Legends 47: Darkness Rising

The cool waters of the ponds and lakes that dot our landscape are often seen as safe retreats for recreation and rest. But if these legends have anything to teach us, it's that there is always a bit of darkness beneath the surface. Narrated and produced by Aaron Mahnke, with writing by Alex Robinson and research by Jamie Vargas. ———————————— Lore Resources: Episode Music: lorepodcast.com/music http://www.lorepodcast.com/music Episode Sources: lorepodcast.com/sources http://www.lorepodcast.com/sources All the shows from Grim & Mild: www.grimandmild.com http://www.grimandmild.com ———————————— Sponsors: SimpliSafe: Secure your home with 24/7 professional monitoring. Sign up today at SimpliSafe.com/Lore http://simplisafe.com/lore to get 20% off any new SimpliSafe system with Fast Protect Monitoring. Hero Bread: Delicious and flavorful bread that has ultra-low NET carbs, zero grams of sugar, and is high in fiber. Get 10% off your order by going to hero.co https://www.hero.co/ and using the code LORE at checkout. Squarespace: Head to Squarespace.com/lore http://squarespace.com/lore to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain using the code LORE. ————————— To advertise on the show, contact [email protected] or visit https://advertising.libsyn.com/Lore ————————— ©2025 Aaron Mahnke. All rights reserved.

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• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:59Aaron Mahnke?

  Welcome to lore legends, a subset of lore episodes that explore the strange tales we whisper in the dark, even if they can't always be proven by the history books. So if you're ready, let's begin.

• 1:21Aaron Mahnke?

  The plague was raging across Germany, but one village had managed to avoid it. Following the instructions of an old wives' tale, a small village near the city of Katbuss had taken a copper kettle from a house where the plague had killed every inhabitant. Then they used the kettle handle to draw a circle in the dirt around the entire town. As long as the circle remained intact, the pestilence would stay away. Every day, though, one man drove his cart outside the town limits to oversee operations at his mill. It was during his commute that the miller met a woman by the side of the road. Even though her clean, white dress hinted at wealth and privilege, she was sobbing.

• 2:05Aaron Mahnke?

  Feeling pity on her, he allowed her to climb into his cart, and then together they journeyed back to town. But as the man's cart crossed back over the line, the woman somehow fell out. He helped her back in, but she fell off again and again, landing in the dirt each time. Eventually, he was forced to drag her across the line before setting her back into the cart once they had crossed the boundary. A short while later, though, she disappeared. Later that night, when the miller sat down to dinner with his family, the woman in white barged in. She hit one of the man's sons over the head, and he immediately fell ill. The woman in white, of course, had been the plague, and the miller had invited her in.

• 2:49Aaron Mahnke?

  When humans are forced to confront things that we don't understand, we make up stories to explain what we've seen. It helps us process the incomprehensible, whether mundane or devastating. This German folk tale about the plague wasn't the only one that Europeans created to explain how illness entered their homes. Other versions used real-life historical figures as the scapegoat. A few even transformed into hate speech, blaming entire minority communities for an imaginary crime. Regardless of the decoration, though, all of these legends actually serve a single purpose. They help the people of Europe make sense of something that felt so very senseless.

• 3:32Aaron Mahnke?

  But while people will do anything to explain the unexplainable, one thing is always guaranteed: The truth will always rise to the surface. I'm Aaron Mahnke, and this is Lore Legends.

• 4:00Aaron Mahnke?

  A child is not supposed to die before their parents, but we live in a world where they do. And not only does it happen, but it happens far more often than it should. This isn't a new kind of tragedy. War, famine, and disease have always existed, and they have always preyed upon the young more than any other. Back in the 1800s, the global mortality rate for children under the age of five was about 500 deaths out of every 1,000 births. By 2022, that number had dropped to just 37, an improvement, but no less painful for those involved. No one can deny that a child's death is a heart-stopping tragedy. But for most of human history, it was both a tragedy and a fact of life.

• 4:44Aaron Mahnke?

  With a 50% mortality rate, the best that any family could do was to have as many children as possible and hope that some of them survived until adulthood. But whether a child died in 1,000 B.C. or this very century, there was almost always a parent who grieved, and grieved deeply. And sometimes, there was hell to pay. In the 17th century, that hell hit the small settlement of Sacot Maine, which was set up along the Sacot River. The English arrived in the area in 1618, and within 20 years, they had turned this undeveloped chunk of the New World into a small town of nearly 40 families. Before the Brits ever arrived, though, the territory belonged to the indigenous Abenaki peoples,

• 5:27Aaron Mahnke?

  and they had lived there for generations upon generations. In fact, many historians think that they have been there since prehistoric times. Obviously, once the English moved into the Abenaki ancestral homeland, things got a bit tense. But aside from a few skirmishes, they managed to coexist in some fashion or other for a few decades. That is, until the colonizers ruined everything. The first known record of this story was written down by historian William Hubbard in 1677, two years after the event occurred. He identified a man named Squando as the Sagamore, or the chief of the Abenaki peoples. But Squando was not just a leader, he was also a family man. Squando had a wife, and she had just given birth to a baby boy.

• 6:12Aaron Mahnke?

  Well, according to the story, one day Squando's wife was paddling down the Saco River in a canoe with her baby. She passed by a group of English settlers who got a devious plan in their heads once they saw her. The English claimed that they had once heard that indigenous babies naturally knew how to swim, and so to test this theory, they overturned the canoe. The mother and her baby were thrown into the water, and the baby, who could not swim, sank under the waves. She immediately dove down to rescue her child, and she succeeded in pulling him to the surface. But the ordeal was just too much for his tiny body. Squando's baby grew ill after being thrown into that river, and just a short while later, he passed away.

• 6:56Aaron Mahnke?

  Squando was devastated at the loss of his son. After his baby's death, he instigated conflict with the settlers, or, as William Hubbard put it, "did all the mischief he could do to the English in those parts." Squando eventually became a key figure in the 1675 conflict known as King Philip's War, and he eventually participated in burning down all of Saco. But that wasn't enough for him. Squando took his revenge in one more way, a way that has never been confirmed by the history books, but lives on in local legend today. It's said that Squando cursed the Saco River. Now, this curse seems to be a late addition to the story, almost 300 years late, in fact.

• 7:38Aaron Mahnke?

  In 1944, the historian Dane York wrote, "Squando not only began a war, but as a great powwow or magician, he laid a curse on the Saco River that each year, the river would claim three white lives by drowning, until all the white men were driven from the banks of the Saco River." And people still speak each summer of the Saco's three yearly drownings and watch to see if the curse holds true. Now, those who live around the river do seem to subscribe to this curse. It's become a local legend, passed down by their grandparents and their great-grandparents. And for good reason: A number of people regularly drown in the rushing water. There is no database to keep count of the drownings,

• 8:20Aaron Mahnke?

  but it must be close to three a year for the curse to still hold so much...water. That being said, it's believed that Squando never actually cursed the river. Instead, the curse was probably added to the story sometime between the 19th and the 20th century. No other historian wrote about the curse before 1944. And in the mid-20th century, white Americans subscribed to "romanticized stereotypes" about Native Americans, which meant that they were more likely to believe that an indigenous chief also was some kind of dark magician. In reality, Squando was nothing more than a grieving father. A father who had the power to avenge his son's death, not through black magic, but through good old-fashioned warfare.

• 9:04Aaron Mahnke?

  The curse was simply created to explain the number of lives the river claimed every year, and to scare children away from its dangerous banks. The curse, of course, is folklore. But if anyone had reason to curse the white people and the river that took his son, it certainly would have been...Squando.

• 9:36Aaron Mahnke?

  The Saco River isn't the only dangerous bit of water out there. Drownings happen all over the world. You don't even need a current. All you need is some liquid. Take for instance Lake Rancancama, the largest freshwater lake on Long Island. There are no strong tides or rapids here. It's a kettle lake, which means that it was formed by melting glaciers. The glacier water collected in that one spot, and it's been there ever since, giving it a relatively calm surface compared to other, rougher waters. Measuring three miles across, this huge lake was once the top recreation spot for the island's residents. Today, it's close to swimmers due to a high amount of dangerous bacteria in the water. But before its waters were polluted, it was dangerous for an entirely different reason.

• 10:20Aaron Mahnke?

  You see, a lot of people have died in that lake. Take a quick perusal of any newspaper archive and you will see the names lined up like headstones. The New York Post reported, "There were at least 160 drownings at the lake between the mid to late 1800s and late 1970s, averaging well over one a year." The cause behind some deaths was obvious. For example, in 1907, a man named James Ryan drowned after falling into the lake. Poor James couldn't swim, so of course, he never surfaced. But some deaths didn't have such a cut and dried cause. In 1961, for example, a 17-year-old named Paul Allen Ferriello disappeared under the water while he was swimming with his friends.

• 11:03Aaron Mahnke?

  Nobody knew why he went under, they just know that he didn't come back up again. Now, some have chalked it all up to the victims being distracted or unsafe. But others have blamed it on a curse. According to local folklore, that curse dates all the way back to the 1600s and can be traced to the area's native peoples. Surprise, surprise. That said, the earliest written record we've been able to find comes from a 1914 article in the Brooklyn Eagle newspaper. "There is a legend in circulation," it reads, "that many years ago, a young Indian chief was drowned in the lake and his body was found a day later in the Great South Bay. It is said that his intended bride comes once in every floodtime in a phantom canoe,

• 11:47Aaron Mahnke?

  singing for the return of her lover, who is said to stand on the shore, waiting for her." A 1923 article attempts to add identities to this fantastical story. According to the author of the article, the chief was named Alkados, a name that I am 90% certain I just mangled, and his bride was named Tuskegee Wanta. Now, it's unclear whether or not these names were made up for the purpose of the newspaper article, or if the previous 1914 article had simply omitted them. In another version of the legend, though, the chief actually drowned himself because his lover refused to return his affections. And yet, another version claims that a native princess fell in love with a white settler.

• 12:29Aaron Mahnke?

  Every night for years, she paddled her canoe to the middle of the lake and floated a message to the settler on the opposite shore. But eventually, the separation from her lover became too much. She sent him a goodbye note, and then she took her own life, right there, in the canoe. And sometimes, the princess in this story is named Tuskegee Wanta, and sometimes she's referred to as Ronkonkoma. Either way, all versions of the story say that she still haunts the lake to this day, earning herself the title "The Lady of the Lake." Whether a man or a woman died out there once, it is now said that the waters are cursed by "The Lady of the Lake." It's believed that she is so embittered by the fact that she can never be with her true love,

• 13:13Aaron Mahnke?

  that she drowns one man each year. Naturally, there are people who say that it's true, that almost everyone who has drowned in Lake Ronkonkoma has been male. Former lifeguard Dave Ignary said that in the 34 years that he worked at the lake, 30 people drowned, and they were all men. And the New York Post reports that of the 160 people who drowned between the late 1800s and the late 1900s, only three of them were women. But there are no official records to back these numbers up. The Suffolk County Police only started collecting data on the drownings in 2001. And one local historian says that, based on her research dating back to 1740, far more women and children have died on the lake than men.

• 13:57Aaron Mahnke?

  It seems the validity of this curse is tenuous at best, relying on word of mouth rather than actual data. It's also hard to support without historical documentation. None of the legends ever mention which tribe the story originated from, nor are there any known records of a chief named Alkaidous or a princess named Tuskegee Wanta. None of that, however, changes the fact that hundreds of people have drowned in Lake Ronkonkoma over the centuries. But even if the popular local legends aren't based on historical fact, the lake itself certainly has been behaving as if it's cursed. So if you ever have a chance to visit, just to be safe, I wouldn't go swimming if I were you.

• 14:48Aaron Mahnke?

  Mabel wasn't doing well. Looking at her from the outside, no one would have guessed. Sure, her husband had died back in 1917, but since then, she had built a really fulfilling life for herself. Armed with a degree from Barnard, Mabel had fought for seven years to establish a women's college at Rutgers before becoming a widow. And after years of fundraising and networking with politicians, including President Woodrow Wilson himself, Mabel's hard work paid off. For the first time in history, Rutgers opened their doors to women. Only a year after her husband's death, in 1918, Mabel was asked to step in as the dean of the women's college. So, Mabel sold her deceased husband's business, packed up her children William Jr. and Edith,

• 15:33Aaron Mahnke?

  and moved to New Jersey for her new job. Mabel flourished as the dean. She had a deft hand with lobbying the state legislature for more funds, and she ran the college so well that she inspired loyalty in everyone around her. And it would seem that Mabel felt the same loyalty right back. She was regularly overheard calling Rutgers "my students, my faculty, my college." In the wake of her husband's death, she had found both a new purpose and a new home. But not all was well in Mabel's world. Her private records from this time include frantic scribbled notes that don't make much sense to us today. And in her first year as dean, Mabel made Rutgers into a literal home, sleeping at her

• 16:14Aaron Mahnke?

  desk and rarely going back to her house where her young children were. Mabel would come to regret neglecting her home life, because in 1923, her 16-year-old son William took his own life. And this would not be the last suicide in the Douglas family. 25 years later, Mabel's daughter Edith would also take her own life. And even though this happened long after Mabel passed away, it does suggest that there were struggles in the family. As the newspaper article stated when William Jr. passed away, "Mabel had not been in good health." Nervous and withdrawn, she had already been showing signs of mental distress. But after his death, she declined even faster. She even seems to have had a mental breakdown, not showing up for work for a stretch of months in 1930.

• 16:59Aaron Mahnke?

  She eventually took a leave of absence in 1932. Her mental health only worsened during her break, though, and she officially resigned from the women's college in 1933. Only a few months later, poor Mabel would go missing. Now, she owned property in the Adirandec Mountains on Lake Placid, and when she needed to get away from the world, she and Edith would go stay there. It was helpful for Mabel to go out into the calm waters of the lake where she could breathe freely. But in September of 1933, Mabel would be staying at Lake Placid forever. On September 21st, she left the home around 1:30 PM without telling anyone where she was going. She paddled her boat out onto the lake, and she never came home.

• 17:44Aaron Mahnke?

  A search was organized, but all the police found was an empty rowboat in the middle of Lake Placid. They searched the surrounding forest just in case she had gotten out of the boat, but they never found her. Within a matter of days, Mabel was assumed to have drowned, and in 1940, she was legally declared dead. Mabel Douglas's body wasn't found until 1963, when two scuba divers stumbled across her remains deep under the lake near Pulpit Rock. Due to the chemical conditions in the water, Mabel's body had been preserved, her skin slowly turning to soap and making her look like a plastic mannequin. Her body, though, disintegrated as they pulled her out of the water,

• 18:25Aaron Mahnke?

  but the coroner was still able to identify her from a fracture in her arm. By the time Mabel's body was recovered, though, there was no one to receive it. Her only relative, her daughter Edith, had taken her own life in 1948. And so, Mabel's body was laid to rest with her husband and her children, where they could all finally be at peace and together. After a long, cold journey through the waters of Lake Placid, Mabel was finally home. A home she had never wanted to leave in the first place. You see, Mabel Douglas Smith hadn't taken her own life. No, the coroner declared her actual cause of death to be a tragic, accidental drowning. Despite everything, it seems, Mabel had wanted to keep on living.

• 19:11Aaron Mahnke?

  The lake, however, had plans of its own.

• 19:30Aaron Mahnke?

  Her story might be tragic, but it isn't a tall tale. Mabel was a real woman with real troubles and real joys. But that hasn't stopped people from turning her death into a legend. Locals say that her death has cursed Lake Placid. Mostly, it seems to be cursed with her ghostly presence. A number of hikers and boaters over the years have reported seeing the form of Mabel floating over Pulpit Rock, the very rock where her body was found. And that seems to sound about right. Whether we're talking about a river, a lake, or the open sea, water has always been good at holding on to its secrets. When so many people disappear under its depths, it's only reasonable for folks to conclude that there is something hiding beneath the waves.

• 20:14Aaron Mahnke?

  Maybe it's a curse, or maybe it's a ghost, but it's always something mysterious. Folklore survives the test of time because it fills the gaps in our knowledge. Drownings are fast, and the bodies aren't always recovered. And so it makes sense that people have come up with a way to explain what happened, and thus, local legends are born. We just have to trust that, in the end, the truth will always rise to the surface.

• 20:56Aaron Mahnke?

  Water is a paradox. It can give life and support a community, but it can also become a hotspot for tragedy and pain. Far from simply being a cool, soothing retreat when the weather is hot, the water around us can also give us chills because of the stories floating within it. And as you might expect, there are more secrets to uncover in the depths of America's waterways. My team and I have tracked down one last waterborne tale to tell you. Stick around through this brief sponsor break to hear all about it.

• 21:27Aaron Mahnke?

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• 22:09Aaron Mahnke?

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• 22:52Aaron Mahnke?

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• 24:21Aaron Mahnke?

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• 25:06Aaron Mahnke?

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• 25:28Aaron Mahnke?

  Consider yourself warned. If you're out near Pyramid Lake in Nevada and you hear a baby cry, then I would encourage you not to investigate, or else you might just meet the water babies. Now, truth be told, they are exactly what their name suggests: vengeful spirits who look a lot like human infants. In some versions of the legend, they do have fish tails, but most just describe them as normal, if ghostly, babies.

• 25:55Aaron Mahnke?

  The water babies that haunt Pyramid Lake are believed to have originated with the local Paiute tribe. Aquatic babies, though, aren't unique to the Paiute. There are many indigenous tribes that have their own version of deadly swimming infants. But the Paiute are believed to be the reason that these beings are in the lake in the first place. The Paiute have lived around Pyramid Lake since before recorded history. And in fact, they still live there today, with the lake situated right in the middle of the Paiute reservation. For much of history, the fish from Pyramid Lake actually made up the majority of their diet. They would even gather for spawning season every year. But according to legend, they would also go to the lake for a much darker reason. One version of the tale claims that, in an effort to keep the tribe as strong as possible,

• 26:40Aaron Mahnke?

  the Paiute would drown any malformed or premature babies in the lake. The water babies were the spirits of all those who had been killed, crying out in pain and fear. A less bloody version of the legend claims that a member of the Paiute community fell in love with a mermaid in Pyramid Lake. But their relationship was rejected by the tribe, and the mermaid was banished. Heartbroken, she put a curse on the lake, creating the water babies to drown anyone who dares to swim in its waters. And drowning people seems to be their primary function. Some say that the cries of the water babies are a death omen. But the more common belief is that they mimic the cries of human infants to lure people to their deaths.

• 27:23Aaron Mahnke?

  Some say that the water babies just drown people, but others say that they eat people as well, specifically, children. And still others claim that water babies are responsible for everything, from failed motorboat engines to the disappearances of local fishermen. Now, scholars have suggested that the Paiute used the water babies to keep their children a safe distance from the water. There are tribal folktales in which water babies and other bodies of water target children. In one story, for example, a group of kids was playing near the Casa Diablo Hot Springs in California. One boy threw rocks into the spring, and this angered a water baby, which rose up from the water, grabbed the boy, and took him under, drowning him.

• 28:06Aaron Mahnke?

  Scholars have also suggested that the invention of the water baby was how the Paiute made sense of drownings. You see, water was central to the Paiute worldview and their way of life. They even called themselves “water ditch coyote children.” Water was both a part of their identity and a valuable resource in the desert. And not only did the water sustain them, but it was also thought to be sentient. The Paiute peoples believe that water, just like everything else in nature, had a living energy called “puha.” This puha imbued water with emotions, and those emotions could be positive or negative. There are Paiute stories of sentient waves trying to drown those who offended it. The

• 28:47Aaron Mahnke?

  water babies could simply be another way that the lake takes revenge. Knowing what we do about the high number of tragic deaths in some bodies of water, it’s easy to see why the Paiute needed something to explain the frequent drownings in Pyramid Lake. Even today, a large number of people still disappear into the water. We can blame it on the random chance of tragedy, or open ourselves to the Paiute stories of supernatural beings. But no matter how you approach it, there’s no denying the risk you take when you slip beneath the waves.

• 29:37Aaron Mahnke?

  This episode of Lore Legends was produced by me, Aaron Manke, with writing by Alex Robinson and research by Jamie Vargas. Today’s topics were submitted by our listeners. If you have a local legend that you love and want us to possibly mention on Lore Legends, email us at [email protected]. My team and I can’t wait to see what you send our way. Don’t like hearing the ads? I’ve got a solution for you. There is a paid version of lore on Apple Podcasts and Patreon that is 100% ad-free. Plus, subscribers there also get weekly mini-episodes called “lore bites.” It’s a bargain for all of that ad-free storytelling and a great way to support this show and its Behind it. For more information about those ad free options, go to lorepodcast.com/support.

• 30:22Aaron Mahnke?

  Lore, of course, is more than just a podcast. There's the book series available in bookstores and online, and two seasons of the television show on Amazon Prime. Information about all of that is also available over at lorepodcast.com. Then you can follow the show on Threads, Instagram, Facebook, or YouTube. Just search for Lore Podcast, all one word, and then click that follow button. And when you do, say hi. I like it when people say hi. And as always, thanks for listening.

• 31:05Speaker 03

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