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

After years of fatalities and bizarre incidents, the Georgia reservoir has spawned countless ghost stories. Are they merely legend or the after-effects of a history steeped in racial trauma?

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. As Kile lay on life support, Foster passed the time Googling for information about Lake Lanier. She is still horrified by what she learned.