In the summer of 1988, a small South Carolina town found itself chasing a seven foot, scaled creature with red eyes, and the strangest part of the whole case is that the only real evidence anyone ever produced was a terrified seventeen year old boy who passed a police polygraph test. This episode of Dark Matters heads to Scape Ore Swamp, near Bishopville in Lee County, for the story of the Lizard Man.
After a couple's car turned up mysteriously damaged in the swamp overnight, Christopher Davis reported being chased by something out of the trees while changing a flat tyre on a lonely back road. Deputies cast three toed footprints, a cryptid researcher blamed Bigfoot, a fake evidence claim collapsed within days, and the story went national, turning a quiet cotton town into a media circus complete with lizard themed merchandise and a million dollar reward nobody ever claimed.
More than three decades on, the case is still unresolved, tangled up with a dying sheriff who never stopped believing, a witness whose life was upended by that one night, and a local rumour involving a butterbean farmer that's never been confirmed or denied.
Hear the full story, and the competing theories behind it, in this episode of Dark Matters.
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