Diana of the Dunes

Indiana · USA · Prison

Fishermen on the Indiana dunes reported a woman swimming alone in the lake around 1915. Her real name was Alice Mable Gray.

Around 1915 the shoreline that is now Indiana Dunes State Park was close to empty. Fishermen working the beach began reporting a woman swimming naked in the lake at certain hours, and word spread of a beautiful recluse living alone among the dunes. Locals around Chesterton compared her to the Greek goddess of the hunt, and the name Diana of the Dunes stuck to her.

The woman was real. Her name was Alice Mable Gray, the daughter of a well connected Chicago couple, widely travelled, educated, and formerly an editorial secretary at a popular magazine. Why she left the city for a hut on an empty beach has never been settled. The romantic version blames a broken love affair. Her own reasons appear to have been closer to a deliberate withdrawal from the life she had been raised into.

What is reported now belongs to the dunes rather than to any building. A figure at the waterline at dusk, seen at a distance, gone when anyone walks toward it. She has been part of the landscape here for more than a century.

FAQ

Hvor ligger Diana of the Dunes?

Diana of the Dunes ligger i Indiana, USA.

Image: aparlette / CC BY 2.0 / Wikimedia Commons