The Grootslang - South Africa's Diamond-Cursed Serpent | The Monster That Was Never an Elephant

Freaky Folklore

Eeriecast Network

True Crime, History, Society & Culture

4.7 • 1K Ratings

🗓️ 29 June 2026

⏱️ 30 minutes

🔗️ Recording | Apple Podcasts | RSS

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Summary

Deep in the Richtersveld, where the Orange River cuts through some of the oldest, driest land on Earth, there is a cave the locals call the Bottomless Pit. They say it runs sixty feet straight down before it opens into the dark — and that it is the source of every diamond South Africa has ever surrendered. They also say something guards it. Something forty feet long, with diamonds set in its eye sockets, that leaves a trail three feet wide in the river mud and never, ever leaves the print of a foot. This is the Grootslang — the "great snake" — and tonight we're separating the legend from the legend. Because the elephant-serpent monster you've seen online, the one the gods supposedly split apart at the dawn of creation, isn't the real story. The truth is older, quieter, and far more frightening: a creature that prospectors tried to dynamite out of the rock, that the Khoekhoe and the settlers both feared, and that may have swallowed a real man whole in 1917 — at least, that's who the desert decided to blame. Pour something strong. Mind the water's edge. #FreakyFolklore #Grootslang #SouthAfricanFolklore #Cryptid #Cryptozoology #Folklore #Mythology #Richtersveld #Monster #ScaryStories #Horror #Legends #Paranormal #OrangeRiver #DiamondCurse #Africa #FolkloreHorror #CreatureFeature #UrbanLegend #Eeriecast Tonight, on Freaky Folklore: The Grootslang — South Africa's diamond-hoarding serpent of the Richtersveld. We trace the creature from the prospecting camps of the early 1900s to the cartoon that rewrote its mythology, and we follow the 1917 disappearance of Peter Grayson into the place where folklore is actually made. F.C. Cornell, The Glamour of Prospecting (firsthand early-1900s account of the "Groot Slang" of the Orange River) EXPLORE MORE SPINE-CHILLING CONTENT: Freaky Folklore: https://www.eeriecast.com/podcasts/freaky-folklore Carman's Crypt (Original Horror): https://www.carman-carrion.com/ Deadly Intent (True Crime): https://www.carman-carrion.com/ Destination Terror: https://www.eeriecast.com/podcasts/destination-terror ________________________________________ SUPPORT THE SHOW: Buy Me a Coffee: https://buymeacoffee.com/carmancarrion ________________________________________ CONNECT WITH CARMAN: Website: https://www.carman-carrion.com/ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@CarmanCarrion Twitter/X: https://x.com/CarmanCarrion Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/carmancarrion/ SUBSCRIBE & REVIEW: Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/0uiX155WEJnN7QVRfo3aQY iTunes: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/freaky-folklore/id1550361184 Your support helps bring you more terrifying tales. ________________________________________ DISCOVER MORE HORROR: http://eeriecast.com/ https://www.carman-carrion.com/ ________________________________________ Written & narrated by Carman Carrion. Music & sound design: Epidemic Sound. The Grootslang is a creature of folklore; the historical figures named are presented as their legends are commonly told. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:30.3	The cattle came down to the Orange River the way they did every evening, slow, heavy-footed,
0:36.7	drawn to the only water for a day's ride in any direction.
0:40.5	In the morning, one of them was gone, not strayed, not stolen. There were no lion tracks
0:47.0	circling the herd, no hyena spore, no drag marks leading up into the hills where a leopard
0:52.8	might carry a kill. There was only a single trail in the soft red mud at the water's edge.
0:58.0	A trail as wide as a man is tall, pressed deep into the earth,
1:03.0	winding back toward the river and vanishing beneath the surface,
1:07.0	and in all that length of it, sliding 30, 40 feet down to the dark water, there was not one
1:14.5	single print of foot, no claws, no hooves, no paws, just the wide, smooth groove of something
1:22.1	enormous, dragging the whole of its weight, back down into the river it had come up out of in the night.
1:28.9	The old men of the village didn't go to the water after that. They didn't need to be told what had
1:34.6	come up out of it. They had a name for the thing, a name older than the diamonds buried under their
1:40.1	feet. Older, they said, than the world itself.
1:44.4	The Groot Slang, the Great Snake.
1:47.8	And tonight, we're going to go looking for it.
1:54.6	Welcome back to Freaky Folklore, where we dive headfirst into the darkest corners
1:58.8	of human imagination and drag the monsters hiding
	...

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