Sunday, May 31, 2009

OddWA #2 - Lady of The Lake - 1940



Lots of cars and people have gone missing in Lake Crescent over the last century, and they tend to stay that way.

There have been exceptions. This depicts Hallie Latham Illingworth, a lady whose body was dumped in Lake Crescent and subsequently turned to soap. This was due to unique properties of the lake, including incredible depth, low nitrogen content and high calcium. Nobody was more surprised when she popped to the surface three years later than her murderer husband, who was extradited, arrested and convicted thanks to the evidence found on the perfectly preserved (if rather soapy) corpse.

I went swimming in Lake Crescent years before I ever heard of the Lady of The Lake, and there was something genuinely creepy about the place. You can see more than a hundred feet down the steep cliffs at the water's edge. It's the only time I ever experienced vertigo while swimming.

CK

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