Spooky Season is nearly upon us, my loves! And so in advance celebration of the air finally freaking cooling down a couple degrees, I bring you badly retold ghost stories from my home state of South Carolina!
I'd have suggested Florida, since that's where I spent my early childhood, but tbh Florida is just so...Florida...that ghosts can't upstage the shenanigans of the living.
1. The Lizard Man of Scape Ore Swamp
My dude starts out in 1988 with police reports about a woman's car having claw and teeth marks, with muddy footprints and hair left behind. Ah yes, lizards: famously hairy creatures. After a teenager calls the cops about a seven foot tall "green" "wet-ish" critter doing its darndest to go car surfing -- and maybe snack on some teenage drivers if he gets the munchies -- the two reports kinda get conflated and the Lizard Man was born. Very shortly thereafter, the local chamber of commerce realized they could capitalize on a local cryptid, and he’s been a regional meme ever since.
Worth noting: 2 years before our scaly friend debuted, The Swamp Thing was filmed in the same state 🤔
2. Lavinia Fisher, the Demon Barber Innkeeper of Fleet Street Charleston
Because who doesn't like beds that are secretly trap doors, right?
That's the legendary modus operandi, at least. This was the 1800s, so what we know now might be as badly retold as anything I could make up, as a disclaimer.
The story goes that John and Lavinia Fisher ran an inn called Six Mile House, which is a strange thing to name a house, except when you have built it six miles from Charleston. Nice little place, but people started noticing that it seemed to be a branch of the Hotel California: you could check in anytime you liked, but you were never going to leave. But considering the lack of a Yelp column in the newspaper, this took a while to be noticed.
Lavinia would welcome wealthy guests in, make them comfortable, make them feel at home, and then make them poisoned tea. Not enough to immediately kill, just enough to drug them.
Now, you may be wondering what I initially wondered: But Radio, wouldn't they have tasted something odd?
And now I regret to inform you of the peculiarity that is South Carolina Sweet Tea.
Sweet Tea is definitely a Southern Thing around here, but I'll say this: the sweet tea I've had in other typically southern states at least tasted like tea. The stuff we have here around the capitol? It's syrup in a cup. You could put it in a feeder and attract hummingbirds. Pour it on some decorative ivory and your knickknacks will develop cavities. Its served cold because if you drank that much sugar while hot your teeth would instantly mutiny and flee your mouth.
Lavinia could've put whatever she wanted in that stuff and it probably would've been hard to tell. And Southern Manners would mean those poor saps would just pretend not to notice the taste. Either that, or their taste buds were already so destroyed by their own preferred blends of sweet tea that they wouldn't have known the difference anyway.
Once a guest got sleepy, John and Lavinia would show them to a guest room and leave them to go to bed. But seeing as you read the beginning of this section, you already know where that bed is going: straight through the floor.
I don't know how they set that up, but I'm picturing like, the frame just opening and dropping the whole kit and caboodle down.
Supposedly, they kept a row of spikes in the basement for the guest to drop onto. Honestly though, that would tear up the mattress or pallet wouldn't it? That's not a cost effective way to mug your inn guests and still hide evidence. So unless they had an unlimited supply of replacement bedding, we can probably ignore the spikes in favor of the rather more Sweeney Todd theory: that John was waiting downstairs with an axe to finish what the blunt force trauma started.
It all had to come crashing down eventually, of course.
The scheme, not the trapdoor, mind you.
Eventually a guest with taste came along: a word here used to indicate that he could tell the difference between tea and syrup in a cup. When Lavinia made her special brew, he took a sip and had a perfectly reasonable reaction:
But he didn’t want to hurt his host's feelings. After all, we can't all be skilled in measuring an Appropriate Amount of Sweetener. So he waited until Lavinia was busy, and dumped the tea down the sink. Of course, this had the side effect of him not being sleepy when he went to his room. He was still up and puttering around when John and Lavinia pulled the lever, and saw his bed disappear into the floor.
Naturally, he beat feet and informed the authorities that Six Mile House was not, strictly speaking, up to code. As a result, John and Lavinia were arrested and charged with highway robbery and mass murder, for which both were later executed. Nobody actually knows how many people died in the inn, nor exactly how involved Lavinia actually was.
3. One more for the road: Bigfoot
Yes, I said Bigfoot.
Generally, we stick to our Lizard Man, and maybe the Catawba River Runner. But there have been just enough Bigfoot Incidents for police in 2017 to put out a warning for locals not to shoot at any Bigfoots (Bigfeet?) Lest they harm a prankster in a monkeysuit.
Aaaaaand then September arrived. And with it, a surprise cameo by the big fella himself at Hunting Island State Park. I, personally, stand by my theory that many "Bigfoot" sightings are Regular Animals In Places They Definitely Shouldn't Be (like the monkeys that live in Wekiwa Springs, FL). I personally find that explanation both technically still a cryptid, and also very entertaining. Brownish black fur, five or so feet tall, walking upright, according to witnesses.
The park superintendent says he's taking it as a "credible incident", so make of that what you will.
