Adams

Straight from the top, I will remove my mug for maximum efficiency.

In the summer of 1817, a farmer named John Bell walked to the edge of his cornfield near Adams, Tennessee.

and saw an animal sitting between the rows.

It was not any animal he knew.

The Bell Witch Cave is a karst cave measuring approximately 150 meters in length.

Can I say it? 150 meters.

Situated on the historic Bell Family Farm in Adams, Tennessee.

And renowned primarily for its connection to the Bell Witch legend, as James said.

Kate.

Sometime in 1817, in what is now Adams, Tennessee, the Bell Witch began tormenting John Bell and his family.

For 11 years, they lived with frightening...

Is this real? Yes.

He later admitted he revived the story because he relished a good ghost story and he found that people found them widely popular.

But his disbelief didn't matter.

His version of events quickly gained popularity and it heightened fears in Adams.

So he didn't even believe it, I don't think.

Okay, let me explain this voice.

My people grew dark-fired tobacco—well, still do— on both sides for generations back in this little town called Adams, Tennessee, and nobody moved out, y'all, and this is what we sound like.

Well, Leanne, we are excited to have you come to the Upstate Bonsker Wellness Arena.

Coming up a little bit later on this week, there's two shows, 3 o'clock and 7 o'clock.

I was flirting, and I was rolling my hair, and I was tickled about boys.

That was almost me too, except the boys part, but I was doing the rest.

You know, I was looking at Adams, Tennessee.

Is that Bell Witch? Yes.

Andrew Jackson is our president.

Most of America is still like that beautiful frontier wilderness, right? And in a remote corner of what's now Adams, Tennessee, a family is about to experience four years of absolute pandemonium hell.

that will become the stuff of legend.

So the Bell family, John Bell Sr., his wife Lucy, and their kids living, oh, get this, living on a 328 acres of farmland in the Red River, like bottomland.

Um, let's go ahead and start with one of my favorites.

That's the Bell Witch Cave and Canoe Rental now in Adams, Tennessee.

Now they've added the canoe rental since I was there last time, but it's right there on the Red River, so I guess that makes sense.

Have you ever been up there to the Bell Witch Cave?

The Bell family was part of this great migration, the Scots-Irish and English settlers who poured through the Cumberland Gap into the river valleys of Tennessee and Kentucky in the decades following the Revolution, displacing the Cherokee and other indigenous nations who had lived there for thousands of years, clearing the forests, building their cabins and churches and courthouses, and establishing the network of small agricultural communities that would define the character of the Upper South for the next two centuries.

John Bell acquired a large farm on the Red River, near what is now the town of Adams, Tennessee, roughly three hundred and twenty acres of bottomland and ridge, a substantial holding by any measure, enough to mark him as a man of means and ambition.

He was prosperous.

He built a large log farmhouse on the property, not a crude frontier cabin, but a well-constructed multi-room dwelling that reflected his status in the community.

It has been the subject of novels, films, television programs, academic studies, and an unceasing stream of popular nonfiction.

It has been cited in studies of American folklore, in anthologies of ghost stories, in treatises on the paranormal, in analyses of frontier society, and in cultural histories of the American South.

The town of Adams, Tennessee, the small community nearest the Bell farm, has embraced the story as its primary tourist attraction and its defining feature.

There is a Bell Witch historical marker.

That's right, Carly.

We're heading to Adams, Tennessee, where the Bell family reportedly encountered something they couldn't explain.

Strange noises, sounds, unseen hands objects moving voices coming from nowhere and an entity that seemed to have absolutely zero respect for personal boundaries because apparently the bell witch didn't believe in knocking she just showed up and chose violence

Oh, honey, light them candles, draw us the circle, grab your black salt, and maybe put a little protection spell around your damn microphone, because tonight we're getting into one of America's most infamous tales of alleged supernatural activity.

is...

The year is 1817.

We're in Robertson County, Tennessee, near a small community of Adams.

Back then, this was a rural frontier area surrounded by farmland, woods, and plenty of dark places where you really didn't want to be wandering around alone after sunset.

This is the first time and the only time where, legally speaking, it is within the court of law that it's been determined death by paranormal entity, or been argued at least.

Now, the legend starts in 1817 in Adams, Tennessee, with a man named John Bell.

Shortly after Bell and his family moved into their newly purchased farm, like always, like all these stories begin, they start to notice strange things.

No one gave them the warning when they moved in, but now they're living there.