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JUANA SUMMERS, HOST:
October is the month of all things scary and spooky...
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GEO RUTHERFORD: Yes, hello. It's October 1.
SUMMERS: ...Ghosts, witches - lakes?
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RUTHERFORD: It's Spooky Lake Month, where we do 31 days of haunted hydrology.
SCOTT DETROW, HOST:
OK, I've heard of haunted houses. Haunted hydrology is new to me. And if, like me, you're asking, what is that? We will let TikTok creator Geo Rutherford explain.
RUTHERFORD: So haunted hydrology is the exploration of all things in the natural world that are wet and strange.
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RUTHERFORD: And today, I want to talk about a volcanic lake in the Philippines.
...Talk about the history of the abandoned radioactive lighthouses...
...To remind everyone about why Lake Superior is so terrifying.
DETROW: For the past six years, Rutherford has posted at least one video each day in October. At this point, she's explored dozens of spooky bodies of water and water-related disasters.
SUMMERS: Every video ends with a rating.
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RUTHERFORD: And that's another reason that the icy wrath of Lake Superior is 10 out of 10 Spookies (ph).
SUMMERS: And Rutherford has a strict system with multiple categories.
RUTHERFORD: One of them is rarity. Like, is this the only place like this on Earth? There's a rating for - is something, like, scientifically interesting? Then there's history and kind of, like, what has happened at that location.
SUMMERS: And get this - she also has a category for vibes.
RUTHERFORD: Something will lose points if it's just so beautiful 99% of the time. That's like Lake Tahoe will hold on to her dead because she's super deep and super cold. But she's beautiful, and so it kind of takes away from the inherent spookiness of the location.
DETROW: There is one particular lake that has become an obsession for Rutherford.
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RUTHERFORD: Lake Baikal is sometimes called the Galapagos of Russia.
Of course, I want to talk about Lake Baikal's ice, which...
So at this point, my account is basically a Lake Baikal stan account.
It's the one that I always come back to. It's the oldest and the deepest lake in the world. There's also a lot of really, like, morbid history.
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RUTHERFORD: There's no reliable record of how many people have died on Lake Baikal, but there are accounts of people losing their lives on its frozen surface that go back for centuries.
SUMMERS: Spooky Lake Month has become so popular, it's even spawned a "Spooky Lakes" book, a "Spooky Rivers" book and a coloring book. Each of those are written and drawn by Rutherford herself.
RUTHERFORD: So I've been kind of riding it like a wave where I'm just kind of going with the flow and, like, seeing where it takes me.
DETROW: This year's Spooky Lake Month comes with a personal mission.
RUTHERFORD: My father was in the Peace Corps in the 1970s with his brother, and they both designed and built suspension bridges in the Himalayas.
DETROW: In August, an avalanche triggered flash flooding and mudslides killing hundreds.
SUMMERS: Some of the bridges Rutherford's uncle built were washed away. So this month, she's fundraising to help rebuild in the area.
RUTHERFORD: Spooky Lake Month is essentially about disasters. So the least I can do with my platform is to kind of give back as much as I can. This point, we might actually be able to build two entirely new bridges in Nepal.
DETROW: As her sixth year comes to a close, Rutherford has continued to explore the spookiness of the natural world.
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RUTHERFORD: And today, I want to talk about the LA River and how engineers took a natural river and turned it into a 51-mile-long concrete waterslide from hell.
SUMMERS: But sometimes, that lies in what we create.
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RUTHERFORD: Just like Frankenstein, the real monster isn't the river itself. It's what we turned it into - 9 out of 10 Spookies.
DETROW: Happy Spooky Lake Month, everyone.
(SOUNDBITE OF ERIK SATIE'S, "GNOSSIENNE NO.1") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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