Ep. 96-The Town the Government Drowned: The Dark Truth About Lake Lanier

A glittering reservoir with 700 miles of shoreline, a summer magnet for millions, and a drowned town beneath the surface—Lake Lanier refuses to be simple. We wade past the “cursed” label to explore the hard truths shaping its reputation: a long record of drownings and collisions, the submerged history of Oscarville, and the way policy choices still echo through today’s recreation culture.

We start with the present, unpacking recent incidents that made headlines and the patterns experts see: unbuckled life jackets, sudden drop-offs, shifting currents, heavy boat traffic, and alcohol turning a quick swim into a rescue that comes too late. From there we follow the shoreline backward, to a thriving Black community shattered by 1912 racial terror and, decades later, by eminent domain for Buford Dam. Homes, churches, roads—and many graves—went under. When drought pulls the lake down, pieces of that story surface, and the folklore writes itself: cold spots on hot nights, the Lady of the Lake, whispers in the coves.

The conversation doesn’t stop at legend. We talk practical safety—how to choose and secure a life jacket, why night boating is riskier than it looks, how wakes and wind trap swimmers near docks, and the difference that sober driving and hazard awareness make on crowded weekends. We also ask what it would mean to care for this place honestly: memorializing Oscarville, improving signage and patrols, and respecting the water with the same energy we bring to play.

If you’ve ever wondered whether Lake Lanier is haunted or simply carrying the weight of history and human error, this deep dive invites you to look closer. Listen, share with a friend who spends summers on the water, and tell us what you believe. If this resonated, follow the show, leave a review, and send us your take—curse or consequence?

https://lakelanier.com/history/

https://time.com/6984594/georgia-death-lake-lanier-haunted/

https://medium.com/theundercurrent/forsyth-1912-the-truth-about-lake-lanier-and-oscarville-6f61ec951e11

Transcript

New Year Banter And Setup

SPEAKER_00 0:00

People say Lake Lanier is cursed. I mean when you hear how many lives have ended there, it's enough to make your skin crawl. But what if that term cursed isn't really the point? What if it's something darker? Something we haven't been willing to look at closely. Because before it was water, it was land. And before the water, it was a town. This is Hold My Sweet Tea. And I'm Pearl.

SPEAKER_01 1:15

And I I sincerely hope that your 2026 is better than your 2025. Right.

SPEAKER_00 1:23

I mean, you're you're a few days into it, like how's it going? You're right. Right. Is it treating you okay so far? New year, same me. Right. New year, new me mental illness. No, it was mental breakdown. That's what it was.

SPEAKER_01 1:46

Or illness, whatever. Or illness is. Could be plural. Yep. New mental illness.

SPEAKER_00 1:53

Yep. Love it, love it, love it. And still haven't made a resolution. I'm just she's just flying by the seat of my pants.

SPEAKER_01 2:05

Oh I was gonna say free ball, and you don't want to ball seat.

SPEAKER_00 2:10

And I'm free.

SPEAKER_01 2:14

Free ballin'.

SPEAKER_00 2:15

Free ballin'. I can't let not sing a Tom Petty song without saying free ballin'.

SPEAKER_01 2:21

I know. Love it, love it, love it. Oh my gosh. Yeah. What state are we hanging

Introducing Lake Lanier’s Reputation

SPEAKER_01 2:30

out in with you today?

SPEAKER_00 2:32

Georgia. Georgia. You know, I love a good Georgia story. You got Georgia on your mind. I do. Millions of peaches. Peaches for me. It's funny because I was like in my car the other day, and I'm like going through getting some coffee, and my uh satellite radio, like it came on presidents of the United States of America, peaches. And I was like, oh, I took a picture of Santa Carl. I was like, and then it was stuck in our head all day again.

SPEAKER_01 3:04

Yeah. You do know that the devil went down to Georgia.

SPEAKER_00 3:08

That is true. He was looking for soul to steal.

SPEAKER_01 3:11

I'm assuming you have lots of stolen souls in your story.

SPEAKER_00 3:14

I really do, because we're not only going to Georgia, we're diving in to what makes Lake Lanier one of the southeast most talked-about lakes. I see what you did there. Diving in.

unknown 3:32

Diving in.

SPEAKER_00 3:33

But do you really want to dive in after you hear this? No. I mean, you think about a lake. We live right next to a lake. Yeah, good old train.

SPEAKER_01 3:45

Rose Pontchatrain.

SPEAKER_00 3:47

You don't want to dive in there either. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 3:49

Ew.

SPEAKER_00 3:49

And I don't know how many um like acres, I guess you would say, Lake Pontchatrain is, but it's a big lake. It's large.

SPEAKER_01 4:01

It's a brackish water.

SPEAKER_00 4:02

Brackish, very brackish. And and occasionally when there's a hurricane and it floods and everything, you get sharks in there sometimes.

Scale And Usage Of The Lake

SPEAKER_00 4:10

There's some weird stuff in there. Weird things happen. There's manatees. Yep, because it's right next to the gulf. So it just flows over in. But Lake Lanier is huge. About 38,000 acres of water with more than 700 miles of shoreline. That's a big lake.

SPEAKER_01 4:32

Yep.

SPEAKER_00 4:33

A big lake. It's located in North Georgia, created by the Buford Dam for flood control, power, recreation, and it's a major water source for Atlanta. So this lake serves many purposes. It's one of the most visited lakes in the United States with 10 to 12 million people a year. That's a lot of people.

SPEAKER_01 5:05

You know what? That makes me want to stay away by itself. Right.

SPEAKER_00 5:09

And you know, most of those people more than likely are in the summer. Oh, yeah. Fourth of July. I'm sure there are like boats everywhere and people swimming. You know, they come for fishing, jet skiing, like whatever. It's just the place to be in the summer if you're in that area or if you're visiting, driving through, like you Lake Lanier. It's it's really pretty too. Like gorgeous. Lake. Yet almost everywhere you go, there are warnings posted, signs about swim at your own risk, no lifeguards.

SPEAKER_01 5:54

Of course. Oh yeah. Right. There usually are not lifeguards.

The Death Toll And Recent Cases

SPEAKER_01 6:00

You're at the mercy of whoever might see you. Right. If you're lucky.

SPEAKER_00 6:05

If you're lucky. And like the numbers, the number of deaths and things that have occurred are like startling. So between just between 1994 and 2022, there have been over 200 deaths recorded in the lake, mostly drownings and boating accidents. And experts estimate that since the lake's creation in the 1950s, some sources put the total closer to 700 to 1,000 deaths in that lake. So it's like a tragic headline every single summer. Like this person drowned in Lake Lanier, this person was in a boating accident. All this stuff.

SPEAKER_01 6:52

They're going to be changing this to Lake Dead Here.

SPEAKER_00 6:56

Dead Here, right. And you know, like once that happened, then you have to have divers go in and search the lake and all this stuff. So, you know, family trips that are supposed to be fun turn into tragedy, and people who know how to drive a boat all of a sudden just disappear under mysterious circumstances. But we're not talking about, you know, just the statistics. These are people's lives. And patterns start to emerge when you step back and look at them like all together in one. So a few of the ones here recently that have happened, so in May of 2025, a father of five didn't come home. He was 43-year-old, Dustin Valencia. He had launched his inflatable kayak earlier that morning, but never made it back. Emergency crews, they searched for days. A dock worker had found his kayak. Um, the paddle was gone. I mean, it was just kind of floating around, so it probably went in the water somewhere else. His footprints trailing into the water, you know, they found where he went in at. His body was eventually located about 51 feet deep in a cove. So they did find his body. There was no foul play suspected, you know, but his kids are left without a father. And people talk and people wonder, did he just slip under because of the currents? Was there submerged debris that he hit, or was it something else? And then in June of 2025, a month later, 27-year-old Raymond Diaz Soria jumped from a boat during a friend's birthday celebration. Even though he wore a life jacket, it wasn't secured properly. You see those people out on boats, and they don't they have a life jacket on, but it's not like snapped, yeah. And it's like, what's the point?

SPEAKER_01 9:05

Yeah, why you got it on? Yeah. You're not gonna clip it on.

SPEAKER_00 9:07

It's gonna come off when you go in the water, my friend. And that's exactly what happened. Within moments, he slipped beneath the surface and wasn't seen again until the next day when he like they found him. And just, you know, by one little slip into the water, boom, your life is over.

SPEAKER_02 9:26

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_00 9:29

And you know, it impacts people's families and stuff. So again, people talk like what happened,

Before The Lake: Oscarville’s Story

SPEAKER_00 9:35

all this stuff. So we're gonna go into a little bit of um before the lake, before they flooded this area, because it wasn't always a lake, it was known as Oscarville, Georgia. And it was land to there was homes, there was families, there was community. About a thousand residents that were predominantly black. Um, they had churches, they had their own schools, they had businesses. It was a thriving little community, and there were generations of people there that grew up in Oscarville. But even before the lake was ever planned, this town went through like immense, like tremendous racial terror. Oh no. Yeah. And one like one of the big ones that sparked some of that was in 1912 after a local white woman named Mae Crow was found dead. Several black men were blamed without due process. They just were like, You did it. They did it. It's this group right here. One man known as Big Rob Edwards was lynched shortly after the arrest. He was just like, he did it, and they lynched him and hung him. Right. Others were convicted and executed. I'm sure they did not get any fair trial and probably didn't have anything to do with it, but who knows?

SPEAKER_01 11:11

Right, died for nothing. Right.

SPEAKER_00 11:13

But massive like white mobs sought to drive black residents out of the county altogether. Churches and businesses were destroyed, burned down, whole families left their home under the threat of violence.

SPEAKER_01 11:27

So, my question is I think that by wiping out this entire town to make a lake, they were doing someone a favor.

SPEAKER_00 11:36

And I think it started that way. Maybe they thought, you know, we'll get rid of this town and something else would happen, but the government had other plans for the area that this town was in. So the Army Corps of Engineers proposed what was called um Buford Dam and Lake Lanier. So this would be flooded by the nearby Chattahoochee River.

SPEAKER_01 12:06

Isn't that where it gets hotter than a Hoochie Coochie? It does. And don't people just love laying rubber on that Georgia asphalt? They do. They get a little crazy, but they don't get caught.

SPEAKER_00 12:23

We had to throw the uh Alan Jackson Chattahoochie right there. Couldn't help it. Sorry, guys. You can't say chattahoochie without singing it.

unknown 12:31

No.

SPEAKER_01 12:32

You say chattahoochie, immediately your brain goes hoochie coochie. Hoochie coochie. There you go.

SPEAKER_00 12:37

Hotter what like and it does get hotter than a hoochie coochie in the south. I don't doubt it. Don't doubt it at all. But so the government used what's called imminent domain. Of course they did. Yep, to buy thousands of acres. So let me tell you what imminent domain is, if you don't

Displacement And The Making Of The Lake

SPEAKER_00 13:00

know. It's the government's inherent power to take private property for public use, like buildings, roads, schools, even without the owner's consent, they can just go in there and take it. But the Fifth Amendment requires quote unquote just compensation. So they went in first. And let me tell you that it ain't just it's not just like just according to who.

SPEAKER_01 13:28

Right. Oh, wait, the government, the one that's taking it from you. So the whatever they think is fair.

SPEAKER_00 13:34

The residents that still resided in the in the town of Oscarville, they you know, were still there. They were like, you know, these people aren't gonna run us out. This is our this is our home. Um, the government went in and started the imminent domain process, and they're like, this is what we can offer you. Some of them sold like immediately they took the money and they were out. Right. They didn't get a lot, but it was more than they probably ever had. So they were like, We're we're gonna get out of here. We're gonna get paid to move. Some of them refused to leave. And you know, eventually they were made, made or forced, flooded out, some people say. So I was gonna say, or okay, stay here, you're about to drown. Yeah, pretty much. You ever see that, you know, part on um O Brother where art though, where they flooded the Georgia town? Could have been. Yeah, yeah. If you think about that, you're like, holy moly. Yeah. Because they put a lake there. And it was in that era, so maybe that was maybe that was the Lake Lanier like reference to that. Maybe so. So could have been. But in this process, you know, more than a thousand families were displaced, predominantly black, like I said, with deep roots in the land. They're supposed to when they do this, they're supposed to go in and take these structures down, roads, they're supposed to dig all that up, knock down the churches, buildings, whatever's there. Cemeteries. Oh my god. They are supposed to take the bodies and move them somewhere else. So in their shortcuts, they moved the headstones, but they left all the bodies there. Oh no. Yeah. So that is freaking horrible. Yes, very. Not only did they make them leave, they left their dead relatives in the ground and just they were like, we're just gonna move the headstones. It's fine. They'll be all right. Yeah. Crazy. But you know, I'll see y'all.

SPEAKER_01 15:56

This is why I don't want to be buried.

SPEAKER_00 15:58

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 15:58

I don't want my skeleton to be floating up in the middle of a lake because someone didn't move me.

unknown 16:04

Exactly.

SPEAKER_00 16:05

I want to be one of those compost things where then they can just like build it, make put it me in the ground with a tree and make a holly tree. Yeah. I'll be fine. Compost me. But, you know, like I said, the

Cemeteries, Shortcuts, And Submerged Town

SPEAKER_00 16:20

everything disappeared under rising waters. It has been, um, I know lately they were talking, like a source that I went through was talking about droughts and things in the area. So the water in the lake had gotten low, and some structures that were still rooted in the the ground and everything, like tops of them you could see. Yeah. Oh my god. And this lake is pretty deep. So, like the droughts and stuff, because that was like um, what's the lake in Nevada, California? Meade. Mead. That went that they found barrels with bodies from the mafia, yeah. So like you find things when droughts happen. But you know, some local storytellers say the ghosts of Oscarville still walk the shores, whispering of injustice and loss, a legacy that long like predates people, you know.

SPEAKER_01 17:22

So when you fall there in, yeah, these spirits be grabbing your ankle. Right.

SPEAKER_00 17:26

You're like, what is that touching my ankle? It's somebody pulling you under. No, thank you. Nope. Y'all can keep that lake. Exactly. It's pretty awesome right here on the shore. Thank you. And and some locals swear they've seen a figure called the Lady of the Lake. I'm like, of course there's a lady of the lake. There's a lady of every lake. A woman in a flowing dress that appears at night by the shore and then disappears into the mist. Others talk about boats that now, this is funny because in the article it said that they caught fire for no like no reason, no logical reason. But it was a 4th of July explosion that one happened. I was like, so you have explosives on your boat and you have drops. On the 4th of July. On the 4th of July. So we we can rule that one out. That one has reason. Right. It's called Dumb. And it sent people flying into the water and taken to the hospital. I'm like, okay, that one we we could debunk that one. There we go.

SPEAKER_01 18:32

We're gonna check that one off the list as some dumbass did this.

SPEAKER_00 18:39

And like divers, you know, like I said, we're in there all the time because they have to look for people who have gone down and drowned. They they have found structures, trees, like in the ground, and old foundations beneath the surface. It's like a little ghost town under there under the water.

SPEAKER_01 19:00

It's like Atlantis. Yes.

SPEAKER_00 19:02

But it's not Atlantis. Exactly. Every time I think of that, I think of Futurama, and they're like the lost city of Atlanta. Yeah. That's funny up. Close. And some visitors even claim they felt cold

Folklore: Ghosts And The Lady Of The Lake

SPEAKER_00 19:20

spots on the water at night. And you know, you're like, oh, it's a lake. Maybe it's cold. No, it's the south. It's hot. It's hot. Even in the winter, maybe, but like in the summer, it's hot. Yeah, it's usually hot. Or they've heard voices when the wind dies down. And these stories, they're not verified, but they show how the past lives in people's minds, especially where history is like so violently erased. So they still want to talk about it and they still want to bring this up, and this is the the reason that this happened and that happened and all that stuff. But let's like We're gonna take a step back. And there are very real reasons Lake Lanier is dangerous. Of course, it's water, it's a large body of water. There are debris and old structures underneath.

SPEAKER_01 20:14

Even if there weren't, there still would be eventually. Like stuff ends up in there all the time. Right. Sh boats that have been wrecked that they that have gone to the bottom and they haven't fished them out. Yeah, like they don't always clean all that up.

SPEAKER_00 20:27

No, they don't. And you know, there's old debris that can snag swimmers and boats. They might hit something, especially when the water goes down. There's like large drop-offs without warning. So you're out there swimming and all of a sudden you're like, oh, I can't feel ground anymore. Yeah. You know, and then the current shifts dramatically, like especially if it's a windy day or something. And then throw in heavy boat traffic, alcohol over crowded weekends. And these like human factors like multiply the risk.

SPEAKER_01 21:03

Right. And you know, people be littering all day long too. So like ice chests, all kinds of dumb crap.

SPEAKER_00 21:10

Yeah. If you pack in, pack out. Like, and if you see something else, pick it up, pick it up. That's disgusting. This place is here for enjoyment and everybody.

SPEAKER_01 21:21

Don't litter. It's disgusting. Every time I go to the beach, go to a lake, go to anything like that. I literally on my walk pick up so much trash that belongs to other people. And you know what? I'm gonna call out some women because y'all are nasty. Yep. Do you know how many times I've and I'm not picking that shit up, but I've passed fucking used tampons on on a sandy beach. I'm like, what the fuck is wrong with y'all? Baby diapers. Yeah. I'm like, just there's there's trash cans. Go find them. There's literal, and and that's the sad part is I passed a trash can right before I passed your nasty shit on the ground.

SPEAKER_00 22:00

And don't take your tampon out on the beach.

SPEAKER_01 22:02

Go find a bathroom. Nasty hose. That's why I'm like, God, what is wrong with

Real Hazards: Debris, Drop‑Offs, And Traffic

SPEAKER_01 22:10

people? Like when I see stuff like that or used condoms. Oh my god, those are everywhere. On the beach. In the fucking water. Like, what is wrong with y'all? Seriously. Nay, it is not stick. The earth is not your trash can. No. And you don't want a flesh-eating amoeba in your veg. Well, not just that. You start thinking about like stuff that you're trying to prevent pregnancy. Well, somebody else has a baby who's swimming in this water. Right. And your nasty bitch ass left your used ass condom in this water.

SPEAKER_00 22:42

And then you're throwing your trash over there.

SPEAKER_01 22:44

And now I have to mark this explicit because I've laid out every cuss word in the human language over here. A nasty tangent. This is why I don't like people.

SPEAKER_00 22:57

Right. But you know, you take all that um like disgustingness and you take all of that like alcohol consumption and overcrowded weekends, and you combine this with a layered history of like loss and displacement, and you understand why the the stories come about and things are said and passed down. So there it becomes a story people tell to make sense of tragedy and things like that. So my question is is like when you're cursed, maybe. But I think curse usually means something unknowable, and what you see there is something constructed by policy, by violence, by oversight. There's a lot of things that went into that lake. So you have tragedy plus forgotten history plus submerged town equals a place that people feel that is haunted. Yeah. That things are going on. And then on top of that, you have these people that drown for no reason, like something just, you know, snagged them or some current pulled them under or whatever. And then you're like, now I see this lady of the lake. It's haunted. So there, you know, stories flow, folklore, legends, things like that go about. And just to put this in here, um, I don't remember what date it was, and I should have written it down, but I remember reading that um there was a boy that was out swimming and he was hit by somebody on a jet ski flying through there. Oh my gosh. This this young boy, and um went under, he drowned. His mother was used to be married to Usher. So that was Usher's stepson. And you know, they live in that the Georgia area and stuff at like Burkhead up in there. So you know, that a lot of people go to this lake. A lot of people, it's gorgeous. So I'm gonna leave you with this. Do you think Lake Lanier is cursed? If you have ever been there or heard stories or lived there, or do you think it's just a catastrophic blend of history, danger, and human error? We need I want you to tell us what you think. Yeah. This is your assignment. Homework. Homework for the new year.

SPEAKER_01 25:49

You turn in your assignment to hold my sweet tea podcast at gmail.com. Absolutely. Or message us on Facebook or Instagram at all the places. Tiki talkie. Yep. You to pick a place.

SPEAKER_00 26:09

Any place. Anyplace. And I mean this summer when people are out there, you know, hitting it again and voting and doing all that stuff, there's gonna be more headlines.

Human Factors, Litter, And Safety

SPEAKER_00 26:20

There's gonna be more drownings and stuff like that in Lake Lanier.

SPEAKER_02 26:26

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 26:26

So please, if you're going out there, be careful.

SPEAKER_01 26:29

Watch your kids, watch your husbands, watch your wives. Everybody, watch everybody. And watch your dogs, secure your life best. Yeah. Be safe. Put it on right.

unknown 26:43

Yep.

SPEAKER_01 26:44

Don't wear it on your legs. Somewhere it goes.

SPEAKER_00 26:47

No, because then you'll flip upside down. Don't wear it like a diaper. No, it's not a diaper. I've seen people do that too. They've like slit it on up, you know, put their legs in it and slid it up.

SPEAKER_01 26:59

I'm like, no. You can call me guilty. I've sat in my life jacket before. No, I did not put it on like a diaper, but I did use it as a seat in the water while I floated. I, however, grew up in Arizona and can swim my ass off. Would I recommend it to someone who cannot know?

SPEAKER_00 27:18

Right. And also you know where the buckle is and you can pop it real quick and get it off. A child cannot, so don't put it on your childhood.

SPEAKER_01 27:25

Don't do that to your kids. Oh my goodness. Wrap them in. Yes. And I mean, obviously, you know if you're a weak swimmer or not. Don't like, don't be prideful. Right. Don't be a show-off. Don't be jumping off boats and being like, look at me. I mean, my daughter went to swimming lessons twice and still sucks at swimming. Right. Hence the reason every time we go to the beach, we don't go out far enough where she can't reach with her feet, but she has definitely pulled my top off more than once. She's like, Mom. I have flashed beaches full of men, women, and children because my kid grabbed your top. Grabbed my bathing suit for safety.

SPEAKER_00 28:09

Well, this past summer we went to a lake and everything, and there was the, you know, they they were requiring, like, if you were a certain age, you had to have a life vest on. And they, it wasn't a huge lake, but you know, it's pretty big, but they had kid lifeguard people, you know, walking around and they were making sure that you went to actually had what you were supposed to have on before you got in that one. Not long after we were there, there was a drowning at that lake. Oh, yeah. Yep. It was a teenager that drowned. I think he was like 14 or 15. Yep. Yep. So you never know. You just don't. And it was, and and that lake's not like a huge detail. It's not huge.

SPEAKER_01 28:49

There's not really a current.

SPEAKER_00 28:51

Yeah. It's very it's a natural spring lake. So it was like really nice and not muddy like most of the lakes are around here. You could actually kind of see into the water a little bit.

SPEAKER_01 29:03

Yeah, and for for it being very still water. It like it was very still and clean. Yeah. So because of the natural spring. But yeah. Yeah. So yeah, you never know. Nope. You just really never know. So do what it takes to be safe. You're not too cool to wear a damn life jacket. That's right. You know, uh, you know who I think would wear a life jacket? Patty Salzetta.

SPEAKER_00 29:23

Probably so. She needs to be saved. And she's pretty small. So you know. Yeah. Her baby would be wearing one. Oh, absolutely.

Is It Cursed Or Constructed Danger

SPEAKER_01 29:30

Absolutely. And her wife. Like, all y'all, I love you, put on a life jacket. Right.

SPEAKER_00 29:36

You she made our theme music, and we thank her every time. That's our life jacket. Right. That's our life jacket. Keeps us afloat. It's more like a cozy blanket. Warm and fuzzy inside.

SPEAKER_01 29:49

Yeah. So yeah. Y'all run over there and follow her. She has a YouTube. Yep. She sure does. Yeah. Just gotta look her up. Pat-E Salzetta. It's there. She follows us. You go look at our followers. You can click on her and subscribe to her channel too.

SPEAKER_00 30:14

Absolutely. And listen to some of her other stuff. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 30:18

There's music, poetry, there's all kinds of stuff on hers.

SPEAKER_00 30:21

All kinds of stuff. And remember, don't like forget to answer these questions do you think like linear is cursed, or is it just a a blend of all of these things? And as always, hold my sweet tea as a drunken bee production. And you guys remember stay safe out there. And just because we're dipping doesn't mean you can't keep sipping.