The Bell Witch: The Full Account (25 page)

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The grave of Dr. Charles Bailey Bell at Bellwood

Cemetery in Adams, Tennessee.

The releases of Miller and Bell’s books in 1930 and

1934, respectively, when combined with existing

interest in the “Bell Witch” due largely in part to

Ingram’s earlier book, generated considerably more

interest during the 1930’s than in previous years.

Each year, more people visit Adams, Tennessee

hoping to have an encounter with Kate.

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CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

“Kate” in the Twentieth Century

T HE FACT THAT THE OLD BELL FARM is

private property kept many people away from

the original Bell home site and cemetery;

however there were always some who managed to get

in. By the early 1940’s, the family who owned the

tract of land with the cave that the Bells used for

storage and where Elizabeth Bell and her friends

once played began allowing select visitors to picnic

near the cave’s entrance and explore the first two

rooms on occasion.

Choking Sensation on the Porch

On one occasion in the late 1940’s, the author’s

uncle visited some friends who owned the cave tract

at the time. Several old outbuildings stood on the

property, some of which are believed be built by John

Bell’s immediate family or close-generation

descendants. One of these buildings had been the

home of Joel Egbert Bell, and later his nephew,

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James Allen Bell. Built in the late 1840s, the house

was constructed partially of logs and stones salvaged

from John Bell’s house when it was razed in 1843.

Located on what was known by previous

generations as, “Brown’s Ford Bluff,” this house was

where Dr. Henry Sugg, Joel Bell, Allen Bell, and

Reynolds Powell experienced several mysterious

encounters during the Nineteenth Century. The

house was used as a storage building during the

period the author’s uncle visited the place, and the

family who owned the land lived in another old house

nearby.

After visiting the family for the better part of a

spring afternoon, the author’s uncle graciously

accepted their invitation to stay for dinner that

evening. After finishing dinner, he and the man who

lived there decided to go outside for a walk around

the farm to get some fresh air and burn some

calories before night set in.

After walking for some time, they made their way

to the front porch of the old house where they lit

their cigarettes and sat down in two big rocking

chairs. After several minutes of conversation, an

unusually strong gust of wind consumed the porch

and, in the words of the author’s uncle, “All of a

sudden, something just didn’t seem right about that

front porch. I wanted to get my tail out of there in a

hurry!”

As the men continued talking, they began

developing what they later described as a strange,

“choking sensation.” The longer they sat on the front

porch of the old house, the tighter their throats

became – reaching a point where if felt as if a noose

had been placed around each of their necks and was

being slowly tightened.

The strange tightness in their throats subsided

after a short time, giving them a much-needed

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chance to return to the main family house. “We got

back a helluva’ lot faster than walked up there, that’s

for sure!” the author’s uncle later said. The author’s

uncle spoke on many occasions of Kate and his

personal experience at the farm that spring

afternoon. In addition to the many stories about

Kate that he shared with the author shortly before

his death in 1984, he also passed his original copy of

Martin Ingram’s book, “Authenticated History of the

Bell Witch,” to the author.

Tragedy after Theft of John Bell’s Gravestone

Several years after the incident on the front porch

of the old house, three boys from Nashville,

Tennessee went joy riding one night and ended up in

Adams, some 50 miles away, to see what all the talk

about the “Bell Witch” was about. The year was

1951. They had heard many stories of people

experiencing strange encounters while visiting the

cave and the old Bell farm, so they were eager to see

how much “trouble” they could encounter.

Arriving in Adams at around 9:30 P.M., the boys

stopped by several service stations and stores to talk

with local residents with hopes of finding out where

to begin their ghostly adventure. After a bit of small

talk and discussing the “Bell Witch” with several of

the locals, the boys gassed up their car and headed

east on Highway 41 until they reached a dirt road

that turned off the highway.

They slowly drove down the road, observing the

eerie surroundings as they proceeded through the

darkness looking for the land that was, almost a

century and a half earlier, the thriving yet haunted

plantation owned by John Bell. After traveling about

a mile, they noticed the old, brick house on the right-

hand side of the road that a man back at the service

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station had spoken of. This house, according to the

man, was “right in the middle of ‘Bell Witch’

country.”

The boys stopped the car, turned off the lights and

motor, then put the gearshift in neutral and began

coasting quietly down the hill past the brick house.

They had been told the land across the road and

down the hill from the old house was at one time

John Bell’s largest field, and that the old Bell home

stood about 400 yards back in the field from the

road’s edge. Atop the hill on the right-hand side of

this large field is the old Bell cemetery, where John

Bell, his wife, and several of their children are

buried.

Tall and dense thickets consumed what was once

John Bell’s front yard and largest field. Even with

the flashlights they had brought along, there was no

way the boys could find their way through the many

acres of thickets to where the Bell home once stood

or up the thorny hill to the cemetery. They discussed

their options as they continued looking into the

thickets in hopes of finding an opening. As the boys

were about to start the car and leave, they noticed

what looked to be an old road off in the thicket to

their left. What was left of the old road led through

the thicket for a good distance before curving and

going up a hill. Curious as to where the road would

take them, the boys started the car and maneuvered

through several yards of dense brush to the old road.

They followed the road up a hill and across a flat

for about a quarter-mile before reaching the end and

getting out of the car. There weren’t nearly as many

thickets on this part of the property as there were

nearer to the main road, so they turned on their

flashlights and began hiking off into the darkness

across a small, sloped hill and then up another hill.

After having made it half way up the second hill,

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the boys shined their flashlights in directions to get a

good sense of their surroundings and what lay

ahead. They were shocked to find that, within fifteen

feet of where they were standing, several gravestones

sat in what looked to be a very old, neglected and

forgotten cemetery nestled among the towering cedar

trees and underneath some brush.

When the boys moved closer to investigate, they

saw the words, “Richard Williams Bell 1811-1857”

inscribed on the largest gravestone. The boys were

astonished – they thought they had already passed

where the old Bell cemetery was, but knew then that

they were actually right on it because of the name,

“Bell” inscribed on one of the stones. They moved to

a smaller stone, about fifteen feet in front of the one

they had just read, and it read, “John Bell 1750-

1820, and his Wife Lucy Bell 1770-1837.”

They sat down to celebrate their prized finding as

they discussed what to do next and how long they

could remain there before having to return to

Nashville. Without a word, two of the boys got up

and began pushing John Bell’s gravestone back and

forth until it became loose to the point they could

pull it from the ground. Each of the two boys carried

one end of the gravestone and the third boy shined

the flashlight as they made their way down the hill,

across the field, and back to their car. Upon arriving

back at their car, they placed John Bell’s gravestone

in the trunk.

They backed down the old road, then turned onto

the main road and followed it to Highway 41 where

they headed towards Nashville. After reaching

nearby Springfield a few minutes later, they took a

shortcut to the Joelton community in northern

Davidson County because one of the boys lived just

south of there. Frightened by what they had done

earlier and the possibility of being followed by

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Robertson County law enforcement officials, the boys

continued towards Nashville at a high rate of speed.

Just as they flew past Joelton and headed south

toward where one of them lived, they reached the

infamous, “Devil’s Elbow” curve. The boy who was

driving immediately lost control of the vehicle,

sending it sideways for several hundred feet before

topping an embankment and plunging more than

100 feet into a deep ravine.

They boy driving the car was killed instantly, and

the other two boys suffered only minor injuries.

Several days after the boy’s funeral, the car was

brought to his family’s home so his belongings could

be retrieved before it was scrapped. Upon
opening

the car’s trunk, the boy’s mother discovered, in clear

sight, John Bell’s gravestone.

Being familiar with and believing in the “Bell

Witch” legend herself, the boy’s mother jerked and

tugged on the stone until she got it out and into her

own trunk. She then drove to the area near Adams,

Tennessee where she thought the Bell farm once was

and unloaded the stone, placing it next to the road

and covering it with some brush. She was too late,

however – for just hours earlier, both boys who had

been with her son the night of the gravestone’s theft

were involved in separate, freak-accidents. One was

killed, and the other lost his hand. s

Later in the 1950s, Boston contractor and John

Bell descendant Leslie Covington created a cemetery

in Adams, Tennessee to honor of the family of John

Bell family and their descendants. Known as

“Bellwood,” the cemetery is located on Highway 41

about one mile east of Adams and is easily identified

by its marble front gates and a large monument that

Covington erected at the back of the cemetery. 48

48 Bellwood Cemetery is also discussed in Appendix E
.

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Adjacent to several shady oak trees and

surrounded by a marble fence, lies a small plot of

land reserved for the graves of John Bell’s direct

descendants. Each lot within this small area has its

own headstone, precisely aligned with the so that all

graves can be viewed without having to walk over

them.

The plot reserved for John Bell descendants at

Bellwood Cemetery in Adams, Tennessee.

Several of John Bell’s direct descendants are

buried in this special plot, including surnames such

as Bell, Winters, Turner, Covington, and Abshire, to

name just a few. At the time this plot at Bellwood

was completed, the graves of several John Bell

descendants were exhumed and taken to the plot

from such distant places as Texas and Oklahoma.

This bizarre action explains why the deaths of some

people buried at Bellwood predate the cemetery itself.