Jonah Chester covers flooding, sea level rise and climate change for the Post and Courier's Rising Waters Lab.
On Nov. 2, a hunter in Newberry County claimed he encountered a giant, hairy beast while traipsing through the woods. It was at least 7 feet tall, with long arms a-swinging.
It wasn't one of those Yemassee research monkeys searching for freedom. It was Bigfoot, the hunter reported to The Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization -- a group dedicated to the study of the giant creature. (It later found the hunter's claim credible.)
Local News Man claims he saw Bigfoot near Columbia. It's not the first reported spotting in SC. By Zoe Nicholson znicholson@free-times.com
Alleged Bigfoot sightings are fairly common in South Carolina. But he's not the only mystery creature in the deep swamps, dark forests and misty mountains of the Palmetto State.
South Carolina is home to countless mythical cryptids -- creatures which many claim exist, but for which there's no scientific evidence. Real or not, they could offer a glimpse into how humans relate to the natural world.
"Sometimes they're about our fears and anxieties, but I think more often they're about the way that we wish that the world was," said Scott Poole, a professor of history at the College of Charleston and the author of "Monsters in America: Our Historical Obsession with the Hideous and the Haunting." Poole emphasized that he's a skeptic who doesn't believe in monsters.
"But I think I actually understand and sympathize with the desire for cryptids to exist," he added. "It's really, partially, kind of a desire for there to be more wonder in the world ... at a time when the world feels like it's sort of been Google-mapped, and there are not the places at the edge of the map anymore with the 'Here be dragons' signs."
Poole said its common for communities to shift the narratives around their local cryptids away from blood-sucking monsters toward friendly or benign.
"I recall a conversation with someone in Bishopville many years ago who was a lizard man believer," he said. "It was very, very important to them that I understand that lizard man was a vegetarian."
Some cryptids are hometown heroes, like the lizard man of Scape Ore Swamp. Others date back centuries, with deep, rich roots in indigenous and Gullah-Geechee cultures, like the Boo-Hag or mermaid. A few are misunderstandings or jokes: the orange alligator of 2017 likely was just a victim of a cosmetic crime.
And some are, frankly, blatant rip-offs of others. Giant ape-like creatures are a common cryptid, from the Bigfoot of the Northwest to the Yeti of the Himalayas. Messie is, essentially, just the Loch Ness Monster of Lake Murray.
Return of the Lizard Man Return of the Lizard Man: Bishopville's journey to reclaim the SC monster By Thad Moore tmoore@postandcourier.com Wonder from the unknown
When a bony, prehistoric-looking blob washed up on Folly Beach in 2012, the event quickly drew national media attention. Sea monsters were real, and they had come to South Carolina.
But it wasn't a monster at all. It was an Atlantic sturgeon, bloated by death and bleached by the bright light of day. Prehistoric? Yes. The species dates back some 85 million years. But still a well-documented, common species of fish.
(For now, at least. The same year one washed up on Folly, the Atlantic sturgeon was added to the federal Endangered Species list -- a victim of habitat degradation and overfishing.)
The edges of the map might be filled in, but the depths remain largely unexplored. One 2011 study theorized that 86 percent of Earth's land species and 91 percent of ocean-dwelling species remain undiscovered, while a separate study found those undescribed species are more vulnerable to extinction.
Any newly discovered species are unlikely to be some kind of land-dwelling megafauna, like a giant ape or lizard man. With so much still to learn, what drives humanity's need to create monsters?
Special Reports Warming waters threaten a deep-sea coral wonder off Charleston's coast By Jonah Chester jchester@postandcourier.com
"These cryptids remind us that the world is still wild, that there's still something to discover," said Tom Mould, a professor of anthropology and folklore at Butler University. "When these beings are associated with the woods or a swamp or a particular kind of geographic area, it's also kind of a reminder that those spaces are still wild."
The community-moderated Cryptid Wiki page for South Carolina notes that many of the state's newly documented monsters have been aquatic in nature. Much of the ocean remains largely unmapped, including areas just off the South Carolina coast.
Vast, mysterious creatures still inhabit those depths. Poole points to the recent discovery of Earth's largest documented coral reef, a find made in the midst of the largest coral bleaching event on record for the planet.
"I understand why a coral reef doesn't do it for everybody," Poole said. "I think it's a fairly universal human tendency to need wonder from the unknown rather than the known. If we lived in a world where we saw dragons every day, we would have house cat sightings."
Nobody knows what became of the Folly Beach Monster. In all likelihood, it was either washed back out to sea by a rising tide or carried home by a souvenir-seeker. Or maybe some secretive federal agency absconded with it to some far-flung lab, and filed it away next to the alien that crashed at Roswell.