Why Caddo Lake Is As Eerie And Mysterious In Real Life As In The Hit Netflix Movie

If spooky season has you primed for a boat ride to the dark side, then "Caddo Lake," currently streaming on Netflix and set on the lake that straddles the Texas-Louisiana border, is right up your bayou. The eerie, atmospheric thriller, produced by M. Night Shamayalan, enjoys an 81% audience approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes' Popcornmeter. It's hard to categorize: Is it horror? Is it sci-fi? A ghost story? A little of each? Not since Robert Mitchum terrorized Gregory Peck in the 1962 classic "Cape Fear" (or Robert DeNiro and Nick Nolte in the '90s remake) has a body of water played such a menacing role in a Hollywood movie. 

In the film's opening scenes, an eight-year-old girl named Anna runs away from home, taking a motorboat out into the lake's sinister and maze-like cypress forest — and vanishes as if into thin air. As her family searches for her, flashbacks to other timelines suggest other mysterious disappearances over the years, until an explosive flurry of satisfying and gut-wrenching plot twists reaches a thrilling conclusion that transcends genre. "It blew me away," writes one Redditor in the r/horror forum. "More tragedy, with some sort of almost folkloric supernatural elements."

While it's not based on a true story, the husband-wife filmmakers, Logan George and Celine Held took their inspiration from the real Caddo Lake, telling Entertainment Weekly they were first inspired by seeing a picture of the eerie lake on Reddit. The image gripped them so fiercely couple immediately jumped in their car and drove 1,500 miles from their home in Brooklyn. And as soon as you land on these shores, you'll see exactly why, because the real Caddo Lake is every bit as spooky and intriguing as the fictionalized version.

Unlike cheerful Toledo Bend Reservoir to the south, where bass fishermen and families frolic in the sun, 27,000-acre Caddo Lake is a naturally occurring body of water that feels positively ancient. Its shoreline is a maze of murky bayous — shallow, misty black waters where herons wade in the gloomy shadows of 400 year-old cypress trees draped in Spanish moss. Permanent residents of this primeval forest include alligators and snapping turtles, and the strange, shark-like paddlefish, the oldest species of animal in North America, predating the dinosaurs at 300,000 years old. It's no wonder this landscape inspired a story with time-travel elements, as it really feels like you're floating back through time here.

And once you've seen a prehistoric paddlefish, you'll believe just about anything is possible in the natural world, so be primed to keep an eye out for the 20-foot long swamp monster rumored to ply the murky shallows. Bigfoot sightings are rampant, too. Then there's the legend of the"weeping woman" who haunts the shore, crying through the mist as she laments the loss of her Civil War soldier lover. Another source of haunted lore is a tragic accident from years ago. In 1869, a riverboat plying the lake caught fire, killing 64 people in an incident that's been compared to the sinking of the Titanic. Given this history, it may come as a surprise that, aside from the occasional boat collision, the lake isn't known to be particularly dangerous, and the disappearances here are entirely fictional.

The lake makes a great addition to any Louisiana road trip, and it's just a short detour on this drive from Dallas to Galveston. At Caddo Lake State Park, you can rent a historic cabin or campsite with a screened-in sleeping shelter. This is exactly the kind of lakeside "haunt" where you sit around the campfire with a belly full of s'mores and hold a flashlight under your chin to tell ghost stories.

The town that serves as the gateway to the Texas side of Caddo Lake bears the perfectly appropriate name of Uncertain. An array of guest houses let you stay lakeside here. There is fishing and seasonal duck hunting, but the main draw is the bayou. Captain Ron's Swamp Tours comes highly recommended, or you can rent canoes and kayaks to explore several paddle trails where painted signposts mark the "boat road" you follow to keep from getting lost in the endless swamp like little Anna in "Caddo Lake."

Paddle up the Cathedral Trail, tie up at the dock of the Shady Glade Cafe, and pop in for the chicken fried steak. For some reason, food always tastes better when you arrive by boat. Or, launch your vessel at Crip's Camp, and you can explore the Old Folks Playground Paddle Trail, which is a lot more scenic than it sounds, its magical bayous lined with lily pads and lotus flowers. Then, after a long day recreating on the water, you can head back to your rented lakeside cabin to dust off that Ouija board you found under the bunk beds and get ready to scare yourself silly all over again.