The Pale Figure at Lake Ainsley

The December heat was oppressive, even for the South Island. I was staying with my mate, Jake, at his family’s bach near the small town of Fernleigh. To escape the boredom and the sweltering afternoon, we decided to walk to Lake Ainsley, a shallow, reedy body of water surrounded by a nature reserve. It was a place we’d been to a hundred times, but today it felt different. The air was heavy, and an unnatural stillness hung over the park. The usual calls of birds were absent, and even the insects seemed to hold their breath.

We separated for a bit—I needed to use the rickety old toilet block near the car park. As I stepped out, the sun felt blinding for a moment, and I squinted across the field toward the lake. Jake was on the other side, near a grove of drooping willows. I started walking along the path that bordered the lake, my footsteps crunching on the dry gravel. That’s when I saw it: a tall, white figure, glowing faintly as if lit from within. It had no face, no features, just a smooth, featureless head and long, impossibly thin arms. It stood perfectly still for a second, then walked with an odd, fluid motion around the corner of a large boulder ahead.

My heart slammed against my ribs. I froze, every muscle locked. I tried to rationalize it—maybe a trick of the light, a reflection off the water? But the figure was solid, three-dimensional, and it had moved with purpose. I heard Jake’s voice cut through the silence, shaky and incredulous: ‘Ryan… did you see that?’ I managed to nod, my voice barely a whisper. ‘The white thing?’ I croaked. He said yes.

We met near the boulder, our eyes wide, scanning the area. There was nothing there. No footprints, no disturbance in the gravel. Jake looked pale. ‘It just appeared out of nowhere, walked right past me,’ he said. I told him I saw it come out from the toilet path and disappear around the boulder. We were both shaken, but we decided to follow the path further, thinking maybe it was some kind of park attendant in a weird suit. But the path wound around the lake and led to a dense patch of manuka and flax. The air grew colder as we stepped into the shade, and the silence felt suffocating.

We came to a small clearing where an old stone well stood, half-covered by moss. The well had always creeped me out as a kid—local legends said it was bottomless. I peered in, but it was just blackness. Then I heard a sound, like a soft whisper, but not in any language I knew. It seemed to come from the well. I backed away, and Jake grabbed my arm. ‘Let’s get out of here,’ he said. We turned to leave, but the path we’d come from was gone—replaced by thick, tangled undergrowth that hadn’t been there a moment ago. Panic rose in my throat.

We pushed through the bushes, tearing our clothes on thorns, until we stumbled back onto the main path near the lake. The sun was lower now, casting long shadows. We both felt a sense of relief, but then we saw it again—a figure, but this time there were two of them. They stood at the edge of the lake, facing the water. They were taller than the first, and they seemed to be swaying slightly. As we watched, they slowly turned their heads in perfect unison, and though they had no faces, I felt they were looking right at us. A deep, resonant hum filled the air, and the ground vibrated.

I grabbed Jake’s arm and we ran. We didn’t stop until we reached the car park, breathing hard. We got in Jake’s ute and sped out of there, not saying a word until we were back on the main road. The rest of our stay was tense; we avoided Lake Ainsley and didn’t speak of it until the night before we left. Jake admitted he had seen things before, but nothing like this. We promised to never return.

Years later, I heard that the lake had been drained for weed control, and they found at the bottom a series of bare, white stones arranged in a circle, and a child’s shoe, impossibly preserved. No one could explain it. But I know what we saw that day was no trick of the light. The pale figures at Lake Ainsley were real, and they were waiting for something. I still get chills when I think about the way they moved, and the silence that followed us home.