The Cursed Waters of Lake Lanier: History, Folklore, and the Town Submerged Beneath the Water
We are diving into the unsettling history of one of America's most famous and infamous reservoirs: Lake Lanier in Georgia. This manmade lake is beautiful on the surface, but beneath its murky waters lies a buried past—literally.
The Origin: We unpack how this massive federal project came to be in the 1950s. The construction of the dam and the creation of the lake required the Uprooting of families, the clearing of a forest, and the difficult, often incomplete, process of exhuming hundreds of graves from over twenty cemeteries.
The Submerged Town: Before the lake existed, there were thriving communities, farms, and homes in the valley. If you believe the folklore, the spirits of the displaced and those left behind are the source of the lake’s current reputation.
The Headlines: Nearly 70 years after its creation, Lake Lanier continues to grab headlines due to its unusually high number of accidents and drownings. We explore whether this is merely a coincidence of its popularity and unique structure, or if the persistent local legend that the lake is "cursed" has some chilling merit.
The Restless Spirits: We discuss the local stories of restless spirits, hidden dangers, and the belief that the land never truly gave up its dead.
Join us as we explore the chilling truth, the tragic accidents, and the enduring mystery of the town, the farms, and the cemeteries that still lie beneath the cursed waters of Lake Lanier.
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TRANSCRIPT:
[00:00:00] A hidden forest, a thousand farms and hundreds of unmoved grave sites. That's what lies beneath the infamous Lake Lanier in Georgia. But before those lakeside cocktails and million dollar speedboats, there was a federal project that uprooted families, exhumed cemeteries. And if you believe the folklore left restless spirits patrolling the waters of the lake.
Today we're unpacking how it all happened and why this manmade lake keeps grabbing headlines nearly 70 years later.
Hey guys, and welcome to the Moms and Mysteries podcast, a True Crime podcast featuring myself, Mandy, and my dear friend Melissa. Hi, Melissa. Hi, Mandy. How are you? I'm doing well. How are you? It's doing great. Thanks. This episode. I am so excited. You and I are both so excited. I won't, I don't wanna get into anything that you're going to be saying because there's just so much to talk about, but I'm so pumped.
I feel like if you [00:01:00] listen to True Crime, this is a thing you hear about a lot and just seeing it all put together and just the history of it is almost completely unbelievable. It really is unbelievable in some ways and in other ways. I feel like I was happy to kind of deep dive on this one and learn a little bit more about the mystery of Lake Linear.
Yeah. Because as you said, it is a very, um, popular topic for maybe not conspiracy theories, but just people who like to. Think about things that are just unusual and, um, things that happen that are maybe feel unexplainable. People love that kind of stuff to kind of figure out like, is there an explanation for these things?
I've never heard, like wedding party has the best time at Lake Lanier. It's always like, it takes something terrible's happened at Lake Lanier. So yeah, I'm very excited about this. Me too. So a couple weeks back I actually saw a post on social media about what was the craziest and weirdest story of the week to me at the time.
And the headline Read [00:02:00] Man Charged with Throwing Deep Freezer at Victim, causing him to fall into Lake Lanier. So. First of all, I am, I have questions. Right? And it's one of those captions where you're like, I should read that again, because surely my brain is not understanding what's happening. But it is, right?
It's, it absolutely is. And the visual that you have in your head is probably pretty close to reality. But like I said, I enjoy a good rabbit hole. I always love to contemplate things like this. So the lake has always fascinated me. When I saw this headline, I was like. Perfect. This is going to be the next topic of the next episode, right, of the podcast.
Um, so in this particular case, um, the case of the man getting a deep freezer thrown at him. This was on the evening of July 2nd, 2025, so this was literally just a few weeks ago. A man named Logan Young, who was 42 years old, was at a boat slip on Lake Lanier. He was on a boat with the 59-year-old victim and two women, when suddenly Logan strips down [00:03:00] naked in front of these other three individuals on the boat, and that leads to an argument among the two men.
Logan punched the 59-year-old victim in the chest and then left his boat. I guess they were on the victim's boat. Everybody else assumed that Logan had gone back to his own boat, so they decided that they were gonna try and leave the dock, and it was at that point that Logan, I emerged from somewhere and allegedly threw a deep freezer at the man, hitting him in the head and knocking him unconscious into the lake.
So he, the victim, was thankfully able to get back to shore. He did have a large laceration on his head, but he refused to be treated for it. I assume that he ended up being okay and we don't really have a whole lot more details than that. Even in the articles that the media reported, like how big was this deep freezer?
How far did he throw it? How I have, I wanna know so many things. How do you have access to a deep freezer when you're at the lake? And like, do you plan to hit people in the head with that? And that's why you have it. Was [00:04:00] it on his boat? There's so many questions we'll never get answers to, but that is.
Just such a wild visual, and it starts with a naked dude, which, okay, I think it said two people were arguing. I feel like everyone was arguing. If I saw somebody stripped down in the middle of the boat, I'm going to start. I'm gonna start fighting. Right? And the last question I would have is, did he put pants on before he threw the, oh my gosh.
Can you imagine? No, I think it would've said, and then a nude guy's name, you know, through the deep freezer. But I, yeah, I, I wish there were cameras on that. Me too. And like editing cameras. I don't need to see it all for sure. But this really is just one of many bizarre stories that have come out of Lake Lanier.
And like I said, that's why I wanted to do an episode on it. But first, this is a lake that has a lot of history and. Is really important to touch onto that history and how this lake even came to be, because a lot of it does kind of explain, you know, how this lake became as mysterious as it is. [00:05:00] So Lake Lanier is actually a manmade reservoir located in Northern Georgia.
It was created by the US Army Corps of Engineers through the construction of Beaufort Dam on the Chattahoochee River. The construction of the dam began in 1950 and was completed in 1956, but Lake Lanier didn't reach full levels until August of 1958. Long before Lake Lanier ever existed, though the land beneath it was home to a thriving community known as Oscar Bill in the early 20th century.
Oscar Bill was a historically black town with around, with hundreds of families living there. The town was established in the 18 hundreds during the reconstruction era, and it was full of carpenters, blacksmiths, and bricklayers, as well as thriving farmlands. A community took shape there after the Civil War and people who were formerly enslaved bought land in the 1870s and into the 1890s.
The town was self-sufficient and prosperous. By 1910, nearly [00:06:00] 1100 black Americans resided in Forsyth County, and many of them owned land there. In the early 19 hundreds, the concept of racial segregation was on the rise. And Governor m Hoke Smith was someone who was committed to separating black and white citizens.
He was also the publisher of the Atlanta Journal, and so his views about segregation were reflected in the newspaper's reporting. Unfounded stories about black men attacking white women were run in the newspaper, which contributed to violence escalating against black people in the south. In 1912, local law enforcement in Forsyth County arrested several black residents on very scant evidence for rape and murder of a white woman named May Crow from Forsyth County.
As a result of these false accusations, white mobs unleashed a relentless campaign of terror against the black residents of Forsyth County. This included lynchings, intimidation, and arson of homes and businesses. The violence was so severe and widespread [00:07:00] that it led to nearly. All of the black residents in the county having to flee.
So over 1000 black Americans, which was actually 98% of the black population in Forsyth County at the time, were forced out of their homes and lost their land and everything they owned in the process, most of them fled with nothing more than the clothes on their backs. After this mass exodus of black families, Forsyth County became almost exclusively white For decades, there was this unspoken rule that black people were neither welcome nor safe in Forsyth County.
By the time the construction of the dam began in 1950, the vibrant black community of Oscar V that had existed before 1912 was gone. But some structures and cemeteries remained from the community that once lived there before being dismantled by racial violence. One of the main reasons for the creation of Lake Lanier was to serve as a source of hydroelectric power and to provide water for the rapidly growing city of Atlanta and the surrounding areas.[00:08:00]
It was also to serve as a means of flood control for the Chattahoochee River Basin, and of course to offer recreational opportunities. The land that would become Lake Lanier was acquired through imminent domain. The government eventually bought about 56,000 acres and displaced about 700 families.
Property owners got paid between 45 to $155 an acre, but many felt shortchanged, especially when lakefront lots were later sold for a lot more than that. Can you imagine like the government coming in and like kicking you out of your home and like flooding it and then being like, okay, right where your home used to be is now a lakefront property worth like so much money and we're gonna sell it.
You know, we're gonna like, that's just. Can't even imagine. No. And I'm fascinated with the idea of imminent domain. I think I have a lot of opinions on it, but um, when I was at Shans recently, the hospital, my sister was like, did you see that house when you came in? I was like, no. There's like this [00:09:00] one guy who refused to move and his house is in the middle of it's hospital hos.
I mean, you know how that area is. It's hospitals everywhere and this one guy's like walking out to. Ambulance is going by his house to go get his mail and to go back in his house and you're like, what are you doing here? So obviously you can't do that if, if your home is gonna be turned into a lake, but apparently if it's gonna be turned into something with the hospital, you still can do something, I guess.
But it's really no wonder why Lake Lanier has become the site of urban legends, ghost stories, and tales of the unexplained. But there's also an alarmingly high number of fatalities there, and we're to get into so much more after a quick break to your word from this week's sponsors. So before the break, we were just getting into really the history of Lake Lanier.
Really the history of what existed there before Lake Lanier was ever there, and kind of some of the reasons why this. Infamous Lake has really just captured everyone's attention pretty much [00:10:00] ever since its inception. So there is a widely held belief locally and really otherwise, if you're familiar with Lake Lanier, that the spirits of those that were left in unmarked graves and cemeteries before the area was flooded and turned into a lake are agitated after having their final resting places disturbed.
The government had mapped roughly 20 cemeteries in the flood zone, and they had crews exhume hundreds of graves and relocate them. But if next of kin couldn't be found, or if they refused to exhume the grave, then those graves stayed there. Divers are still said to find marble headstones embedded in red clay at 70 feet deep.
No, I don't like this. No, I don't like this either. And we'll kind of get into this, uh, I'm sure more as the story goes on. But if you listen to us a lot, you've probably heard me say that I don't like anything submerged in water, and this story has not helped me overcome that at all. Some people believe that these spirits are responsible for the high death toll [00:11:00] at the lake because they believe that they are seeking revenge for what was taken from them.
And these statistics surrounding Lake Lanier actually are kind of significant and hard to ignore. Hundreds of lives have been lost in the water there, and it makes it one of the deadliest lakes in the United States. There have been at least 203 deaths since 1994 and roughly 700 since the lake opened.
Many of these fatalities are attributed to common boating and swimming accidents, but just the amount of deaths and often mysterious circumstances surrounding Some of them feel a little too coincidental, but of course, with approximately 11 million visitors each year, accidents are statistically going to be more likely to occur.
People swimming in the lake have reported things like feeling hands pulling at their legs, and boaters have reported unexplainable malfunctions or collisions. One of the most chilling tales is the legend of the Lady of the lake. This is most commonly associated with a real life tragedy that happened in [00:12:00] 1958 when two young women named Delia Mae, Parker Young, and a woman named Susie Roberts were involved in an accident on a bridge crossing the lake.
The women both vanished after their Ford sedan plunged into the water and the following year a decomposed body in a blue dress surfaced with both hands missing. But it wasn't until 31 years later when workers dredged the lake bed that they found the car that the two women were traveling in and it still had Susie's remains inside.
The legend says that the ghost of Delia May, Parker Young still roams the lake to this day. Unsuspecting boaters have reported seeing the Lady of the Lake and others have alleged that the lady will attempt to pull swimmers beneath the surface. Beyond drownings, the lake has also seen dozens of freak accidents, some boat fires, and even missing persons cases, and the dark and murky waters make it very difficult to find people who do vanish Beneath the surface, rescue divers have encountered submerged objects and even what some of them [00:13:00] have described as body parts.
So you might be wondering what the lake bed actually looks like and exactly what all is submerged in it. The deepest point of the lake is actually so far down that visibility is zero because the light can't get down there. The water is about 40 degrees in that area immediately. No, yeah. Fully. No, just it's like I, I.
Going into places like the ocean or a lake, the less information I have, the better. Because if I, it's like the ocean, I like it when it's not totally clear. If something hits my leg, I can say, oh, that was, um, algae, or that was, you know, whatever. Right? But if I see a fish hit me, I'm out of there. I can't do it.
Um, so for me, ignorance is bliss. But before the lake was created, timber crews cut some of the trees down to make them 35 feet. Below the lake's full pool, but there are whole pine and hardwood trunks that still stand there, 50 plus feet [00:14:00] tall in the water, so it's so deep that it's pitch black with trees just standing up an underwater forest in the dark.
Imagine? Mm-hmm. Actually, don't imagine nobody imagined. That's terrifying. That's scary now. But since there were towns and developed communities there, you can still find intact asphalt, concrete bridge, pilings, and even submerged steel trusses. I hate it. All of it. The bottom of the lake is littered with barbed wire fences, chicken coops, well houses and chimneys.
And I bet you know what? I bet that deep freezer was not the first deep freezer that was thrown in that book. I'd be not. And there's some of those too. But rescue divers frequently find vehicles and the occasional sunken houseboat. One dive lieutenant describes diving into Lake Lanier, like crawling blindfolded through a collapsed building.
Only underwater that really took it from terrible to whatever [00:15:00] is worse than terrible. But I don't have, I don't think the English language, I has a good word. I don't have words. Yeah, yeah. At least I don't, my vocabulary can't help us. So in 2007 though, there was a major drought that impacted Lake linear.
The full pool target is 1071 feet above sea level. But in December of 2007, the lake was almost 20 feet below normal, which is actually the lowest level that it was ever recorded. So imagine those tree tops are literally only like six feet down. They're like touching your feet when you're, you're like swimming around and getting scratched by a tree.
So scared I can't. The reservoirs surface area shrank from 39,000 acres to about 31,500. It was actually such a massive change that only 10 out of 104 total boat ramp lanes were usable, which is not very many when you're talking about all the people that go to Lake Lanier. That's, those are some boat lines for sure.
But at the same time, the drought was occurring, the suburbs of Atlanta were exploding, and there were [00:16:00] 5 million residents getting drinking water from Lake Lanier. At one point. Projections showed that the lake could hit Deadpool, not the Ryan Reynolds movie in 90 days. So basically that's when a reservoir's water level drops so low that water can no longer flow downstream through the dam, meaning the dam can no longer release water for downstream users, including those who rely on it for drinking irrigation and hydropower.
So the situation was dire, and the governor literally led a prayer vigil for rain. This drought exposed previously submerged areas of the lake and revealed a set of concrete bleachers where Looper Speedway used to be. It's just so hard to understand. It is how big this lake was or this lake is because you're like, oh duh, it's a full town that was here before, but it is just like, imagine.
Our town being under, I, I can't. Mm-hmm. I can't. Mm-hmm. It's weird. And just swimming over the mall. Oh, I hate it. It's like the most bizarre [00:17:00] concept to me. And like I do find. The idea of sunken cities. Fascinating girl. And um, where my mom lives up in upstate New York, they have a similar thing where they had created a dam and flooded a town.
Obviously not while people were living there, obviously. Well, um, but it's like the same thing. So it's the lake. It's right where my mom lives. Lake Delta. If anybody lives in that area, you'll know about that story. But there's a town that's like the whole thing. There's a whole town under Lake Delta. 'cause because of a similar thing, it had to be flooded for.
Flood control and whatever other reasons they had, but it freaks me out just to think of stuff building. I feel like we need to and stuff being under there. Take them down first. I cannot. The idea of swimming over those things, it's too much. But like if they were all gone, I'd be like, sure, great, whatever.
But knowing there's a whole town under you, I gotta stop looking into any of this stuff. I'm never gonna have fun again in my life. I know. But these bleachers, as I mentioned, surrounded a half mile dirt track and a popular venue for [00:18:00] stock car racing, right until Lake Lanier was created. When the water levels get low enough, the top few rows of those grandstand can be seen.
I bet some of these boat wrecks have just been people running into these stupid bleeds. Bleachers. Yeah. Oh, come on guys. This is, this is too much. So other Lake Lanier haunting stories involve the underwater church bell of Van Pugh. It said that you can still hear the bell ringing from beneath the water.
I, my ears ring all the time, so that wouldn't even, I wouldn't even catch that one. I'd be good there. Some reports also suggest that a Native American burial ground was disturbed during the creation of the lake. Others believe that supernatural forces are at play in the waters of Lake Lanier. With some near drowning survivors reporting, sudden storm swells, whirlpools and invisible hands pulling at them.
But what's an invisible hand? An invisible hand to me is a Nothing. Nothing. Okay. Mandy right behind you. I see an invisible hand that it's not a thing, but I don't feel anything pulling [00:19:00] at me, so that's why it's not a thing. Oh, actually, okay. Okay. I forgot how much creepier that got. Right. So let's stay creep and we'll get into the rest of the story after one last break to hear work from this week's sponsors.
Alright, so before the break we. Shared a lot of information about the history of Lake Lanier and kind of what some of the lore around it says. We talked a lot about things that are submerged under Lake Lanier, and truly that is one of the most horrifying parts of this story to me, because I do not like things submerged in water.
It's a very real fear of mine. So. Let's get into some of the real confirmed actual stories out of Lake Lanier, just to kind of show how eerie and strange this place really is. So in 2024, a 73-year-old man was fishing with his wife when a seat on their boat came unbolted, and the man fell into the water while attempting to sit down.
He never resurfaced, and his body was later found in about six feet of water. So. [00:20:00] This is just one of literally dozens of accounts where someone either falls or jumps into the water only to completely disappear without ever resurfacing. I find that incredibly odd. Yeah. That people just fall or jump into the water.
And they ne they literally just never come back up to me. That is very strange, especially people who are experienced around water. Right. To not have come up at all and to have witnesses say no, once they went down, we didn't see them again. Yeah. It feels like something is pulling you in the water. That's such a weird thing.
So, due to the conditions though, in some parts of the lake, as I was saying, the deep. Water, the literal standing trees. It is often really difficult to find victims who do succumb to drowning down there because as I said, it's very difficult for the to rescue di for rescue divers to even get down there.
I read this one article of a diver talking about diving in Lake Lanier and how truly challenging it is, even for a very experienced diver because of how dark it is and because of all these [00:21:00] things that are actually down there. They of course do take a light down there and like use a light. Apparently it just ca makes it like cast this like really eerie, like green haze in the water, like the light that they use.
And he was saying that these, um, where the forest is, these trees of course have been just down there for like. Decades and they all have sediment and stuff just like sitting on them. So, um, if you even brush past one of these branches, it like knocks off like literally like 40, 50 years worth of stuff. No, that's just been sitting on it and stirs up and makes it really murky and obvious.
It's already hard enough to see, but like, these are just like some of the challenges they have, they said that there's like fishing wire and stuff entangled in the trees down there and all the, I mean, it, it definitely uhhuh, um. It sounds really scary to me. Question. The article you read about, is this guy like a for leisure?
Diver or is he like a rescue diver? I hope nobody for leisurely dive. I can't [00:22:00] say the words. Nobody should do that. This was a leisure, this was like a, not leisurely. I'm sorry. Okay. This guy, this man was speaking, he's a rescue diver. So he was saying what challenges, um, they face when they're trying to dive and, uh, look for people and look for victims in Lake Lanier because it truly is putting themselves in really, in really in danger because like.
Imagine, like he said, it's like crawl, you know, like the guy said before, it's like crawling, going through a collapsed building underwater in the dark. Like just terrifying. But even just thinking about that, about like brushing up against a tree and having like mm-hmm. I mean, it really makes me feel things like inside.
I know I just don't like. So in September of 2024, authorities responded to the lake about a drowning and learned that 46-year-old Hasani Wideman was swimming from the shore. He swam from the shore back to his boat. When same thing happened to him, he just disappeared beneath the surface and did not come back up.
In July of 20 23, 20 4-year-old Thomas Milner [00:23:00] died after, get this being electrocuted when he jumped off the dock into the water. No, no, no. Don't like that. Don't like that at all. Um, his family heard him screaming for help shortly after he jumped in and they tried to use a ladder to help get him out, but they were unsuccessful.
Of course, they did not realize that he was actually suffering from an electric. Electric shock at this point. They just didn't know what was wrong with him. So neighbors tried taking a boat out to where Thomas was, and one of them actually jumped in the water to try and go help him and save him. But they immediately realized, oh my gosh, they felt like something stinging on their skin.
This person recognized that. It immediately as being an electrical current running through the water. So this neighbor swam to shore through the electrical current, turned off a power box, I guess that was nearby, and then got back in the water and pulled Thomas out. But unfortunately, it was too late. So it does seem that while in some of the drowning cases at the lake.
The victim like is known to be someone who's not a strong swimmer. Many of these cases though, like I said before, these people are [00:24:00] experienced around water. They're either boaters, they live on the water, you know, they've been around this lake, they, it's not like these people don't know how to swim. So in May of 2019, a 61-year-old man was found floating in the water near his dock.
Over Memorial Day weekend, Michael Thompson was discovered by a family member who dialed 9 1 1, and his death was determined to be accidental and there were no signs of foul play. Similarly to that story, in July of 2025, just this month, another man was found floating in Lake Linear, near a private dock.
Witnesses say he was just swimming around the dock when he went underwater and never came up. And officials have said that there might have been an electrical current in the water, but they are still currently investigating this. Like what is going on though that like, I don't ever hear about these types of weird freak.
We live in Florida, there's a ton of lakes here. Oh yeah. We always hear about different like boating accidents, different. You know, things that might happen, but I can't, uh, I can honestly not say that there's one particular lake that I always hear about crazy things happening. No. Mm-hmm. No, [00:25:00] we, I don't either.
And yeah, we have several of them, like a ton of them. But Lake Lanier, honestly, just, it's like in the background of. True crime stuff, people going missing. Just there's a lot of connections. If we've covered a Georgia case, there's a good chance that we've mentioned Lake Lanier because it's somehow a part of all of this.
But perhaps one of the most infamous cases to ever happen at Lake Lanier was the death of the singer ushers, 11-year-old stepson. I remember this. Do you remember when this happened? I do. Yes, I do. Yeah. Terrible. But this wasn't so much of a freak accident as it really was negligence. It's a story not many people know about, and it did happen at Lake Lanier.
It was 2012 when usher's then wife, Tamika Foster lost her son. After a family friend riding a jet ski crashed into the boy and a 15-year-old girl who were playing in an inner tube. Both were seriously injured and the 11-year-old died two weeks later from brain injuries. Jeffrey Simon Hubbard was indicted on charges of homicide by a vessel and [00:26:00] serious injury by vessel and unlawful operation of a personal watercraft.
He was sentenced to four years in prison, plus an additional 15 years of probation. His attorneys maintained that the collision was a tragic accident and he tried to avoid hitting the kids. They said that he has been remorseful from day one. There's a, um, Nate Brizi joke that he has that talks about like everybody you see on a lake, they're either drinking or they're 11.
Like there's just no, it's just like, there's no real rules. Like you don't have to know certain rules and people are speeding and there's just chaos. There's not, it's not like you have travel lanes, anything like that. It's like this huge thing. So you can see how things do happen, but obviously this is just like the earring.
Us of all this stuff at Lake Lanier is, it's just a lot. The fatality record is actually the highest at Lake Lanier than of any Georgia Lake. Likely explained by the submerged debris, the heavy boat traffic, and the fact that there are no lifeguards at most of the swimming spots. [00:27:00] When you also add in the go stories graves that were never relocated and the painful memory of racial violence, you just get a place that feels unsettling.
However, the waters of Lake Lanier are one of North Georgia's most indispensable assets. It provides the Atlanta metro area with necessary flood protection, a drinking water buffer, hydroelectric power, and it's a beautiful spot where millions of visitors go each year. Love that for them. Me, that's the thing.
It's like, I'm trying to think. Like you were saying, we don't know of any spots here that are, that you know are infamous like this, but I'm trying think like. There is anything here that I would go to that somebody outta town would be like, I would never do such and such. Like we're like, I would never go to Lake Lanier, but people that live around it are like, do they not care?
If you live and swim in Lake Lanier? Let us know because I really don't know. I know. The things we know about it haven't been great. Right, right. Um, but I can't think of anything here. I think just Florida in general, people are like, I'm not going there. I was [00:28:00] gonna say, that's just anything. Right. That's just literally our whole state as a whole.
People are wondering why we're here, but No, I literally like, I feel like. I don't know. There's several reasons why I don't feel like I will ever visit Lake Lanier and I certainly will not get in the water. Uh, and you know, I am, I do enjoy boating and water activities and I like to see nice places, but I don't know something about Lake Lanier.
I don't know whether you wanna say it's like a, I don't know. I just feel like. It does feel like an unsettling place to go. It wouldn't be my first choice. Yeah, I'm sure it's beautiful and I saw lots of pictures of it while I was working on this episode. Um, and that's like all I really care to see of it.
Like I just feel like it's not, I don't feel like we should go there and get in the water. No, no, no. Don't worry, don't worry. I am totally good there. But Mandy, uh, you were talking about this week when you were talking about this episode with me, you were talking about. Reminding me of your fear of these things in the water and you said there's actually a name for this fear.
What is it called? There is, so it's called sub [00:29:00] phobia, and this is specifically the fear of submerged manmade objects. So like, you know, statues so your don't count, right? The trees don't count, but I still think it counts for something. Mm-hmm. That still has to, that still triggers something in me that I did not like.
Sure. Um, mm-hmm. But also. I feel like not only do I have a fear of, it's not just manmade, but to me it's also large objects that are submerged. Sure. Right. Like I don't really care what it is, but if it's huge, I don't wanna be around it. It's actually interesting because speaking of of lakes, my family, my husband, and we took our kids, um, last summer up to, it's in North and South Carolina.
It's kind of on the board. But we went to Lake Joi, which is this massive lake up there. Beautiful mountain lake. Crystal clear, you can see straight to the bottom. But the bottom is very, very far down. And it, it was, it was beautiful, but like, I also felt really like unsettled there just because of the sheer size of like the rocks and things that were like under the water.
Oh, oh yeah. Like even that kind of stuff, like brings up this like feeling [00:30:00] and inside of me that like, just makes feel an anxiety, anxious, you know, I get like serious anxiety from it. Yeah, so I sent you like a little AI overview of um, exactly what it is and different things. There was like a list on there for like, oh, mechanisms that you can try if you have this.
And one of them was like, you can do like exposure therapy. Why would you need to, like, why don't you just stay outta the water? Yeah. I feel like it'd be very easy. You're not a mermaid. You can really avoid this altogether. You really can't. Was was that lake that you're talking about? Wasn't there a place that you said, I, I.
Have this in my head, and maybe it was a dream, and this isn't real because I'm about to sound crazy. No, you're right. I already know what you're talking about. Where it looked like I was on where the Truman Show and reached the edge, the earth. Yes. Yes. Okay. Yes, because it's like this. I think about a lot.
I think about it a lot. Okay. Because I think about how freaked out I was when we got to that part of the lake where it's literally a sheer cliff, but you can drive your boat right up to it. The water goes like right up to it. But if you look up, it just looks like a wall, like a wall of rock that just goes.
Directly up and it lasts for a long [00:31:00] time. It goes a long way. Even being next to that freaked me out, like being in our boat and like my husband was like, let's drive right up next to the rock wall. And I'm like, no. Like what's gonna happen? Literally nothing. Nothing happens, happened. What good could happen?
Exactly, but just that stuff freaks me out. I don't know. There are definitely certain things in life and and places that you can go that make you realize. How tiny you are as a human being and I just don't like that feeling. I know. And the other thing I've seen this week, because probably 'cause I've now seen TikTok videos about Lake Lanier and everything else as we've been talking about it, is this is different, but it's the same cave diving, cave divers, the people that just go into a cave and just.
Oh my gosh. There's like a TikTok girl that talks about them and like you see the animation. One was like this guy takes, uh, 15, fifth, fifth graders, his fifth grade class to go look in this cave. And you just see like bodies, pictures of, I don't know. I don't know. It made, you know what I love about caves upset.
It upset me and I kept thinking about caves [00:32:00] in Lake Lanier too. I hate it. What do you know about caves? What do you like about caves? I like the fact that you don't have to go in them. Amen. Okay. You have a choice. Oh. Oh my gosh. Yeah. This is too much. Yeah, so, okay. Lake Lanier. We've covered it. So we've covered it.
Yeah. If you do live locally and have visited, I would love to hear from people who have visited like Lanier and I would love to hear some personal stories, even if they're creepy. Especially if they're creepy. Ooh. Yeah. If they're creepy, we might have to do a part two. 'cause this is, yeah, for sure. This was weird.
Yeah. This is definitely, uh, definitely a fun story. So let us know what you thought about this one and. I think I'll just, I think I'll just say I won't be visiting. I'm with you. I think there's a lot of places that I would like to visit and if I can't make it to Lake Lanier, I can't make it to Lake Lanier.
It'll be alright. I also am not gonna plan to. Exactly. Alright guys, thank you so much for listening to this Thursday's episode. We will be back next week. Same time, same place. New story. Have a great [00:33:00] week.
