The Bell Witch: The Full Account (30 page)

back on by itself. At this point, my doubts began

to get replaced by astonishment.

A little later, he was showing me some tape he

had shot where the camera was picking up

something just before it went dead. There was

nothing but static. After we had got back outside,

he showed me some tape he had shot the day

before that had captured a small ball of light in

that same little opening behind the Indian grave.

It was amazing.

My wife and I took sick after we left and stayed

that way for weeks. This I cannot actually blame

on the cave because we were told of a similar

virus that was going around at the time.

However, the symptoms were really a little odd for

what I generally have when suffering from a virus.

We are team drivers of an 18-wheeler, and are in

Los Angeles every Monday evening, and have been

for the last 3.5 years. We have a dedicated run,

and deliver Saturn auto parts to the same Ryder

warehouse every week. It is protected by a state-

of-the-art burglar alarm, which I have to shut off

when we arrive there after business hours.

As I was returning from the keypad to drive the

truck though the gate after disabling the alarm, I

heard my wife beating on the windshield of the

freightliner we drive. When I climbed back in, I

asked why she was beating on the glass, and she

said she wasn't as she looked at me like she

thought I was goofy. I asked her again, and she

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again said she didn't and thought there must

have been someone close-by that was hitting on

something and it was echoing between the

concrete buildings, which is quite common.

When we stopped at the back of the lot, my wife

was letting our Yorky Terriers relieve themselves

as I parked the truck. I heard what I thought was

some goofy truck driver making a ridiculous

sound on the C.B., but when I reached up to turn

it off I discovered that it wasn’t even on. At that

point, I began to feel very worried.

I returned to the keypad and reactivated the

alarm as my wife put the dogs back in the truck.

That keypad has never made but one sound, and

that is a little beep as the buttons are pushed to

enter the code and to turn it on and off. As I

pushed the final button to turn it back on, it

made a sound like either a bunch of children

laughing, or a sound like an old woman laughing

wickedly; but I can't say for sure which. I jumped

back about three feet and looked all around in

panic. Of course there wasn't anything around

me that wasn't supposed to be. I reached and

shut the box that houses the keypad, and then

took off running like a madman.

Halfway across the lot, I stopped dead in my

tracks and realized that if something had followed

me all the way from Tennessee to L.A., I had no

place to run and that there was no sense in acting

like a childish fool. I have not been scared or

panicked since, but there is something with me. I

can sense its presence all the time, and in fact

know that it’s with me now.

I had planned on going back to Adams the

following week with my video cam after the first

visit, but have been putting it off not only because

of being sick, but also I am just now getting back

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225

the nerve to return. I have been having

nightmares and have been hearing voices, the last

of which was last Wednesday night as I was

drifting into the drowsy state just before falling

asleep. I have thought for years that I could hear

voices at that point. I think of that point between

sleep and consciousness as ‘twilight,’ but it

always sounded like many people at one time and

could never understand what was being said.

Last Wednesday, I distinctly heard a woman's

voice say, in a low-pitched tone, ‘come with me.’

Things have happened here at our home from

time to time, but until we went to the cave in

August, I was telling myself it was just our

imaginations. I have since begun to believe we

have been victims of some type of paranormal

events in our own home, but are just now

beginning to face the truth of it all.

Don Hampton

Robertson County, Tennessee

September 1999

Miscellaneous Happenings in the Cave

With this letter, I wish to share with you just a

few of the things I have either witnessed or been

told about by people I’ve run across when visiting

the Bell Witch Cave in Adams, Tennessee.

While I don’t doubt that these encounters involved

a supernatural entity of some type, only the first

strikes me as being characteristic of Kate, the so-

called ‘Bell Witch.’ As you will learn later, there is

a strong possibility that hundreds — and possibly

thousands — of Spirits roam the area.

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One afternoon in the summer of 1995, I was near

Adams and decided to stop by the cave. As I

waited for a guide to return, I noticed a very

frightened young couple standing in the owners’

front yard. I pretended to ignore them, but I was

closely watching their facial expressions and

listening to them.

They had apparently been on a tour of the cave an

hour or so earlier and encountered something

that terrified them to the point that their teeth

were still chattering as they spoke. After about

five minutes, the guide came up the hill with some

other visitors and then took me down to the cave.

I found out that the young couple, while standing

near the cave’s back room, heard the sounds of

children playing and an old woman talking behind

the large flowstone at the end of the passageway.

The others didn’t hear anything.

On another occasion, I was standing in the cave’s

first room talking with some friends when one of

the group began complaining of “growling” sounds

coming from the cave’s upper-level. No one

present, myself included, heard these “growling”

sounds, but the person said it had been going on

since we first got there. Most of the group,

including myself, thought the person was joking;

however, after about five minutes, his face had

become white as a sheet and sweat was pouring

from his head.

One afternoon in the summer of 1999, I was

walking along with a group and taking pictures of

the cave for a book when one man began

complaining of an ice-cold ‘sticking’ sensation in

his neck. He said it felt as if he was being stuck

in the neck with a cold needle. As the tour

continued, he kept his right hand over his neck

but said nothing more of the incident.

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227

After the tour concluded, everyone walked back

up the hill and began talking and looking at some

pictures that the cave’s owner had on display.

Convinced that the man’s earlier neck problem

was either a circulatory or nervous system

anomaly, I inquired, “Hey man, how’s your neck

doing; any better now?” “Yes, much better!”

replied the man, “but it’s still very cold.”

At this point, I began trying to think up an

acceptable reason to feel of this man’s neck,

which was of course to no avail. I decided to turn

the tables a bit. “Wow! That must be a strange

feeling – I mean, after all, we’ve been standing out

here for over an hour in ninety-degree heat and

you say your neck is still cold. If you neck’s still

cold, I bet Kate really has it in for you!” I

exclaimed. As my calculated logic would have it,

he responded, “Well here, reach over and feel it for

yourself!”

Several of us felt his neck and agreed that one

spot was ice-cold despite the hot weather! I gave

the man my card, and he called the following day

saying that the cold sensation in his neck went

away as soon as he left the property.

Pat Fitzhugh

Nashville, Tennessee

July 2000

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CHAPTER TWENTY-

THREE

The Bell Farm Today

T ODAY, ONLY SMALL TRACES REMAIN of the

once-thriving Bell plantation where cotton,

corn and tobacco were grown, children

strolled merrily through large pear orchards, slaves

worked in the fields from dawn until dusk, and

where the most terrifying and baffling phenomenon

ever known to humankind took place.

The land that was once John Bell’s front yard,

covered by an orchard of towering pear trees and

having a small, fenced-in lane leading through it

from the main road, is now a tobacco field. There are

no signs suggesting that pear orchards and a pretty

lane existed on that location during the Tennessee’s

early frontier days, an era that has long been

forgotten and about which very little is known today.

The last of the original Bell pear trees deteriorated

more than a century ago, the land has been cleared

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229

and tilled many times over since then. The only

structure on this land today is a tobacco barn that

was built in the Twentieth Century.

This is what remains of the Bell farm today. It

was John Bell, his sons, and their slaves, who

first cleared the fields in the foreground. The

field in the left background was a pear orchard

among which the Bell home was situated

All that remains of what was once home to John

Bell and his family is a long, narrow hole surrounded

by trees and filled with runoff dirt, stones from the

house’s foundation, and thorny undergrowth.

Almost 200 years ago, this “hole” was the cellar

underneath the Bell homestead. It is located on the

back side of the tobacco field and barely visible from

any road.

230 P A T

F I T Z H U G H

The trees in the foreground are leaning because

the cellar of the old Bell home is filling in.

Amidst a large clump of weeds and undergrowth

some 100 yards due north of the old Bell home site,

and guarded by a lone tree in the middle of the

tobacco field, is the well that was once used by John

Bell and his family. An inscribed stone stating that

Bells once used the well marks this site. The well

has filled in considerably over the years and is now

completely dry and less than eight feet deep.