Pyramid Lake, Nevada

The Facts:

Pyramid Lake is a salty remnant of the ancient Lake Lahantan that covered northwestern Nevada and parts of northeastern California and southern Oregon some 12,000 years ago. Now, this remnant is only about 27 miles long and 11 miles wide, distinguished by what are called ‘tufa’ formations: limestone shapes that were formed back when Lake Lahantan was nearly 900 feet deep rather than Pyramid’s current 355 ft depth.

Pyramid Lake is fed by the Truckee River, which comes from Lake Tahoe, but Pyramid Lake doesn’t have any outflow, itself, losing excess water through evaporation.

The entirety of the lake is within the bounds of the Pyramid Lake Paiute Tribe Reservation, with a tribal population of about 1500 people. The tribe is very protective of the lake, with good reason, as Anaho Island is a sanctuary for pelicans, and the tufa formations have suffered vandalism and over-visitation in the past. Because of this, the cast of The Gothic Podcast want to mention here that we have taken a great number of liberties concerning the lake and the tribe during this episode of Ghost Hunt TV, and none of these should be considered factual. Plus, none of the characters we mention during the ‘investigation’ represent any real persons, living or deceased (this goes pretty much for all of our episodes, but definitely for this one).

The Mythology:

The inspiration for the ‘monster’ of our Pyramid Lake investigation comes from the well-known stories about the ‘water babies’ of the lake, as well as tales of the Stone Mother, about which more can be learned on author C.J. Hall’s blog.

The pyramid lake water babies are vengeful spirits said to mimic the sounds of crying infants, luring people to their doom. Most of the legends we came across claim that these spirits are the angry ghosts of premature or malformed infants who were thrown into the lake to preserve the strength of the tribes, generations ago. But other legends speak of the water babies as results of the vengeance taken by a mermaid-like creature when she was rejected by a lover.

The quick-and-dirty information Patrick used for his ‘research’ into the Pyramid Lake Water Babies came from (as almost always) Wikipedia’s entry, and from an article called “Curse of the Pyramid Lake Water Babies” by Mark Fiorentino in The Granby Drummer.

The snake-with-a-baby’s head concept came from the speculative biology art of Eduardo Valdez-Hevia. Go check out the Luretail Viper on the the Valdevia website. And definitely hit Play on the sound recording you’ll find there.

The monster itself, and the way in which is moves and expands, was also most definitely influenced by the movie “Nope” (2022 dir. Jordan Peele).