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The spookiness of Soap Lake extends to both the physical and spiritual realms.
October is spooky for a reason. The days grow shorter, the nights longer, and hints of death are everywhere—subtly, in the leaves falling from trees and gardens going dormant; sensationally, in candy wrappers printed with tombstones and skulls.
It is also Spooky Lake Month, a celebration of “haunted hydrology” that began in 2020 when TikTok megastar, Geodesaurus (Geo Rutherford), began sharing her passion for weird bodies of water. Rutherford and other spooky lake enthusiasts typically focus on catastrophes, such as shipwrecks, diving disasters, and all manner of wet death.
We have our own share of spooky waters here in the Pacific Northwest. Most notably is probably Lake Crescent, where in 1940, a murdered woman’s body turned into soap after spending a few years in its depths. But in my mind, none are as spooky as Soap Lake, a mineral lake scooped out of the sagebrush and basalt of Eastern Washington.
Nobody has actually turned to soap in its waters, but in Soap Lake, science has echoes of science fiction, and the natural has echoes of the supernatural.
One of its strangest qualities is sometimes called the “lake within the lake”—or monimolimnion—which is a body of water within this body of water, like a hydrological hall of mirrors. Most lakes turn over throughout the year, so the water on the bottom cycles to the top, and vice versa. But Soap Lake is stratified, with a natural “chemocline” barrier that keeps the two layers separate. For millennia, the water deep down has been trapped and untouched. It’s three to five times saltier than seawater, has no oxygen, and is the consistency of syrup or goo. And with a natural dash of arsenic (five times the amount that is safe to swim in), as well as high concentrations of sulfur, you wouldn’t want to drink it.
But that’s all down deep, and the top layer of the lake is perfectly fine for swimming and wading. Some people even drink it. Every day.
For a long time there was a spigot on Main Street in the town of Soap Lake that flowed straight from the lake, and it wasn’t uncommon to see people loading containers with water to take home for drinking and bathing, and to make soaps, lotions, and maybe even potions.
This is because Soap Lake also has a long history of healing.
The lake was thought to have healing properties. Turns out that arsenic might have played a role.
Taking a cool swim in the silky waters of Soap Lake—looking up the coulee at the basalt cliffs, with hardly any civilization in sight—it’s hard not to think about all the people who have suffered here, and all the relief these waters have brought.
For centuries, people have made pilgrimages to this unusual lake. Indigenous people of the Columbia Plateau soaked in its waters for spiritual and physical healing. Around the turn of the last century, white settlers followed their lead, even soaking their livestock in the lake to get rid of parasites. (Dr. Leo Bodensteiner, emeritus professor of ecology at WWU, theorizes that the aforementioned arsenic might have played a role in exterminating all those ticks and fleas…)
With its sunny climate and reputation for healing, Soap Lake soon became the most popular resort town in our state. Its spa hotels and vacation cottages were packed with visitors. Postcards and packaging with spiritual vibes announced, “It Will Cure You!” and called the lake, “God’s Gift to the Sick!”
Perhaps the most fascinating aspect of this boom-time was the arrival of veterans, and the realization that all this woo-woo talk of healing wasn’t so woo-woo: The lake really worked.
After WWI, returning soldiers who suffered from Buerger’s Disease found little relief in Western medicine. This circulatory affliction was excruciating and horrific, causing flesh to erode and expose the nerves. Some of its victims—“half-insane from pain, maimed, hopeless,” according to a 1937 American Legion Monthly article—endured so many amputations they were said to be dying “an inch at a time.”
And this remote little lake in the heart of our state cured them.
Cured them.
The treatment itself—soaking in Soap Lake—was unbearably painful, but over time, it healed their dying flesh. In 1938, the Veterans Administration found enough evidence of the lake’s healing properties that it built a hospital in town to help these people on their journey.
Eventually, with broader access to antibiotics and the onset of interstate travel, visitors decreased and, like many rural places in the Inland Northwest, the town went into decline. In the early 2000’s, when a BBC report said Soap Lake was “well on its way to becoming a ghost town,” it was best known for Brent Blake’s quest to build the World’s Largest Lava Lamp as a way to renew the local economy and return attention to the ecological gem of the lake. It’s a project that many of us found well-suited for this colorful place.
Spookiness often centers on the unknown—the monster behind the door is typically creepier than the monster we can see—which might explain our fascination with spooky lakes. Amniotic origins aside, the depths of a body of water are not only obscured beneath the surface, behind the proverbial door, but also remind us that we can’t breathe down there. That’s scary. Besides, do we ever feel more vulnerable than while floating in water and feeling something unknown graze the bottom of our feet?
Soap Lake, more than most lakes, feels like a manifestation of that unknown.
“This water isn’t water,” says a character in my novel, Midnight in Soap Lake, who has recently moved to a fictional version of the town to study the “miracle microbes” discovered in the lake. It’s a creepy mystery novel, so of course things don’t go so well.
Perhaps the spookiest aspect of Soap Lake is more real than mythical or fictional: This rare mineral lake is slowly dying. It is being diluted by groundwater, and “the lake within the lake” is shrinking significantly. There are many potential reasons for this, including climate change, but it is mostly due to the impact of irrigation in the region.
The Columbia Basin Irrigation Project carries nearly a trillion gallons of water each year from the Columbia River through a network of canals to 670,000 acres of farmland. But since the 1950s, despite the addition of intercept wells, groundwater from the canals has seeped into the lake, “freshening” it and diluting the very qualities that make it unique.
Irrigation is slowly draining Soap Lake. But there’s not much we can do to save it. Perhaps that’s the spookiest fact of all.
In 2023, the Washington Department of Ecology listed the negative impact of irrigation as one of the reasons for designating Soap Lake an “Outstanding Resource Water.”
Earlier this year, when I asked Dr. Bodensteiner, one of the authors of the irrigation study, whether he was optimistic about the future of Soap Lake, he said, “I’m realistic.”
Meaning: Agriculture in the region is a multibillion dollar industry, and there isn’t any immediate solution to a problem of this scope. It goes without saying that no one is planning to shut down the canals in order to help save a lake, regardless of its ecological, cultural, and historical importance—and no matter how spooky it might be.
That reality might be the most unsettling thing of all.