To be honest, the photo looks a bit like a promo still for a bad B-movie. Ed Wood bad. “Mystery Science Theater 3000” bad. Bad bad.
In the shot, what could be charitably called a lizard man is depicted stalking the woodline Sunday outside a Bishopville, South Carolina, church.
It’s hard not to look at the picture and see Guy In a Lizard Suit Man.
“My hand to God, I am not making this up,” the woman who says she took the photo wrote to CNN affiliate WCIV. She says she took the photo while leaving church.
Amazingly, the Internet did not seem to believe her.
“$10 says that #LizardMan sightings in South Carolina are really just a Scooby-Doo villain scaring people away from some buried treasure,” one Twitter user wrote.
But wait, there’s more! Lizard Man also seems to appear in a newly released video shot by a hunter back in May who told WCIV that the newest sighting helped him (human) man up.
“I saw your lizard man story and it’s given me the courage to send you a video I took in early May,” the man wrote WCIV.
From behind a tree, the man filmed what looks to be Lizard Man, stalking Bishopville’s Scape Ore Swamp.
That’s where, WCIV reports, most of the sightings of Lizard Man have occurred. The first sighting came in 1988, the station says, when a 17-year-old out at 2 a.m. returned home with scratches on the roof the car and a damaged mirror.
He reported that a lizard man (he wasn’t yet Lizard Man, of course) charged him as he was changing his tire and then jumped on the car as he tried to drive away, the station says.
He resurfaced again in 2008, locals say, tearing up the hood of Bob Rawson’s minivan, according to a CNN report from the time.
“You think it’s a joke, but you look at the damage to the vehicle, it’s hard to say,” then-Lee County Sheriff E.J. Melvin said.
If all that doesn’t convince you, there’s this bit of verifying detail: Lizard Man has a Twitter account. Never mind he’s tweeted only eight times, starting Monday. Give him a break; he’s a lizard.
“Born in swamp. Relocated to Bishopville,SC. Shy and misunderstood. Love wrestling, NASCAR, and flies. Currently single, but looking. #lizardman,” he mashed poetically with his webby, beclawed hands.
“Why do I hide? This is no Far Side comic. I can’t throw on a trench coat and go to the Bishopville Dairy Queen unnoticed,” he says.
But, he says, he’d be down for a good steak, medium rotten.
“I’m 1/2 Lizard & 1/2 Man,” he writes. “So I love flies but also love steak. So my perfect steak is one that has been left out too long.”
All he really seems to want is validation. It’s not easy being Lizard Man in a world that doesn’t believe in Lizard Man, he tweeted to a WCIV reporter.
“It is hard to prove being the “real” #lizardman,” he writes. “I have no drivers license. I failed the eye test. Again. #bishopvilledmv.”