Our first stop of the Haunted America tour is Georgia – my home state. I was born and raised in Georgia and live there to this day. The Lady of Lake Lanier was the obvious choice for Georgia because of my history with Lake Lanier itself. So….
Pull up a chair. I’ve got a story.
I’ve been going to Lake Lanier my whole life. Boats, jet skis, kayaks, swimming in coves I probably shouldn’t have been swimming in. My parents live on it right now…literally in their backyard, dock and everything. My kids and I have splashed around in that water more times than I can count.
And the whole time, something has been down there watching.
Let me tell you about the Blue Lady.
In April of 1958, two women left a dance together late at night. Delia May Parker Young and Susie Roberts. Young women, out having a good time, driving home across Browns Bridge, the same Browns Bridge in Gainesville that I’ve driven over probably a hundred times in my life, about thirty minutes from where I sit right now.
They stopped for gas on the way. Then drove off without paying for it.
Maybe they were laughing about it. Maybe they were going too fast because of it. Either way, something went wrong on that bridge. Their car went off the edge and into the dark water of Lake Lanier.
Just like that. Gone.
Eighteen months later a fisherman spotted something floating near a bridge.
It was a woman. Severely decomposed. Missing her hands. Missing her toes.
She was wearing a blue dress.
Nobody could identify her. Not right away. But the locals, they already knew. Because here’s the thing. In the months since Delia and Susie had gone missing, people had been seeing a woman on the bridge. Walking slowly. Wandering. Like she was lost. Like she was looking for something.
And she was wearing a blue dress.
So when that body came up from the water, no hands, blue dress…they knew. That was Delia.
The grave was unmarked for years. Eventually they put her name on it. And the legend of the Lady of Lake Lanier was official.
Susie Roberts wasn’t found for another three decades. Her car, a 1950s Ford sedan, was finally discovered at the bottom of the lake in 1990. Over thirty years after it went in. Her remains were still inside.
Some people say Delia is still out there on that bridge. Looking for Susie. Wandering back and forth in that blue dress with nothing at the end of her arms, searching.
Others say the two of them are together now. Down at the bottom of the lake. And when swimmers feel something grab their ankles and pull…that’s them. Looking for company.
Here’s where it gets bigger than one ghost story.
Lake Lanier was built in the 1950s by flooding the valley. And when I say they flooded it…I mean they flooded everything. Homes. Churches. Bridges. A whole town called Oscarville that had been there for generations.
They relocated some of the cemeteries before the water came in. Twenty of them. Over seven hundred graves dug up and moved.
But here’s what they’ve confirmed. Not every grave was found. Record keeping in rural Georgia in the early 1900s wasn’t exactly meticulous. Unmarked graves, forgotten plots, bodies nobody documented, some of them are still down there right now….at the bottom of the lake.
Divers have found rooftops, foundations, roads, the Gainesville Speedway…still intact underwater. One diver described reaching out in the dark and feeling something that didn’t move. An arm or a leg, he said. Just floating there. I’d freak!
Over 700 people have died in Lake Lanier since it was filled in 1956. Nearly 200 of them since 1994. Twenty-seven bodies were never recovered. They’re still in there somewhere…down with the houses and the cemeteries and whatever else the water swallowed.
Last week a 21-year-old went swimming with his friends on a calm summer day and never came back up. They found him the next day.
A lot of people chalk it up to drinking, to accidents, to the submerged debris that creates invisible hazards beneath the surface. And that’s probably true most of the time.
But good swimmers go under at Lake Lanier and don’t come back. And people report feeling pulled. Hands around their ankles in water that should be empty.
I’ve been swimming in that lake my whole life. I’ve never felt anything.
But I know what’s down there now.
And I think about it every single time.
Have you been to Lake Lanier? Have you heard the Lady’s story? Tell me in the comments. Especially if you’ve felt something in that water that you couldn’t explain.