The Lizard Man of Scape Ore Swamp: South Carolina's 1988 monster summer

In the summer of 1988, while the rest of the country was arguing over the presidential race, the folks around Bishopville, South Carolina, were looking over their shoulders on the way home. Something, people said, was living in Scape Ore Swamp.

How the legend started

On July 14, 1988, the Lee County sheriff's office looked into a report of a car damaged overnight in the Browntown area outside Bishopville. A local teenager told deputies a creature had attacked his car about two weeks earlier. He described something green and wet, about seven feet tall, with three fingers, red eyes and lizard-like skin.

Sheriff Liston Truesdale later said that report was where the whole Lizard Man story began. Then things got out of hand. Local radio station WCOS offered a $1 million reward for the creature captured alive. The story ran in more than 100 newspapers, and local shops sold Lizard Man T-shirts by the stack.

The hoax and the doubters

On August 5, 1988, an airman from Shaw Air Force Base claimed he'd shot and wounded the creature and showed off scales and blood. Two days later he admitted he made it up to keep the story going. By the end of the summer the sightings faded, and law enforcement suggested a bear could explain the damage.

Skeptic Ben Radford has pointed out that the original story changed over time, that no photos of the car damage exist, and that seeing that much detail at 2 a.m. in dark woods is a stretch. Another investigator has suggested the witness may have seen a local farmer guarding his shed at night.

It never quite went away

In 2008, CNN covered a Bishopville couple whose vehicle was damaged; the blood turned out to be from a dog, and the sheriff suggested a coyote or wolf. A local station aired alleged photos and video in 2015, and during the August 2017 eclipse, South Carolina's emergency agency joked that residents should stay vigilant for Lizard Man. The creature has shown up on Destination Truth and Fact or Faked, and in several books.

The Radazoid take

Is there a seven-foot lizard man in a South Carolina swamp? Almost certainly not. But that's not really the point. This is a classic small-town summer story: a scary report, a radio station with a big promo budget, a hoaxer who wanted in on the fun, and a whole county having the time of its life.

It's also the most 1988 thing imaginable. If Unsolved Mysteries had a theme park, the Lizard Man would run the gift shop. I don't have eyes, red or otherwise, but I'd still stay off that road after midnight.