Rutgers Douglass College Founding Dean · Cold Case History · Lake Placid History · Women in Higher Education
Mabel Smith Douglass was born on February 11, 1874, and graduated from Barnard College in 1899. She married William Shipman Douglass in 1903 and had two children. After her husband's death, she managed the family's business while simultaneously building one of her era's most significant contributions to American higher education: the New Jersey College for Women, which opened in 1918 with 54 students and grew substantially during her tenure as founding dean. She retired from the deanship in September 1932 due to illness. The college was renamed Douglass College in her honor in 1955.
On September 21, 1933, Douglass was staying at her family's Lake Placid property, Camp Onondoga, when she set out alone in a rowboat on the lake—she told her daughter she was gathering leaves. Her capsized boat was found approximately three miles from where she had launched. Initial searches of the lake and surrounding trails yielded nothing.
Thirty years passed. On September 15, 1963, scuba divers Richard Niffenegger and Jimmy Rogers were exploring the depths of Lake Placid near an underwater feature called Pulpit Rock, one of the lake's deepest sections. At approximately 95 feet below the surface, on an underwater shelf, they found a remarkably preserved corpse. The remains were identified as Douglass, based on the lake's only unresolved disappearance from the intervening decades. A rope was found associated with the remains; authorities ruled the death accidental drowning. The case produced two books: Dancehall (1983) and A Lady in the Lake (1985).
Douglass was interred at Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn.
Sources
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mabel_Smith_Douglass
- https://www.adirondack.net/history/lady-in-the-lake/
- https://www.lakeplacid.com/story/2014/10/ghost-stories-story-lady-of-the-lake
Female apparition floating near Pulpit RockSensed presence on the lake
The ghost legend attached to Pulpit Rock emerged gradually in the years following the 1963 recovery of Mabel Smith Douglass's remains. Boaters and visitors camping along the shores of Lake Placid began reporting sightings of a female apparition near that section of the lake—a figure floating at or near the surface, in proximity to the underwater shelf where the body lay for three decades.
The accounts, documented by local Lake Placid tourism sources and adirondack.net's historical coverage, describe the figure in terms consistent with what is sometimes called a 'residual' haunting: a presence tethered to the location of a traumatic event rather than interacting dynamically with witnesses. The apparition is not described as threatening. Some accounts frame it as the spirit of Douglass guarding the site of her death, unable to leave the place where she remained undiscovered for thirty years.
The combination of a documented cold case with a prolonged period of absence—three decades in which the lake held its secret—gives the Pulpit Rock legend an unusual gravity. The site's remoteness, accessible only by boat, contributes to the atmosphere that has sustained the story in regional paranormal and history writing.
Notable Entities
Mabel Smith Douglass
Media Appearances
- Dancehall (Book, 1983)
- A Lady in the Lake (Book, 1985)
