Locals are in an uproar over plans to build a “waterslide coaster” at Georgia’s Lake Lanier – which is infamous for its troubling past.
The ride will be part of the new Fins Up Water Park at Margaritaville at Lake Lanier Islands, which will open on May 4, according to its website.
The waterslide coaster — known as the “Apocalypso” — will “redefine aquatic thrills,” the park website promised.
Officials attended a ground-breaking ceremony for the ride on Wednesday, WSB-TV reported.
The Apocalypso will have the largest “blasterango drop” in the US, including up and downhill speeds of around 30 miles per hour, the outlet said.
Online commenters, however, were quick to slam the construction, citing the popular lake’s troubling backstory.
“Water slide park at LAKE LANIER?! Please go to hell,” one person wrote on X.
Located northeast of Atlanta, the popular lake was built on top of what was once a thriving black community in the early 1900s, Yahoo News reported.
The town — known as Oscarville — was decimated when its residents were forced to flee following the murder of an 18-year-old white woman in 1912, the outlet explained.
Three young black men from the area were accused of the attack and were lynched for the crime despite a dearth of evidence against them.
The remains of the town — including buildings and cemeteries — were flooded to create the lake in 1956.
“I don’t have to believe in ghosts to believe that a place like Lake Lanier could be haunted,” Mark Huddle, a professor at Georgia College & State University, told Yahoo News of the site.
“The haunting is that this is a place where the dark and bloody struggle for American race relations played out in a terrible way,” he explained.
Social media users agreed with Huddle’s assessment.
“Lake Lanier should NOT be a tourist destination, it’s so disrespectful to the history of that place,” one person wrote on X in response to a news story about the water slide.
“In a perfect world, this would be sacred ground, and we would never allow this,” another replied.
More recently, Lake Lanier’s tragic reputation has taken the form of dozens of drowning deaths, as well as some freak electrocution incidents.
About 216 people have died in the lake between 1994 and 2022, according to data from the Georgia Department of Natural Resources.
During just one week in September 2023, three people died in the lake.
“Don’t people die there all the time?!” one X user wrote of the waterslide news, while another called the plans a “horror film waiting to happen.”
Yet another responder referred to Lake Lanier as “that serial killer lake,” while a fourth posted a photo of the Grim Reaper sitting in a lifeguard stand with the caption “lifeguard on duty.”
TikTok influencer Patrick Cloud chimed into the discussion on his account.
“It does have some haunted history because it used to be a thriving black community. And they said, what if we flood it and make it a lake instead,” he said in a video.
“That’s what they did. And now hundreds of people have died in there. And now they’re like, you know what would be dope in here? A waterslide!” he exclaimed incredulously.
“If you have any plans on going here, you are probably either insane, completely dumb, or very racist, or all three,” he opined.