It’s Long Island’s largest, deepest lake, a majestic expanse surrounded by scenic woods and lined with white sand.
Thousands have flocked to its shores each summer to enjoy the water and bask in the unspoiled natural surroundings.
But there are scores of local residents who won’t even dip their toes in Lake Ronkonkoma — and it’s not because of its recent bout with algae bloom.
Buried in the lake’s waters are untold lost bodies, they say — the victims of a centuries-old ghost who regularly drags young men to their graves.
“I would not swim there,’’ said local Danny Guido, 44. “Too big of a risk.’’
Legend has it that in the 1600s, a young Setauket Indian princess named Tuskawanta fell madly in love with a blond bearded woodcutter she spotted one day across the water.
In one version of the spooky Suffolk County saga, the Native American Juliet catches the eye of her Romeo woodsman, Hugh Birdsall, and he becomes equally entranced with her — but her father forbids her from seeing the white English settler.
The distraught princess then spends every day for the next seven years writing Birdsall love letters on pieces of bark and trying to send them to him by floating them across the water.
She never gets a response, and in despair, finally rows out into the middle of the lake and stabs herself in the heart.
According to locals, who love to retell the tragic tale in one version or another, every year since, “The Lady of the Lake’’ has made it her mission to grab a young man from her watery grave to replace her lost love.
“If you’re a true Ronkonkoma native, these things are in your blood,’’ local historian Ellyn Okvist told The Post.
Drowning statistics back up the legend, some residents said.
There were at least 160 drownings at the lake between the mid- to late 1800s and late 1970s, averaging well over one a year — and only three victims were women, said former longtime Lake Ronkonkoma lifeguard David Igneri, 74, citing his own research.
Igneri, who has a doctorate in colonial American history, said that in the 34 years he helped guard the lake’s beaches starting in the 1960s, there were 30 drownings alone — all male victims.
“I had heard it for years — all the legends, the princess curse . . . I thought it was all malarkey, just myth” as a young man, Igneri told The Post.
Then he had a terrifying premonition about a drowning while guarding, witnessed instances where females inexplicably survived situations others would have died in, listened to buddies’ tales of their encounters with the heartsick princess — and lived to tell about his own brush with death in the lake.
“I started to say, ‘Maybe there’s something to this legend,’” Igneri said.
It’s easy to see how the majestic, if not slightly eerie, lake would inspire such a tale.
As the deepest lake on Long Island, Ronkonkoma has been called “bottomless,’’ although even the most strident believers in “The Lady of the Lake’’ acknowledge that isn’t true.
In reality, the lake is nearly 90 feet at its deepest, around 10 feet along the edges and at some point, features a dangerous sudden 45-foot drop.
But it is deep enough to keep some secrets as well.
Virginia Schutte, 72, who lives on the edge of the lake, said her uncle was a lifeguard there — briefly — when she was little.
During his first week on the job, “He dove off the diving board and came up with a body on him. He didn’t know it — somebody had drowned and was in the water,’’ Schutte told The Post.
“He quit,’’ she said.
Schutte said she doesn’t consider the princess “evil — I view her as a person whose heart was broken.’’
Still, she admitted that she never takes any chances.
When her son was in high school and planning to take a raft out onto the lake with some buddies, she hid the small boat so the boys couldn’t go out.
Schutte said there have been so many drownings over the years that she can’t hear the whirl of a helicopter anymore without tensing up. It means the search is on for yet another body.
“It’s a horrible sound,’’ she said.
“When they start making their circles . . . you know that somebody’s in trouble . . . And the longer you hear it going, you’re like, ‘Oh, my God, they’re not going to find them.’”
Igneri’s recollections about the lake are just as troubling.
He said that in the months leading up to July 4, 1965, when he was a lifeguard, he had the same dream every night for a week: “I was diving in very, very deep for somebody. And I couldn’t find them.’’
Each time he reached the water’s surface in his dream, he saw fireworks.
The dream was so unsettling that Igneri told his fellow guards, “and just as a precaution, the town allowed me to bring more guards to the lake for that day,’’ July 4.
“We had a few minor rescues’’ that day, Igneri said. “And then the epileptic boy went down.
“We all cried as the police grappled [with] the body’’ of the 6-foot, 15-year-old boy.
“We saw him taken away, and I said to my guards, ‘We’re closing the beach today. Call the town. Tell them.’
“As the days went by . . . I said, ‘You know something, maybe there is a princess.’”
Igneri said he had his own possible brush with Tuskawanta about four or five years ago. He said he was swimming toward a local bar and grill on the edge of the lake known as the Lighthouse, and when he got close, he found himself swimming in place.
“And then I get picked up, and I get thrown back,’’ he said. “The legend does say that the princess lives in the deep hole [near] the Lighthouse. That’s where I was.’’
As dramatic as some locals’ tales are, there are as many residents who dismiss the princess’s story as just colorful folklore.
“I think it’s a wonderful legend, but it’s just that,’’ said Evelyn Bozler, research director of the Lake Ronkonkoma Historical Society.
According to the Suffolk County Police Department, the last person to drown in the lake was a female in 2017. The department said it only started breaking down drowning statistics specifically for Lake Ronkonkoma starting in 2001, and since then, there also was a male who died in 2012 and another male in 2014.
Buried in the lake’s waters are untold lost bodies, they say — the victims of a centuries-old ghost who regularly drags young men to their graves.
The lake is now off-limits to swimmers because of algae bloom, according to signs in a visitors parking lot at the lake.
Okvist said her own research dating to 1740 shows more women and children have drowned in the lake than men.
Some possible descendants of the princess’s love interest, local Birdsalls, agreed that the tale is hard to believe.
“It’s kind of like witchcraft,’’ David Birdsall, 77, told The Post.
But another Birdsall, Matthew, 19, said he was brought up on tales of “The Lady of the Lake’’ and, “Absolutely I believe it.’’
There’s no historical proof that the princess ever lived, but Hugh Birdsall is believed to be a real person who moved back to England and married, according to the Sachem Patch.
The legend has been enough to spur a small cottage industry.
There have been several books, a movie project, a wall mural of the princess and now even a sculpture of her carved out of a local tree trunk.
Schutte said she hopes the tree sculpture of Tuskawanta near her home will appease the distraught princess.
“We’re just wishing her well,’’ said Schutte, who is involved in the project with sculptor Todd Arnett. “I’m probably going to put ‘Tuskawanta, Rest in Peace’ . . . I’m hoping . . . it calms her down.’’
Some residents said the legend doesn’t just affect men on the lake.
Lake Ronkonkoma noticeably rises and falls every seven years — and even that can supposedly be explained by the tale.
“It’s weeping for them still,’’ Okvist said of the lake, referring to the princess and her love.
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