For centuries, people living along South Africa's Orange River warned of something enormous beneath the water: a serpent capable of taking livestock, controlling floods, and guarding unimaginable riches in the deep places of the desert. Prospectors called it the Grootslang—the Great Snake. One terrified explorer claimed he watched it rise twelve feet from the river. Another supposedly disappeared while searching for its diamonds. And in 1910, British prospector Fred Cornell became concerned enough to throw dynamite into one of its alleged lairs. But the strangest thing about the Grootslang isn't whether the monster ever existed. It's that the elephant-headed creature you'll find everywhere online today apparently never existed in the original legend at all.
Tonight, we follow the Great Snake from ancient water spirit to diamond guardian—and discover how the internet accidentally created an entirely different monster.
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