Aloha, Tide Riders. Happy New Year and welcome to a brand new saga to kick off 2026 on California Craziness, where we'll focus on stories from my home state. For our first installment, we've got a doozy. Beneath the sun-baked streets of Los Angeles, a stranger story has been lurking for nearly a century.

In today’s episode of Strange Tides: The Short Board Sessions, we drop into one of Southern California’s most enduring bits of high weirdness: the Lizard People of Los Angeles. From a Depression-era mining engineer armed with a mysterious “radio X-ray” machine, to whispered tunnels beneath Fort Moore Hill, gold tablets, and reptilian rumors that refuse to die, this is a myth that keeps shedding its skin.

We trace the legend from G. Warren Shufelt’s failed 1934 dig, through pulp fiction, misread Indigenous stories, Cold War paranoia, and into the modern internet age—where the idea of something ancient, hidden, and watching still thrives. Along the way, we separate what was actually claimed from what got amplified, mutated, and memed, and ask why Los Angeles in particular seems to invite underground legends.

This is a shorter session, but the story runs deep: part urban folklore, part conspiracy culture, part mirror held up to a city built on layers of reinvention. Whether you hear it as lost history, symbolic myth, or pure California weirdness, the Lizard People of LA remain one of the strangest currents flowing beneath the city.

Wax up, drop in, and keep one eye on the shadows under your feet.

Links and Sources:

Bosquet, Jean. "Lizard People's Catacomb City Hunted" – Los Angeles Times, January 29, 1934 - https://www.latimes.com/archives (Search "Lizard People 1934)

"Treasure Hunters Reach 250 Feet in Search for Lizard People's Gold" – Los Angeles Times, March 5, 1934 - https://www.latimes.com/archives

Icke, David. The Biggest Secret* (1999) - https://www.amazon.com/Biggest-Secret-Book-That-Change/dp/0952614766

Howard, Robert E. "The Shadow Kingdom" (1929) - http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks06/0601711.txt

Doreal, Maurice. Mysteries of the Gobi (1940s) - https://sacred-texts.com/atl/dtp/index.htm

Waters, Frank. Book of the Hopi (1963) - https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/297295/book-of-the-hopi-by-frank-waters/

"The Legend of Los Angeles' Lizard People" – PBS SoCal, January 27, 2014 - https://www.pbssocal.org/history-society/the-legend-of-los-angeles-lizard-people

"The Lizard People of Los Angeles" – Historic Mysteries blog, March 25, 2024 - https://www.historicmysteries.com/lizard-people-los-angeles/

"The Lizard People Beneath Los Angeles" – Olguin Scene blog, August 22, 2017 - https://olguinscene.com/lizard-people-los-angeles/

"The Lizard People of Los Angeles" – Hollywood Times, January 30, 2025 - https://thehollywoodtimes.today/lizard-people-los-angeles/

Public Policy Polling Survey – April 2, 2013 - https://www.publicpolicypolling.com/polls/national-conspiracy-theory-poll-april-2013/

PRRI Survey – May 27, 2021 - https://www.prri.org/research/conspiracy-theories-2021/

California Death Index - https://www.familysearch.org/search/collection/2015582