Ain't nothing quite like a summer night down
at Lake Lanier. The water's smooth like glass,
the moon rippling across the surface, cicadas
humming in the trees. Folks laugh and splash,
boats drift easy, and the air's thick with the
smell of fish and gasoline from them jet skis
tearing across the lake. But when the sun dips
behind them, Georgia pines, when the water turns
black, Something in the air shifts. A boy once
told a tale, swore up and down it was true, about
how he was swimming out near the old Lunier Bridge
when he felt fingers wrap around his ankle. Cold,
strong, pulling him down. He kicked, thrashed,
screamed, but something beneath the water wouldn't
let go. They found him gasping on the shore,
eyes wild, hands shaking. said when he looked
down into that murky water, just before he blacked
out, he saw her. A woman in a blue dress, floating
just below the surface, her face pale, her eyes
dark pits, her arms stretched out like she was
reaching for him. Ain't nobody dared to tell
him he was lying, because plenty of folks around
these parts got stories about Lake Lanier, and
not one of them ends well. Welcome to Kentucky
Melodies America's Scariest Stories, where we
bring you ghostly legends, spooky haints, and
bone -chilling tales from all over this great
land. These stories will have you looking over
your shoulder all night. So pull up a chair,
dim them lights, and let's dive into the eerie
and unexplained. Tucked up in North Georgia,
Sprawled out like a black bottomless hole, Lake
Lanier don't just sit, it looms. It stretches
near 38 ,000 acres. Its water's hungry and deep,
swallowing up everything that once stood beneath
it. By daylight, it might seem still, just a
big old basin of water, but when the wind dies
down and the surface smooths out like glass,
it starts feeling less like a lake. and more
like a looking glass that ain't reflecting the
world above, but something else entirely. Ain't
nothing natural about what lingers under them
murky depths. Back in the 1950s, the government
come in talking big about progress, saying how
they needed to build a hydroelectric dam. Claimed
it'd be good for Atlanta, good for power, good
for flood control. What they didn't say, what
they didn't care much to talk about was what'd
be swallowed up in the process. Whole towns,
whole lives. They come through with their surveyor
stakes and eviction notices, telling folks they
had to clear out that their homes, their churches,
their schools, their histories, all of it was
gonna be wiped off the map. Some packed up and
left, but plenty didn't wanna go. Weren't long
before the bulldozers come, tearing up the land,
knocking down buildings, leaving whole communities
to rot before the water even got to them. And
then there was the graveyards. Now they claim
they did the best they could, say they went through
digging up graves, moving markers, trying to
make sure them that had been laid to rest weren't
disturbed too much. But let me ask you something.
How you reckon they found them all? Some of them
bones had been down in that dirt since the Civil
War, since before the ink dried on the declaration,
since long before any surveyor's pen ever scratched
out a map of Georgia. Whole family plots where
time had worn the stones clean, where names had
been forgotten, where roots had tangled up with
ribs and femurs and old wooden coffins. So, when
the dam finally shut, when the water started
crawling up over the hills and filling the valleys,
when it rose up slow and patient, swallowing
roads and forests, pulling whole towns into the
deep, you really think they got every last body?
Or did some of them stay put, trapped under the
silt, settling under the weight of that dark,
drowning water? That's right. The bodies. And
a lake that big, holding that much history, that
much death. It don't stay quiet. Ain't never
stayed quiet. Ain't just one ghost in Lake Lanier.
No, sir. This place don't hold just one restless
soul. It holds hundreds, maybe more. Folks around
here say the whole place got a curse on it. Something
woven deep into the water, into the land beneath.
It ain't just the drownings. Ain't just the wrecks
or the vanishing folks. It's the feel of the
place. The way the air changes when the sun dips
low. The way the water don't never feel quite
right when you step into it. Some say it started
back in 1912. long before a single drop of this
lake existed when the town of Oscarville was
wiped clean off the map. Wasn't no natural disaster
that took it. No sickness or famine. It was people.
A thriving black community. Folks with homes,
with farms, with businesses, was run out by violence.
Mob come through, set fire to houses, took what
they wanted, killed who they pleased. The ones
that got away? They left with nothing. Their
land stolen, their history erased. And decades
later, when the government come deciding this
was the perfect spot for a lake, the water rose
up and took what was left of that town. But the
past? It don't drown easy. Fishermen been out
there before dawn, sitting quiet in their boats,
waiting on a bite, only to see figures standing
on the water. Not in it, but on it. Dark shapes,
motionless in the mist, just watching. More than
one man has cast his line, thought he hooked
something big, only to feel the weight shift,
like something tugging from below, harder than
any fish should pull. And when they look over
the side, sometimes the water don't just show
them their own reflection. Sometimes it shows
them someone else. Dark eyes, empty faces, people
that ain't supposed to be there. And them graveyards,
they say they moved? Well, plenty of folks reckon
they didn't get every last body. They talk about
cold hands brushing past their legs when they're
swimming. Feeling like something grabs at their
ankles, pulling them under, holding them down
just long enough to taste panic. But even them
spirits from Oscarville, even them nameless dead
beneath the water, they don't send the biggest
shiver down folks' spines. No sir, that'd be
her. The Lady of the Lake. Been stories about
her since 1958, when two women, Susie Roberts
and Delia May Parker Young went driving down
that old Lanier bridge, laughing and carrying
on till something went wrong. Their car veered
off the road, flew into the black water below.
For a whole year, there weren't no sign of them.
Then one day, a fisherman found a body, bloated,
twisted, hands gone. Couldn't tell who she was,
where she come from. Then in 1990 something else
come up from them depths a rusted out Ford sedan
sitting at the bottom of the lake all them years
holding the skeleton of Suzy Roberts which means
that first body that was Delia and some say she
never left people driving across Lanier Bridge
late at night say they seen her a woman in a
blue dress walking the roadside, her hair dripping
wet, her face pale as the moon. Sometimes she
steps right out in front of their cars, eyes
black as the deep. The ones that try to stop,
try to help, say she vanishes before their very
eyes. And the ones that don't see her in time?
They say she just stares as the car passes through
her, like she knows who's next. Them that live
to tell it don't never take that road alone again.
Now, I reckon you might sit there and say, ah,
that's just old ghost stories, just folks spinning
yarns. But let me tell you something, numbers
don't lie. Since 1994, over 200 people done drowned
in Lake Lanier. That's 200 souls lost. and that's
just the ones they counted. Some of them bodies
turned up, some never did. Ain't like it's a
stormy sea, neither. Ain't like these folks was
caught in hurricanes fighting against raging
waters. No, sir. Some of them was just swimming.
Some of them was sitting in boats on waters,
so calm and still you could see the trees reflecting
back at ya. Then, gone. Boats capsize for no
reason, flipping in water that shouldn't be churning.
Lifeguards tell tales about strong, invisible
currents, pulling swimmers straight down, like
something beneath the surface got a grip on them.
But it's the divers that got the worst stories.
Them that go down in the deep talk about seeing
whole forests still standing beneath that water.
Trees with branches stretched out, like they
reaching for the surface like they trying to
climb their way back to the world of the living.
Ain't just trees, neither. They seen roads down
there, bridges, whole buildings sitting silent
in the dark, swallowed up and forgotten. The
past don't die. It just waits. And sometimes
them divers say it ain't just trees that reach
for them. People that been in that water before
talk about feeling something brush past their
legs, something cold, solid, like flesh where
flesh shouldn't be. They kick and twist, but
there ain't nothing there. Least not that they
can see, but some don't get the chance to tell
the tale. Some get pulled down and never come
back up. Others say, If you stop paddling, just
tread water real still. Let the silence settle
around you. You might hear something. Not the
lapping of water, not the sound of boats in the
distance, but screaming. Ain't no echoes on a
lake. No reason a voice should come from below.
But there it is, muffled, twisting up through
the deep. A sound that ain't got nowhere to carry
it. No lungs to make it. And if you stay out
too long, if you listen too close, real late
at night, you might hear something even worse.
Not screaming, not crying, but laughing. A woman's
laugh, light and sweet, floating just over the
water, right before something cold wraps around
your ankle. Ain't hard to find folks who got
their own tale to tell. Maybe they saw the lady
in blue on the bridge. Maybe they felt them fingers
in the deep. Maybe they know something they ain't
never gonna speak out loud. But what about you?
If you ever found yourself standing at the edge
of Lake Lanier, feeling that warm Georgia breeze
on your skin, watching the water stretch out
dark and still, would you go in? Would you step
into them waters? Feel the cold creep up your
legs, let the dark close over your head, even
knowing what might be lurking just beneath you?
Or would you stay put on the shore, heart hammering,
listening close, watching the tree line for shadows
that ain't supposed to be there? Would you keep
your ears open for a whisper, for a splash that
don't belong, for the sound of laughter drifting
low across the lake? Maybe you got a tale of
your own. Maybe you heard something from kinfolk,
or you've been out there and felt something cold
grip your ankle when there weren't nothing there
to grab ya. Tell me, have you ever had a run
-in with something you can't explain? Ever seen
something in the water that shouldn't be there?
Drop it in the comments, share your story, or
just let me know. Would you take a swim in Lake
Lanier? Now, if you made it this far, reckon
you got a taste for the eerie and the unexplained.
The kind of stories that keep you up at night,
listening for sounds that ain't supposed to be
there. But don't stop now, there's plenty more
haints and horrors waiting for you right here
at Kentucky Melody. Ghosts that don't rest, curses
that don't break. Towns that vanished but left
something behind So go on if you dare click the
next episode But be warned once you start down
this trail you might not find your way back And
if you hear something whispering from the dark
while you listen Don't answer back