How Devil Lake Got Its Name
If you look up the history of Devil Lake over the past twenty years, you’ll find there have been an unusually high number of drownings. There’s much superstition about it and kids make a game of seeing who can swim out the farthest, or stay longest after dark. People don’t take it very seriously, and neither did I until I almost drowned. I was a great swimmer, and the waters were calm. Something wasn’t right, and many long nights were spent contemplating what happened. It has taken me some time but I’ve finally traced a history.
In 1961 a man named Ronald Turpin was arrested for the murders of over a dozen people in the Toronto area over the previous three years – all by strangling. Ronald walked into a local police office wearing the uniform of Officer Arthur Lucas, the last person he’d killed. He was quickly identified as not being Arthur, and arrested. Many speculate that this was Ronald’s way of turning himself in, although he had denied it. He said he wished to continue strangling people to death, and wouldn’t stop. This turned out to be a prophetic statement.
While incarcerated in the Don Jail he had strangled his cellmate and sent to solitary confinement for a week. Once out, he strangled his second cellmate and was again sent to solitary. It was determined then that it was best for Ronald to have his own private cell. When other inmates began accusing the warden of preferential treatment, he offered to put them in the cell with Ronald to make things right. This brought an end to the controversy.
One night about a month later Ronald was found in his private cell dead, with bruise marks around his neck. The obvious conclusion was that he had strangled himself. This of course was impossible, yet he was found cold and without a pulse. He was taken to the prison infirmary to await the coroner for inspection, accompanied by a prison guard due to the questionable circumstances of his supposed death.
When the coroner arrived he was shocked to find the guard lying dead in the corner of the room, apparently strangled. Speculation abounded that Ronald had killed him, but to what end? His body still laid cold and lifeless on the gurney he was brought in on. If this was an escape attempt (likely, since similar plans had been tried before), Ronald made no such escape after killing the guard.
The doctor did his job, surrounded by a team of correctional officers for protection. He checked for a pulse, heartbeat etc, but found nothing, and announced the prisoner deceased. Ronald was then transferred to a city morgue for an autopsy. The autopsy was performed, but it too wasn’t without controversy or death. When the funeral director came in the next morning he found the pathologist and the night-time custodian both strangled to death. Again people suspected Ronald was behind the murders, but this time his body had been thoroughly dissected. He lay on the examining table, his chest cavity agape, with various organs in jars on a desk behind.
Clearly Ronald couldn’t have been responsible for the deaths of two more people, making matters all the more perplexing. The most logical explanation was that there had to have been another person committing the crimes, Someone following in Ronald’s footsteps. However, detectives could find no evidence to support this theory. There was no sign of anyone else being in the morgue that night.
Superstition began to spread like a virus. No one wanted to be alone with the body. The mortician quickly got in touch with the next of kin – Ronald’s mother – and had him approved for cremation. He was immediately sent out, cremated, and transported to another funeral home to await the arrival of his mother. This would take four days.
The first night at the other mortuary another person died, again strangled to death. It was thought that after the body was reduced to ashes the stranglings would cease, but this was not the case.
Still speculating that a second perpetrator was involved, police moved the urn to an undisclosed location for safe keeping. As a precaution, no one was allowed in the same room. Two people died in the police office that night, both men unaware that Ronald’s ashes were even in the building. It was determined that the safe place wasn’t so safe after all.
By now word had spread, and many felt the murders were coming from beyond the grave. The urn was transported to a new, undisclosed location, and left alone with no one to guard it.
The murders stopped.
Ronald’s mother came to collect the ashes two days later. Everyone agreed not to tell her of the other murders for two reasons; one: no one could definitively prove that Ronald was behind it; and two: there was no point in scaring an old lady, nice as she seemed to be. As far as letting her be alone with the remains of her son, no one thought – assuming Ronald was somehow killing from beyond the grave – that he would hurt his own mother. And if someone else was committing the murders, whoever it was probably wouldn’t track her so far out of town.
But they were wrong. A concerned neighbour called the police when they hadn’t seen or heard from her in two weeks. Her body was discovered in her bed. Bruises around her neck suggested she’d been strangled like everyone else.
Not knowing the connection between all the murders, local authorities were at a loss. There was no break and enter and no evidence of anyone else being in the house. Since no other relatives could be located, the neighbour, a close friend of Ronald’s mother, was granted permission to spread Ronald’s ashes over Silver Lake, where he has allegedly spent a great deal of his youth.
Since then there has been an abnormally high number of drowning incidents at Devil Lake, Ontario. Since Ronald’s ashes are now inextricably mixed into the water nothing can be done to fix the problem. It is thought that a priest could come and exorcise the lake, but no one will investigate the incidents or believe in the haunting. Most believe it’s a foolish superstition.
I, too, had heard the spooky stories, but considered them just that: stories. Until the day I nearly drowned, knee-deep in the water. I felt a presence over me, and something around my throat, but all I could see was the sun shimmering through the rippling waves. Then a man pulled me out and scolded me for being a foolish child.
I stood there for a while, looking out over the lake, my nose and lungs burning, wondering what had just happened. I later found bruises around my neck, and have refused to swim there ever again.
Do you think it’s all just superstition? Would you swim there? Why do you suppose they call it Devil Lake to begin with? Perhaps it’s all just a coincidence, but the story of Ronald Turpin is all true; do the research yourself.
I’m just glad Ronald’s ashes weren’t spread over the nearby Algoma Highlands. Among them is Ogidaki Mountain, which at the time was considered the highest point of elevation in Ontario. I shudder to imagine his ashes being scattered in the breeze from that high peak and all the horrors it would cause.
The Chris Effect 
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