The Missing Person Behind the ‘Lady in the Lake’ Legend from Lake Placid, New York
The 'Lady in the Lake' is a legend in New York's Adirondack Mountains around Lake Placid that is based on the true story of a woman disappearing in the lake in 1933, and her amazingly preserved body recovered by divers 30 years later. Her body was so well preserved it looks like she was a mannequin in the water.
This is the story of a successful educator, Mabel Smith Douglass, that started the New Jersey College for Women at Rutgers. After suffering several tragedies in her life, including the death of her husband and her son's suicide, she spent a year in a mental institution.
She left the mental institution and spent the summer relaxing at her family camp on Lake Placid. On the day she was closing up the camp to go back to New Jersey she went out in a small boat out to Lake Placid's Pulpit Rock and then just disappeared.
Legend has it boaters, hikers and campers have seen the ghost of Mabel Smith Douglass hovering over Pulpit Rock. The ghost story is kind of creepy, but the real story and the discovery of her body 30 years later is even more bizarre.