Robertson County

You stand at the edge of a tobacco field in Robertson County, Tennessee at dusk.

The light is the color of old honey, thick and slow-moving across the bottomland, catching the tops of the tobacco plants and turning them briefly golden before the shadows take them back.

To the south, the Red River moves through the valley floor, not rushing, not even hurrying, just moving, the way rivers move when they've been at it for longer than anything with a memory can account for.

Brachiopods filtered the warm water.

Nautiloids, long cone-shelled predators, distant ancestors of the modern chambered nautilus, drifted through the shallows, hunting smaller organisms.

And when these creatures died, their shells and exoskeletons settled to the seafloor and accumulated layer upon layer, century upon century, compressed by the weight of the water and the sediment above them into the dense, fine-grained limestone that now underlies Robertson County.

Four hundred and fifty million years of slow compression.

Four hundred and fifty million years of silence.

Thank you for having me.

Uh, and Austin & Bell Funeral Home is the result of a cabinetmaker in Turnersville, uh, which is Robertson County, uh, that opened in 1842.

Marion Henry also made caskets, uh, alongside his cabinets in Robertson County, and was on the stagecoach line from Na- Nashville to Hopkinsville, Kentucky.

And what started as a casket and cabinet company is now the oldest family funeral home in the state of Tennessee.

Bob Bell is now the owner.

Yeah.

I learned that from an old country boy, Jack Jones, Robertson County.

I was a part of his club forever.

He's the first guy I saw do that, once killed a deer and we went in there tracking, he started pulling off toilet paper and leaving it.

And so do you know how Ingram found out about the witch? Did someone tell him about it, or is it stories he just grew up hearing?

Ingram, well growing up in Robertson County, about everybody knew something about the Bell Witch legend.

And so what Ingram probably did, from my guess, is since all these people are telling stories about the Bell Witch, he put all the stories together, wrote him a book, and it's still here.

And he was the publisher of the Leaf Chronicle in Clarksville at the time, and he would run accounts of the Bell Witch, or the Bell Spirit,

And it would like pour rancid water on people.

Yeah.

So he was there in Robertson County both and had stories.

Yeah.

Um, my parents' property borders up to what is still the Bell property.

Um, John Bell and his family moved to Robertson County in 1804, and they purchased 220 acres of land, which since has been divided in half, and my parents own half, the Bell family still owns the other half.

Um, they settled there, and for the first 13 years things went really well for the Bells up until 1817.

That's when the, the hauntings first started.

I can tell you a, a time where I pushed back against the administration.

So, um, not, not long ago, um, we, we learned that it, that ICE was, uh, putting a call center potentially in Montgomery or Robertson County.

Now, we, we learned after through some, uh, discussions with them that the, it actually was not going there.

It was a clerical error on their part.

We're just, uh, getting through the week, getting ready for a ballgame tonight.

How's the weather treating you up there in Robertson County?

Weather's okay.

Uh, it's a little bit up today.