A recent report appearing at the Haunted America Tours site describes an encounter reported by a truck driver in the vicinity of New Orleans, LA, this past Sunday morning. As he drove along in the early morning, he witnessed the creature, apparently a humanoid, as it darted along a nearby treeline. As stated in the HAT article, “the creature had dark or black skin covered in masses of ‘skin or fins’ that looked like algae growing all over its body.  It seemed to have gills or matted hair that looked like gills on its face and head; two yellow eyes leered out from under a prominent forehead.” The creature has allegedly drawn a bit of interest from cryptozoologists in the area, and News Editor Rick Stokes with The Anomalist recently described the event as an encounter with “a creature that could have clawed its way to the surface of the Black Lagoon.”

This is one of a handful of reports of encounters passed down over the years that deal with strange, anthropomorphic lizard-like “people.” Arguably, the most famous of all “Lizard Man” reports deals with what was called “The Lizard Man of Scape Ore Swamp,” a strange creature witnessed around the town of Bishopville, South Carolina, as well as various other swampy locales throughout the surrounding Lee County in the 1980s. However, earlier reports of lizard-like humanoids exist which (surprisingly) date all the way back to 1878! Have these “creatures” from the fringes of reality existed alongside us for longer than we realize?

Blogger J.S. Holland of the website LousivilleMojo.com shared the following strange account with his readers late last month:

In the October 28, 1878 issue of the Courier-Journal, there was a peculiar story of a “Wild Man of the Woods” being captured somewhere in the wilderness of Kentucky – they didn’t specify where exactly – and placed on public display in downtown Louisville for the public to gawk it.

The mysterious humanoid creature was said by eyewitness accounts to be over six feet tall, and possessing eyes twice as large as a human’s. Try to picture that for just a moment – pretty horrifying if you think about it.

What intrigues me most of all about the sketchy details of this Courier-Journal news report, though, is that the monster-man in question purportedly had scales instead of skin.

Indeed, many of the late nineteenth century reports of this sort were often either confabulation on the part of tall-tale-tellers, or even silliness dredged up by the journalists of the day when local news was less than worthy of reporting, and they were struggling to compete with other area dailies–hence the “creation” of the occasional Tom Foolery (just ask Mark Twain).

Nonetheless, within a century of the reports of a “scaly wild man” in Louisville, a different kind of scaly critter would turn up a little further east in Loveland, Ohio. First witnessed in 1955 by an area businessman, the report entailed the appearance of three or four three-foot-tall humanoids with frog-like faces gathered together beneath a bridge. One element pertaining to this encounter that provides a slightly more UFO-oriented air dealt with a strange object one of the creatures had been wielding, which emitted sparks, according to the witness. Again in 1972 a frog-like “man” was witnessed by several area police officers on two occasions early in the morning near the Little Miami River. One officer, Mark Mathews, managed to fire of a shot at the creature as it fled the scene. He described it as being “three to four feet tall, 50 to 75 pounds, leathery skin, possibly wet – matted hair on its body that made it look textured, possible tail, a head and face like a frog or lizard, and could leap over the roads’ guard rail.” The same year, an encounter occurred at Thetis Lake, British Columbia, involving a monster resembling “The Creature from the Black Lagoon” that prompted an official investigation by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. Later, Russell Van Nice, who had been present among the original witnesses to the encounter claimed “it was just a big lie,” accusing his friend, Mike Gold, of “trying to get attention,” and calling him a “habitual liar.”

Finally, following our chronology of Lizard Men that appear in various locales, Bishopville SC’s creature differed from the diminutive “Loveland Frogs” particularly in size; reportedly seven feet tall and more aggressive than its Northern kin, the most famous account was reported by then-teenager Christopher Davis:

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.

The creature was seen several more times following Davis’ sighting before it sank back into the waters of Scape Ore Swamp again, returning to the fringes of obscurity. Occasionally, there are still reports of Lizard Men in the area; in October 2005, a woman in the nearby town of Newberry phoned police to warn them she had “seen two creatures resembling the Lizard Man outside her home.” Responding officer Michael Kennedy merely told the woman that “(they) just like to check on humans from time to time.”

If something as fantastic and implausible as the existence of reptilians in our midst could have any fact to it, how do these creatures manage to elude us so easily? Can we suspend our judgment long enough to consider the variables, or is it better to doubt their existence altogether? The reports persist–though infrequently–and the mystery surrounding alleged encounters with non-human entities of this world will no doubt continue to thrive, just as these strange, scaly watchers in the darkness may have been able to do for so long.