Image
The circled area shows a humanoid figure as it turned toward the man recording it.
The fabled Bishopville swamp creature known as Lizard Man appears to have surfaced again Sunday afternoon.

Sarah, a Sumter woman who says she went to church with a friend Sunday morning, stepped out of the sanctuary to see the Lizard Man running along the tree line.

So she did what anyone else would do -- took a picture with her phone.

"My hand to God, I am not making this up," she wrote in an email to the ABC News 4 newsroom. "So excited!"

She says they were just a mile or so from Scape Ore Swamp, the site of a similar spotting of what may also be the Lizard Man in May.

A man who asked not to be identified submitted a short video of what he thought was the Lizard Man Monday morning. He said he took the video in May while coon hunting but kept its existence quiet -- until he saw the reports of Lizard Man outside a church.


"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. "Though my wife believes me that it's real, she said she would be embarrassed that everyone would think I was a loon so I kept it a secret."

The man said he took the video in Scape Ore Swamp just off Camden Highway in Bishopville.

In the 20-second video, the photographer ducks behind a tree as a dark figure with what appears to be a long tail walks by some 30 or 40 yards away.

The video stops as the figure appears to turn towards the camera.

"If you're wondering I absolutely believe it's real. I also don't know if it's the same thing you posted," he added. "When it noticed me I high tailed it out."

Scape Ore Swamp is the area where most of the Lizard Man sightings over the last 30 years have been focused.

Yes, there is quite a lot of local lore surrounding the reptilian humanoid, including the first sighting in the summer of 1988.

Known as the Davis sighting for the witness Christopher Davis, it starts with then-17-year-old Davis stopping on a road bordering the Scape Ore Swamp to change a flat tire at 2 a.m.

He heard noises, turned to see a 7-foot beast charging at him, so he ran for the safety of his car. The Lizard Man jumped on the roof as Davis tried to drive away. There were scratch marks on the roof and one of the side mirror had been damaged.

And the legend was born.

There have been plaster casts of the mythical beast's claw. There have been million-dollar rewards to capture the Lizard Man alive.

Since the first sightings in the late 1980s, the Lizard Man sightings have trailed off.

One of the last alleged encounter with the Lizard Man came in 2011 when a Bishopville couple reported their car had been mauled overnight.

There were teeth marks in in the metal and saliva coating several discarded parts.

Still, there have been searches by Destination Truth and Mysteries at the Museum as recently as 2013. In a 2014 episode of Ancient Aliens, the Lizard Man was mentioned.

The tales have been documented in a cryptozoology book titled Lizard Man: The True Story of the Bishopville Monster.

But the creature has not been seen in more than a decade -- until now, possibly creating yet another ripple in the swampy waters around Bishopville.