EERIE footage has revealed a haunting “lost city” lying deep beneath a vast lake, where buses, homes and even wood-burning stoves sit frozen in time.
Hidden dozens of metres below the surface of Brazil‘s Lake Furnas, the drowned world has been captured by divers exploring the eerie underwater ruins.
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12 Divers explored a ‘lost city’ beneath Brazil’s Lake Furnas, revealing preserved structuresCredit: Scubaminas Diving
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12 Footage shows intact buses, homes, and wood-burning stoves from the submerged communitiesCredit: Scubaminas Diving
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12 A boat was also found at the bottom of the lakeCredit: Scubaminas Diving
The jaw-dropping video shows ghostly streets swallowed by dark water, with entire buildings still standing and everyday objects eerily intact.
A Volkswagen Kombi van sits on the lakebed, with its shape still unmistakable despite years underwater.
Nearby, a full-sized bus looms out of the gloom, coated in sediment but still recognisable, like it was abandoned days ago.
Divers sweep torches through the murky depths, revealing kitchens, floors and wood-burning stoves still in place.
In one chilling sequence, the camera glides along what was once a street, lined with structures that remain largely intact.
Roofs have partially collapsed, but walls, rooms and layouts are clearly visible – like a town paused in time.
Diving instructor Roberto Obvioslo, who has spent a decade exploring the site, told G1: “We found an entire street. From there, we started mapping everything. We marked the points, but without exploring immediately.”
His obsession began in childhood as he watched the lake form.
“That whole thing about the lake filling up and flooding some areas always made me curious to know what really happened,” he recalls.
What started as curiosity became a full-blown mission as he went on tracking down entire submerged communities using stories from former residents.
The deeper divers go, the more they uncover.
“Some houses are still intact. Only part of the roof came down, but everything else is clearly identifiable,” says the diver.
Among the most stunning finds is a perfectly preserved bridge discovered by pure chance.
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12 The town of Guape in Minas Gerais before the floodingCredit: Collect
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12 Residents abandon homes set to be submerged following the creation of Lake FurnasCredit: Collect
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12 Families had to leave most of their belongings behind in search of a new life elsewhereCredit: Collect
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12 The town of Guape after the devastating floodCredit: Collect
“We had been looking for this bridge for a long time and couldn’t find it. When we went looking for the car, we found it intact, just as it was,” he recounted.
The lake hides more than homes. Explorers have also found a sunken schooner and lost equipment, alongside the van and bus now haunting the depths.
Dives are not for the faint-hearted. The team plunges as deep as 80 metres, where sunlight fades fast and visibility drops, forcing them to rely on powerful torches.
Despite the treasure trove below, nothing is taken.
“What’s there, stays there. We only document it with photographs,” Roberto explained.
The underwater time capsule dates back to 1963, when the Furnas Hydroelectric Plant flooded entire towns in the state of Minas Gerais – forcing residents to flee as water swallowed homes, farms and roads.
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12 Fish swim around one of the submerged ruins after years underwaterCredit: Scubaminas Diving
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12 The underwater towns were flooded in 1963 due to the Furnas Hydroelectric Plant’s creationCredit: Scubaminas Diving
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12 Several residents were forced to flee, losing everything they hadCredit: Scubaminas Diving
Retired resident Abrão Alves Andrade, 86, still remembers the chaos.
“My father told me: ‘Saddle the horse and go to Barra Velha to tell the people that the water is there.’ But people didn’t believe me, they said I was a fool and didn’t know anything,” he told G1.
Others recall desperate evacuations as the water surged.
Father José Ronaldo Rocha, who was only 12 when it all happened, said: “As the water rose, people were evacuated from their homes. They stayed at the school complex, which was higher up.”
Buildings were even torn down before the flood hit.
He added: “Tractors with steel cables would come down, pulling and knocking down the houses. It was a rather desperate situation.
“There was a lot of ripe corn, a lot of rice. The water came and everything was lost.
“I made rafts out of banana leaves to collect corn.”
At first, many didn’t believe the flood would happen at all.
Resident José Dalton Barbosa, 77, recounted: ”When that conversation started, saying they were going to close it down, cover everything up, we thought it was like Noah’s flood.”
But the water came swallowing everything.
And now, decades later, the lost towns remain – perfectly preserved beneath the surface.
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12 The underwater town has been revealed by divers who dedicate years to exploring these submerged ruinsCredit: Scubaminas Diving
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