Episode 109 – Lake Lanier: The Stories Beneath the Surface is out now!
Lake Lanier is one of the most popular lakes in America. It is also one of the most feared.
Lake Lanier is named after Sidney Lanier, a 19th-century American poet and musician from Georgia. The state officially named the reservoir in his honor because of his famous poem “Song of the Chattahoochee,” which describes the river that now fills the lake. The name, however, comes with controversy, and many people want it renamed.
Beneath its waters lie old roads, foundations, forgotten pieces of communities, and a history far darker than the ghost stories suggest.
In Episode 109, we travel back long before the lake existed. We explore the Native American history of the land, the forced removal of the Cherokee, and the racial violence that drove more than a thousand Black residents from Georgia’s Forsyth County in 1912. Then, decades later, the federal government arrived to build Buford Dam, flooding thousands of acres and creating the lake we know today.
But the story didn’t end when the water stopped rising.
Recent Tragedies
Hundreds of deaths have been connected to Lake Lanier over the decades. Search-and-recovery divers regularly descend into its dark, debris-filled depths. Below is a look at some of the headlines from recent years.
2026
2025
2024
2023
1960 – 2020
Meanwhile, stories persist of submerged ruins, unexplained encounters, a mysterious woman in blue, and a lake some believe has been cursed from the beginning.
How much of the legend is folklore?
How much can history explain?
And what really lies beneath the surface of Lake Lanier?
Join Curator135 as we separate documented history from enduring legend and descend into one of America’s most mysterious bodies of water.
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