Bell Witch

Moll Dyer, the inspiration for the Blair Witch Project.

Apparently the Bell Witch was another strong inspiration, so if you haven't seen that video, check it out.

But you know me, I have to say.

Moll Dyer was more than inspiration for a movie.

It's on the Kentucky-Tennessee border.

The Bell Witch.

It's part of Tennessee history because Andrew Jackson came to investigate.

His wagon wheels locked up and he couldn't turn around.

Donald Sutherland and Sissy Spacek did a movie.

There's been several.

plays written books in tennessee history little children used to have to write a book report on it in fourth grade they don't anymore but that's where i was raised with this demon the bell witch so you can google that and learn about it's fascinating and it was the bell family and uh and the and mr bell had run for uh president in the wig party so anyway it's Now that you're in Tennessee, and that's my people, that's where I'm from, what that's known for.

And there is a museum.

The hikers spent the whole day hearing the children giggling around them from the woods.

Next, the Bell Witch Haunting.

Not too far west of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park is the town of Adams, Tennessee.

John and Lucy Bell were farmers who settled in Adams around 1803.

See nutrition facts on Hero.co for sodium and sugar content.

They allegedly talked for three nights about the past, present, and future, explains Fitzhugh.

After that, the Bell Witch bid farewell and promised to return in 107 years.

That would have been 1935.

A case so violent and physical that it crosses the line from being a simple poltergeist into something else entirely.

This is the legend of the Bell Witch.

Now, while not a cryptid in and of itself, there were cryptids seen and experienced as part of the haunting.

Now, the ordeal began in 1817 at the farm of John Bell in Adams, Tennessee, a place I've had the pleasure to visit.

Notably, there is significant historical doubt whether Jackson was involved in this story at all.

The future president kept extensive personal papers documenting every aspect of his life, and never once mentioned the Bell Witch or anything like it.

By the fall of 1820, Kate's relentless torment had taken its final toll.

John Bell's health completely collapsed and he was confined to his bed.

The entity did return in 1828, not to torment, but to converse with John Bell Jr. about the past, present, and future, reportedly delivering prophecies and a promise to return in 107 years.

The spirit didn't return in 1935, and if it did, no one was paying attention.

Notably, the story as we know it was cemented in 1894 by Martin Ingram's book, An Authenticated History of the Famous Bell Witch.

And yes, you know it's definitely a true story when you have to call it an authenticated history.

In the spring, when the rains come and the creeks rise and the Red River spreads across its floodplain, the water in the sinkholes rises too, filling the depressions with turbid red-brown water that drains slowly downward into the underground passages below, carrying with it the red clay of the surface, the decaying leaves from the hardwoods on the ridges, the traces of whatever has been applied to or deposited on the fields above, the agricultural chemistry of two centuries filtering down through the karst, through the fractures and joints and solution channels Into the aquifers that feed the springs and seeps that emerge along the bluffs and in the bottoms of the hollows.

The water that comes out of the Bell Witch Cave has been underground for years or decades, traveling through passages too narrow for any human to follow, reacting with the rock, dissolving and depositing minerals, emerging into daylight at a temperature and a chemical composition that tells the story of its subterranean journey to anyone who knows how to read it.

The hydrologists who study karst groundwater systems speak of residence time, the average length of time that a molecule of water spends underground between entering the system through a sinkhole or a fracture and emerging through a spring or a seep.

In the karst of Robertson County, residence times can range from days to decades, depending on the path the water follows and the complexity of the underground network.

The water that drips from the ceiling of the Bell Witch Cave today may have fallen as rain on the tobacco fields above during the administration of a president who has already been forgotten.

The water is patient.

The rock is more patient still.

John Bell was born around seventeen fifty in Edgecombe County, North Carolina, a region of flat, sandy coastal plain far removed from the limestone hills of Middle Tennessee.