Jason Voorhees Immortalized In Minnesota Lake; Freddy Krueger Could Be Next

MINNEAPOLIS (WCCO) -- Halloween is less than a week away, and if you like being scared you may have grown up watching "Friday the 13th" movies -- the ones where Jason Voorhees wore that infamous hockey mask and terrorized camp counselors at Crystal Lake.

Thanks to a Princeton man, Jason still lives at the bottom of a Minnesota lake.

"It never ended. What are they on, No. 15 now? It just kept going and going and going," Doug Klein said. "I just love the 80s, period. That's when I graduated. That's when I was the coolest."

As a child of the 80s, Klein remembers when Jason was at his peak. Now, he's rock bottom -- 112 feet below the surface.

"I don't know how Jason popped into my head, but I figured, 'Hey, that's going to work great,'" Klein said.

An avid scuba diver, Klein frequents Lake Louise near Crosby. It's an old mining pit used for training purposes. Other divers have added their own flare over the years with skeletons and mermaids.

So Doug created the man -- or in this case mannequin -- behind the mask.

"A bunch of stuff that was in my garage. I had leftover plywood and two-by-fours. It's mostly wood," Klein said.

A second-hand store provided the overalls and eBay supplied the mask, but getting Jason to the bottom of the lake was even harder than the movies made it look.

"The rope I had tied to the blocks broke, so he went shooting to the surface like a Polaris missile," Klein said.

After a few adjustments, such as adding cement blocks, Klein got Jason where he wanted him -- tied to an old water pipe where other divers can enjoy the scenery.

"Two weeks ago there was a guy that flew in from Seattle because he wanted to dive Jason," Klein said.

Now, there's pressure to give him some company.

"Could see a Freddy Krueger, yep," Klein said. "There will probably be a Freddy Krueger video at some point," Klein said. "There will be a sequel, yes."

Klein put his Jason creation in Lake Louise five years ago. Since then, scuba enthusiasts from across the country have visited the lake.