman Festival at Point Pleasant.