Inspecting City Drains, Workers Uncover a Horrifying Sight Like Never Before

A one-minute video of the incident has caused a stir on Facebook.The urban legend of “alligators in New York City’s sewers” may be just a myth, but in Florida, it’s a reality. A team of workers in Oviedo, Florida, proved this after discovering a 1.5-meter-long alligator living in a mud-filled drainage pipe. A video of the terrifying underground creature has been creating buzz on the official Facebook page of the Oviedo city government. A spokesperson remarked, “This is yet another reason not to wander into storm drains!” The alligator was discovered at the end of 2023 during a routine pothole inspection.

According to a Jam Press report, a public works team deployed a robot equipped with a camera to investigate the cause of recurring potholes in the area. What they found lurking beneath the surface was far more frightening. The city’s post, now going viral, stated: “During the inspection, as you’ll see in the video, they encountered a 1.5-meter-long alligator!”

The chilling moment captured in the footage brings to mind a long-standing urban legend, which inspired the 1980 B-movie Alligator and was further popularized by Drew Barrymore in Steven Spielberg’s 1982 sci-fi classic E.T.

Initially, workers mistook the cold-blooded creature living underground for a toad—until they saw its “two small glowing eyes.”

Social media has been flooded with reactions to the reptile living in the city’s drainage system, drawing comparisons to the villain Killer Croc from the Batman series. One shocked viewer asked, “Have you ever seen anything like this?” while another wrote, “Oh my gosh, that’s terrifying.”

Others speculated how the alligator managed to infiltrate the labyrinth-like drainage system, which includes 75 miles of underground pipes beneath the city. The Oviedo city government suggested it might have entered through one of the stormwater ponds designed to prevent flooding during storms.

Interestingly, alligators—the largest reptiles in the U.S., capable of growing up to 15 feet (4.5 meters) long and weighing over 1,000 pounds (453 kg)—are not uncommon in Florida’s stormwater networks. This phenomenon mirrors the plot of the 2019 sci-fi horror film Crawl, in which a father and daughter discover killer alligators nesting in storm drains after a hurricane.

In 2010, police captured an 18-inch (45 cm) reptile of unknown origin that emerged from a flooded Astoria storm drain and hid beneath a parked car. Meanwhile, in February 2023, officials retrieved a sluggish, likely cold-shocked, 4-foot (1.2-meter) alligator from Brooklyn’s Prospect Park Lake near an area frequented by children.

Park officials suspected the alligator—found with a bathtub drain stopper in its stomach—was an unwanted pet its owner had released into public waters. Despite receiving care at the Bronx Zoo, the “reptilian refugee” succumbed to numerous injuries and what officials described as “tragic animal mistreatment.”