Creepy Witches Castle in Utica

There's an abandoned witches house, whose sinister history is haunted by the number three, and which has borne witness to misery, mayhem, and murder in gruesome detail.

This scary haunt is located about 725 miles from Utica, New York in the small (some say cursed) town of Utica, Indiana, across from Kentucky along the Ohio River. It just might be worth a weekend road trip, for you Halloween fanatics.

The stone structure is actually called The Witches Castle, because of three different tales from three distinct eras of Utica, Indiana's history.

1. Utica's early years (the 1700 and 1800s)...

The town's founder James Noble Wood allegedly used a vigilante group to forcibly evict three troublesome Native American sisters from their house. They were placed on a makeshift raft and sent down river toward the Falls of the Ohio and certain death. Their screams and curses echoed in the ears of the town's people, who watched from the riverbank until the raft disappeared from sight.

2. Later in the 19th century...

Three very different, stubborn and antisocial sisters took up residence in a stone home on the outskirts of town. Soon after, Utica's children began to disappear. A raid of the sisters' home turned up small bones, human skins hanging on a clothesline, and what appeared to be a child's heart, stewing in a pot on the fireplace. The sisters were tried as witches and cannibals; they were hanged, and the structure was burned to the ground.

3. In the 1950s and beyond...

The castle was rebuilt and repurposed into a tourist home, but suffered an unexplained fire and was abandoned. In 1992, four teenaged girls lured 12-year-old Shanda Sharer to the castle's remains, beat and tortured her, and later that night burned her to death. The case drew national media attention.

To this day, the infamous Witches Castle is historic and haunted, with sightings of ghosts and the spectral faces of children peering out from the windows of the decayed home.

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