Supernatural Summer Safety | Lake Lanier Part 5

We have finally left the woods {sort of} and are examining the murky waters of the most haunted lake in America, Lake Lanier in Georgia. Join us for some spooky tales and a few safety tips!

Thank you for listening! 

Rebel Road theme music by: B3yondBeatz Tony Simms

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SPEAKER_00 0:04

Hey everyone, it's Haley. And I'm Mary. Thanks for joining us for another quick little road snack. And all summer, well, through July, we're talking about staying safe out there in the wild while also doing some of your favorite summer activities. And we've covered hiking and camping, and we really got sucked into the strange cases of the missing 411. So if you haven't listened to those, go back and give them a listen. But today we are leaving land and we're heading to the water, specifically lakes. And you may not know this, or maybe you do, but every year, thousands of water-loving people head to the water during the summertime. And Mary, let me ask you, do you love visiting and swimming in lakes? You know, I myself, if I can't see the bottom, it's uh not sounding too appealing to me.

SPEAKER_01 1:05

Same hailey saying I do not. Well, maybe if the lake was crystal clear, I might do that. But give me an ocean and I'll never want to leave, which is even weirder because, you know, an ocean's crazier than a lake or a pond. But I do not like lake water or ponds. It's too murky and it's just really icky for me. Even if I'm on a boat, how people like to go to the lake and party on their boats, and everyone is partying. I stay on the deck of that boat, and I am the designated safety watcher and the thrower down of beverages and snacks to everybody floating in that water because ew. When I was younger, I wasn't even a fan. So lakes, ponds, they just always felt off to me, just really gross and icky.

SPEAKER_00 1:52

Yeah, the water's just sitting there stagnant. You don't know what it is. Um I'm happy to sit in on the dock with my feet in the water from a boat. I might jump in but get right back out. It's just icky. But uh, married to the ick, I don't think you are wrong on that ick of some murky lakes. They are beautiful. Now I love sitting and looking. I love sitting out on the bank and looking at the lakes. I love that part of the lake. Um, but as we know, sometimes beautiful can also mean deadly. Let's remember that. And we're gonna start this episode off with what is considered the most haunted and cursed lake in all of America. And she is located in Georgia, and that is Lake Lanier. And let's start off with one of the lake's most famous legends.

SPEAKER_01 2:52

The headlights of the car pierced through the heavy Georgia fog, but they barely penetrated the darkness cloaking the newly built bridge over Lake Lanier. Behind the wheel, Susie gripped the steering wheel. Her knuckles were white. Next to her, Delia hummed a soft tune, adjusting her scarf in the rearview mirror. We shouldn't have taken this road, Susie muttered, her voice barely louder than the hum of the engine. The water looks too close. It's just a lake, Susie, Delia smiled, turning to look out the passenger window. She could feel the chill coming from the lake. Beneath them, millions of gallons of water filled the valley, drowning the remnants of abandoned farms, old roads, and forgotten graves. She shuddered at the thought of the dead.

SPEAKER_00 3:36

Suddenly, the headlights caught a thick patch of mist that seemed to rise from the asphalt like smoke. The tires lost traction on the slick, unpaved approach to the bridge. The car fishtailed. Susie! Delia gasped. Susie slammed on the brakes, but it was too late. Their car veered sharply, crashing through the wooden guardrail. For a terrifying second, they were suspended in midair. The girls screamed. The headlights swept across the vast, black expanse of Lake Lanier. Then the car plunged nosefirst into the freezing depths. Water rushed in through the seams of the doors. Dark, murky, and relentless. The car sank rapidly into the drowned valley, settling deep into the branches of long dead trees. Silence and cold swallowed them.

SPEAKER_01 4:28

Thirty years later, in the summer of 1988, a teenager sat at the edge of the same bridge. The night was hot and still. He swung his legs over the concrete barrier, shining a flashlight onto the calm surface of the lake. He had heard the rumors. Everyone in Forsyth County knew the stories of the people who went swimming and felt cold, unseen hands tugging at their ankles from the dark. They called her the Lady of the Lake. A sudden drop in temperature made him shiver. The humid summer air turned instantly to winter. Looking down, he noticed the water directly below him began to ripple in perfect concentric circles. Though there was no wind, a pale glow bloomed beneath the surface. It grew brighter, rising from the black depths until it broke through the waterline. Marcus froze, his breath catching in his throat. It was a woman. She wore a blue waterlogged dress that drifted around her like smoke. Her face was beautiful but cast in a sorrowful, translucent light. As she floated closer to the bridge support, Marcus noticed with a jolt of horror that her hands were missing, nothing but smooth glowing mist where her wrists ended.

SPEAKER_00 5:41

She lifted her arms toward Marcus. She didn't speak, but a sound echoed in his mind. A mournful, metallic screech of tearing metal, followed by the rush of water. Her dark eyes locked on to his, filled not with malice, but with desperate, crushing loneliness. She was trapped in the flooded forest below, a keeper of the lake's secrets, forever searching for a way home. Marcus blinked, and the figure vanished. The water was perfectly still again. Two years later, a construction crew dragging the lake bed near the bridge hooked onto a rusted piece of metal. They pulled a 1958 Ford sedan from the mud. Inside, authorities finally found Susie and Delia, bringing an end to a decades-old mystery. Yet, even today, fishermen on Lake Lanier swear that when the fog rolls in thick and the water turns bone-chillingly cold, you can still see a pale blue glow drifting just beneath the surface.

SPEAKER_01 6:55

This one is sad and actually true. The bridge well, the bridge accident part anyway. 23-year-old Delia Mae Parker Young and 21-year-old Susie Roberts were driving home from a local roadhouse, and while crossing the newly constructed bridge at Lake Lanier, Susie lost control of her vehicle, and the car broke through the ridge's right abutment and plunged into the murky reservoir, which had been filled just two years prior, back in 1956. Initially, law enforcement couldn't find any trace of the car or the two women. It was really hard to see there in Lake Lanier. And there's so much debris on the bottom. So in November 1959, a year and a half after that crash, a fisherman actually discovered a heavily decomposed female body floating near the bridge. And the remains were wearing a blue dress and were notably missing her hands and several toes. And that's a natural result of aquatic decomposition and wildlife picking at her. But it sparked a chilling urban legend of a handless ghost. But because the body lagged authorities couldn't match dental records, even the Navy divers searched the area for wreckage where they had found the body, but nothing was found. That woman remained unidentified and was buried in an unmarked pauper's grave in Gainesville. Fast forward many decades later, on November 1st, 1990, construction crews building a second bridge ban across the Dawsonville Highway struck a metal object a hundred feet below the surface. And when they hauled that heavy rusted Ford sedan from the lake bed, they found human remains still trapped inside the vehicle. And jewelry found on that skeleton identified those remains as Suzy Roberts. So by uncovering Suzy inside the car decades later, officials were finally able to deduce that the handless body found floating way back in 1959 belonged to Delia May Parker, who had borrowed that blue dress she was found in from Susie on the night they died. Delia's remains were then exhumed from the pauper's grave and properly laid to rest under her own name.

SPEAKER_00 9:12

That is such a sad story. If you think about it, you're just heading home from a fun night with your best friend, and to die tragically, that's a horrible way to go. Mary, I don't know, maybe this could be a little safety lesson. Listeners always drive slow on bridges and especially drive slow in the fog. They do make those glass busters now so you can break the glass to get out of your submerged car if you find yourself in that situation. So think about that. Think seriously about that. Always have one of those in your cars. And then they also make those knives where you can cut the seatbelts if it gets jammed. If you think about it, Mary, being in that situation, being in a submerged car and being stuck, like drowning is one of my top, top fears.

SPEAKER_01 10:10

100% agree with you on that. I yeah, no. And back to your jumping onto the safety, this is a little horrifying fact for our listeners. There's an estimated 400 to 600 people that die every year in the USA due to a car plunging into bodies of water. So it's not as rare as what I think a lot of people think. This type of incident makes up about 11% of drowning victims. So I would recommend find a YouTube video and watch those people that go into cars and the water submerges so you can see and kind of mentally prepare for a worst-case scenario if this happens and learn how to safely exit a vehicle that's submerged in water and commit that to your memory. When the water's coming in, you cannot open your car door while it's filling with water. That pressure, you could be the strongest person in the world. You can't do that. You have to let your car fill all the way up with water before you can even open a car door. And most cars they have electric windows nowadays, so your window's not gonna roll down. It's just kind of something good to have in your back pocket. Tuck that away for if you ever need it. And we pray that you never would be. But you know, for just one of those just-in-case scenarios, the best thing is to always be prepared in anything, but the absolute best thing would be to avoid veering into the water at all costs. But definitely buy one of those window breaker things because that's another thing people don't realize is um car windows, they are impossibly hard to break. They don't just break and shatter into a million pieces like you see on movies. You have to do it a specific way or have a specific thing. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 11:58

Definitely everybody get on Amazon right now and order one of those. I didn't realize, Mary, how many people in the United States die this way? And you know, think it's a huge it has to be a trigger for people. It it makes me uncomfortable, kind of puts, you know, a little knot in my stomach. So if that was triggered by anyone, we apologize, but definitely something to take serious. Um, you know, Mary, let's get back to Lake Lanier. Uh over 700 people have died in the water at Lanier since its creation in 1956. Now, they do attribute most of these to accidental drownings. For example, no life jackets, uh, people were too much, having too much to drink, you know, along with that murky water. People can't see, uh, or they get caught in all the debris that's on the lake bed. And I think that's something that a lot of people don't consider. I think people who have been around lakes, they're good. But then you have the people that are coming in that are visiting, and it's so easy to dive into what you think is deep water, but you can very easily dive into the water that might be deep, and there is a tree log that's floating, and you're hitting your head, and now now you're knocked out under the water and you're gone. Like again, it's very difficult to see anything in murky water. You can't see the bottom. Uh, that's why it's important to wear your life jacket. But this is something I'm passionate about. I'm gonna get going.

SPEAKER_01 13:45

I hear it in your voice, and I agree, like it just takes an instant for things to go bad in water. An instant. Yeah, absolutely. I can remember canoeing and tipping over in that canoe. And I mean, it was in stand-up water. If you stood up in the water, it was to your knees. You know how you float in your canoe on water, and our canoe tipped. We'd been drinking, it was no big deal, but we tipped in like an undercurrent, and there was a tree there, and the canoe got stuck under the tree and that pressure sucked me underneath that water. And it's so scary. I couldn't get it. It took two people to pull me out from underneath that canoe and underneath that tree in shallow water. I mean, I would have died. So definitely drowning is no joke, and you can do it in what did they say? Like just a few inches of water. So always be careful. But you know, Lake Lanier, let's get back. She was originally a town called Oscarville, but the government came in, bought out the town, or forced the locals out, and then the Army Corps of Engineers came in and they demolished all the buildings. Well, most of them. Then to cut corners, they just decided you know what, let's just flood the whole town. Homes, six churches, and almost 20 cemeteries were submerged to make Lake Lanier. But the people started complaining. So eventually, the Army of Engineers they came back and they supposedly removed all of the graves. But then they came back and they said, All right, well, maybe we didn't get all of them. And if you look it up and we'll post them on social media, you can still see hundreds and hundreds of graves still down there at the bottom of Lake Lanier, and it is chilling and horrifying.

SPEAKER_00 15:32

Chilling and horrifying is absolutely correct. I that's just despicable, and honestly, that's how you get a haunted lake for sure. Absolutely. And this is not a little lake, this is a 38,000-acre lake. Lanier is the biggest lake in Georgia with 26 miles long, with 692 miles of shoreline. She's a beautiful lake. Every year, between 10 to 12 million people visit the beaches of Lanier. And its size alone, now that's what attracts all sorts of people looking for that summer fun. And if you're a lake lover, she's going to appeal to you. In 2017, a local Georgia diver, Buck Buchanan, uh, during an interview with local media regarding the murky, dangerous conditions at the bottom of the lake, he told the reporters, these are his words. You reach out into the darkness underwater and you feel an arm or a leg and it doesn't move. Even though there is nothing there to physically pull up, you feel it there. That is so spooky.

SPEAKER_01 16:54

Many locals say that they can feel cold hands trying to pull them down and actually clawing at them. And these stories, they're fueled by survivors who almost drowned in Lanier, and they all claim that same thing. Swimming is exhausting, or it can be. And I think when you are swimming in a lake, you kind of feel a sense of being in safe water, safer than let's say you're swimming in the ocean with the currents that can beat you up. But so you just get too far from the shore. And in a lake, I think it's easier to go out farther than you realize. And also lakes, they do have undertoes and currents, which people don't realize. And those lake beds, they have that little silty bed that acts like quicksand if you step on it. It just holds you, it's you know, it sucks you into it. And that is a large part of why I don't like the lake. I got stuck in a lake when I was little and my dad had to come pull me out. No, it was in shallow water again, but I could not move in it. My feet were stuck into that stuff. It was so gross.

SPEAKER_00 18:03

I think we just have traumatic memories from our childhood, Mary. Do you remember we used to go to the Ozarks and jump off the cliffs into the water? So many things. So many things. But this lake, Lake Lanier, these stories, they are so creepy. And it does not disappoint if you're looking for that kind of haunted paranormal lake with the invisible hands and ghosts. You also have tales of submerged shadow walkers.

SPEAKER_01 18:41

The water at the center of Lake Lanier didn't look like water. It looked like spilled oil. Thick, heavy, and black enough to swallow the beam of a flashlight. Jed killed the pontoon's engine. Beside him, his brother Leo was already tightening the straps of his diving harness. They were three miles out of the shoreline, floating directly over what the old maps called the Oscarville Ridge. Eighty feet below them lay the skeleton of a town flooded in the 1950s. Concrete foundations, rusted farming equipment, and forests of dead pine trees that still stood perfectly upright in the dark. Visibility is gonna be less than three feet down there, Jed warned, checking the pressure gauges on the air tanks. If you get snagged on the timber, don't panic, just signal me. I'm not worried about the timber, Leo muttered, pulling his mask down over his eyes. I just want to find the wreckage. The sonar picked up a solid hole near the old church foundation. They dropped over the side together.

SPEAKER_00 19:46

The warmth of the Georgia summer vanished instantly, replaced by a crushing, freezing chill. As they descended past 40 feet, the sunlight died. Jed switched on his dive light. The beam illuminated nothing but green soup and thick flakes of floating silt. At 60 feet, the trees appeared. They looked like giant, skeletal fingers reaching up from the abyss. Stripped of their bark decades ago, the wood was slimy and black. Jed felt a familiar tightening in his chest. Navigating this underwater forest was like swimming through a graveyard of spikes. Leo signaled with his light, pointing downward. They had reached the bottom. The silt here was thick, resting like a layer of dust on a forgotten attic floor. Directly ahead of them, the rotted, collapsed roof of an old barn loomed out of the gloom. Jed checked his dive computer. Ten minutes of air used. Everything was normal. Then the water pressure shifted.

SPEAKER_01 20:56

It wasn't a current. It felt like a heavy, rhythmic displacement, as if something massive was moving nearby. Jed swung his flashlight across the silk bed. The beam caught a row of deep, defined depressions in the mud. Footprints. He froze. The tracks didn't belong to a diver. They were wide, heavy, and spaced apart in perfect walking stride, leading down what used to be a dirt road. He swam closer to Leo and gripped his shoulder, flashing his light towards the floor. Leo stared at the tracks, his eyes wide behind his glass mask. He shook his head violently, signaling that they needed to ascend. Before they could swim upward, the beam of Leo's flashlight flickered.

SPEAKER_00 21:41

Through the murky green haze, a shape materialized. It was completely solid, blocking out the faint bioluminescence of the lake algae behind it. It looked like a man, but it was easily seven feet tall, its entire form composed of Absolute light-consuming blackness. It didn't wear diving gear. It didn't breathe bubbles. It was walking. The shadow walker moved with agonizing slowness along the sunken road, its heavy feet kicking up clouds of silt that hung in the water like smoke. As it passed the standing pine tree, its dark hand brushed the wood. The branches didn't snap. They simply decayed into dust at the entity's touch. Jed felt the primal urge to scream, but the regulator in his mouth kept him silent. He grabbed Leo's harness to pull him toward the surface, but Leo was paralyzed, his flashlight beam locked onto the creature. The shadow walker stopped. Without turning its body, its head pivoted toward them. There were no eyes, no face, just a void shaped like a silhouette. It raised a long, dark arm, pointing a finger directly at Leo.

SPEAKER_01 23:06

Suddenly, the water around them grew freezing cold, cold enough to ache through their thick neoprene suits. From the silt beneath Jed's fins, dozens of dark, slender shapes began to rise. They weren't ghosts, they were physical shadows, lifting themselves out of the mud like men waking up from a long sleep. They began to march, closing the distance between the old barn and the divers. Panic shattered Jed's training. He purged his buoyancy compressor, forcing himself upward. He hauled Leo by the straps of his vest, kicking frantically against the heavy water. Below them, the flashlight being caught the main shadow walker. It didn't swim. It simply stood on the sunken road watching them rise, surrounded by a dozen dark figures that paved the underwater streets of a town that refused to stay forgotten.

SPEAKER_00 23:58

They broke the surface gasping, the bright moonlight of the Georgia sky striking their faces. Marcus hauled his brother onto the pontoon boat, both of them shivering violently despite the 80-degree night air. When Jed looked back down into the water beside the boat, the lake was perfectly still. But just an inch beneath the surface, a single massive shadow lingered for a second before dissolving back into the deep. And with that, beware of dark waters. And if you are visiting a lake, especially a rumored haunted lake, wear a life vest and don't overestimate your threshold for swimming. And maybe, like in hiking, keep everyone in your group, in your line of sight at all times. Or and I'm just gonna add this.

SPEAKER_01 24:58

Don't get off that boat. Just enjoy the lake water from the shore. If you love swimming like me, find a nice hotel with a pool. That's my favorite. Going diving, learning how to scuba dive, that is a bucket list item for me, along with underwater photography, but only in the ocean. If I got to deal, if I had to deal with haunted waters in addition to water cryptids and natural dangers, that's too much for me. I need one of those to go away for me.

SPEAKER_00 25:27

I agree. Put it right there next to camping. It's a no for me, dog. So, well, friends, we hope that you enjoyed this quick episode on Lake Lanier and that you will join us again next week as we chat more about unusual lakes that are visited every summer and a few more safety tips. You just never know. Don't get caught off guard.

SPEAKER_01 25:53

And if you think we're being ridiculous, husband Mike, that's okay because our crazy just might stick with you if you ever need it. And we really hope you don't.

SPEAKER_00 26:03

That's right. We are completely okay with being ridiculous and weird, I think. Uh, like we say, we gotta keep it weird and we gotta pull it back to Jesus. Don't get caught off guard without Jesus either.

unknown 26:20

Hi.

SPEAKER_00 26:21

Bye.