The Bell Witch or Bell Witch Haunting is a poltergeist legend from the 19th-century Bell family of Adams, Tennessee.
John Bell Sr., who made his living as a farmer, resided with his family
in Adams, Tennessee in the early 1800s. According to folklore in 1817,
his family came under attack by a witch.
In the 1894 book An
Authenticated History of the Bell Witch, author Martin Van Buren Ingram
claims that the poltergeist's name was Kate, and that she frequently
cursed the Bell family out loud. The activity centered on the Bells'
youngest daughter, Betsy, and worsened after she became engaged to one
Joshua Gardner.
Several accounts report that during his military career, Andrew Jackson was intrigued with the story and was frightened away after traveling to investigate.Other stories relate that the family was haunted by scratching noises outside their door after Bell found a half-dog, half-rabbit creature. Some stories end up with Bell being poisoned by the witch
Theory's vary about the witch being
someone who had been cheated by Bell or a male slave whom Bell had
killed
All of the above accounts of the legend are drawn from two
sources.
In part, the Goodspeed article was a source, but newspaper
publisher Martin Van Buren Ingram provided most of the material.
Seventy-five years after the Bell Witch events, he wrote An
Authenticated History of the Bell Witch. Ingram states that he based his
book on the diary of Richard Bell, who was a son of John Bell, Sr. The
events happened when Richard Bell was 6–10 years old, but he didn't
write the diary until he was 30. According to Brian Dunning no one has
ever seen this diary, and there is no evidence that it ever existed:
"Conveniently, every person with firsthand knowledge of the Bell Witch
hauntings was already dead when Ingram started his book; in fact, every
person with secondhand knowledge was even dead." Dunning also concluded
that Ingram was guilty of falsifying another statement, that the
Saturday Evening Post had published a story in 1849 accusing the Bells'
daughter Elizabeth of creating the witch. That article does not exist
either.
According to Radford, the Bell Witch story is an
important one for all paranormal researchers: "It shows how easily
legend and myth can be mistaken for fact and real events and how easily
the lines are blurred" when sources are not checked.
Dunning
wrote that there was no need to discuss the supposed paranormal activity
until there was evidence that the story was true. "Vague stories
indicate that there was a witch in the area. All the significant facts
of the story have been falsified, and the others come from a source of
dubious credibility. Since no reliable documentation of any actual
events exists, there is nothing worth looking into.
Dunning
concludes, "I chalk up the Bell Witch as nothing more than one of many
unsubstantiated folk legends, vastly embellished and popularized by an
opportunistic author of historical fiction. Radford reminds readers that
"the burden of proof is not on skeptics to disprove anything but rather
for the proponents to prove... claims".
Joe Nickell has written
that many of those who knew Betsy suspected her of fraud and the Bell
Witch story "sounds suspiciously like an example of “the
poltergeist-faking syndrome” in which someone, typically a child, causes
the mischief."
There have been several movies based, at least in
part, on the Bell Witch legend, including The Blair Witch Project in
1999, Bell Witch Haunting in 2004, An American Haunting in 2005, Bell
Witch: The Movie in 2007, and The Bell Witch Haunting in 2013.
The Danish metal band Mercyful Fate have a song titled "The Bell Witch" on their 1993 album In the Shadows.
Seattle-based doom metal band Bell Witch took their name from this legend.
The American television series Ghost Adventures filmed an episode at the Bell Witch Cave.
There is a new series - "Cursed: The Bell Witch" - based on the latest
members of the Bell family trying to end the curse. It aired October
2015 on the A&E Network.
Tennessee author William Gay wrote a novel, published posthumously in 2015, entitled Little Sister Death, about the Bell Witch.
Paranormal enthusiasts can still visit The Bell Witch Cave ..
