Lizard People?

Not, strictly speaking, half-lizard half people, but still pretty damn Fortean. Have a gander at this, on the excellent Strange Maps blog.

(LA Times, 29 Jan 1934)
By Jean Bosquet

Busy Los Angeles, although little realizing it in the hustle and bustle of modern existence, stands above a lost city of catacombs filled with incalculable treasure and imperishable records of a race of humans further advanced intellectually and scientifically than even the highest type of present day peoples, in the belief of G. Warren Shufelt, geophysical engineer now engaged in an attempt to wrest from the lost city deep in the earth below Fort Moore Hill the secrets of the Lizard People of legendary fame in the medicine lodges of the American Indian.
 So firmly does Shufelt and a little staff of assistants believe that a maze of catacombs and priceless golden tablets are to be found beneath downtown Los Angeles that the engineer and his aides have already driven a shaft 250 feet into the ground, the mouth of the shaft being on the old Banning property on North Hill street overlooking Sunset Boulevard, Spring street and North Broadway.


Anyone read TED Klein's story 'Children of the Kingdom', collected in Dark Gods? A superb novella, all about blackouts, folklore and weird subterranean beings.

I love this underground stuff. Rather like airships and dinosaurs surviving up the jungle somewhere, the idea of strange subterranean cultures - living or dead - fascinates me. Ever since I read Journey to the Centre of the Earth, I've harboured the sneaking suspicion that something other than geophysics is going on Down There.

Of course, in an ideal world - or inside it - one would find a lost civilisation,Mesozoic flora and fauna, half-naked young tribal ladies and some actors.

Look! It's Peter Cushing and Trampas out of The Virginian!