The Witches' Tree
Louisville, Kentucky, United States
An old twisted tree in Old Louisville that, by neighborhood legend, sprang overnight where three hanged witches had cursed the corner, still hung with offerings by practitioners today.
At the corner of South Sixth and Park in Old Louisville stands a gnarled tree with a story Louisville's witch community keeps current: in 1889, three women hanged nearby (the folk account varies on the details) cursed the corner, and a blackened tree erupted there overnight, roots twisted above ground, to mark the wrong. The legend is not in the historical record; the practice is. Practitioners and neighbors leave charms, coins, ribbons, and spelled objects in its branches, and local news has covered the offerings as a standing feature of the neighborhood.
Old Louisville is already America's densest Victorian haunted-neighborhood in the public imagination, and the tree is its living emblem. It is one of very few urban trees in America with a continuous, named, present-tense witchcraft practice attached to it.
Visiting
The tree stands at the sidewalk corner on a residential block; it is viewable at any hour but is a private-adjacent neighborhood site: approach quietly, take nothing, leave nothing that harms the tree.
Associated traditions & practices
Visitor stories