Like a shiftless in-law, he won't go away

Sit back, gentle reader, and remember a bygone age, when this little state was a land of giants, where heroes fought the British from behind crude barriers made of palmetto trees, where statesmen thundered their wrath and rage and the nation trembled, where angry rebels fired the first shot of America’s greatest war. Yes, there was a day when men were braver, women more beautiful, and even the wildlife was wilder than anywhere else in this great land.

It was the early morning hours of June 29, 1988. Seventeen-year-old Christopher Davis had left his job at a local restaurant and was driving home when he had a flat tire near Scape Ore Swamp in Lee County. After changing the tire, Davis said that he heard a thumping sound.

“I looked back and saw something running across the field towards me,” Davis said later in one of his many interviews. “It was about 25 yards away, and I saw red eyes glowing. I ran into the car, and as I locked it, the thing grabbed the door handle. I could see him from the neck down — the three big fingers, long black nails and green rough skin. It was strong and angry. I looked in my mirror and saw a blur of green running. I could see his toes and then he jumped on the roof of my car. I thought I heard a grunt, and then I could see his fingers through the front windshield, where they were curled around the roof. I sped up and swerved to shake the creature off.”

Davis must have driven straight to the nearest television station, because — in the twinkling of a news cycle — Lizard Man was born and quickly became the most famous resident of South Carolina.

In the weeks that followed, others reported seeing the strange creature in the rural area around Bishopville. Two men told authorities that Lizard Man chased them away from a spring where they had gone to dip water. Tom and Mary Waye drove into the swamp, and their car was attacked and chewed up, according to a report in Time magazine.

By the middle of August, Lizard Man needed an agent. His comings and goings had been reported on CBS Evening News. Calls poured in to S.C. media outlets from around the world, seeking the latest information. Johnny Carson had some fun with him on The Tonight Show. Gov. Carroll Campbell was officially noncommittal as to what it was or if it really existed. A California researcher declared the creature to be a “skunk ape,” aka “Bigfoot.” Tourists came from far and wide to get a glimpse of “Lizzie,” and hunters waded into the many swamps around Bishopville in hope of bagging him. Radio station WCOS offered a million dollars to anyone who captured Lizard Man, but as Gov. Campbell said, “This is a very elusive sort of fellow.”

I was reporting for The State newspaper in Columbia at the time and vacationing in the Soviet Union when I first read of Lizard Man in the English language Moscow News. Just my luck, I thought. The biggest story since the attack on Fort Sumter and I was on the other side of the world.

When I got back to the newsroom, I was eager to hear my colleagues’ take on the phenomenon. Mostly what I encountered was exasperation and rolling eyes. There were still school board meetings, fires, drownings, and homicides to cover. The newsroom was thinned out with reporters on vacation. Who had time for a silly damned Lizard Man?

Air started going out of the story in August when an airman at Shaw Air Force Base filed a report with police, saying he had shot and wounded Lizard Man on Highway 14. He presented some scales and blood as evidence. The airman recanted two days later when he was arraigned for unlawfully carrying a pistol and filing a false police report. He said he had invented the incident to keep the Lizard Man story going.

Lizard Man waned with the summer. We now had national elections to focus on, upheaval in the Soviet Union, Clemson and USC football. The news hole was filling up fast. Lizard Man, it seemed, had gone the way of the Carolina parakeet. Or had he?

In October 2005, a woman in Newberry reported seeing two creatures that looked like Lizard Man outside her home. And as recently as last February, Bob and Dixie Rawson of Bishopville reported strange damage to their vehicle and traces of blood and that some of their cats had disappeared. Could it be you-know-who?

In a state where myth and superstition are more popular than reality, Lizard Man found a natural home. And that’s probably why he refuses to leave.