Whitewater Witches Tower

The Starin Park Water Tower in Whitewater, better known as the Witches Tower, is an 1889 stone water tower with a history that is almost as strange as the legends attached to it. It was built by C.E. Gray & Company as part of Whitewater’s first municipal water system to address concerns that residents’ private wells were the source of “enfeebled health and shortened life.” The roughly 100-foot structure consists of an octagonal limestone masonry tower supporting a 30-foot steel tank that held approximately 185,000 gallons. The stone walls are about 8 feet thick at the base and taper as they rise. The tower originally belonged to a private utility before being turned over to the City of Whitewater in 1912, and it continued operating as a water tank until it was decommissioned in 2022. Today, it stands in Starin Park as one of Whitewater’s most recognizable historic landmarks.

The tower’s darker reputation comes from Whitewater’s long-running Witches of Whitewater folklore. Local legend says witches gathered around the tower to perform rituals, with some versions claiming the site was connected to séances, witchcraft and an altar buried nearby. Another favorite detail involves the old fence around the tower, with pointed tips turned inward rather than outward, as if to keep something inside.

The tower also sits within the area of Whitewater’s so-called Witches Triangle, formed by three historic cemeteries. The connection between the tower and Whitewater’s witch lore may have been reinforced by the fact that the Morris Pratt Institute, an influential Spiritualist school, was established in Whitewater in the same year the tower was built, 1889. Historians have noted that stories originally associated with the city’s Spiritualist history were later attached to other Whitewater locations, including the tower. There is no documented evidence that witches actually performed rituals at the tower, but the folklore has made this piece of 19th-century infrastructure one of the most recognizable stops in Whitewater’s “Second Salem” mythology.

Reported Paranormal Activity

• Witches are said to have gathered around the tower to perform rituals and séances
• Witnesses have claimed to see figures or shadowy apparitions around the base of the tower at night
• Disembodied voices, echoes and unexplained noises have reportedly been heard coming from the tower
• Local lore claims the tower acted as a magnet for malicious spirits drawn to the area by the witches’ rituals
• Legend claims an altar connected to the rituals was buried somewhere near the tower
• Some versions of the story claim a demon was imprisoned inside the stone tower
• One account claims the tower itself rotates on Halloween night

Explore the strange history and haunted legends of Whitewater »