Is it just superstition?

And what are we doing, discussing it before autumnn and Halloween?

The issue: places where the dead are buried.

For countless times, when there are strange events, sometimes calamitous, and “paranormal” phenomena, it is later learned that the situation has proximity to or is even built on graves.

To be frank and more specific, the most violent cases of hauntings seem to trend strongly to Native American burial plots, perhaps due to the rituals performed in a pagan culture (that, after harsh treatment by conquering Europeans, in many cases levied curses to go along with human remains).

But any cemetery, it seems, can have issues.

Overall — when treated in a prayerful state — it can be a nice thing to do: visiting the graves of loved ones, in order to better focus entreaties on their behalf. The problem arrives when it becomes too much a routine, with disregard for what else may be clinging to a property. (Remember, the deceased who left in God’s Grace are not at graves but in a splendid afterlife, not in any way confined to an earthly locale.)

The most striking link between burials and human tragedy may be a lake in Georgia, not far north of Atlanta.

This is Lake Lanier, an artificial lake built atop towns and cemeteries and was named after a writer, poet, musician, and Confederate army veteran (Sidney Lanier). More than twenty ghraveyards were relocated to make room for it, and other, older ones–perhaps unmarked–were simply inundated.

Its location on top of various cemeteries (for black and Europeans, as well as Native Americans) isn’t the whole of the picture. During constructin, certain impoverished communities were uprooted for the lake (which supplies water and hydroelectricity to Atlanta) and relocated uncharitably.

In the seven decades since its construction in the mid-1950s, according to some accounts, the lake has claimed the lives of 700 people.

Part of the problem is mundane: the flooded buildings at its bottom pose a hazard to swimmers. There are also treacherous currents.

Notorious also are the graves at places like Gettysburgh, and there were always rumors (unconfriemd) that the famous alleged Amityville haunting was due to Shinnecock Indian remains in the area. Ditto for a house in Brownsville, Pennsylvania, about which we had a “special report” (a clearcut tenebrific circumstance, to understate it).

Noted the New Republic: “’There are haunted bridges and haunted alleyways, haunted parks, and haunted parking lots. But in the United States, the most common—the most primal—haunted place is a house. Home ownership has always been intertwined with the American dream; we have magnified this simple property decision in part because it represents safety and security. The haunted house is a violation of this comfort, the American dream gone horribly wrong. And in the last few decades, the most common cause for a house’s haunting—a problem cited so frequently it’s almost become a cliché—is the Indian burial ground.”

Urban (and suburban) legend?

Haunted Indian burial grounds, points out New Republic, “have appeared since in Poltergeist II, in Stanley Kubrick’s adaptation of Stephen King’s The Shining, and in countless lesser-known films, novels, and TV shows. It’s a legend that’s become so ubiquitous that it’s become something of a cliché, showing up these days as often as not as a punchline in comedies, appearing everywhere from South Park to Parks and Recreation.”

They’ll be a future “special report” about graves, but for now, let’s focus on Lake Lanier.

According to another publication, “it’s said to be the most dangerous underwater surface in the United States. In droughts, the unpredictable lake floor becomes exposed and ferry boats, cars, bodies, and debris of all kinds get closer to the boats and swimmers at the surface. And the chaotic lake floor makes dredging the lake for missing bodies that much more difficult. The water depths are also unpredictable. One second you are shoulder-deep, and one step forward brings a 30-foot drop.”

Legend has it the ghost of a long-deceased woman roams the waterway in a flowing blue dress and that mysterious arms reach out for swimmers from the aqueous depths. Angry spirits call people home to submerged graves. There are those who had close calls and insist something grabbed them and dragged them below the waves.

Have seven hundred really died on or in it?

The Georgia Department of Natural Resources says more than two hundred people have died at Lake Lanier between 1994 and 2022, most attributed to drownings.

Granted: the seven-hundred figure is for a longer period of time (again, dating to the 1950s).

On an episode of Expedition X, a fellow named Phil Torres performed a dive on a submerged cemetery and discovered tombstones that had not been disturbed, complete with momentos left by loved ones, suggesting that the government did not relocate graves as promised.

Divers find eerie relics of streets, walls, and houses intact like an abandoned ghost town on the lake’s bottom. Some have felt body parts.

Disgruntled spirits (maybe). With twelve million visitors a year, a good number of drownings and boat accidents are to be expected.

But this many?

[resources: Lying Wonders, Strangest Things]

[resources: Michael Brown retreat]