Lore - Legends 28: Lizard People

Episode Date: May 27, 2024

Snakes and lizards have frightened people around the world for thousands of years. But the truly terrifying stories of scaley beings exist in the legends we whisper around campfires. Narrated and produced by Aaron Mahnke, with writing by Harry Marks and research by Cassandra de Alba. ————————— Lore Resources:  Episode Music: lorepodcast.com/music  Episode Sources: lorepodcast.com/sources  All the shows from Grim & Mild: www.grimandmild.com ————————— Sponsors: Acorns: Acorns helps you automatically save & invest for your future. Head to acorns.com/lore to sign up for Acorns to start saving and investing for your future today! CrunchLabs: Camp CrunchLabs starts this June, with a Build Box delivered every week for 12 weeks—making it the least boring summer ever! Sign your kids up today at CrunchLabs.com/LORE. BetterHelp: Lore is sponsored by BetterHelp. Give online therapy a try at BetterHelp.com/LORE, and get on your way to being your best self. To report a concern regarding a radio-style, non-Aaron ad in this episode, reach out to [e-mail] with the name of the company or organization so we can look into it. ————————— To advertise on our podcast, please reach out to [e-mail], or visit our listing here. ————————— ©2024 Aaron Mahnke. All rights reserved.

Welcome to Lore Legends, a subset of lore episodes that explore the strange tales we whisper in the dark, even if they can't always be proven by the history books. So if you're ready, let's begin. The beautiful young woman stepped off the boat into the pristine blue water. It had been untainted by humanity until now, and it stayed that way for a reason. Little did our visitor know that there was something below her, hiding under the water. It observed her through sunken eyes as deep as the ocean, and as she swam, it lunged toward her, close enough to touch. Suddenly, a voice called out, summoning her back to the boat, but the creature beneath her wasn't ready to let go.

It reached out with a webbed hand and grazed her foot before retreating back to the depths. The scene from the 1954 film The Creature from the Black Lagoon shocked audiences everywhere. It opened to great success, both critically and commercially, and influenced a number of science fiction and horror films following its release. Heck you can find traces of its impact in modern films like Alien and The Shape of Water. But amphibious and reptilian monsters aren't just relegated to the silver screen. Believe it or not, they've appeared in a host of local legends, too. Despite their propensity for making audiences laugh, most people are actually scared to death of creepy crawlies that slither

and scurry. Which begs the question, what happens when one of our fears becomes a bit more monstrous? Across the globe, some legends collect whispers of monsters that are a step beyond mere lizards or serpents. They are the very definition of cold-blooded and so unnatural that they're absolutely terrifying. I'm Aaron Manke, and this is Lore Legends. We often think of lakes as peaceful, the kind of place where you can relax, sitting in a

small rowboat waiting for the fish to bite as the sun rises over the trees. It can be pure bliss, but lakes aren't always so tranquil. Some are large enough to have crashing waves and crushing depths. Others have a different kind of problem, like Lake Hopakang. It's located in northern New Jersey and holds the title as the state's largest lake, measuring nine miles long and spanning across 2,500 acres. It seems like a serene blue slice of heaven, but gliding beneath its surface is something terrifying, something only seen by a

handful of people. One of the first sightings occurred in 1894, when a local fisherman spotted strange movement on the lake. It was described as a monster that seemed to rise from the depths, rocking the man's boat in its wake. This beast was at least 40 feet long and, I quote, as thick as a man's leg, according to a witness statement. It had what looked like the head of a St. Bernard on the body of an enormous snake. Several witnesses allegedly fired their guns at it to no avail.

One man claimed that he'd fired a.38 caliber rifle at the serpent and the bullet didn't even make a dent. Of course, as soon as people started claiming that they'd seen the beast of Lake Opecong, skeptics got to work debunking their claims. They suggested that it was nothing but a giant mud turtle, but those who had seen it knew otherwise. People started calling it Hopi, named after the lake it was discovered in, and sightings have continued for years. But despite its massive size and solitary location, no one has been able to snap a photo.

Yet. But Lake Hopakong isn't the only lake facing such a monstrous problem. And even though it may be easy to blame this particular state for its unidentified monsters, it's not just a New Jersey phenomenon. 3,000 miles away in Vancouver, British Columbia, is Thetis Lake, a popular hangout surrounded by over a thousand acres of parkland, and it has a reptilian lurker as well. In 1972, two teenage boys reported that they had encountered something bizarre at Thetis Lake, but unlike Hopi, this beast wasn't in the water. The first time they saw it, it was near a concession stand on the beach. They spotted it again on a nearby rock bluff overlooking the water.

According to an article published in the local paper, the strange creature was, and I quote, about five feet three inches long, fluorescent gray in color, triangular in shape with three points on the top of its head. One of the boys even claimed that he'd gotten close enough to cut his hand on those points. They were razor sharp. But it didn't take long for more sightings to be reported. Four days later, two young boys told the Royal Canadian Mounted Police that they had gotten as close as 15 yards from a horrifying sight in the water. But it didn't chase or attack them.

Instead, it just sort of had a look around before disappearing below the lake's surface. They described it as having the body of a person covered in silvery scales with a monstrous face, large ears, and a sharp point on the top of its head. It honestly sounded like something out of a drive-in movie from the 1950s, but even though the Mounties were hesitant to believe them, they still investigated their claim. But their search quickly came to a close after a local man mentioned the loss of his pet. He owned a tegu lizard, a three-foot long South American reptile

with black and white fluorescent scales and a lumpy head. It was assumed by many that the new Thetis Lake monster was simply a stray house pet. Still, some locals believe that a tegu lizard didn't quite fit the description the newspapers had given. Years later, many concerns were put to rest after Daniel Loxton, an editor at Junior Skeptic Magazine, tracked down one of the boys.

Now an adult, the man told Loxton that he had made the whole thing up. Not only that, but his friend had been a known liar who told wild stories for attention. And then the final nail in the legend's coffin was a television listing that had been dug up from a week before the first sighting in 1972. A local station had aired a poor quality B-movie from the 1960s called The Beach Girls and the Monster, which featured a lizard-like humanoid creature that emerged from the water to terrorize local teens. Still, none of this evidence has stopped sightings from being reported.

As recently as 2006, the Thetis Lake Monster was seen stalking the shore in search of its next meal. And I get it, it's unsettling when the lines between fact and fiction get blurred. Especially when that might mean that a monster is skulking about. But these lakes aren't the only spots where people have spotted scaly creatures. They tend to snake their way into all sorts of places, even the ones we might least expect. Two hours east of Los Angeles is the city of Riverside, Two hours east of Los Angeles is the city of Riverside, an apt name given Charlie Wetzel's encounter on the night of November 8th of 1958.

Charlie had been driving on Riverside's North Main Street, approaching a bridge that spanned the Santa Ana River. Up ahead, he noticed water rushing over a dip in the road, a surprising sight since the riverbed almost never got that high. So he slowed down his car to get a better look, and that's when he saw it, looming over his two-door green Buick. It was six feet tall, with glowing eyes set into a rounded head, but that head had no ears or nose, and its skin was covered in layers of scales or leaves.

Charlie couldn't be sure, given the lack of light. But as it lurched closer toward him, more details came into sight. It had very long arms, and its legs were attached at the sides of its torso rather than at the bottom, much like a lizard's. Charlie's ears burned as the beast screamed and gurgled. It reached one of its gangly arms toward his windshield and scratched at the glass. Not willing to wait and see what would happen to him, Charlie grabbed the gun he kept in his car and then floored the Buick toward the monster. It let out a blood-curdling shriek as the car's wheels thumped over its body. When the distraught Charlie got home, he explained to his wife everything that had happened.

She told him to call the police. But they weren't much help. The cops theorized that poor Mr. Wetzel had probably just surprised a vulture that had been eating a dead rabbit in the middle of the street. But their investigation didn't turn anything up. No bunny, no feathers. They checked his car for signs of damage, and that's where their investigation took a terrifying turn.

There, along the windshield, were claw marks from some unknown creature. Meanwhile, the Buick's undercarriage showed signs that it had run over something, and all this time, Charlie insisted that whatever he had seen was not human. The following night, another driver found themselves face to face with a massive creature that had jumped out of the underbrush. The incident occurred in the same area as before. Some have claimed that both individuals saw a Bigfoot, but their descriptions don't line up with what we know about that particular creature from folklore.

Instead, the truth is even stranger. What Charlie and the other driver had seen on the bridge was actually the disgusting and terrifying Cecil Johnson. Johnson was a former Riverside City College biology professor, and he had come up with an interesting way to pass the time. He would wear a phosphorescent costume and a mask, and it would scare people going over the bridge.

He admitted to doing this multiple times. It wasn't a hobby that you might expect from a respected biology professor, but who are we to tell someone what they should or shouldn't do outside of their work hours, right? Of course, if Wetzel really had run him over, you'd think that it might have turned him off from doing it again. Maybe it really was Mr. Johnson. Or maybe it was something else. You see, across the country that same year, a Nebraska man was staying at his cabin near

Grand Island in the middle of the state. He'd been looking out at the surrounding area when he noticed a pack of deer chasing some dogs. That seemed unusual, as deer were often the ones who were being chased. So the man walked toward the commotion to get a better look. And that's when he saw a creature, six feet tall jumping toward the dogs. It was able to leap ten feet into the air, and it looked kind of like a kangaroo. Was it actually an animal from down under? No one knows for sure. Several other witnesses came forward that year claiming to have seen a

giant kangaroo hopping around the area. But this man was special, because he had something in common with the Buick driver from Riverside, California. His name was also Charlie Wetzel. Amazingly, no relation. Still, the Los Angeles area is no stranger to bizarre creatures lurking in the shadows. In fact, some have been there for years, hiding right under our noses. You have to be something of a character to live in L.A. After all, that's where characters are made. G. Warren Schufelt was one such person.

In the 1930s, Warren was just a mining engineer with a dream. He had learned that in the late 1890s, three men had found $20,000 worth of gold while digging in the old Protestant cemetery on Fort Moore Hill nearby. It had been hidden there by American forces in 1847 during the Mexican-American War. Well, even after the war, the gold was never claimed. And in 1902, an elderly Mexican woman on her deathbed left behind a hand-drawn map for a friend, telling them where the gold was buried.

By the 1930s, the gold was still hidden, but now there was a problem. The city was getting ready to level most of Fort Moore Hill in order to build a civic center. Warren, realizing that he was running out of time, decided to try and find the treasure for himself. He built a device he called a radio X-ray. It used a pendulum on a copper wire to tell him where minerals and tunnels were located underground. And so with the radio X-ray in hand, Warren and a small team of treasure hunters set out

to Fort Moore Hill in search of gold. Their expedition didn't yield any riches, but they did find one unexpected treasure. Tunnels Warren claimed that he mapped a series of tunnels and vaults that had gone unnoticed for years. And pretty soon, his dreams of untold wealth turned into an obsession with the underground passageways that he had uncovered.

Eventually he consulted with a man named Little Chief Greenleaf of Arizona's Hopi tribe, who shed some light on the origins of these tunnels. Greenleaf explained how, thousands of years ago, there had been three ancient lost cities along the Pacific coastline, and Warren had stumbled onto one of them. But the question was, who had lived there? The story of Warren's discovery was published in 1934 in an article in the Los Angeles Times. It described how the engineer, and I quote, a little staff of assistants, had already drilled a 250-foot deep shaft into Fort Moore Hill.

They claimed that he had mapped 1900 square feet worth of tunnels, which led to rooms as big as 9,000 square feet in size. He provided the LA Times with a map of his discovery, too, along with an explanation of how they got there. According to Warren, the tunnels had been built by a group that he and Greenleaf called the Lizard People. They'd been an advanced race, much smarter than today's modern humans. So smart that they hadn't dug the tunnels at all. Instead, they had used a chemical process to burn away the subterranean rock, after which they had covered the tunnel walls with a very strong cement.

Now, to see these tunnels up close wouldn't reveal much. To get the full picture, you have to see them laid out on a map, like the one that Warren created, because according to him, these corridors and passageways formed the shape of a lizard, with its head below what is now Dodger Stadium and its tail under the central library. Now, you might be asking the question, why would these lizard people build the tunnels in the first place? Well, they had a good reason. For protection.

Apparently, a cataclysmic fireball had carved a several hundred mile-wide path through the region, destroying everything it touched. The tunnels were designed to protect them from future fires, housing as many as a thousand families inside. They would sustain themselves on what one author later referred to as imperishable herbs. Some versions of the legend claim that the Lizard People received warning that more fire was set to rain down on them, so they sealed themselves within the tunnels for protection. However, they slowly died as natural gas seeped inside with nowhere else to go.

Other rumors about the tunnels claim that there were gold tablets hidden somewhere inside, etched with the story of humanity's origins, as well as information about the Mayans. Although, the lizard people predate the Mayans by a wide margin, so that's less likely. But Warren was certain that he was right. In fact, his X-rays allegedly revealed 37 such tablets within the tunnel system,

each one measuring four feet long and 14 inches wide. So what was the explanation for this convoluted system of tunnels, gold tablets, and ancient Hopi folklore? Well, one could argue that it was Warren's desire for fame and notoriety. There was an offshoot of the Hopi called the Lizard Clan, but according to Professor Paul Apodocca of California's Chapman University, Warren Schufelt took the idea too far, concocting a fantasy of a lost civilization. The thing is, it's possible that the Lizard people did exist, just not in the way we think. Because there's more to this cold-blooded story than meets the eye. All we have to do is dig a little deeper.

Now I'm with you. When we hear the phrase, lizard people, we all probably think of 1950s B-movies and actors in silly rubber costumes, like I mentioned before. After all, both Godzilla and the creature from the Black Lagoon were just people in suits. But there's another image that comes to mind, of individuals covered in scales with forked tongues.

In other words, hybrid creatures or descendants of actual lizards. But the reality was a bit more mundane. The tunnel-dwelling society that Warren Shufelt had been searching for wasn't reptilian at all. It was simply comprised of humans who revered lizards. To them, these animals were symbols of a long life. Gold also happened to be a symbol of life to them, which is why they carved their stories into writing tablets made of the precious metal.

Over time, though, the legends evolved, taking on more fantastical details as they went. Believers in these stories claim that these lizard people are able to shape-shift into other creatures or people, and that they have lizard-like heads on top of human bodies. According to some experts, the reptilian conspiracy theories actually started a few years before Warren found the tunnels. In August of 1929, Robert E. Howard wrote about human beings with the heads of snakes. These strange creatures also had the ability to shapeshift into fully human forms at any time.

Apparently, the snake men had been impersonating high-ranking members of the government council before their ruse was discovered by Call the Conqueror. Howard, you see, was a fiction author, and his short story, The Shadow Kingdom, had been published in Weird Tales magazine. Even if you're not familiar with his name, though, you might know his most famous character, created just a few years later, Conan the Barbarian. Now, the evil plot by the snake men was just a story, but sometimes fiction finds a way into our reality.

Howard's tale was the start of a conspiracy theory that became so well known, it embedded itself firmly within popular culture. It suggested that the people at the top of the global food chain, such as presidents, dictators, wealthy industrialists, and even celebrities, were all actually lizard creatures in disguise.

In the years following its publication, other writers took up Howard's idea for their own stories. Over the years, though, some have positioned it as a true story of humanity's origins, rather than what it is, a fantasy. Angie Warren Shufelt's tunnels are sometimes cited as further proof that a species of reptilians not only existed, but might still be thriving. If not in the White House, then perhaps just under our feet. Some legends seem to flirt with the edges of the utterly ridiculous. But yes, while some reptilian folktales do seem to drift into the Twilight Zone for its

material, I hope you've enjoyed the broader journey we took today. Monsters, it seems, are all around us. That is, of course, if you want to believe. Then because of that, my team and I have tracked down one more scaly story. Stick around through this brief sponsored break to hear all about it. This episode of Lore was made possible by Acorns. I know that I should be investing, but if you're like me, you're not sure if you have enough money to start. Spoiler alert, you do. That's because Acorns makes it easy to invest with what

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In the southwest corner of Ohio is the small community of Crosswick. It's a pretty mild-mannered place to grow up and raise a family. At least it was until 1882. In May of that year, Crosswick found itself in the crosshairs of a monster. Rumors had circulated for years about a large creature in the region, supported mostly by witnesses noticing the tracks it left behind on the main dirt road, but no one had actually encountered anything. That is, until May 26, when two boys came face to face with terror. Ed was 13 years old, and his companion Joe was 11.

The boys had been sitting on the banks of the local creek, whiling away the day while fishing when they heard a noise behind them. Something was rustling in the underbrush. As they turned, they saw an enormous beast barreling toward them. The boys screamed, trying to find their footing, but they couldn't get away fast enough. Ed was snatched first by the creature's long arms in what the Cincinnati Inquirer described as a, and I quote, slimy embrace. It put him in its mouth and dragged him away toward a nearby tree trunk, trying to pull

him into the hole in the side. But three men who happened to be quarrying stone not far from the commotion ran to the scene as soon as they heard the screaming. They reached for Ed inside the hollow sycamore as the creature tried to drag the boy deeper. Scared of its pursuers, the beast let Ed go and disappeared down into the tree. Now, despite almost being killed, Ed had only suffered a few scratches and bruises, along with a hefty dose of trauma, for sure. That afternoon, a group of 60 armed men and their dogs gathered at the hollow sycamore,

determined to kill the beast for good. They started hacking and sawing, and it didn't take long before the thing living inside finally emerged. It was at least 30 to 40 feet long, covered in scales and over a foot in diameter. Its robust legs measured four feet long and it ran on 12-inch lizard-like feet, which were black and white and covered in big yellow spots. And on top of it all was a giant head, a black forked tongue protruding from its crimson

mouth. When it ran, it did so on its hind legs, using its tail to propel itself forward. As the creature burst from the inside of the tree, some of the men and their dogs ran away in fright, but others gave chase. That's when the lizard-like beast kicked things into high gear. It leapt about 14 feet into the air before speeding over the creek and up a small hill. It eventually escaped its pursuers by hiding in a hole beneath a large rock formation about a mile away.

Meanwhile, Ed was expected to make a full recovery, despite spending much of the evening waking from sleep in a panic. Several prominent men from town, including a reverend and a judge, had both witnessed the botched creature hunt themselves, and they swore that what the boys had seen had been as real and horrifying as they had described. The town vowed to kill the thing once and for all, and they would have, except for one small problem. It was never heard from again. This episode of Lore Legends was produced by me, Aaron Manke, with writing by Harry

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