My
official model of the 'Creature from the Black Lagoon' (© Dr Karl Shuker)
The term
‘reptoid’ is most closely associated with the reptilian category of
extraterrestrial aliens, but it also has a much wider yet less familiar usage,
having been applied to a number of extraordinary humanoid reptilian entities
reported from modern-day North America and elsewhere, as will be seen here.
LEAPING LIZARD
MEN! ESCAPE FROM SCAPE ORE SWAMP
When a shaking,
petrified 17-year old youth called Christopher Davis arrived home in a
hysterical state with his car’s roof bearing several long deep scratches, his
father was naturally shocked, but was even more so when his son, after finally
calming down sufficiently to speak, told him a truly incredible tale of what he
claimed had happened earlier that night.
According to
Christopher, at 2 am on 29 June 1988, he had pulled up near to Scape Ore Swamp, just outside
the South Carolina backwater village of Bishopville in Lee County, in order to
change a tyre. But as he was replacing the jack in his car’s boot afterwards,
he saw something very tall, approximately 7
ft in height, racing towards him at speed across a field. As it
drew nearer, Christopher was amazed and horrified to discover that it resembled
a huge bipedal lizard, with humanoid form but covered in green wet scaly skin, sporting
just three fingers on each hand and three toes on each foot, every one tipped with
a 4-in-long black claw, and glaring at him with slanted glowing red eyes!
Artist's
impression of Lizard Man (© Richard Svensson)
Terrified,
Christopher jumped into his car at once, but as he tried to slam the door shut,
the creature – soon to be dubbed Lizard Man by the media – grabbed its mirror
in an attempt to wrench the door open. Moreover, even though Christopher
accelerated and drove off, his saurian attacker was not left behind. Instead,
it hurled itself onto the car roof, and tried to hold on to it as the
panic-stricken teenager drove madly through the swamplands, swerving wildly at
speeds of up to 40 miles/hr in a desperate attempt to dislodge it from his roof.
Happily for him, however, the creature quite literally outreached itself when
it stretched its arm down to grab at the windscreen, because it lost its grip
on the roof and fell off the car, to be left far behind as Christopher sped on
to his home.
When the story
broke, Lee County’s sheriff,
Liston Truesdale, interviewed Christopher and also researched his background
history, subsequently confirming that he accepted his story and had found him
to be a very clean-living boy never linked to drugs or drinking. Moreover, in
the weeks that followed, many other sightings of Lizard Man were reported in
the same area, and by people again claimed by Truesdale to be of reputable
status.
Lizard
Man investigator Lyle Blackburn in Scape Ore Swamp (© Lyle Blackburn)
Nevertheless,
apart from some very large three-toed footprints of dubious origin turning up
in the swamp and soon dismissed by police, no physical evidence for Lizard
Man’s existence was forthcoming. Eventually, therefore, especially after
certain more recent reports were exposed as definite hoaxes, Lizard Man faded
from the headlines and into local folklore, but remains one of the most bizarre
unidentified entities ever documented - a thoroughly surreal mystery that today
is still resolutely unresolved. Or is it?
The most
extensive modern-day investigation of the Bishopville Lizard Man is that of American
cryptid researcher and author Lyle Blackburn. Lyle and his partner Cindy Lee
not only visited the precise sighting locations, and interviewed those
eyewitnesses still living, but also examined (and were even permitted to
photograph) official eyewitness testimony records plus police documents of this extraordinary case, and thoroughly
reviewed a comprehensive range of theories in their bid to provide a
satisfactory explanation.
Lyle
Blackburn's excellent book, Lizard Man (©
Lyle Blackburn/Anomalist Books)
But what did
they discover, and what were their conclusions? The answers can be found in
Lyle's fascinating book, Lizard Man: The True Story of the Bishopville Monster (2013), which I thoroughly
recommend to everyone wishing to examine the full history of this truly bizarre
being.
Incidentally, in
an example not so much of art imitating nature as body art imitating unnatural
history, one of today's most memorable (and certainly most eyecatching) of
freak show performers is Eric Sprague.
Aka 'The Lizardman', he sports a
full-body tattoo of green lizard-like scales, a modified bifurcate tongue,
sharpened teeth, and subdermal implants, thereby converting his appearance to
that of a veritable reptoid.
Life-sized
replica of Eric Sprague, The Lizardman, currently on display at the Ripley's
Believe It Or Not! Odditorium in London,
England (©
Dr Karl Shuker)
THE REAL
CREATURES FROM THE BLACK LAGOON?
One of the most
famous of all movie monsters is the scaly amphibious entity that appears in the
cult American sci-fi/horror flick ‘Creature from the Black Lagoon’. Directed by
Jack Arnold and produced by Universal Studios, it was originally released in
1954, and went on to spawn two sequels as well as all manner of derivative films
in the years to come. Yet whereas its eponymous bipedal gill-man of Devonian
descent and a penchant for abducting buxom brunettes was thankfully confined to
the swamplands of the silver screen, there are a number of modern-day claims on
file concerning real-life encounters with mysterious amphibious beings that
bear much more than a passing (not to mention alarming) resemblance to it.
Still
from 'Creature from the Black Lagoon' (© Universal Studios)
Undoubtedly the
most frightening of these took place on the evening of 8 November 1958, and featured Charles Wetzel, who was
driving his Buick along the road bordering the Santa Ana River near Riverside, California, when someone –
or something – suddenly leapt in front of his car and stood there, staring
directly at him. Wetzel was astonished and terrified – for good reason.
According to his subsequent testimony to the police and other investigators,
the entity was bipedal and at least 7 ft tall, sported a
round pumpkin-like head lacking a nose and ears but possessing a projecting
beak-like mouth and a pair of bright fluorescent eyes, waved its extremely long
arms so animatedly that its entire body rocked from side to side, stood on a
pair of legs that splayed out from the sides of its torso like those of a
reptile (rather than emerging from beneath its torso like a human’s do), and
was covered in leaf-like scales.
And as if this stationary
vision of horror was not enough, the reptoid then opened its beak, emitted a
high-pitched gurgling scream, and raced directly towards Wetzel’s car, its long
arms reaching across the bonnet and clawing madly at the windscreen as it
violently strove to reach Wetzel! The petrified driver was armed with a rifle
but did not dare shoot at the reptoid with it as the bullets would have destroyed
the windscreen – the only barrier separating him from his frenzied saurian
aggressor. Instead, he swiftly accelerated his car and ran the reptoid down,
feeling its substantial body scraping the undercarriage as he drove over it and
away with all speed.
A
scaly green 'Creature from the Black Lagoon'-type reptoid (© Richard Svensson)
Laboratory tests
later confirmed that something had indeed scraped off the grease from the
undercarriage of Wetzel’s car, and several very prominent claw-marks sweeping
across the windscreen were readily visible. Although a police search armed with
bloodhounds failed to locate the reptoid’s body, and despite suggestions that
what he really ran over was simply an uprooted tree, Wetzel never recanted or
changed his story.
Almost 20 years
later, in 1977, Alfred Hulstruck, a highly respected New York State
Conservation naturalist made a startling announcement concerning a
hitherto-unreported but highly distinctive alleged inhabitant of the Southern
Tier region of New York State, stating: "A
scaled, man-like creature...appears at dusk from the red, algae-ridden waters
to forage among the fern and moss-covered uplands".
'Creature
from the Black Lagoon' advertising poster (public domain)
Outside North America, humanoid
lizard men have been reported as recently as 2003 from Italy’s River Po and
River Pijava, with plaster casts of their alleged hand and footprints having
been made by chemist Sebastiano di Djenaro. And similar entities have also been
reported from large ponds or lakes in Poland.
THE MONSTER OF THETIS LAKE – THE TRUTH AT
LAST?
The most famous
case featuring a Creature of the Black Lagoon lookalike, however, has recently
become the most infamous, due to a shocking yet surprisingly little-publicised
revelation. It all began on 19 August 1972, at Thetis Lake, near Victoria, the capital of
British Columbia, Canada. This is where
two teenage youths, Gordon Pile and Robin Flewellyn, claimed to have seen
emerging from the lake a bipedal reptoid covered in silver scales and bearing
six razor-sharp spines comprising a central longitudinal ridge running along
the top of its head. Moreover, upon seeing the youths, the reptoid lost no time
in chasing after them, approaching so closely that it supposedly cut the hand
of one of the youths with its head’s spines.
Four days later,
during the afternoon of 23 August, a similar scenario was reported from the
opposite shore of the same lake by two more teenage youths, Russell Van Nice
and Michael Gold, who were able to watch the reptoid emerge but without being
chased by it this time, because it simply re-entered the water a short time
later and vanished. Afterwards, they provided a detailed description of it,
which corroborated and added to that of the previous youths. Using this
description, a sketch published the following day by a local newspaper depicted
the scaly entity with a powerful muscular chest, two three-pronged flippers for
feet, clawed humanoid hands, six spines on top of its head, a huge pair of
pointed ears, a very large pair of flat fish-like eyes, and an equally piscean
mouth.
Artist's
impression of the Thetis Lake
monster (© Richard Svensson)
Apart from a
bizarre attempt by the area’s police to ‘identify’ this entity as nothing more
startling than an escaped 1-m-long South American tegu lizard – a species
notable for NOT walking bipedally, for NOT possessing ears, a spiny crest on
its head, or flippers for feet, but for possessing a striped body and a very
long tail (features conspicuous only by their absence from the eyewitness
accounts of the Thetis Lake reptoid!) – nothing more was seen or heard of this
lake-dwelling nightmare...until 2009, that is.
This was when
Canadian writer-illustrator Daniel Loxton, who edits the Junior Skeptic
insert section of the highly-acclaimed quarterly science-education magazine Skeptic,
decided to reopen this mystifying case. What spurred him on was his discovery
that the very weekend before the first alleged reptoid sighting at Thetis Lake
back in August 1972, ‘Monster from the Surf’ (aka 'The Beach Girls and the
Monster'), a low-budget sci-fi film distributed by U.S. Films, originally
released in 1965, and featuring a scaly ‘Creature from the Black Lagoon’ type
of monster, had been screened not once but twice on local television in this same
area of British Columbia. Furthermore, the monster in it perfectly matched the
descriptions of the Thetis Lake reptoid that
had been given by the teenagers claiming to have encountered it.
Advertising
poster for 'The Beach Girls and the Monster' (© U.S. Films)
Determined by
now to solve this case once and for all, Loxton succeeded in contacting one of
the original eyewitnesses, Russell Van Nice (the first time that any
investigator had ever done this), who swiftly confessed that their story was a
hoax, that they had indeed watched the film on television and had then simply
pretended to have seen its monster in real life. True, the testimony of the
earlier pair of teenagers has not been exposed as a hoax, but as their
description of the Thetis Lake reptoid also
corresponds perfectly with that of the monster in the film, it is evident that
this reptoid case can no longer be taken seriously.
Yet even without
the backing of its most widely-publicised case, the mystery of amphibious
reptoids reported across North America remains -
thanks not only to those other cases documented here but also to a number of additional
ones on file. Prominent among these is an extraordinary case reported from Loveland, Ohio.
HAS THE FROG MAN
OF LOVELAND HOPPED OFF?
Bearing in mind
that its two separate eyewitnesses were both police officers, the so-called Loveland frog man has
attracted more than a little curiosity down through the years. At 1 am on 3
March 1972, as policeman Ray Schocke drove along Riverside Road towards the
Ohio town of Loveland, his car’s headlights illuminated what he initially
thought was a dog – until the creature stood up on its hind legs, revealing
itself to be a grotesque 4-ft-tall entity with textured leathery skin, a frog-like
or lizard-like face, and weighing about 60
lb. After briefly staring at him, the creature leapt away over a
guard rail, and moved down an embankment into the Little Miami River. As soon
as Schocke reached his station and revealed what he had encountered, fellow
officer Mark Matthews drove back with him to look for evidence, but all that they
found were some scrape marks leading to the river.
Artist's
impression of the Loveland
frog man (© Richard Svensson)
On or around 17
March, however, while driving alongside this same river just outside Loveland, Matthews
himself saw something. Lying on the road ahead was what seemed to be a dead
animal, but when Matthews got out of his car to pick it up and put it in the
boot, the ‘carcase’ raised itself into a crouching position. Then, without
taking its eyes off Matthews, it moved to the guard rail, lifted its legs over
it, and vanished. Matthews attempted to shoot the creature with his gun, but
missed.
Because there
had been reports of weird frog-like entities here in the past, some researchers
have suggested that the officers had been subconsciously influenced by these
when observing whatever it was that they had seen. Also, in later years
Matthews claimed that the media had distorted his account, and that he felt
sure that what he had seen was merely a large lizard, possibly an escaped pet. Of
course, it may be that the creature he had seen was a totally different one
from the entity spied by Schocke. In any event, nothing resembling a frog man
has been reported here in recent years, so whether it really was just a case of
mistaken identity after all, or, alternatively, Loveland’s most
mystifying visitor has simply hopped off to somewhere else, is still unknown.
AN ENDURING ENIGMA
Suggestions that have been proffered down through the years as
to what these reptoids might be are as varied and certainly as exotic as the
entities themselves – everything, in fact, from extraterrestrial or
interdimensional reptilians that have either been secretly residing on planet
Earth since ancient times or have reached here from the far-distant future, or
Hollow Earth inhabitants that occasionally come to the surface, to evolved
post-Cretaceous dinosaurian descendants, or reclusive native life-forms of
undetermined taxonomic status but perhaps allied to the equally elusive merfolk
and possibly even the bloodthirsty chupacabra.
Lyle Blackburn with Sheriff Liston Truesdale (© Lyle Blackburn)
Far beyond the
fringes of accepted cryptozoology, these bipedal reptile-men remain an
inscrutable enigma, defying all attempts at explanation or classification. Yet
their very existence, if genuine, remains a highly disturbing, disconcerting
thought – as eloquently summarised by veteran American cryptozoologist Loren
Coleman:
"Are these beasts future time travelers lost in some time/space
warp? Or infrequent visitors? Or do you feel more comfortable with the idea
there is a breeding population of scaly, manlike, upright creatures lingering
along the edges of some of America’s
swamps? Something is out there. That’s for sure."
Amen to that!
I am extremely grateful to Richard Svensson for permitting me to utilise his wonderful
artwork, and to Lyle Blackburn for permitting me to include his excellent photographs - thanks guys!
And to read about some very different humanoid reptilians - namely, Jake the Alligator Man and the mummified crocodile boy of Topkapi - be sure to click here!
Taking turns with my
mother, Mary Shuker, to display another of my 'Creature from the Black Lagoon'
models - click to enlarge (© Dr Karl Shuker)
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