#hydrology

Ghost Lake Energy 👻🌊

This week, we're diving into Spooky Lakes: 25 Strange and Mysterious Lakes That Dot Our Planet, written and illustrated by Milwaukee-based artist, author, and educator Geo Rutherford. Published in 2024 by Abrams Books for Young Readers in New York, this eerie yet enchanting collection is based on Rutherford’s viral Spooky Lake Month TikTok series.

Rutherford’s book explores some of the world’s strangest and most haunting lakes. From Tanzania’s Lake Natron, whose waters can mummify animals, to Venezuela’s Lake Maracaibo, where an endless lightning storm rages, to the ghostly shipwrecks preserved in the cold depths of Lake Superior. These real-life phenomena prove that truth can be just as chilling as legend.

Her moody, mesmerizing illustrations capture the quiet mystery of deep waters while teaching readers about hydrology, ecosystems, and the importance of protecting our planet’s fragile environments. Blending field guide precision with folklore flair, Spooky Lakes delivers equal parts wonder and goosebumps, perfect reading for spooky season and a reminder that even the calmest lake may hold secrets beneath its ripples.

Geo Rutherford was once a graduate student of our Special Collections librarian, Max Yela, and our copy of Spooky Lakes is a gift from him featuring a signed presentation inscription from the author herself.

-View previous Fairytale Friday posts

-View more from our Historical Curriculum Collection

---Melissa (will not be taking any midnight swims), Distinctive Collections Library Assistant

LOCATIONS — 230/262 — Bylany

A settlement 1.5 km southwest of Kuttenberg built along Bylanka creek. According to archaeological findings, the history of the local settlement dates back to the New Stone Age (about 4,000 BC). The first written mention of the village is from 1143, when Miroslav of Zimburg donated it to the Sedletz Monastery. The village later passed from the monastery into private hands and often changed owners. Near the village is the Spring of St Adalbert (pramen sv. Vojtěcha), which supplied the whole of Kuttenberg through wooden pipes, starting in the Middle Ages. To this day, massive slag heaps lie in the village along the Bylanka creek. These are remnants of medieval mining, when surplus and waste material from nearby mines was deposited here.

TRIVIA

— Bylany is one of the largest and most important Neolithic archaeological sites in Central Europe. Excavations began in 1955 and continue to this day — revealing one of the earliest known farming settlements north of Danube. Alongside sites such as Eythra in Germany and Těšetice in Moravia, it preserves evidence of some of Europe’s first farming communities.

The settlement is home to both the Linear Pottery (LBK) and later Stroked Pottery (STK) cultures, which played a major role in spreading agriculture across the region. Although no structures survived, archaeologists have recreated the village based on findings of postholes, pits, foundation trenches and grooves left in the soil, which allowed the reconstruction of longhouses and rondels.

Besides the ancient history, this area contains traces of more recent history too. An aqueduct crosses the Přítocká valley in the same location where the medieval structure made of wooden trunks stood before it, carrying water toward Kutná Hora. The aqueduct dates to the late 15th century. It supplied fresh water from the spring of the Chapel of St. Adalbert, about 2.5 kilometres from the city, feeding Kutná Hora’s fountains and water system.

The Caspian Sea has a salinity of 1.2%, which places it at one third the salinity of ocean water. It's much larger than Lake Superior, with about five times the surface area. But is this sea actually a lake? Legally, it's not really a lake, because there were some complicated negotiations on the matter. If it were a sea instead of a lake, that would have implications, as the law of the sea is its own distinct thing. Geologically, Wikipedia assures me that it's actually a small ocean. So I'm willing to concede that the Caspian Sea is the largest inland body of water, but I don't agree that it's world's largest lake.

The other big problem for Lake Superior's claim to being the largest lake is Lake Michigan-Huron. Now you might read that and think to yourself "wait, aren't those two separate lakes?" and yes, you would think that, given that they're connected only by the Straits of Mackinac. But hydrologically speaking, their levels rise and fall with each other, and that's enough for them to sometimes be counted as one lake, depending on who you ask. Combined, they have a larger surface area than Lake Superior. I don't take this seriously, and I don't think that you should either.

(And of course the largest lakes by volume are Baikal and Tanganyika, and also the Caspian Sea if you really are determined to count that as a lake. But come on, who cares about volume?)

This is not a meditation on when definitions collide with a universe which does not actually work that way. I worry you might read me talking about the lake/sea binary and think that it's about something else. I really do care about whether Lake Superior is the largest lake in the world. I want to be able to not get in a fight with someone about it if I just make that claim. But by God, I will fight that fight if I have to. And you know what, I do enjoy saying "I live next to the largest lake in the world" rather than "I live next to the largest freshwater lake in the world by surface area".

I acknowledge that this is a stupid thing to care about and that definitions are made up.

The deepest lake in Louisiana, Lake Peigneur, 200 feet deep, was once only 10 feet deep. It was also freshwater instead of brackish (nearly saltwater). And in between, it disappeared into the ground entirely. There was an unnatural disaster that resulted in the lake completely collapsing and taking most of the surrounding area with it!

The secret of Lake Peigneur is that directly under it ran a massive salt mine, which had been used since the early 20th century. Unfortunately, an oil drilling company working on the surface of the shallow lake didn't bother finding that out, and it's believed that the exploratory holes punched into the roof of the salt mine in 1980.

The lake began to drain. In a rare event, the river that formerly flowed out of Peigneur to the Gulf of Mexico actually reversed, pulling in salty ocean water. It also formed Louisiana's largest waterfall for a few days, 164 feet high. In what must have been a beautiful and/or terrifying sight, air being forced out of the mine created 400-foot geysers of water in the area. A natural gas pipeline in the lake also ruptured and sent out a plume of fire.

From "Hydrology, Part 2: Infiltration" in Batwoman #2, December 2011. Haden Blackman co-writer, J. H. Williams III co-writer, pencils, & inks, Dave Stewart colors, Todd Klein letters.