People have been referencing sentient reptilian entities, sometimes humanoid, sometimes not, going back to some of the earliest written works and legends known to man. In more modern times, according to a survey done by the firm Public Policy Polling approximately 4% of Americans queried claimed they believe Lizard People are influencing world politics, with an additional 7% on the fence on this question. So how did the idea of Lizard People ruling the world start?

To begin with, for those unfamiliar with our Lizard overlords, while there are a variety of versions of this conspiracy theory, the general notion is that a few different types of reptilian humanoids walk among us. Chief among these creatures are a type speculated to come from the Draco constellation, because apparently the Lizard People knew their little corner of the galaxy would look vaguely like a serpent from Earth when connecting the dots during a certain part of Earth’s history, and so went ahead and spent millions of years evolving appropriately on their home planet to match. The Draconians are apparently tall, winged, reptilian humanoids who not only secretly rule over humans, but more overtly rule over other types of lizard people as well. As for those others, the second most prominent group widely held among adherents to this conspiracy are the shape shifting human/reptilian hybrids.

Naturally, thanks to the fact that the Lizard People are secretly working to control humanity, many former and current prominent world leaders, such as Queen Elizabeth II, Barack Obama, and Donald Trump, along with celebrities like Angelina Jolie, Betty White, Simon Whistler, and Katy Perry, are all known to be shape shifting reptoids.

As to why said reptoids wish to rule the world, there are a variety of reasons given, with the most prominent two being that they are here for our gold, and alternatively that they feed on negative energy from humans, particularly given off when we’re afraid, angry, or just generally anxious. Thus, they wish to create an Orwellian world government system in order to more easily manipulate our collective emotions for their own sustenance.

This now brings us to who actually first came up with the modern idea of these reptilian overlords in the first place.

While, as noted, sentient reptilians of some form or another have seemingly been around in human legend for as long as we’ve been humaning, one of the earliest and most influential references of Lizard People in more modern times can be found in Robert E. Howard’s 1929 story “The Shadow Kingdom” published in the pulp magazine Weird Tales.

Not coincidentally, these beings are shockingly similar to the modern perception of Lizard People. In a nutshell, the story involves ancient shape shifting reptilian humanoids with elaborate underground abodes who work in the shadows to rule humanity, including via infiltrating various groups and using mind control to influence world politics.

This and subsequent works by Howard would go on to popularize some version of these Lizard People, including in works by a close friend of his, H.P. Lovecraft. The concept caught on from here and has shown no signs of stopping in science fiction since.

Noteworthy here for reasons we’ll get to in a bit is one individual, mystic correspondence school founder Maurice Doreal, who would seemingly be inspired by Howard’s Lizard People when creating many written works for his followers, most notably The Emerald Tablets of Thoth the Atlantean. Except in Doreal’s case, he would use these science fiction characters to create a supposed real history of Earth that incorporates reptoids as factual beings.

Another notable incident that helped spread the idea of Lizard People occurred in 1934 and 1935 when one G Warren Shufelt was looking for gold in California. To aid in his endeavor, Shufelt invented a device that he claimed used “radio X-rays” to see deep into the Earth, and was apparently able to be used to find precious metals, like gold, as well.  Of course, his device didn’t actually use X-rays, but rather used a common dowsing pendulum, as described in a January 29, 1934 edition of the Los Angeles Times,

Shufelt’s radio device consists chiefly of a cylindrical glass case inside of which a plummet attached to a copper wire held by the engineer sways continually, pointing, he asserts, toward minerals or tunnels below the surface of the ground, and then revolves when over the mineral or swings in prolongation of the tunnel when above the excavation.

Using this device, the Times piece reveals a rather astounding discovery made by Shufelt,

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…

Shufelt himself goes on of the discovery, “I knew I was over a pattern of tunnels and I had mapped out the course of the tunnels, the position of large rooms scattered along the tunnel route as well as the position of deposits of gold, but I couldn’t understand the meaning of it.”

Shufelt made a breakthrough, however, when he came across a Hopi Native American who went by the name Little Chief Greenleaf, as well as “L. Macklin”. Shufelt claims Greenleaf told him about 5,000 years ago Hopi history speaks of lizard people who built vast underground cities in the region, recording their own history on gold tablets.

Hearing this story, Shufelt connected the dots and believed he had found one of these cities, and could prove it because within the chambers he found, to quote, “gold tablets with perfect corners, sides and ends… scientific proof of [the gold’s] existence.”

Of course, given that he was using nothing more than a dowsing pendulum, it’s not really clear how he could have detected anything, let alone gold tablets hundreds of feet below the surface of the Earth. And we’re not really sure how claiming you found gold is scientific proof of finding gold. But he sure was happy to take investors’ money to pursue the dig.

On that note, with the story being published in newspapers across the country, Shufelt was able to both garner city support for the project, in exchange for 50% of any gold found, as well as get sufficient money from investors to start excavating.

Unfortunately for his investors, as often happens when you dig deep holes, the result is eventually encountering water, with the project ultimately stopping at a depth of about 350 feet because of this complication. While Shufelt had thus successfully accomplished drilling a well, sadly, he did not manage to find any buried treasure.

As to what happen to him after, he doesn’t appear to have used his radio x-ray device on any other projects and more or less disappeared from history other than it being recorded that he died in California in 1957.

As to the Hopi legend he used to garner so much support for his project, it should be noted here that while this story is often used as support of the existence of Lizard People, beyond the fact that no such tunnels were ever found, it is explicitly noted in accounts from Shufelt at the time that these were humans who simply used the lizard as their symbol. And, indeed, while there is no known Hopi legend about literal Lizard People, it was common for the Hopi to have clans that used animal names such as a bear clan, a spider clan and, most pertinently to the topic at hand, there really was a lizard clan.

As to the rest of the story concerning underground cities and technologically advanced peoples, there is no known reference to this in any surviving Hopi legend.  Of course, given their history was passed down orally, much was lost before their stories started to be written down.

That said, further raising questions about Shufelt’s story is that there is no record of a Chief Greenleaf or L. Macklin in any surviving Hopi birth and death record. Of course, while extensive, these lists are not comprehensive, so it’s possible Greenleaf really did exist. But, as with the supposed Hopi legend of these advanced Lizard People, all we have to go on his Shufelt’s word.

Whether Shufelt was simply a con artist or he legitimately believed vast tunnels filled with gold exist under the city of Los Angeles isn’t clear. Either way, his claims are occasionally used as proof of ancient Lizard People inhabiting the Earth.

Fast-forwarding to 1976 we have The 12th Planet and subsequent similar works by Zecharia Sitchin where he purports that beings known as Anunnaki from the planet Nibiru came to Earth a half a million years ago in order to acquire our, to quote, “mono-atomic gold” which they can use for traveling through dimensions, among other things. Thankfully for us humans who were used as slaves by the Anunnaki, this group ended up hightailing it off Earth because of a great flood that covered the planet. When the Anunnaki came back they apparently were involved in the building of a variety of ancient structures such as the pyramids.

Noteworthy here is that Sitchin’s Anunnaki weren’t necessarily reptilian, but, as with Shufelt’s story, would later be folded into the Lizard People conspiracy theory anyway.

This finally brings us to the man of the hour and arguably the greatest driving force behind the modern Lizard People conspiracy theory, as well as perhaps the most successful professional conspiracy theorist of all time- David Vaughan Icke.

Icke was a former popular sportscaster for the BBC and prominent Green party member. His life changed, however, around 1990 when he started feeling some invisible presence which physically led him to a book called Mind to Mind written by a psychic healer by the name of Betty Shine.

Soon enough he sought out Shine to see if she could shed a little light on how he might heal his arthritis and what the deal was with the strange presence he was encountering. After a few visits, Shine allegedly told him on March 29, 1990 that Icke was placed on Earth to work as the instrument of the spirit world, and they would be contacting him to use him as a conduit to help humanity.

Shortly after this, the messages flooded in.

In order to spare the Green Party the controversy he knew would follow when he revealed to the world what the spirit realm was telling him, in 1991 Icke decided to leave said political party. He then held a press conference along side his wife, Linda Atherton, and his girlfriend, Deborah Shaw, announcing to the world that he was, in fact, the “son of Godhead”, with Godhead described by Icke as “Infinite Mind”.

Among other things, he would make a variety of bold predictions, such as that the world would experience a cataclysmic event in 1997, which would see such things as New Zealand disappearing into the sea. This would all culminate in the entire world ceasing to exist. He further revealed that all of this was told to him by spirit voices who were using him as a conduit to communicate to the people of Earth…

While he’d expected controversy from these revelations, apparently the reality of people not only not believing him, but actually mocking him quite openly across the country was too much at first for Icke. He stated,

One of my very greatest fears as a child was being ridiculed in public. And there it was coming true. As a television presenter, I’d been respected. People come up to you in the street and shake your hand and talk to you in a respectful way. And suddenly, overnight, this was transformed into “Icke’s a nutter.” I couldn’t walk down any street in Britain without being laughed at. It was a nightmare. My children were devastated because their dad was a figure of ridicule.

At one point shortly after his infamous announcement to the world, many dozens of teens even went so far as to gather in front of his house continually chanting “We want the Messiah. Give us a sign, David.”

Despite it all, Icke soldiered on anyway, writing several astoundingly well reviewed books, such as The Truth Shall Set You Free, The Truth Vibrations, The Children of the Matrix, The Biggest Secret: The Book That Will Change the World, Alice in Wonderland and the World Trade Center, and Infinite Love is the Only Truth, among many others, with the entire catalogue having apparently sold a couple hundred thousand copies to date. On the side, Icke also sells merchandise, operates a surprisingly popular conspiracy theory website, and most lucratively of all frequently gives public talks in front of crowds of thousands, in one instance in Australia apparently grossing a whopping £83,000 (about $102,000) in ticket sales at a talk in Melbourne.

As for Lizard People, they are at the center of Icke’s vast conspiracy theory, which pretty much forges elements from just about every prominent conspiracy theory into one master theory to rule them all. Noteworthy is that much of the modern mythos surrounding the Lizard People Icke has channeled from the spirit realm bears shocking resemblance to the Sci-Fi stories that kicked off the whole Lizard People idea in the first place, as well as seemingly borrowing from the aforementioned The Emerald Tablets as well as Stichin’s works, among others.

Not completely unoriginal, Icke has come up with a number of his own elements to add to the narrative, including claiming the Lizard People use the Moon, which apparently is a spacecraft and interdimensional portal, to project a holographic reality to aid in controlling humans. In his own words, “We are living in a dreamworld within a dreamworld—a Matrix within the virtual-reality universe—and it is being broadcast from the Moon. Unless people force themselves to become fully conscious, their minds are the Moon’s mind.”

He later claimed that actually the rings of Saturn are where these signals originate with the Moon itself merely amplifying and projecting them onto Earth.

Which, I’m not going to lie- shape shifting interdimensional Lizard aliens invading Earth, using mind control, virtual reality, moon-sized space craft, and many other awesome technologies to take over the world… I would watch that movie! Can we get someone to sum up Icke’s books into one coherent trilogy, add some awesome characters, and maybe get the Watchowskis to direct?

Of course, in Icke’s version of things, it is not Keanu Reeves who will save the world, but rather himself, the son of Godhead, via him revealing the truth to the world and getting everyone to love one another. As Icke states,

Divide and rule is the bottom line of all dictatorships…Arab is turned against Jew, black against white, Right against Left. Unplugging from the Matrix means refusing to recognise these illusory fault lines. We are all One. I refuse to see a Jew as different from an Arab and vice versa. They are both expressions of the One and need to be observed and treated the same, none more or less important than the other. I refuse to see black people in terms that I would not see white, nor to see the ‘Left’ as I would not see the ‘Right’. How could it be any different, except when we believe the illusion of division is real? If we do that, the Matrix has us.

He sums up in a speech in 2012, “If we want a world of love and peace, we have to be loving and peaceful with everyone, even people we don’t like.”

In the end, that is, according to the spirit realm who is using Icke to communicate with us, the only way to defeat the Lizard People. Starve them of our anxieties, fears, and anger, and give them only the positive energy of love.

So to sum up, Lizard people in some form or another have been around seemingly as long as humans have been coming up with stories, with the modern incarnation mostly seeming to have been popularized by author Robert E. Howard, spreading through fiction from there and ultimately adapted, among other works, by others with this all culminating in the most prominent version of the Lizard People story created by the Son of Godhead, Britain’s own David Icke. For full details, see his many books which the Lizard People freely allow him to publish despite that the books reveal their ultra secret plan in incredible detail and even out some of their most prominent members.

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