DALLAS — At an old cemetery near White Rock Lake, WFAA found the woman Dallas has spent decades looking for.
“Some people laughingly do refer to me as the 'Lady of the Lake,'” said Sally Rodriguez, the unofficial lake historian.
Unlike the Lady of the Lake legend, Rodriguez is very much alive. She earned her nickname because no one knows the lake’s history better than she does, including a haunted history that’s well documented.
However, Rodriguez says no matter how many times the story is told, it’s not true.
At least, not likely.
“I’ve found lots of stories, but no stories that match that,” Rodriguez said.
A story that ends at Cox Cemetery, reportedly where the Lady of the Lake is buried.
But how did she get there?
According to the urban legend, long ago, a lady in a soaking wet dress stopped a young couple driving by and asked for a ride home.
The couple agreed, but when they arrived at their destination, they looked in the backseat and the woman was gone. Where she was sitting there was just a puddle of water.
The woman had led the couple to a house, so the couple knocked on the door and the homeowners said they had a daughter who died years earlier.
“She and her date were on the way to the prom, ended up driving into the lake and died,” Rodriguez said.
Rodriguez says, surprisingly, back in the day, many people drove into White Rock Lake and died.
But after years of research she can’t find any record of a death like this. However, she did find this story somewhere else.
“Some place in Ohio and Michigan have exactly the same story in their town lake,” Rodriguez said.
Austin does too.
So if it’s all made-up, why does the story persist?
“It’s just a good ghost story to tell,” said Rodriguez.
If you were hoping to catch a ghost, bad news: There’s not a woman haunting White Rock Lake.
The good-ish news? Someone probably is.
“Do I think there could be spirits out here at the lake based on the number of deaths,” Rodriguez asked. “Yes.”
If anyone should know, it’s the Lady of the Lake.
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