Lake Lanier is the largest in all of Georgia — and one of the deadliest in the United States. An estimated 700 people have lost their lives in the manmade reservoir since its creation in 1956, leading some people to believe that Lake Lanier is haunted.
The sun-soaked tourist attraction receives more than 10 million visitors each year, which could account for the sheer amount of deaths. However, nearby Lake Allatoona sees nearly as many tourists annually — and has only recorded a fraction of the number of fatalities throughout its history.
Level-headed onlookers blame the ruins beneath the surface of the water, as the reservoir was built over the historical town of Oscarville. Others think Lake Lanier is haunted by the spirits of those who were forced to leave Oscarville. And still more theorists say the ghosts of the 27 victims of the lake whose bodies were never recovered pull unsuspecting swimmers to their deaths.
With such a violent history dating back more than a century before the lake even existed, it’s enough to make one wonder.
The Bloody History Of Lake Lanier
Lake Lanier might look pristine today, but the land it sits on has a long history of trauma, violence, and death. The Cherokee people lived in what is now Forsyth County, which borders the western side of the reservoir, until their expulsion by the U.S. government on the Trail of Tears in the 1830s.
Then, in 1912, another minority group was forced out of the area. That September, a teenager named Mae Crow was raped and beaten to death in the town of Oscarville. Residents immediately blamed three Black men. A white mob violently lynched one of them, while the other two were found guilty and hanged.
Wikimedia CommonsThe 1912 attack on Mae Crow reportedly occurred near the area where Browns Bridge spans Lake Lanier today.
Following the incident, groups of armed white citizens who called themselves “Night Riders” threatened Black residents and burned their businesses until they fled from Oscarville. The Atlanta History Center reports that the Black population of Forsyth County dropped from 1,098 to just 30 between 1910 and 1920.
However, all that history was seemingly washed away when Congress authorized the construction of a dam in 1946 that would create a large lake over 38,000 acres of land in northern Georgia, including the town of Oscarville. Workers broke ground in 1950, and by 1956, Oscarville was completely underwater.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers relocated most of the homes and structures before flooding the area, and they moved several cemeteries — but any unmarked graves were left behind. From Forsyth County’s original inhabitants to the loved ones of the Black families who were run out of town in the 1900s, these ghosts allegedly haunt Lake Lanier to this day.
U.S. Army Corps of EngineersThe construction of Buford Dam formed Lake Lanier in 1956, and since then, an estimated 700 deaths have occurred in its waters.
In 2020, Army Corps of Engineer spokesman Cesar Yabor told CNN, “While the Corps made every effort at the time to locate unmarked burials, the limited capabilities of the time make it probable that unanticipated finds of human remains are possible, whether from the antebellum and Civil War periods or of Native American origin from pre-colonial and ancient times.”
What’s more, these spirits are said to be joined by the hundreds of victims who have died in Lanier’s murky waters since 1956.
Is Lake Lanier Haunted? Inside The Chilling Theories
The most famous case for Lake Lanier’s haunted past is the local legend of the “Lady of the Lake.” In 1958, two women named Delia May Parker Young and Susie Roberts accidentally drove Roberts’ car off a bridge and drowned in the reservoir.
A fisherman found a decomposed body in the lake the following year. The corpse was wearing a blue dress and had no hands, but otherwise, it was wholly unidentifiable. However, locals reportedly began catching glimpses of a ghostly, handless figure in a blue dress walking across the very bridge that Young and Roberts had crashed on. Rumors began circulating that this “Lady of the Lake” snatched swimmers from below, causing them to drown.
Then, in 1990, workers building a bridge found a Ford sedan at the bottom of Lake Lanier. According to a report in The New York Times from Nov. 5, 1990, there were bones in the car — and they were matched to Susie Roberts. Her son told reporters, “We believed she was in the lake, but then we heard she might be in Chicago, then in Florida. We wondered if she survived but had amnesia and never knew where to go.”
The identification of Roberts led authorities to surmise that the body pulled from the reservoir back in 1959 was that of Young, finally giving a name to the eerie “Lady of the Lake” who haunted Lake Lanier.
Joanna Cepuchowicz/EyeEm/Getty ImagesRumors of a ghostly “Lady of the Lake” surround Lake Lanier to this day.
Countless other tragedies haunt the Georgia reservoir, too, even if they don’t have their own ghost stories to go along with them. Christmas of 1964 was the deadliest day in the history of Lake Lanier. Another crash took the lives of seven people when a car again plunged into the icy waters. One married couple and three of their four children, as well as two other kids, were killed in the accident.
In addition to car wrecks, countless boat collisions, fires, and electrocutions have occurred over the decades. Most of these have been written off as negligence, though some are bizarrely unexplainable. For instance, a boat explosion in 2021 seemingly came out of nowhere when a vessel that had never had any prior issues randomly blew up on the lake.
Then, there’s the disappearance of Kelly Nash, which remains a mystery to this day. On Jan. 5, 2015, the 25-year-old got out of bed at 4 a.m. feeling sick, and when his girlfriend woke up the next morning, he was nowhere to be found. His body was discovered in Lake Lanier a month later, and although he had a gunshot wound, his death was ruled a drowning.
Whether these deaths can be explained by natural events or were brought about by paranormal activity is up for debate. Regardless, the alleged haunting of Lake Lanier doesn’t keep away the millions of people who flock to its shores each year.
The Alleged Haunting Of Lake Lanier Today
Today, most of the people who vacation at Lake Lanier aren’t aware of its chilling history. Why, then, do many of them still experience an eerie sense of foreboding in its waters?
Some swimmers have claimed to hear bells from the steeple of a church that once stood in Oscarville. This should be impossible — the Army Corps of Engineers removed all the large structures before they flooded the reservoir, after all — but the reports of ringing persist.
However, it’s hard to ignore allegations of hauntings when other evidence of the lake’s past lies just beneath the surface. An old auto racing track sits at the bottom of the reservoir — and so do body parts, according to some divers.
Jo Anaya/UnsplashLake Lanier reaches depths of 160 feet at some spots, and its murky waters are said to contain centuries of ghostly spirits.
Buck Buchannon, who has frequently descended into the depths of Lake Lanier, once said, “You reach out into the dark and you feel an arm or a leg, and it doesn’t move.”
Still, whether Lake Lanier is truly haunted is in the eye of the beholder. Despite witness accounts of apparent ghost sightings and the numerous deaths that remain unsolved, most people believe the lake is just another body of water.
For others, however, Lake Lanier is undoubtedly haunted. With such a sordid past, how could it not be?