The Bell Witch

Adams, Tennessee

In 1804, John Bell moved his family from North Carolina to land that he purchased near what is now Adams, Tennessee. The family prospered and Mr. Bell began buying more land. One neighbor, Kate Batts, whom he purchased from proved to be cantankerous to say the least, and though Bell was an honest person, she declared he cheated her on the deal. This belief plagued her for years and festered until her dying words proclaimed she would 'hant John Bell and all his kith and kin to their graves.'

Not long after, loud knockings and banging sounds were heard from the outside walls of the Bell home. Repeatedly, Bell or his sons tried to catch the culprit and repeatedly found no one there. This began to go on all night long sometimes, and eventually worsened.

During the night, bedding was ripped off the sleeping family, they were kicked, scratched, beaten, and had their hair pulled. The two most tormented were John Bell, and Betsy Bell, his twelve-year-old daughter.

At times, Betsy was absolutely brutalized. She experienced what the others did, but often became bruised, in addition to being stuck with pins, pinched, and slapped.

In time, a whispered voice that resembled singing or weeping was heard, and that grew to a loud, fully understandable voice that accompanied the attacks with taunting, threatening, and name-calling. The entity claimed to be Kate Batts, the vengeful neighbor that felt cheated by Bell.

Though the Bells kept these attacks secret for a long time, he eventually told a friend, who then spent the night and experienced the Bell Witch for himself. Word spread, as did the spirit's mischief. It's said that she attended revivals nearby where she out-sang and out-shouted worshippers, perhaps as a way to test the faith of church-goers through the fear she instilled. Regular raids of moonshine stills of corn whiskey were frequently blamed on the spirit, who allegedly got drunk, only to return to the Bells and harass them through the night in a drunken frenzy.

The stories of the Witch continued to spread and caught the attention of General Andrew Jackson. John Bell Jr. and Jesse Bell were under his command at the Battle of New Orleans and had forged somewhat of a friendship. General Jackson was curious, so he gathered up an entourage and headed for the Bell farm.

Once they entered the territory near the farm, their uneventful-thus-far journey came to an abrupt halt. The horses pulling the wagon were pulled, prodded, commanded and cursed at, but the wagon wouldn't budge. An eerie voice came out of thin air and told them they could continue, and the wagon moved again as though nothing had happened.

That night, at the farm, the spirit made itself known, slapping and hitting a particular man, one who claimed to be a witch-tamer, who thought he would remove the spirit. He ran from the house screaming. The rest of the men left by noon the following day. Andrew Jackson never wrote of his visit to the Bell farm, so there's no proof this is true, unless he was already planning his political career and thought talk of something so unusual might sour his chances at success.

As young Betsy grew older, she fell in love with Joshua Garner. They had their parents' blessings on their engagement, but not that of the tortuous spirit. It followed them wherever they went, singing, cajoling, talking loudly, and taunting, until Betsy couldn't handle it anymore and finally called off the wedding. Betsy eventually married Richard Powell, a school teacher with a wife in Nashville. He was believed to practice and study the occult, and maybe this is why the Bell Witch didn't have much to say regarding the union.

While Betsy was plagued with her own problems, her father fell ill several times, at the mercy of the spirit, who kept him from getting the rest his health needed by continually tormenting him as he lay in bed trying to get well. One night came when he breathed his last breath, and the next morning a bottle with a black substance was found near him. The spirit proudly claimed to have given it to "Ol' John to fix him." The eldest son gave a drop to the cat and it fell dead almost immediately. When he threw the bottle into the fire, it flew up the chimney in a blue gaseous ball.

After his death, the hauntings continued but less frequently and the spirit finally left them, promising Lucy Bell that she'd return in seven years, which it did. It came to John Bell, Jr. and proceeded to carry on a lengthy conversation about scripture, politics, and predicted such things as the coming Civil War, the World Wars, and the Great Depression. Three weeks later, it left again, vowing to return in 107 years to visit John Bell's closest descendent. The year 1935 would have been the year, and it passed with no recorded incident.

The relative was Charles Bailey who wrote a book about the family's history with the spirit. It was prior to 1935, however, and he died in 1945 without a second book or an updated publication.

So what happened to the Bell Witch poltergeist? Some believe it resides in a cave near the burial grounds of the original Bells, on the property that used to be John Bell's. (It would be interesting to know if it's the same plot of land purchased from Kate Batts.) At times, she still makes herself known, though not to the extent she had previously.

Chris Kirby, the current owner of the property, sometimes hears strange banging sounds emanating from deep within the cave and refuses to venture in alone.

On October 23, 2004, a television program aired called CMT's Most Shocking: Ghosts! in which the Bell Witch and the cave were segmented. A distant relative narrated parts of the story, and during repeated attempts of one portion of the tale, the microphone cut out. After examination, they realized there was no electonic reason for it to happen. Later, during a visit to the cave itself, the camera did the same thing, so perhaps the spirit of Kate Batts, the Bell Witch, did take up residence in the cave, and still haunts the area near Adams, Tennessee.