Haunted and cursed': Lake Lanier has a deadly reputation. A darker tale hides beneath the surface

"Kile Glover was the entertainer in the family, the pride of his stepfather, the R&B superstar Usher. He sang, he danced he burned CDs of his own music, styled the covers with self-made art and was otherwise expressing his creativity in internet videos before it was trendy. He would've been a YouTube sensation by now, says his mother, the celebrity stylist Tameka Foster."

"But that future was thwarted on a family trip to Lake Lanier, just outside his Atlanta home town, in July 2012. Kile was only 11 when he was struck by a speeding jetski while tubing and knocked unconscious. Foster, on the island of Saint Martin at the time, managed to get to Kile's hospital bedside within hours thanks to Usher sending a private plane an olive branch that came amid a bitterly public custody battle over their two younger sons."

"A craggy outcropping of the Chattahoochee and Chestatee rivers in the Blue Ridge mountain foothills that is more than twice the area of Manhattan, Lake Lanier juts north-eastward from the city of Atlanta like a forked tongue, portending danger. It is reputed to be one of the US's most dangerous lakes, up there with the far larger Great Lakes, with an estimated 700 fatalities over the past 70 years. According to Georgia's department of natural resources (DNR), the authority responsible for policing the lake, 233 of those deaths have occurred in the last 20 years."

"But it is the particularly mysterious nature of many of these incidents that fuels talk that this recreational idyll is cursed by restless spirits. If people really knew what was underneath the water still, says Dave Kahn, a lake resident and pleasure cruise operator, they'd think twice about partying here."

Kile Glover was an energetic, creative child known for singing, dancing and self-produced music and videos. He suffered a life‑threatening injury in July 2012 after a speeding jetski struck him while tubing at Lake Lanier, aged 11. Usher arranged a private plane so Kile's mother could reach his hospital bedside. Lake Lanier is a vast, craggy reservoir formed by the Chattahoochee and Chestatee rivers, more than twice the area of Manhattan and projecting northeast from Atlanta. The lake has an estimated 700 fatalities over 70 years, with 233 deaths recorded in the past 20 years, and many incidents are described as mysterious.

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