CREEPY CATALOG

There's A Haunted Lake In Minnesota And My Friend And I Decided To Swim In It

One of the most important people in my life is my best friend, Liz.

On the surface, we seem to have nothing in common. I've got lanky brown hair. She has bouncy blonde curls. I'm weak and sickly. She's got the body of an athlete and the energy of a five-year-old. I prefer sitting in my room and reading. She prefers trying out for every club and activity that she can find. If she's fire, then I'm ice.

Despite all our differences, we are still as close as sisters, maybe even closer. It's a little strange, we met when we were both in high school and something just seemed to click. We quickly became inseparable. We have horror movie marathons together, we do plays and mock trial together, we go out for drives together...once, we even got lost and ended up in Iowa together.

And, most importantly, we both love swimming.

Actually, we're both certified as lifeguards, although she's been a guard much longer than I have. Although I usually hate sports, I never get tired of swimming. The feeling of gliding effortlessly through the water, twisting and contorting my body as I speed through the blue depths, is like bursting out of a cage, free, unbound.

Fortunately for us, we live in the land of ten thousand lakes (aka Minnesota). You can't drive more than a few miles without seeing a creek, a pond, a lake, a river, or some other carpet of silvery blue water glinting in the sunlight.

When summer rolled around this year, Liz and I both decided to go swimming at the national park.

Although I live in a rather small town in Minnesota, we have a sizeable national park just a few miles away. Imposing bluffs rise above the neighboring towns, coated with a thick abundance of trees and prairie grass.

To get to the swimming hole, however, you have to go off the official paths. It's not really that hard to find, if you can recognize the trampled grass for what it is. You follow through until you find yourself in a thicket of trees. Keep heading east and eventually the trees break and you're left standing at the edge of a small lake.

Lots of kids come out here. Some of them go camping here during their senior year, almost like a rite of passage. Some summer nights there will be couples here doing what can't be done with their parents in the house.

Oddly enough, no one goes swimming.

I can't say I blame them. Living in a small, rural area means that there are lots of urban legends designed to keep kids entertained. One of them is about that lake, or, at least, people think it is. There's some legend about a lake in the park that's haunted. You go in, and you never come out. There's probably more to it, but it never interested me all that much. Of course, there's more than one lake in the park (it's really quite extensive), but the location of this supposedly haunted lake is unknown. The story was probably designed to stop kids from going swimming in it in the first place – swimming in the middle of the woods with no adult supervision can be dangerous.

Being lifeguards, this did not deter Liz and I on a hot summer day after our collection of horror films had been thoroughly exhausted.

I'll admit, I was a little reluctant to get in the water at first. I've always found the little lake a bit creepy. The water is deep and dark, with this feeling of sentience that I can't explain. When I looked into the water, I felt like the water was looking back up into me. Like it was waiting for me. It lapped at me feet as though it wanted to draw me in.

But I'm not superstitious. And neither is Liz. She ran into the water and threw herself down. I watched her sink below the surface and then bounce back up with ease. "Hey, the water is much deeper than it looks! Be careful."

Pretty soon we were both inside, twisting through the lake's depths like fish. If we stayed close to the shore, we could touch the bottom. It wasn't long before we were dredging up mud to pelt each other with. It was all great fun until Liz had one of her brilliant ideas.