Jaunsar - The land of witches

Every child is fond of listening to stories, specially if the story is mysterious. When i was a child,  my nanaji used to  tell me stories of many mysterious places in uttrakhand. One of the heated topic on those stories were of jaunsar, a place in uttrakhand where people believe witches exist. 

The story, that i remember from my nanaji's side is that once my nanaji's grandfather went to jaunsar for development of roads. Hence he wondered that all the stories from jaunsar were a myth & other engineers were not ready to go there, he got ready for the project of jaunsar. The day he reached jaunsar a cat tried to enter the flat alloted to him, which looked a little bigger than the normal cat. While the cat was trying to enter through the window, he threw wooden photo frame on the cat.

He was really terrified by the cat because of it's abnormal size, he had understood that it was one of the witches of jaunsar. The next day when he woke up he noticed that one of the woman in jaunsar was wounded & the wound was on the face, where exactly the cat got hurt. On the same day he packed the bag and left jaunsar.

As i grew older, my interest of knowing this place grew with me. So i started studying about jaunsar from the students of my college, who belonged to that place,  obviously. The fact i got to know is that this place was really into some black magic & witches used to live there in particular place. The place in jaunsar bawar is Boha's  Ghitiyakhat, which was earlier known as Dankathat. This place in jaunsar used to have a fest on 20th August, every year. where witches from around the world used to come and celebrate the festival. The local  people say that they used harm the humans if they  see them. People used to hear their voices. Evidences like chulas (outdoor cook top) , places to hide jewelleries & scratch marks are seen their even now. The places where they used to party are also seen. People never did farming in that area, neither they used to go there before. But now,  from around 100 years no such voice is being heard, but evidences are still there. People near Ghitiyakhat even today dont get out of houses on 20th of august