Gypsy Heart
Gold Member
Utopia is not a true ghost town; people still live there, on the two streets which make up the town--both of which dead-end at the banks of the Ohio River. It does, however, have ghosts. Or so they say.
Located in Clermont County, Utopia was founded by Charles Fourier, a French guy who was a member of a religious sect which believed that the world was about to enter a 35,000-year period of peace, and that people would be organized into "phalanxes"--something like the communes hippies like to live in. He also believed that the oceans would turn into lemonade. I am not making this up.
Phalanxes were about three square miles in size and would include their own farmland, libraries, schools, and stables. In 1844 he convinced more than a dozen families to join him at his phalanx in southern Ohio for a rent of $25.00 a year. Each family got a wooden house. There was a dining hall for everyone located on the river bank. Later on a thirty-room brick house was built higher up.
When the oceans failed to turn into lemonade, Fourier's followers became disillusioned and disbanded in 1846.
After that the land with all the phalanx buildings was sold to John O. Wattles, the leader of a group of spiritualists. Against the warnings of locals, Wattles had the main building moved, brick by brick, down to the water's edge. It was completed by December of 1847, just in time for one of the biggest floods of the ninteenth century.
On December 12 the Ohio had overflowed to the point where people had to be ferried to the main house by boat, but people were still seeking shelter there. There was a party on the evening of December 13, but the dancing was interrupted when the bricks gave way and all but a few of the spiritualists were washed out to drown or freeze in the icy Ohio River.
In 1975 a dredging operation brought up bricks from the original house, and it's said that when the water is very, very low the original foundation is visible. The house where John O. Wattles himself lived is now a private residence, a stone house on Route 52. Stranger still are the underground chambers recently discovered near the Brown County line.
Today the riverbank at Utopia is said to be haunted by the ghosts of the spiritualists killed in the flood of 1847. Residents have seen them walking out of the water. Strange lights have been seen moving around in or near the water.
Located in Clermont County, Utopia was founded by Charles Fourier, a French guy who was a member of a religious sect which believed that the world was about to enter a 35,000-year period of peace, and that people would be organized into "phalanxes"--something like the communes hippies like to live in. He also believed that the oceans would turn into lemonade. I am not making this up.
Phalanxes were about three square miles in size and would include their own farmland, libraries, schools, and stables. In 1844 he convinced more than a dozen families to join him at his phalanx in southern Ohio for a rent of $25.00 a year. Each family got a wooden house. There was a dining hall for everyone located on the river bank. Later on a thirty-room brick house was built higher up.
When the oceans failed to turn into lemonade, Fourier's followers became disillusioned and disbanded in 1846.
After that the land with all the phalanx buildings was sold to John O. Wattles, the leader of a group of spiritualists. Against the warnings of locals, Wattles had the main building moved, brick by brick, down to the water's edge. It was completed by December of 1847, just in time for one of the biggest floods of the ninteenth century.
On December 12 the Ohio had overflowed to the point where people had to be ferried to the main house by boat, but people were still seeking shelter there. There was a party on the evening of December 13, but the dancing was interrupted when the bricks gave way and all but a few of the spiritualists were washed out to drown or freeze in the icy Ohio River.
In 1975 a dredging operation brought up bricks from the original house, and it's said that when the water is very, very low the original foundation is visible. The house where John O. Wattles himself lived is now a private residence, a stone house on Route 52. Stranger still are the underground chambers recently discovered near the Brown County line.
Today the riverbank at Utopia is said to be haunted by the ghosts of the spiritualists killed in the flood of 1847. Residents have seen them walking out of the water. Strange lights have been seen moving around in or near the water.
