When I lived in the desert of Las Vegas, our family pet was a lizard we named Rocky. This little guy was so cool. He would perch on my knee while I tried to get lost for a while in the adventures and mysteries of my books. We would catch crickets for him to eat. I cried when he died, and we had a little funeral for the small reptile. You might be thinking I was a child at this time, but I was actually a mother of two little ones!

In the Scape Ore swamps of Bishopville, located in Lee County, South Carolina, a seven-feet-tall bipedal creature with well-defined muscles, green scaly skin, and orange glowing eyes, was frequently spotted in the summer of 1988. Additional features included three-finger hands ending in four-inch black nails, and three-toed feet with circular pads, that would stick to flat surfaces.

The first encounter with the lizard man took place about two in the morning, on June 29, 1988. Teenager Chris Davis was driving home from work, when a tire blew. He was just finishing up the tire change, when he heard a “thumping noise” from behind the car. He turned around to see the monster about twenty-five yards away, running directly toward him. “It looked strong and angry,” as it attempted to tear the car door out of Davis’s hands, then jumped on the car roof while Davis was trying to drive away. Davis swerved from side to side on the road, eventually throwing the beast off. His car roof had scratch marks, and his side mirror was damaged. Plaster casts taken of the tracks, spaced four feet apart, were identified as “unclassifiable.”
Tourists and hunters descended on the small town, and radio station, WCOS, offered one million dollars to anyone who could capture the beast alive.

Sightings declined by summer’s end and, for decades, the Lizard Man was relatively quiet. Locals in Lee County, South Carolina, fear the beast is back.

A resident of Newberry, South Carolina, reported two Lizard Men outside her home in October of 2005.

Another vehicle was attacked by the Lizard Man in February of 2008 in Bishopville. Dixie Rawson awakened one morning to find her van “chewed up.” Pieces of the vehicle had been torn off, and were all over her driveway. The parts were covered in blood, and what looked to be “bite marks.” The wheel wells on both sides, and other metal parts, were bent “like a piece of paper.” Samples of the blood were taken for testing, but they were said to be contaminated, and no determination was ever made.

Dixie’s husband, Bob, told interviewers, "I couldn't believe it, I just couldn't believe it. He literally bit, you can feel where he bit straight through here." He has his Glock, loaded and ready.

Dixie believes there is something dangerous dwelling in the area, and it is “very scary” living there now. Several of her cats have disappeared, and Dixie hopes they were just frightened off.

Not long after the incident at the Rawson’s home, several large farm animals were found dead nearby.

Before sightings of the Lizard Man of Scape Ore, South Carolina were reported in 1988, there had been encounters with similar creatures, in other North American regions.

The first vehicle reported to have been attacked by a lizard creature was in November of 1958. Charles Wetzel was driving near the Santa Ana River in California, when a six feet tall, glowing-eyed creature with “leaf-like scales and a protrusible beaklike mouth,” attacked his car. Wetzel told Author Loren Coleman, in a 1982 interview, that the creature’s legs appeared to stick out “from the sides of the torso, not from the bottom.” Wetzel made his escape by stomping on the accelerator, ejecting the monster from the hood of his car.

In August of 1972, a lizard-type man was sighted in the Thetis Lake area of British Columbia by several eyewitnesses. The man-size beast was humanoid in shape, with scale-covered silver skin, large ears, a monster face, and several “projections” on its head.

A few years later, in 1977, a state conservationist reported seeing a “scale-covered man-beast” “regularly,” at dusk each evening, near the waters of Southern Tier in New York State.

In 1982, a scientific paper was published by paleontologists, Dr. Dale A. Russell and Dr. R. Seguin from the National Museum of Natural Sciences in Ottawa. They scientists theorized that, if the dinosaurs had not become extinct, a bipedal “dinosaurian counterpart of human beings” would have developed with three fingers on each hand. The model constructed from their description looks amazingly like the Lizard Man being sighted in Scape Ore, South Carolina today!

References/Sources/Additional Information and Reading:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lizard_Man_of_Scape_Ore_Swamp
http://www.theonion.com/content/node/53272
http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/offbeat/2008/03/01/sc.lizard.man.update.wis
http://www.wistv.com/Global/story.asp?S=7978464
http://www.skepticworld.com/cryptozoology/reptilians.asp
http://theshadowlands.net/creature2.htm#lizard
http://www.theonion.com/content/node/53272
Monsterquest Episode: Lizard Man