Mysteries Around Us: 12/14/08

Friday, December 19, 2008

Mystery of the Lizard Man

The Lizard Man of Scape Ore Swamp (also known as The Lizard Man Of Lee County), is a humanoid cryptid which is said to inhabit areas of swampland in and around Lee County, South Carolina.

Description

The Lizard Man is described as being seven feet tall, bipedal, and well built, with green scaly skin and glowing red eyes. It is said to have three toes on each foot and three fingers on each hand which end in long black claw-like nails.

Davis sighting

The first reported sighting of the creature occurred on June 29, 1988, and was made by Christopher Davis, a 17 year old local youth, who is said to have encountered the creature while driving home from work at 2 AM. According to his own account, Davis stopped on a road bordering Scape Ore Swamp in order to change a tire which had blown out. When he was finishing up he reported having heard a thumping noise from behind him and to have turned around to see the creature running towards him.

The creature is said to have tried to grab at the car and then to have jumped on its roof as Davis tried to escape, clinging on to it as Davis swerved from side to side in an effort to throw it off. After he returned home, Davis' side-view-mirror was found to be badly damaged, and scratch marks were found on the car's roof--though there was no other physical evidence of his encounter.

“I looked back and saw something running across the field towards me. 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 curled around on the roof. I sped up and swerved to shake the creature off.”

In the month that followed the Davis sighting there were several further reports of a large lizard like creature, and of unusual scratches and bite marks being found on cars parked close to the swamp. Most of these are said to have occurred within a three-mile radius of the swamps at Bishopville.

At the time, local law enforcement officials reacted to reports of the Lizard Man with a mixture of concern and skepticism, stating that a sufficient number of sightings had been made by apparently reliable people for them to believe that something tangible was being seen, but also that it was more likely to be a bear than a Lizard Man.

Two weeks after the Davis sighting the sheriff's department made several plaster casts of what appeared to be three-toed footprints - measuring some 14 inches in length - but decided against sending them on to the FBI for further analysis after biologists advised them that they were unclassifiable. According to South Carolina Marine Resources Department spokesperson Johnny Evans the tracks neither matched, nor could be mistaken for, the footprints of any recorded animal. Evans also dismissed the possibility that they could have been made by some form of mutated creature.

The sightings attracted tourists interested in seeing the creature and hunters interested in tracking it, and nearby radio station WCOS offered a $1 million reward to anybody who could capture the creature alive. However, reports of the creature began to decline at the end of the summer with the last credible sighting of the year being reported in July.

On August 5 Kenneth Orr, an airman stationed at Shaw Air Force Base, filed a report with the police saying that he had encountered the Lizard Man on highway 15, and that he had shot and wounded it. He presented several scales and a small quantity of blood as evidence. Orr recanted this account two days later when he was arraigned for unlawfully carrying a pistol, and the misdemeanor offense of filing a false police report. According to Orr, he had invented the sighting in order to keep stories about the Lizard Man in circulation.

Events

In October 2005, a woman in Newberry, South Carolina reported to the police that she had seen two creatures resembling the Lizard Man outside her home. The responding officer, Officer Michael Kennedy, apparently amused, told the woman that the creatures "just like to check on humans from time to time."

In February 2008, a couple in Bishopville, South Carolina, Bob and Dixie Rawson, reported strange damage to their vehicle, traces of blood, and the disappearance of some of their cats. Based on how the damage looks, some have claimed that this is the "return" of the Lizard Man.

The blood traces from the Rawsons' vehicle were sent to the South Carolina Department of Natural Resources for evaluation, in hopes that their source could be identified, but the samples were deemed contaminated. Soon after the incident at the Rawsons' home, Lee County Sheriff E.J. Melvin discovered a dead cow, and a dead coyote in a field next to the Rawsons' home.

How all this happened, no one is quite sure yet - making clear only that the Lizard Man mystery isn't ready to be solved.

Did you know...

1. Until babies are six months old, they can breathe and swallow at the same time. Indeed convenient!

2. Offered a new pen to write with, 97% of all people will write their own name.

3. Male mosquitoes are vegetarians. Only females bite.

4. The average person's field of vision encompasses a 200-degree wide angle.

5. To find out if a watermelon is ripe, knock it, and if it sounds hollow then it is ripe.

6. Canadians can send letters with personalised postage stamps showing their own photos on each stamp.

7. Babies' eyes do not produce tears until the baby is approximately six to eight weeks old.

8. It snowed in the Sahara Desert in February of 1979.

9. Plants watered with warm water grow larger and more quickly than plants watered with cold water.

10. Wearing headphones for just an hour will increase the bacteria in your ear by 700 times.

11. Grapes explode when you put them in the microwave.

12. Those stars and colours you see when you rub your eyes are called phosphenes.

13. Our eyes are always the same size from birth, but our nose and ears never stop growing.

14. Everyone's tongue print is different, like fingerprints.

15. Contrary to popular belief, a swallowed chewing gum doesn't stay in the gut. It will pass through the system and be excreted.

16. At 40 degrees centigrade a person loses about 14.4 calories per hour by just breathing.

17. There is a hotel in Sweden built entirely out of ice; it is rebuilt every year.

18. Cats, camels and giraffes are the only animals in the world that walk right foot, right foot, left foot, left foot, rather than right foot, left foot...

19. Onions help reduce cholesterol if eaten after a fatty meal.20. The sound you hear when you crack your knuckles is actually the sound of nitrogen gas bubbles bursting.

21. In most watch advertisements the time displayed on the watch is 10:10 because then the arms frame the brand of the watch and make it look like its smiling.

22. The color blue can have a calming affect on people.23. Depending upon the need, the brain may send up to 11 tranquilizing chemicals to calm the body.

24. Leonardo DA Vinci could write with the one hand and draw with the other simultaneously. Now we know why his pictures were so exquisite!

25. Names of the three wise monkeys are: Mizaru (See no evil), Mikazaru(Hear no evil), and Mazaru (Speak no evil).

26. The only 2 animals that can see behind themselves without turning their heads are the rabbit and parrot.

27. The only 15 letter word that can be spelt without repeating a letter is uncopyrightable.

28. Babies are born without knee caps. They don't appear until the child reaches 2-6 years of age.

29. The names of the continents all end with the same letter with which they start.

30. Electricity doesn't move through a wire but through a field around the wire.

31. All U.S. Presidents have worn glasses; some of them just didn't like to be seen wearing them in public.

32. No word in the English language rhymes with month, orange, silver and purple.

33. Raw cashews are poisonous and must be roasted before eating.

"FACTS" we know that are not so...

Almost everybody knows that Wellington’s final battle against Napoleon was fought at Waterloo. And that bulls see red. But, like a lot of other things we know, these “facts” just aren’t so. The battle of Waterloo was really fought four kilometers away from Waterloo, between the villages of Plancenoit and Mont St Jean. And investigations have established that bulls are actually “colour-blind” – they cannot distinguish one colour from another. This article is an attempt to set the record straight on some more such misinformation.

Moth-eaten:

Moths, contrary to the popular notion, do not eat clothes. Some, as a matter of fact, don’t eat anything at all during their adult lives, which are (not surprisingly) brief. It’s the larvae that do the damage; by the time moths are flying out of the cupboard, it’s too late.

Sherlock Holmes:

At no point in any of the 56 short stories and four novels that Arthur Conan Doyle wrote about his famous detective does Holmes say, “Elementary, my dear Watson.”

S.O.S.:

The universal symbol requesting aid, contrary to what is often said, doesn’t stand for “Save Our Ship,” or “Save Our Souls.” It doesn’t, in fact, stand for anything. It was selected because it is very simple, both to remember and to transmit in Morse code – three dots, three dashes, three dots.

The bagpipe:

While the bagpipe is considered to be the national instrument of Scotland, historically it is hardly more Scottish than Irish. It is a very ancient instrument – as old as ancient Persia – which was introduced into the British Isles by the Romans. Surprisingly enough, some form of the bagpipe is found in Spain, Italy, France, the Balkans, and even Czechoslovakia.

Frankenstein:

A common misconception is that the name of the monster in Mary Shelly’s book: Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus, is Frankenstein. Frankenstein was not the name of the monster but the name of the person who created the monster.

Steam:

You just think you can see it. Like most other gases, steam is invisible. Only when it cools enough so that minute droplets of water condense, is it visible. If one looks closely at the spout of a boiling kettle, one can observe a small space of what looks like air between the spout and the mist. That is steam.