Lake Lanier is a man made Georgia lake from the mid-20th century that has experienced approximately 600 deaths over the duration of its existence. The lake sits above a rural farm town called Oscarville that was home to thousands of Black residents and agricultural workers.
Oscarville helped the agriculture industry in Georgia survive and innovate further after an infestation of boll weevils hindered many farmers’ crops. Oscarville became a pillar small city of success that helped push Georgia forward during the Great Depression because of their use of chickens to revitalize the rotten soil.
Shortly after, the town was flooded and a major dam was built for Lake Lanier to come to life. Mayor William B. Hartsfield aimed to make Atlanta more of a metropolitan city and did so by filling up these rural connecting towns with water.
Hundreds of families were misplaced, and even the cemeteries that stood in these towns were covered by Lake Lanier. This means, dead bodies had to be dug up and relocated to neighboring cities, but many of the grave sites weren’t fully emptied.
Today, Lake Lanier is a body of water that is over 100 feet deep in some areas. Below, at the lake’s floor, lies concrete structures, leftover building foundations, paved roads, homes, and cemeteries that haven’t been demolished.
//www.instagram.com/embed.js
The ghost tale of Georgia’s biggest and most haunted lake relates to the many deaths that have occurred at Lake Lanier. The lake, itself, is a tourist destination and attracts millions of tourists and Georgia locals in the area as the lake is roughly 50 miles away from Atlanta.
Lake Lanier’s dark history is being turned into a feature film, directed by William Eric Bush-Anderson. The Black-directed movie will discuss the horrifying background of Lake Lanier and how the lake came to be through flooding a lively farm town. Oscarbille had many Black farmers, and roughly 1,000 of them left the city to escape racism and the violence that surrounded discrimination in the early 1900s.
The film is slated to be released in 2022.
The creepy rumors surrounding the lake highlight a woman who stalks the waters and hundreds of dead bodies that still float underneath the lake’s surface that have yet to be found.
Related: Is Lake Lanier Haunted? The Eerie History Of The Georgia Lake Built Over An Entire Town
