Read time: 5 min.

Pioneer cemeteries have always captivated me with their eerie, unsettling beauty. As a kid, I might have imagined ghosts or shadows lurking among the gravestones, but I’ve since learned the real threat to these places isn’t supernatural: it’s vandalism. Tucked away in the southern reaches of Salem Township, Sharp Cemetery knows this all too well. The burial ground has suffered from damage and defilement time and time again.

Perched high above Bell Creek about half a mile north of the Henry County line, Sharp Cemetery is a place steeped in eerie local lore. Growing up, my friends whispered about it as “the Witches’ Circle.” According to legend, a witch was buried just outside the cemetery’s boundaries¹. There was even a small cluster of stones past the back of the grounds that resembled a primitive grave! In 2008, a former Salem Township trustee mentioned that officials once discovered pentagrams there².

I suspect the disturbing findings were the work of modern-day troublemakers, not satanic forces. When my brother and I recently visited Sharp Cemetery, we found no signs of the occult- only destruction and vandalism. A handful of markers still stood, but most lay shattered, painted, or pushed deep into the ground. Forget any talk of “witches”- the real monsters of Sharp Cemetery are those who have desecrated it.

Nevertheless, John and I tried to piece together the history of Sharp Cemetery from the few fragments that remained. We learned that the land was originally part of a grant from President John Quincy Adams in the late 1820s³. Edward Sharp appears to have settled nearby in 1831. Just two years later, an infant named Adam G. Jones was laid to rest there at only eleven months old⁴. Sadly, Jones’ tombstone -along with so many others- has long since been destroyed.

What likely began as a small family plot on the knoll gradually became a greater resting place as more and more people were buried there. By 1874, the cemetery sat on land owned by J.P. Sharp⁵. Thirteen years later, it straddled plots belonging to Allen White and Sanford H. Bowers⁶. Today, Bowers’ tombstone is one of the most prominent. The stone’s precarious position at the edge of the hill seems to mirror Sharp Cemetery itself: a place once significant now teetering on the edge of destruction.

Just a short distance from Bowers’ tomb sits the Losh family’s plot, partially enclosed by a collapsed iron fence. A member of Indiana’s 147th Volunteer Regiment⁷, Wilson Losh lost his life at seventeen on March 24, 1865. Nearby, a prominent obelisk marks the grave of his father, John. Other members of the family -two infants and a brother- were buried nearby.

The Losh markers were poignant, but one of the most heartbreaking sights we found was the tombstone belonging to Ruth Bowers. She died from childbirth complications in 1877. What’s left of her white bronze marker lies off to the side of the cemetery, in the midst of a jumble of other ruined headstones. Her damaged marker makes her story even more sorry, like the hardship she endured in life somehow followed her in death.

Bowers’ memory is threatened by the same forces that haunt the rest of the burial ground. Cemeteries are always somber places, but the real tragedy at Sharp is the deliberate destruction. Nearly every tombstone has been toppled or cracked by careless vandals seeking a cheap thrill- whether it be the glimpse of a witch or the echo of a nearby farmer racking his pump-action. The vandalism is an assault on the very fabric of the community’s past- my community’s past.

Unfortunately, there’s not much to look forward to. As Sharp Cemetery crumbles, so does our shared connection with this corner of Delaware County. It’s not just a matter of preserving the cemetery- it’s about protecting the legacy of those who built our community and honoring their memory. Unfortunately, safeguarding it seems less and less likely as vandalism, time, and neglect continue to take a toll.

Sources Cited
1 Towns, E. (1997, October 2). Grave stories. The Muncie Star. p. 26. 
2 Carlson, J. (2008, October 26). Legend Has it…The Muncie Star Press. p. 43.
3 See footnote 1.
4 Greene, D. (Seen and Heard in Our Neighborhood. The Muncie Star. p. 4. 
5 Kingman, A.L. (1874). Map of Delaware County, Indiana : from recent & original surveys, made expressly for this map, drawn, compiled and published by A.L. Kingman and assistants. map, Chicago, IL; A.L. Kingman.
6 Griffing, B. N. (1887). Mt. Pleasant Township. An atlas of Delaware County, Indiana . map, Philadelphia, PA; Griffing, Gordon, & Company.
7 (See footnote 1).