Speaker 1: Happy Saturday. It is October. Today's classic is one where
Speaker 1: we kick things off being very excited about it being October,
Speaker 1: and that is the bell Witch. Oh. I love this
Speaker 1: story and it originally came out on October fifth, twenty sixteen.
Speaker 1: Enjoy Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a
Speaker 1: production of iHeartRadio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
Speaker 1: Holly Frye and I'm Tracy d Wilson. Tracy, what is
Speaker 1: that time of year again? Is that time Autumn? It's
Speaker 1: the best time of year, not just Autumn, but halloweeny time.
Speaker 1: So as we get into October, for any of our
Speaker 1: new listeners that might not know, we can talk about
Speaker 1: some fun spooks and haunts and scary stories. We can
Speaker 1: talk about them year round, there's no law against it,
Speaker 1: but we like to get some extra spooky stuff going
Speaker 1: on here as we get into the Halloween season and
Speaker 1: make a special point. Yeah, it's a special enough point
Speaker 1: that for long time listeners last year when literally the
Speaker 1: first two podcasts in October were not Halloween, so people
Speaker 1: got real mad. And today's topic is one that we
Speaker 1: often get requests for, and it's a little bit tricky,
Speaker 1: as many stories along these lines can be because a
Speaker 1: lot of the information is not just apocryphal, it is
Speaker 1: flat out made up. But we're going to talk about
Speaker 1: how the legend of the Bell Witch became a well
Speaker 1: known part of American lore. But first we are going
Speaker 1: to indulge in the fall fantasy of talking about the
Speaker 1: alleged paranormal story as it is often told. So the
Speaker 1: primary account of the Bell family and what happened on
Speaker 1: their Tennessee land is a book that was written in
Speaker 1: eighteen ninety four by Martin van Buren Ingram, and it's
Speaker 1: entitled An Authenticated History of the Famous Bell Witch. But
Speaker 1: that book was written more than seventy five years after
Speaker 1: the events of the story, and even in the introduction
Speaker 1: it kind of sets up this scenario that makes it
Speaker 1: impossible to refute. Ingram claimed that he was working from
Speaker 1: an account that was written by a member of the family,
Speaker 1: William Bell, and that the family had declined to publish
Speaker 1: that account while any of the involved parties were still living,
Speaker 1: but that he had come in and you know, managed
Speaker 1: to make this deal and promised that he would tell
Speaker 1: the true story. By the way that manuscript that he
Speaker 1: claimed to have used, there's no evidence of it ever existing.
Speaker 1: But he also and when I say he, I mean
Speaker 1: Ingram also acknowledges that many people had already come to
Speaker 1: the conclusion that the entire haunting was a hoax, possibly
Speaker 1: perpetrated by members of the Bell family for some sort
Speaker 1: of financial gain, but he dismisses that by describing how
Speaker 1: William's account was written in an effort to clear the
Speaker 1: family name and prove once and for all that the
Speaker 1: whole thing really happened. It's one of the things that
Speaker 1: once he lays it all out there, like the rebuttal,
Speaker 1: is of nah. Right. So first we're going to talk
Speaker 1: about the story as it is laid out in that book,
Speaker 1: and then we will talk about it from a more
Speaker 1: skeptical perspective. The story all starts with the family patriarch,
Speaker 1: John Bell, who was born in Halifax County, North Carolina
Speaker 1: in seventeen fifty. He apprenticed as a cooper for a while,
Speaker 1: but eventually decided to become a farmer. At the age
Speaker 1: of thirty two, he got married to Lucy Williams, who
Speaker 1: was twenty years younger than he was. Yeah, that was
Speaker 1: one of those things that when I first did the
Speaker 1: math there I got real creeped out, and then I
Speaker 1: was like, oh, this can't be right. And then I
Speaker 1: kept looking at other sources and it kept lining up.
Speaker 1: The couple had their first child, a son named Jesse,
Speaker 1: eight years later, so at that point Lucy would have
Speaker 1: been twenty in seventeen ninety, and the Bells initially did
Speaker 1: really well with their farm in Edgecombe County, North Carolina,
Speaker 1: and they also had three more sons. Over the course
Speaker 1: of several years. Starting in eighteen oh one, though, they
Speaker 1: started to have issues with their crops, and eventually they
Speaker 1: decided to leave that farm in North Carolina and move west,
Speaker 1: as so many of their friends and acquaintances had already done. So.
Speaker 1: In eighteen oh four, John, Lucy and their children, along
Speaker 1: with a slave named Chloe who had been given to
Speaker 1: the couple by Lucy's father when they got married, and
Speaker 1: Chloe's eight children, made their way to Red River, Tennessee.
Speaker 1: This is near the area that's now known as Adams, Tennessee,
Speaker 1: which is not far from Nashville, and the Bells were
Speaker 1: welcomed into the community, where John bought a home and
Speaker 1: some property that included both barnes and an orchard, and
Speaker 1: the family established their farm, and they were again pretty prosperous,
Speaker 1: and everyone really adored Lucy. That comes up over and
Speaker 1: over that everyone just loved this woman. And over time
Speaker 1: Bell added to his landholdings and he became one of
Speaker 1: the most wealthy, influential, and respected men in the area.
Speaker 1: As the farm got bigger, as so often the case,
Speaker 1: the family did too. The Bells had several more children,
Speaker 1: including a daughter born in eighteen oh five named Elizabeth.
Speaker 1: She was called Betsy, and she becomes central to this
Speaker 1: whole haunting legend. After thirteen years in Red River, things
Speaker 1: started to shift from the happy prosperity that the Bell
Speaker 1: family had enjoyed up to that point. Initially, the first
Speaker 1: thing that happened was that John Bell saw a weird animal.
Speaker 1: He spotted a creature out in the cornfield that he
Speaker 1: would later describe as having a dog's body and a
Speaker 1: rabbit's head. He shot at it and he missed, and
Speaker 1: one of his sons, Drew Bell, saw a massive bird
Speaker 1: on a fence near the home. When he went to
Speaker 1: get a gun to shoot at it, the bird, which
Speaker 1: he thought was a turkey, revealed itself to be a
Speaker 1: strange bird that he just couldn't identify. Betsy. At one point,
Speaker 1: was walking in the woods with the younger children of
Speaker 1: the family one evening when she saw what appeared to
Speaker 1: be a little girl in green dress swinging in the trees.
Speaker 1: That girl was not actually there. And then one of
Speaker 1: their servants named Dean, claimed that he had seen a
Speaker 1: black dog on his regular walks to visit who his wife,
Speaker 1: who was also a slave and was owned by a
Speaker 1: friend of the family named Alex Gunn, and this dog
Speaker 1: would allegedly trot along in front of Dean while he
Speaker 1: walked over to the gun home, and then the dog
Speaker 1: would vanish just as they arrived there. The next strange
Speaker 1: happening was a variety of tapping noises inside the family home,
Speaker 1: and they couldn't figure out what the source of these
Speaker 1: noises was. These noises had actually been going on for
Speaker 1: some time, and at first they had been attributed to
Speaker 1: much more ordinary things like the children being mischievous, but
Speaker 1: it continued to get more frequent and louder. There was
Speaker 1: a faint voice that the members allegedly started to hear.
Speaker 1: It was too feeble for anyone to make out the
Speaker 1: words or the songs, but they sounded like they were
Speaker 1: coming from an elderly woman, and according to the Bell children,
Speaker 1: their bedding began to be pulled off of them in
Speaker 1: the night, and they also reported that animals, possibly rats,
Speaker 1: could be heard chewing on their bed posts, but that
Speaker 1: whenever the noises were investigated and someone lit a candle
Speaker 1: or tried to look, nothing was actually there. Then they
Speaker 1: started to report that they heard what sounded like dogs
Speaker 1: fighting in the house, and then there were sounds of
Speaker 1: chains on the floor, and then additional creepier noises were
Speaker 1: also detailed in William Bell's account, including what sounded like
Speaker 1: the smacking of lips and occasional gulping. Those are like
Speaker 1: the sort of great details for me, Like that's such
Speaker 1: a good creepy noise detail. Like if you were just
Speaker 1: lying in bed and you heard what sounded like someone
Speaker 1: gulping or smacking their lips near you, wouldn't that be
Speaker 1: delightfully creepy? And at this point, the symptoms of their
Speaker 1: haunting are kind of like a haunting Schmorgus board. It's
Speaker 1: like we're just gonna have a buffet things happening, and
Speaker 1: then we're gonna new strange things and then different strange things. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and the next strange thing was that William recounted that
Speaker 1: he felt as though someone had grabbed his hair in
Speaker 1: the night and began to lift him off the bed
Speaker 1: by his head with it. So this elderly woman's frail
Speaker 1: voice we've been talking about that had been too faint
Speaker 1: to make out not so much the case when speaking
Speaker 1: to Betsy. This witch is said to have given some
Speaker 1: very clear direction that Betsy should not marry her intended,
Speaker 1: which was a boy named Joshua Gardner. And we were
Speaker 1: gonna get back to that in a little bit, but
Speaker 1: before we talk about how the family handled all of
Speaker 1: this wacky stuff that was happening. Like Tracy said, it
Speaker 1: is sort of the haunting Smorgasboard. We're gonna pause for
Speaker 1: a word from one of our fantastic sponsors. So getting
Speaker 1: back to the John Bell, the patriarch of the family,
Speaker 1: started to have some medical issues during all of this,
Speaker 1: and his condition gradually worsened. Initially, it was described as
Speaker 1: quote a stiffness of tongue. So when he was having
Speaker 1: an episode of this illness, he couldn't eat, and he
Speaker 1: described it as feeling as though a stick was lodged
Speaker 1: sideways in his mouth between his cheeks preventing him from eating,
Speaker 1: so when he would try to eat, the food would
Speaker 1: kind of fall right back out. At first, john was
Speaker 1: encouraging the family to keep the strange happenings at the
Speaker 1: farm and his mystery illness under wraps, but eventually he
Speaker 1: disclosed what was going on to a neighbor and friend
Speaker 1: named James Johnson. Johnson and his wife spent a night
Speaker 1: at the Bell home at John Bell's request, and they
Speaker 1: were hoping that they could maybe shed some light on
Speaker 1: this situation and offer an outsider's perspective as to what's
Speaker 1: going on. And after leading the family in prayer and
Speaker 1: then retiring to bed, Johnson and his wife witnessed the
Speaker 1: same Finni that the Bells had been experiencing, including hearing
Speaker 1: all of the noises in racket, having their bed covers
Speaker 1: pulled off of them as they slept, and mister Johnson
Speaker 1: apparently had the presence of mind to try to speak
Speaker 1: with the mysterious entity, and he determined that a it
Speaker 1: was intelligent and b it would cease its actions when
Speaker 1: spoken to, and then c that John Bell should no
Speaker 1: longer keep this situation secret, but should seek the help
Speaker 1: of the community. So a lot of people started going
Speaker 1: to the Bell Home to visit and to investigate this spirit,
Speaker 1: who at this point people were saying was called Kate,
Speaker 1: And really all they were figuring out was that Kate
Speaker 1: really hated John Bell and seemed like basically a gossipy,
Speaker 1: busybody and not an actual problem. Her manifestations did start
Speaker 1: to have become stronger, and it became clear that she
Speaker 1: was speaking Bible verses and singing hymns. When asked who
Speaker 1: she was and what she wanted, she replied, I am
Speaker 1: a spirit. I was once very happy, but have been
Speaker 1: disturbed later after she grew more adept at communicating. The
Speaker 1: spirit apparently said that she had been buried nearby, but
Speaker 1: that her grave had been disturbed, and that one of
Speaker 1: her teeth was under the Bell Home and she was
Speaker 1: looking for it. Yeah, there is a whole wack a
Speaker 1: doodle story about an animal's head showing up and a
Speaker 1: tooth falling out of it and into a crack in
Speaker 1: the floor, but we don't know well. And this whole
Speaker 1: thing we were talking about before the break, that was
Speaker 1: like and then there were noises, and then there was singing,
Speaker 1: and then there was levitation, and then there was someone
Speaker 1: grabbing my hair. I'm like, none of these things are
Speaker 1: really creepy to me. But then we get to this
Speaker 1: part where she's like, and my tooth is under your house,
Speaker 1: and I'm like, all right, come out out of the story.
Speaker 1: Ghostly Dentistry is where Tracy draws the line. And this witch, though,
Speaker 1: was devoted to John's wife Lucy, just like everyone else.
Speaker 1: She loved Lucy, And as we said, she had come
Speaker 1: to be known as Kate, and this consequently has associated
Speaker 1: her with a neighbor of the Bells, a woman named
Speaker 1: Kate Bats. And we're going to talk about Kate Bats
Speaker 1: a little bit later in the episode, and there's even
Speaker 1: the suggestion that she, this disembodied voice claimed herself to
Speaker 1: be Kate Bats. But whatever her true origin, whether it
Speaker 1: was Kate Bats or just a mystery person, she became
Speaker 1: downright famous in the area, and for a time she
Speaker 1: almost seems to have been seen as a good influence.
Speaker 1: People were just afraid enough of her that they lived good,
Speaker 1: honest lives. According to Ingram's writings, quote, everybody got good.
Speaker 1: The wicked left off swearing, lying and whiskey drinking. The avaricious.
Speaker 1: We're careful not to covet or lay hands on that
Speaker 1: which belonged to their neighbors, lest Kate might tell on them.
Speaker 1: No man allowed his right hand to do anything that
Speaker 1: the left might be ashamed of, And the story of
Speaker 1: what the spirit was troubled about, i e. That lost tooth,
Speaker 1: among other things, did not stay consistent, though, so later
Speaker 1: she told a visitor that she had once had a
Speaker 1: great deal of wealth, but had buried it, and she
Speaker 1: would only tell Betsy Bell the location of this buried treasure.
Speaker 1: She later eventually told several men in the family as
Speaker 1: well as close friends of the family, on the stipulation
Speaker 1: that they give every dollar that was buried to Betsy.
Speaker 1: And these men went out and they dug, and they
Speaker 1: dug in the named spot, which was this very tricky area.
Speaker 1: I think it was near a stream, but it was
Speaker 1: like a there was a lot of heavy rock over it.
Speaker 1: And they found nothing. And the spirit when they reported
Speaker 1: back to the house that no, there's nothing in that spot,
Speaker 1: the spirit allegedly laughed at them that night and taunted
Speaker 1: them for being so easily duped. In eighteen eighteen, as
Speaker 1: the stories of Kate were becoming a lot more well
Speaker 1: known in the area, the church excommunicated John Bell. Sometimes
Speaker 1: this is reported as being due to his association with
Speaker 1: supernatural events, but there was a more mundane element to
Speaker 1: the story. You're going to talk about it in a bit, yeah,
Speaker 1: and I will give you a slight spoiler alert that,
Speaker 1: for my money, the reason he was excommunicated is way
Speaker 1: more troubling than any paranormal thing. There was also allegedly
Speaker 1: a notable human visitor to the Bell farm in eighteen nineteen.
Speaker 1: The claim is that Major General Andrew Jackson came to
Speaker 1: stay and during the War of eighteen twelve, the three
Speaker 1: eldest bell Sons had served under Jackson at the Battle
Speaker 1: of New Orleans. Jackson had heard, according again to this
Speaker 1: tale of the alleged haunting, and even made a joke
Speaker 1: that the witch must be holding them up when the
Speaker 1: horses he was that were part of his travel group
Speaker 1: suddenly stopped as they approached the Bell farm, and according
Speaker 1: to Ingram's accounts of the visit, this entourage that was
Speaker 1: following Andrew Jackson was intending to spend a week there,
Speaker 1: but they left after just one night. She went on
Speaker 1: to spend different arns to subsequent visitors to the Bell
Speaker 1: home claiming at one point to be the spirit of
Speaker 1: a young girl and another to be the ghost of
Speaker 1: a family friend's stepmother. Nothing was consistent, much like all
Speaker 1: the earlier symptoms of the haunting, and it seems like
Speaker 1: things were shifting away from jovial toying into being a
Speaker 1: little more sinister. At one point, when family friend William
Speaker 1: Porter was staying at the house, Kate claimed to want
Speaker 1: to get in the bed with him, and he said
Speaker 1: that the bedcovers slowly twisted into a human shape next
Speaker 1: to him and sort of curled up next to him,
Speaker 1: and thinking at that point that he had the witch captured,
Speaker 1: Porter picked up all of those bedclothes and intended to
Speaker 1: throw them in the fire, but they began to emit
Speaker 1: a really foul smell and he dropped them on the floor.
Speaker 1: In September of eighteen twenty, Lucy Bell had pleurisy, and
Speaker 1: the spirit allegedly acted as a nursemaid, singing to her
Speaker 1: and checking in on her and what's described as a
Speaker 1: very loving way. According to William's account, Kate even brought
Speaker 1: hazelnuts and grapes to the sick woman, and the manifestations
Speaker 1: then had shifted from irritating we said, they kind of
Speaker 1: ratcheted up and were less jovial, but then they became
Speaker 1: downright chilling. So Betsy Bell began experiencing attacks that harkened
Speaker 1: back to the descriptions of spirit torture from the Salem
Speaker 1: witch trials that had happened more than one hundred years
Speaker 1: prior to the events on the Bell farm. She described
Speaker 1: the sensation of feeling like she was being pricked with
Speaker 1: pins and as though she was being slapped by a disembodied,
Speaker 1: non corporeal hand, and her friends actually said that they
Speaker 1: witnessed welts appearing on her face and saw at times
Speaker 1: even her shoes being forcibly pulled off of her body.
Speaker 1: The attacks on Betsy slowly subsided, but as they did,
Speaker 1: John Bell's health really deteriorated. He started having spells that
Speaker 1: lasted a day or two, during what his tongue would
Speaker 1: once again seem to stiffen and his face would go
Speaker 1: into spasms. Once these spells had passed, he seemed to
Speaker 1: be in fine health and he went about his life,
Speaker 1: but the incidents became more frequent and longer and more
Speaker 1: severe over time. Additionally, John Bell was tormented in a
Speaker 1: more assaulted way he started to experience this feeling of
Speaker 1: being slapped in much the same way that Betsy had described,
Speaker 1: as well as also having his shoes jerked off his
Speaker 1: feet repeatedly as he attempted to walk in the fields.
Speaker 1: On the morning of December nineteenth, eighteen twenty, John Bell
Speaker 1: could not be roused from sleep. A vial was found
Speaker 1: near his body that contained a dark liquid, and according
Speaker 1: to William's story, the family sent for a doctor from
Speaker 1: Port Royal, and the spirit could be heard saying that
Speaker 1: the family patriarch would never rise from his bed again.
Speaker 1: This part's really hard for me, So if you're an
Speaker 1: animal person, maybe don't listen for the next twenty seconds.
Speaker 1: Contents of that mystery vial were tested by giving it
Speaker 1: to a cat, and that cat, of course, quickly died.
Speaker 1: The remaining bits of liquid were thrown in the fire
Speaker 1: and then produced a blue flame. John Bell died on
Speaker 1: December twentieth, and the witch is said to have sung
Speaker 1: joyously throughout his burial there on the farm. After John's death,
Speaker 1: the spirit is said to have largely stopped in her activities,
Speaker 1: although she lingered into eighteen twenty one before she told
Speaker 1: Lucy that she would go but return another seven years later.
Speaker 1: Of course, she stayed true to that in Ingram's book
Speaker 1: and appeared at the farm again in eighteen twenty eight.
Speaker 1: So when she reappeared, she started doing the same sorts
Speaker 1: of things as she had been doing early on in
Speaker 1: eighteen seventeen, tapping around the house pulling covers off of beds.
Speaker 1: But this only went on for two weeks and then
Speaker 1: Kate once again vanished. So at that point William, his
Speaker 1: brother Joel, and their mother Lucy were the only people
Speaker 1: still living in the house, and they had all agreed
Speaker 1: to it nor the spirit and not engage with it.
Speaker 1: And apparently that worked, as she left the Bell family
Speaker 1: seemingly for good. And now that we've given some of
Speaker 1: the highlights of the Bell Witch's time in Tennessee, as
Speaker 1: based on William Bell's alleged recollection, we will talk about
Speaker 1: things from a more critical perspective. Before we do that,
Speaker 1: we're going to take a brief word from a sponsor.
Speaker 1: There are a lot of theories about the reality of
Speaker 1: the Bell Witch and what was actually going on at
Speaker 1: this farm if it was a ruse. One of the
Speaker 1: theories is that someone wanted to break up the relationship
Speaker 1: between Betsy Bell and her fiancee, Joshua Gardner, and if
Speaker 1: that had been the motivation, the ruse was in fact successful.
Speaker 1: Betsy was frightened enough by the witch's admonitions against her
Speaker 1: marriage to Gardner that she broke up with him in
Speaker 1: eighteen twenty one. One of the can Temprairie explanations, and
Speaker 1: one that we alluded to in the intro to the episode,
Speaker 1: was that two of the Bell boys had learned ventriloquism
Speaker 1: when they had traveled to New Orleans on trading trips,
Speaker 1: and then they had taught Betsy the skill, and the
Speaker 1: three of them got together to basically lonch to make hopes.
Speaker 1: But there were some times during these events of the
Speaker 1: alleged haunting when one or the other of the Bell
Speaker 1: boys was away from the family home, and then there
Speaker 1: were also times when all three of them were present
Speaker 1: in plain sight when the noises in the witch's voice
Speaker 1: were heard. And Betsy was, by all accounts a lovely
Speaker 1: girl and very bright as well, who was admired by
Speaker 1: virtually all of the young men in the area, and
Speaker 1: there have been theories that a romantic rival may have
Speaker 1: been behind the hauntings. And while the issues began when
Speaker 1: she was only twelve. By the time she had been
Speaker 1: moved to break up with her longtime sweetheart Joshua, she
Speaker 1: was sixteen. One of the more likely suspects in the
Speaker 1: whole suitor theory is a man named Richard Powell. Richard
Speaker 1: had been the Belchi children's teacher, but as Betsy grew
Speaker 1: toward adulthood, he seemed to take a romantic interest in her,
Speaker 1: and he was also a close friend of the family.
Speaker 1: And one of the things that makes Powell look so
Speaker 1: suspicious is that while he did not apparently tell his
Speaker 1: friends in the area he was married, his wife Esther,
Speaker 1: was almost twenty years older than he was, and she
Speaker 1: died of unspecified causes the same year that Betsy finally
Speaker 1: broke off her engagement to Joshua Gardner. And I just
Speaker 1: want to note that while this is mentioned in several
Speaker 1: texts with a citation of the records of Robertson County, Tennessee,
Speaker 1: I found this little bit of information too late in
Speaker 1: the game to actually get eyes on those records for confirmation,
Speaker 1: but it does show up in multiple different accounts. Richard
Speaker 1: Powell started to openly pursue Betsy after her ties to
Speaker 1: Gardner were severed, and he and Betsy were married in
Speaker 1: eighteen twenty four. Richard died seventeen years later, and Betsy
Speaker 1: remained a widow for the rest of her life her
Speaker 1: death in eighteen ninety. So, yeah, some people think that
Speaker 1: that sort of chain of events points circumstantially to Richard
Speaker 1: Powell having orchestrated the whole thing. And remember that thing
Speaker 1: about John Bell being excommunicated from the church. It did
Speaker 1: not have to do with anything paranormal. It actually had
Speaker 1: to do with some shady lending practices and some usury
Speaker 1: in relation to the sale of slaves. So John Bell
Speaker 1: was basically making some shady business deals and the church
Speaker 1: did not like that, so that is why he was excommunicated.
Speaker 1: It did not have anything to do with demonic possession.
Speaker 1: Another incongruity from the Ingram Book, which is the primary
Speaker 1: source that most other Belwich authors draw from, is that
Speaker 1: visit from Andrew Jackson. There's never been anything to document
Speaker 1: Jackson making this trip. And Andrew Jackson never wrote about
Speaker 1: it in his personal diaries. One would think that such
Speaker 1: a novel experience would merit at least a line or
Speaker 1: two in a diary. Yeah, and As for Kate Bats,
Speaker 1: it's kind of a world of no While there have
Speaker 1: been a vast array of rumors about her, including that
Speaker 1: she and John Bell had a bad business dealing that
Speaker 1: led her to curse him. In another that she was
Speaker 1: in fact pregnant by John Bell, and that he killed her.
Speaker 1: She actually died decades after John Bell, so she could
Speaker 1: not have been vengeance haunting him, and he definitely did
Speaker 1: not kill her. It does appear, at least in the
Speaker 1: Angrim account, that Kate Bats was kind of an outsider
Speaker 1: in the community and was viewed with some suspicion. She
Speaker 1: was loud and brash, which for a woman in the
Speaker 1: late eighteenth and early nineteenth century basically meant scary rumors
Speaker 1: of witchcraft had been attached to her at various points
Speaker 1: in time, but more because it seems like she was
Speaker 1: peculiar and not because of any actual malicious behavior, So
Speaker 1: it seems like she was really more of a convenient
Speaker 1: figure for the people making up this story to pin
Speaker 1: on her, rather than somebody that actually was a ghost.
Speaker 1: And there was even in that first acout the link
Speaker 1: between the two suggesting that Kate Bats was somehow manifesting
Speaker 1: the various events through witchcraft. But apparently even when the
Speaker 1: Bell Witch was being perceived as a good thing, Kate
Speaker 1: Bats was incensed to be associated with it, so that
Speaker 1: idea really doesn't hold much water. And she was also
Speaker 1: we should point out Lucy Bell's niece. She was related
Speaker 1: to the Bells. Her father was actually Lucy Bell's brother.
Speaker 1: And there's also no record of this business deal gone
Speaker 1: bad between her and John Bell that instigated this ill
Speaker 1: will and there's no real motive for her to go
Speaker 1: to so much trouble to pester this family. On top
Speaker 1: of all these facts that don't really add up, there's
Speaker 1: the matter of the Angram Book and its truthfulness. Ingram,
Speaker 1: a newspaperman, was writing it two generations removed from the
Speaker 1: actual events. We always talk about how unreliable even fresh
Speaker 1: eyewitness accounts can be, so even if he did have
Speaker 1: a manuscript that really was written by William Bell, that
Speaker 1: manuscript would have been written according to Ingram's own introduction
Speaker 1: in the eighteen forties, twenty years after the then adolescent
Speaker 1: William had experienced the so called Bell Witch events. So
Speaker 1: it's number one a book. Ingram was writing much later
Speaker 1: after William Bell had allegedly written it down twenty years
Speaker 1: after it had purportedly happened. And there's also the possibility
Speaker 1: that Ingram assembled this tale as a deceptive fiction to
Speaker 1: capitalize on its sensational nature. There are just enough verifiable
Speaker 1: details about the family that it might convince readers, while
Speaker 1: the supernatural elements of it are entirely unverifiable. None of
Speaker 1: it really passes muster as a true historical account of
Speaker 1: this alleged haunting. And then, I mean, this reminds me
Speaker 1: of when we were talking about Anne Bonnie and Mary Reid.
Speaker 1: One of the things that seems the most telling about
Speaker 1: how this whole account is that Ingram was incredibly insistent
Speaker 1: about how it was completely indisputable. Yeah, here is a
Speaker 1: passage that we're going to read that's particularly unrelenting in
Speaker 1: how no one with any integrity could possibly ever doubt it.
Speaker 1: Knowing the character of the men and women who testify
Speaker 1: to these things, no one can disbelieve them or believe
Speaker 1: that they would have willfully misrepresented the facts. Nor can
Speaker 1: it be reasonably said that so many reputable witnesses had
Speaker 1: fallen into an abnormal state of mind and were so
Speaker 1: easily deceived in all of their rigid investigations. A man
Speaker 1: may be arraigned for trial on the charge of murder,
Speaker 1: the court and jury knowing nothing about the facts and circumstances,
Speaker 1: but they are bound by both physical and moral law
Speaker 1: to believe and find the man guilty on the testimony
Speaker 1: of reputable witnesses detailing the facts and circumstances, and yet
Speaker 1: may form no opinion or idea as to the state
Speaker 1: of mind or cause that prompted the prisoner to commit
Speaker 1: the murder. So it is in this instance the testimony
Speaker 1: is convincing of the truth of the wonderful phenomena at
Speaker 1: John Bell's, but the motive or cause is beyond our comprehension,
Speaker 1: and to this extent the fact must be accepted. It
Speaker 1: really happened, y'all. You're horrible if you doubt it. Of course, today,
Speaker 1: the Bell Witch is a moneymaker. People love a good
Speaker 1: haunting story, so it gets told and retold, and the
Speaker 1: details shift and changed, just like gooey ectoplasm. Aside from
Speaker 1: the dates associated with things like births and deaths, writings
Speaker 1: about the Bell Witch often are really different in their details.
Speaker 1: I remember somebody telling me a story about the Bell Witch.
Speaker 1: I think when I was in college that had basically
Speaker 1: a completely different cast of characters. Yeah, there was even
Speaker 1: a book written recently by a clairvoyant that dispelled the
Speaker 1: long standing myth that the family was cursed, and this
Speaker 1: instead indicated that the land that they had moved to
Speaker 1: intended was the source of this curse. Not only has
Speaker 1: this story been used as an ingredient in numerous films,
Speaker 1: but also a variety of quote documentary examinations of the paranormal.
Speaker 1: For a small fee, you can tour the bell Witch Cave,
Speaker 1: which is on the property and as allegedly haunted, possibly
Speaker 1: by Kate herself, So if you're hankering to try to
Speaker 1: meet her, you can. It's probably what you're gonna see
Speaker 1: as a cave. Yeah, Yeah, it's one of those things
Speaker 1: there you'll have people talk about like all of the
Speaker 1: various components of it and how you know the blue flame.
Speaker 1: One of the things that's a little more science based
Speaker 1: is that when they threw that liquid from that vial
Speaker 1: into the fire and it burned blue, that that could
Speaker 1: be an indication of arsenic so that perhaps someone had
Speaker 1: been systematically poisoning John Bell, But again it's unclear who
Speaker 1: might have been doing that, although apparently he was kind
Speaker 1: of a weasel in some business dealings, so we don't know,
Speaker 1: but it definitely doesn't when you really start to look
Speaker 1: at the facts of things. All of the elements that
Speaker 1: get sensationalized is super spooky don't really hold up to scrutiny.
Speaker 1: So that's the scoop on the bell which thanks so
Speaker 1: much for joining us on this Saturday. If you'd like
Speaker 1: to send us a note, our email addresses History Podcast
Speaker 1: at iHeartRadio dot com, and you can subscribe to the
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