Lizard Man of Scape Ore Swamp

Photo by Sarah Berra (2015)

Origins:

It was early in the morning in July of 1988, and 17-year-old Christopher Davis was stopped on the side of the road by a butterbean shed, changing out a flat tire. As described in a July 1988 article ("Lizard Man: S.C. Encounters Leave Tracks, Fright") in "The Philadelphia Inquirer", written by Billy Bowles and Jan Tuten:

The incident happened on a Wednesday night five weeks ago as Davis was heading home about 1 a.m. after leaving work at a McDonald's and dropping by a friend's house. Davis later told the sheriff he was putting the tire and jack into the trunk of his car when a "creature" more than seven feet tall came running toward him across a soybean field from the direction of the swamp. He described it as having greenish-black skin or fur, with glowing red eyes, and said it ran upright, like a man.

"He said it was running so fast it was kicking up dust," the sheriff said.

Davis said he got the car door open and dived into the front seat as the beast rammed the rear of the car, moving it forward, even though the emergency brake was on.

[...]

Davis said in an interview he started the car as the creature grabbed at the door handle and that it pursued him as he drove away. When he reached 30 or 35 m.p.h., he said, he heard a thump on the car's roof and realized that the creature had jumped onto the car.

"I saw some fingers on the windshield, " Davis said, "so I started swerving to throw it off."

Art of the creature, as drawn by Davis.



The article continues:

And ever since, things have been a little wild in Lee County. Four youths drove to the sheriff's department about 3 a.m. Sunday and reported seeing a creature run across Interstate 20 near U.S. 15 and jump a 6-foot fence.

[Lee County Deputy Wayne] Atkinson called state Trooper Mike Hodge for backup and the two responded. The officers came upon tracks in a dirt road - fresh, big tracks - that convined them "something is out there."

They also examined two battered cardboard trash bins and a broken tree limb dangling about 9 feet overhead before they got back in the car, drove down the road and turned around.

When they returned to the trash bins, the officers said, something had walked across their tire tracks, leaving a fresh set of three-toes, 14-by-7 inch prints that led into the woods.

[...]

The tracks continued for several hundred yards, according to the officers, ending in a thicket.

"I was pretty spooked. They were just some weird tracks. They were too consistent to be fake. They were deep down in that hard dirt," Hodge said.

"I stomped in the road, and I couldn't make a track," Atkinson said.

The three-toed tracks appeared to be 1 to 1 1/8 inch deep, and the claws appeared to sink to a depth of almost 1 1/2 inches, Hodge said.

Casts of the footprints in question:



With time, details of the creature solidified from potentially furry to a "creature packed with mud" and so on until the creature was ultimately described as a 7 foot tall biped with three fingers, red eyes, and skin like a lizard. That said, varying descriptions of both the creature and the original sighting abound.

Since, sightings (and vehicle damage, often associated with the creature) have been sporadic, with the creature landing on national newspapers again when Sarah Berra saw the creature while returning home from church, snapping a photo with her cell phone, in 2015. You be the judge on how much faith you allot it.

The original encounter has been suggested to be an exaggeration of events, from the man who might just be the Lizard Man himself. From an article ("Off to See the Lizard") in the College of Charleston Magazine, written by Alicia Lutz (2011):

The butterbean shed, we’d learned earlier, is more than just the landmark closest to many of the Lizard Man encounters; Elmore’s Butterbean Shed actually takes center stage in this unfolding tale of a multilayered legend.

Lucious “Brother” Elmore was a lucrative butterbean farmer, with 40-something acres of butterbeans and clients all over the state, including the Columbia restaurant chain Lizard’s Thicket. In order to keep his harvest moving quickly, he dumped the beans onto drying tables in his shed on Browntown Road, which he equipped with air-conditioning window units to further speed up the drying process.

“In those days, not everybody had air conditioning, and I guess it got so hot sometimes that it went to people’s heads, because people kept stealing the units right out of Brother Elmore’s shed,” Al Holland, owner of the local feed and seed, had told us that morning. “Well, he’d just picked up three new units from the store, and people knew this. But he was determined to make sure no one stole them.”

Brother Elmore claimed to be on a stakeout the night that Christopher Davis’ tire blew, and – when he heard the car stop just 100 yards down the road from the butterbean shed, he thought he’d found his culprit.

“He walks out to the road, which is lower than the yard, so he’s up high, hiding in the dog fennel,” Holland told us. “So he’s standing there, he’s looking down, when the kid turned around and screamed and took off.”

The way Holland tells it, Davis’ taillights reflected in Elmore’s glasses, causing an illusion of red glowing eyes; and the scrapes and scratches on his car were from the still-attached jack.

“When the story took hold, Elmore’s son decided to perpetuate the story. He made some giant feet out of wood and flip-flops and stomped all over the swamp,” Holland had said. “That’s when the sheriff fell into it, and the Elmores were so happy because no one would steal anything with all those cops patrolling.”