The Bell Witch: The Full Account (6 page)

more was mentioned about the incident.

They continued with dinner until John Jr. asked,

“Father, why have you not eaten for several minutes?

It’s not like you to sit at dinner with a half-empty

plate before you; and, you look like you are worried.

Is something wrong?” John Bell replied, “Thank you

for your concern, son, but all is well. This has been

a very busy week, and I was thinking about some

things I hadn’t had time to think about until now. I

offer my apology if this has disrupted your dinner.”

“John, you do look very tired; perhaps you should

retire early this evening and get some rest,”

suggested Lucy Bell. “I think it would do me some

good,” he replied. The family finished dinner and

John Bell retired shortly thereafter.

About halfway through dinner the next evening,

Drewry Bell walked in and exclaimed, “Father, you

won’t ever guess what I just saw! It was the largest

bird I’ve ever seen, sitting right on the fence out by

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the lane! I thought it was a wild turkey, so I fetched

my gun; but it flew away as soon as I aimed at it. I

watched it for a good distance, and I swear it was

either the world’s largest wild turkey or some type of

big, ancient bird!”

“Are you sure it wasn’t an eagle, son?” John Bell

inquired, “you know eagles can get very big, and they

are very plentiful in these parts.” “No, father; I’m

sure this wasn’t an eagle, it didn’t have the grace nor

the wingspan of an eagle. I will look around the farm

in the morning and see if I can see it again,” replied

Drewry. “So just what did this magnificent bird say

to you, brother?” asked Elizabeth. “It said that

you’re not at all funny, little sister!” exclaimed

Drewry. “Okay, enough of the foolishness; you need

to eat your dinner before it gets cold,” Lucy Bell

remarked.

Philis, one of the house slaves, spoke up and said

she had heard her older brother, Dean, speak of a

large, black dog that followed him when he visited

his wife at the Gunn farm each night. The dog

jumped out of the bushes at the same place each

night, and would follow him to the Gunn property

line before running away. “Well, Dean is a very good

and honest man, Philis, but his imagination is

sometimes as big as Kate Batts’ stomach,” John Jr.

said laughingly. After some family conversation and

a long prayer later that evening, the Bells retired.

Knocks on the Walls

Several weeks elapsed without incident, and then

the Bells began hearing faint, knocking sounds on

the door and outside walls of their house after dark.

After being victimized by this seeming “prank” for

several evenings in a row, John Bell and his sons

rushed outside whenever they heard these sounds,

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39

hoping to catch the culprit. They kept up this

routine night after night…always returning

frustrated and without an explanation.

The force and frequency of the knocking sounds

grew with the passing of each night, and fear began

to set in as hopes of finding an explanation for the

“pranks” quickly faded. Something was terribly

wrong, and the Bells now knew it. The Bell children

found it increasingly hard to go outside after dark,

and John Bell himself often initiated important

conversations with his sons just prior to going

outside, so they often followed him to continue the

conversation. The rest of the family knew this was

out of character for Bell and that he was very

troubled about something.

Bedcovers Pulled from Children

As the nights grew colder, the noises that once

occurred outside the Bell home moved inside. The

Bell children began waking in the middle of the

night, extremely frightened and complaining of

noises that sounded like rats gnawing relentlessly at

their bedposts.

The noises would temporarily stop when a candle

was lit, but quickly started up again as soon as the

candle was blown out. After these noises had been

heard inside the Bell home each night for about a

week, the children began to feel light jerking at their

pillows and sheets as they were about to doze off.

When they tried to hold on to their sheets or hide

underneath them, the jerking became considerably

stronger — often pulling the sheets off the beds and

leaving the children freezing and trembling with

bone-chilling fear.

Sometimes when trying to resist this unknown

force pulling at their sheets, the Bell children were

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slapped in their faces by a seemingly invisible hand.

John and Lucy Bell always rushed to the children’s

bedsides to comfort them when such disturbances

occurred, but even this level of comfort and consoling

was not enough. The harder the Bells tried to resist

the mysterious force, the more restless and vicious it

became.

The disturbances occurred very late at night,

sometimes not ending until after 3 o’clock in the

morning. When awakened, the Bells searched every

room of the house in hopes of finding a reasonable

explanation for the humiliation and torment that was

being inflicted upon them by this mysterious entity,

seemingly at its own will. When they searched one

room, the noises began in another room. When they

ran to the other room hoping to find the culprit, the

noises ceased and soon started up in yet another

room.

Over time, the once light gnawing at the bedposts

became louder and sounded like a dog grinding its

paws into the floor beneath the bed. The Bells also

began hearing the sounds of stones falling and

chains being dragged across the floor late at night.

These disturbances took not only an emotional toll

on the Bells, but a physical one as well. Work on the

farm still had to be done, which meant rising before

daybreak each day. Since the Bells often did not get

to sleep until after 3 o’clock in the morning, they

grew tired quickly each morning and the days soon

became longer.

The Bells seldom spoke of the disturbances while

working during the day or having dinner in the

evening because their exhaustion and level of

emotional stress were beyond anything they had ever

experienced. By this time, it was clear in the minds

of John and Lucy Bell that the disturbances were the

work of an entity that possessed much greater power

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41

than their own, and which seemingly had a mind of

its own.

When the Bells occasionally spoke of the

disturbances among themselves, the only possible

explanations that came to mind were acts of the

Almighty or fallout from the New Madrid earthquakes

that occurred in west Tennessee several years earlier.

Elizabeth is Tortured

Shortly after retiring one evening, the entire family

was awakened by ear-piercing screams coming from

Elizabeth’s room. When John and Lucy Bell arrived

at their daughter’s bedside, they found her crying,

her hair in knots, and her face covered with welts.

“Oh God, my dear child, what has happened to

you? I’ve never seen a human being in as much fear

as you appear to be in now. Please, tell your father

and I what happened to you.” Elizabeth’s words were

not understandable, as she was still crying and

gasping for breath. Her body cold and trembling

from head to toe, she tried very hard to speak, but

the chattering of her teeth muffled her words.

Lucy Bell lay beside her while John Bell rubbed

her head and repeatedly told her everything was

going to be all right. “Your mother and I don’t have

all the answers about why these things are

happening, but I promise you in the name of the

Lord God Almighty that your mother and I will

always do everything we can not to let anything bad

happen to you. We love you very much, Elizabeth.”

He then knelt on the floor next to the bed, looked

upward, and cried, “My God, why…why is our

beloved and innocent daughter, Elizabeth, being

subjected to such evil and painful torture? What has

she done to deserve this? Even a horse thief does

not deserve treatment as cruel and sinister as this,

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yet with my own eyes I see it being inflicted on an

innocent child barely twelve years of age! Why, dear

God, why?”

Now much calmer, Elizabeth turned to her father

and said, “Thank you, father; I love you and mother

as much as life itself, and it deeply hurts me to know

that you are suffering my pain; but God will see us

through it, He always does.” She gave her father a

kiss on the cheek, and he and her mother tucked her

in and left the room. Less than a minute had

elapsed when Elizabeth began screaming again.

John and Lucy Bell rushed back to her room and

found her holding her ears as tightly as she could

with her now blood-soaked hands. “Oh God! What

is it, Elizabeth? Who or what did this to you?” Bell

inquired.

“Father, did you not hear that!” “We didn’t hear a

thing…what did you hear?” “A scream, a very loud

scream in both my ears and the pain is unbearable!

It was louder than anything I’ve ever heard before.

Please, I beg of you, stay in here with me for the rest

of the night. I’m very scared.” Lucy Bell crawled

under the covers and spent the rest of the night with

Elizabeth. The next morning, Elizabeth’s face was

covered with welts and bruises, and she could barely

hear a thing. John Jr. and Drewry comforted and

talked with her to help get the events of the previous

night off her mind. After these most recent events, it

became obvious to the Bells that they were not

dealing with the Almighty, but a sinister entity with

powers stronger than they could comprehend.

After much thought and discussion, the Bells

decided to see whether the mysterious entity

possessed intelligence. Late one night they began

asking questions that required numbers for answers,

such as “How many miles to Port Royal?” The entity

answered the question correctly by rapping on the

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43

wall seven times. When asked the question, “How

many slaves do we own?” the entity correctly rapped

nine times on a bedpost. From this point on, the

Bells considered the entity to be not only an evil

being, but an intelligent being as well. From this

point in time, they referred to the entity as, “The

Spirit.”

John Bell feared greatly the skepticism and

scrutiny of the community and church that would

befall him when others in the community learned of

his family’s encounters with the “Spirit.” There was

also the fear that if someone came and proved the

encounters to be a hoax, the credibility of John Bell

and his family would suffer irreparable damage. It

was for those reasons that John Bell swore his family

to complete secrecy in the matter of the “Spirit.” e

Up to this point, the apparitions that had occurred

were more mysterious than frightening; however, as

time went on, mysticism gave way to all-out terror

and fright.

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CHAPTER FOUR

Terror Takes Over

O NE MORNING, Elizabeth took her younger

brothers, Richard and Joel, on a hike

through the woods nearby. It was a

beautiful spring morning with the sound of cheerful

birds and ripples from the Red River filling the air

with beautiful music. Enjoying every step of the way,

they often stopped to smell the wildflowers or watch

a deer or rabbit darting through the woods. They

continued towards the Red River as they planned a

contest to see who could skip a rock the farthest

across the river.

As they approached a large sinkhole near the bluff

overlooking the river, a cold and unwelcome feeling

began quickly taking their breath and energy away.

Dark clouds quickly set in and the temperature

dropped several degrees in the matter of what

seemed like only a minute. What had been the

perfect spring day only a moment before was now a

cold and gloomy day. As they neared the sinkhole,

they noticed something in the distance that appeared

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45

to be greenish in color and hanging from a tree at the

sinkhole’s crest.

Now feeling very uneasy, Richard asked, “Are we

really supposed to be here?” Joel replied, “Well, I

don’t feel good at all any more. It feels almost as if

we’re unwelcome here and are being watched from

the woods. Something is not right here; I can feel it.

What about you, Elizabeth, why are you shaking?” “I