The Terrifying Tale of the Bell Witch: A Haunting from American History
Magan: 0:06
Alright, welcome, spooky friends. I'm Magan, this is Rumble, and you are here with us in the Haunted Grove. This is a weekly podcast where we discuss anything and everything spooky and paranormal. So, rumble, how the heck are you? I'm great. Are you ready for something spooky and paranormal?
Rumble: 0:24
Yes, so this is a story that I've not ever heard before. Hopefully, yeah, oh okay, we don't.
Magan: 0:31
I'm just saying like I don't, I would you know, out of what we're going to discuss, at least in the next, that I've got planned for the next six or seven episodes. This is probably, if you were going to have heard of one, it may have been this one Only because they've done a bunch of movies and stuff about it. But you know, movie versions aren't always the most accurate, Correct. I didn't want to say it's been a hot minute since our last episode, so you were sick.
Rumble: 0:57
Yes.
Magan: 0:58
I was sick and then I believe there was a holiday there at some point. But you know, I would love to tell you all that this podcast is a well-oiled machine. We are learning, we're learning as we go, and that's all we can do right. That's great. Yeah, yeah, just keep on going, keep on trucking, practicing, getting better each time. So let's get into talking about what wandered into the haunted grove this week. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to read you a little intro, and this is I just want to say too, I'm a little biased. This is probably one of my favorite stories, and I know I say that I'm going to say that with all of them, but really this really is one of them, so okay. So one day, while walking along the edge of his cornfields inspecting his crops on his farm in Tennessee, john Bell would encounter something that would change his life forever. Often the distance, at the end of one of the rows of corn, john could see what at first he thought was some kind of large animal. It was standing still and just staring at him, but as he squinted his eyes and tried to get a better look at this animal, he was just shocked by what he was seeing. He had no idea what this creature was. It looked like a large dog, but it had the head of a rabbit. What John didn't realize in that moment was that that encounter with that mysterious creature would ignite a chain of events that would last for years and become known as one of the most terrifying and documented hauntings in American history, and ultimately it would cost John his life.
Rumble: 2:28
Oh boy, yep, nope, I have not heard of this one.
Magan: 2:32
So this week we are talking about the legend of the bellwitch, also known as the bellwitch haunting. Yeah, still don't know. That was my question on here. Have you heard this one before? I already answered it.
Rumble: 2:44
Nope, I heard the word Tennessee and I'm like yep, I'm out, we're good.
Magan: 2:48
So, like I said, I love this story for a myriad of different reasons, One of which is because this is a true story. This is a well documented like I said, well documented and then oftentimes this is referred to as America's greatest ghost story.
Rumble: 3:03
Oh, where have I spent my whole life?
Magan: 3:07
Okay, so we'll get started here. So in the early 1800s, john Bell, his wife Lucy and their six kids left their home in North Carolina and moved to Adams County, tennessee, to start anew. So John purchased around 1000 acres of farmland, which included an old home that needed a little bit of TLC. Well, here was it 18. What 1800s? They're really early 1800s. We needed a little love, got you A little paint, maybe A little speckle, but yeah, so it needed a little TLC. This house that was on there. It had several different barns and other outbuildings and it also had an orchard. And over the next 12 years John acquired more land. He became very successful. He had a very successful farming operation and they even added three more kids to the mix. Oh, so they had nine kids in total. John became one of the wealthiest and most influential people in the area. Very well to do. And Lucy, his wife, was also quite a gem. She was very well liked and she was known as a kind, caring, caring, like mother figure, just a good. They were, all in all, everybody really loved the bells. They were just really good people. This was an era also, too, with where there was slavery still, and while there is no reason, no good reason, no good. People own slaves right, but out of everybody they were even considered very. They treated their slaves very well. So all in all, they just they were known as these great people. They were very devout Baptist in their church and oftentimes they opened up their home to travelers and people in need If they needed any place to stay. I don't know where you have extra room with nine kids, but if they needed a place to stay they would have people come and they could stay with them. They were just all around nice people. So the Bell family was livin' and thriving in this increase?
Rumble: 4:58
Yeah, they were.
Magan: 5:00
For years. They were here for years before anything strange started to happen. So this wasn't something like they moved in Like can I always hear like ghost stories now People like they bought the house it was super cheap? Yeah, they didn't know why.
Rumble: 5:11
They didn't know why. They just kicked them off this way.
Magan: 5:13
And then all of a sudden. No, they were here on this property for 12 years before anything happened. Wow, and that was until one day in the summer of 1817. So that's the day that John was walking around his property when he saw off in the distance that very strange looking animal. Again, he said to himself it looks like a dog, but it doesn't look like a dog. It wasn't proportioned right, but looked like it's part of it has been like twisted or broken. Oh my, the longer he stared at it, the more he was convinced that this was like something that looked like a dog's body but with a rabbit's head.
Rumble: 5:49
I'm right now imagining my tiny seven pound chihuahua with this big rabbit, which would make my head go. What is happening, yeah?
Magan: 6:01
So naturally, he doesn't know what it is, so he does.
Rumble: 6:04
I mean does a?
Magan: 6:05
very, does a very American thing, and he shot at it. So, anyway, he didn't know what it was, okay, but to be fair, he was freaked out. Well, yeah, he was like I don't know what this thing is, it's on my property, so he pulls out his gun and he fires at it. So when John shot at the creature and he knew he hit it, like it wasn't that far away, uh-huh, so like he knew he hit it, yeah, it just kind of glared at him and then turned around and Its head turned all the way back around. Like walk, hopped I don't know whatever a dog, rabbit would do turned around and went back into the woods and John was just sitting there like what the fuck, yeah, and he goes to investigate, obviously. So he walks up to where this animal was and he looks around and he couldn't find any blood. He actually couldn't even find any tracks or any indication that there was actually an animal there. Cool, so he just chalks it up to. You know, maybe it was a trick of the imagination, Maybe I thought I saw something, but whatever, Clearly there's no evidence that it was here, so I guess it was nothing.
Rumble: 7:07
That's something to think about at two o'clock in the morning when you can't sleep. Oh, there's more. Yeah, I think that's plenty more.
Magan: 7:16
So that encounter would mark the beginning of years of torment for the Belle family. Again, this is years worth of stuff, oh my gosh. So after that experience, everybody in the Belle household started to have experiences. Okay, so that whatever happened, probably I would have shot it. It pissed it off. And now it's so. Just a couple of days after that, the Belle's son, drury, sees what he thinks is this huge turkey, like perched on the fence outside his house, and he says, damn, there's a huge turkey outside the house. So he goes inside and grabs his gun. He's going to shoot this turkey. Why not, right? Yeah? So he goes in and grabs his gun, comes out and starts walking closer and closer to this bird and again, when he gets in distance of being able to shoot it, he looks and he's like that's not a turkey. What is that? Yeah, so he shoots at it and the thing just gets up, extends these massive wings and flies away and he's like that is. I don't know what that is, but that is not a turkey. Oh my God, I've never seen a bird like that before. So what do you see? I don't know what that is. So he's, like you know, a little freaked out.
Rumble: 8:27
By that. I imagine this thing crouching like a human kind of thing, crouching on the fence and it. That's like what pops into my head, like it was like somebody's yeah.
Magan: 8:38
Yeah, he does give a whole lot of detail, other than he initially thought it was just a huge turkey which is why he's like boom pity.
Rumble: 8:45
Yeah, not one.
Magan: 8:48
So then, a couple of nights later, the group of sons were sleeping in the same bedroom. Again, there's nine of them, yeah. So they start to hear noises in the walls and scratching and like rustling around, which I would think wouldn't be that uncommon, like nope. I'm not. I'm not from a farming family. I'm not from a farm. But I know that mice, oh mice get in the walls, yeah, yeah, and then every time they would get up to investigate that, the noises would stop.
Rumble: 9:16
Huh, sounds familiar.
Magan: 9:19
So then, yeah, so they get up to investigate, otherwise they stop. And it just kept going on and on and on. And then eventually they started feeling and hearing things gnawing at their bed post, oh my, and again they would get up to look, and then every time they touched the ground it would stop, and this kind of went on forever too, and then, you know, the bed would start shaking, but there was never anything like they couldn't find it.
Rumble: 9:43
They couldn't find out anything.
Magan: 9:45
So then the family would also report hearing sounds of like dogs fighting outside while they were trying to sleep, and then they would hear like things flying around their room and they would just hear all these noises and like there were no dogs on the property. Oh, they couldn't see dogs outside fighting. They couldn't find anything, they couldn't find a source for any of the noises that were happening. There was one story where they were sitting down at supper and all of a sudden they were hearing these loud bangs on the side of the house, but it was going around the house like someone would be running around the house throwing rocks at the house and of course they go out to investigate and there's nobody there. So they're kind of going crazy again with all this stuff happening and they're just like this is so weird and it's creepy. And you know, for as rural of an area as they were in the bells knew like their neighbors, they knew the community, they knew their neighbors and they trusted them. And they did turn to them for help and was, like you know, they were members of the church, they were like you know, hey, stuff's going on. So a handful of neighbors, trying to help them out and also, probably out of curiosity, trying to verify the story, like would agree to stay the night at the bell house. Oh good, that's smart, yep. And they would again, they wanted to witness, be witnessed to the events, but then also to try to try to provide some comfort, right, like, oh, it's just a, it's just a mouse, john or it's just a whatever. We can disprove that, yeah, mm hmm, one of those neighbors was James Johnson. So James would stay the night and during that night he would be awoken several times by all of the same stuff and more. Oh my gosh, so the next day Were you gonna say something?
Rumble: 11:31
I was just thinking like the ghost, whatever this is, doesn't have any fear of any person. No, no, no, no, no, because they're smart, because they didn't. You know, sometimes they don't. They won't do stuff when there's people around that are there to you know. Help prove the people.
Magan: 11:51
Well, and that's the thing too, is it's like it wasn't just, it didn't seem like random occurrences. Yeah, it was intelligent. Right, they were doing stuff to freak them out. So the next day, this James Johnson would tell John Bell and of course, everyone else he's announcing that in church, which John and everyone else that would listen, that the hauntings were like that from the Bible, oh Jesus, so of biblical proportions, which of course spread like wildfire, perhaps demonic. Yeah, began to draw people in from all around the area to witness the haunting of biblical proportion.
Rumble: 12:31
Oh.
Magan: 12:32
So when I tell you this was well documented yeah, it was really big ton of witnesses, a ton of like it was not just these people's story.
Rumble: 12:43
It was only just John Bell.
Magan: 12:44
Yeah, so eventually, kind of as things started to take off and as people started to give it more attention, the spirit started to speak.
Rumble: 12:56
Oh my God, no, yep.
Magan: 13:01
Started to speak and answer questions. So it started out. This entity started out just kind of making these choking noises, oh my God, and then it eventually turned into more and more and more. And then they saw these people that would stay over or would come over to see this. The spectacle would ask questions and someone had asked who are you and what do you want? Wow, and the entity would identify itself as Kate and it stated I am a spirit. I was once happy, but I have been disturbed and been made unhappy. There is a few different stories of the origin of the entity. In some versions the entity states that its bones had been dug up. Dug up, Wow, you know what I mean. Dug up. There you go, Dug up. Words are hard Dug up and disturbed the spirit from everywhere heaven, hell, earth, air. It just came from everywhere.
Rumble: 13:51
Oh, Okay, yeah.
Magan: 13:53
I mean. But in a lot of the versions of the stories the entity is called Kate and the general overall assumption is that it is called Kate because of one of the bell's neighbors, kate Bats.
Rumble: 14:08
So Kate Bats was you want to hear more about Kate Bats? I do. I do. I'm not dead, I'm dead. Is she alive? Like is what happened? What? Where was she buried?
Magan: 14:19
Let's talk about Kate. So Kate Bats lived. Kate Bats and her husband lived on a farm close to the bells. She was an abrasive woman who pretty much ran the roost at the Bats farm. The husband was not able to, he wasn't capable. I don't. They didn't really go into a lot of detail. I couldn't find a lot of detail if he was like just mentally not able to or if he was physically not able to or both. But either way, kate was the. She was in charge she was in charge, she was loud, she was opinionated and she used really big words and she didn't take shit from anybody. So you can about imagine what happened.
Rumble: 15:02
She was a witch. Yeah, hundredth of a cent.
Magan: 15:06
In that timeframe, you are a well, you're a witch. I don't like you, you're a witch. But yeah, because she was opinionated, because she was she wouldn't listen to anybody, she would do her own thing. She yelled in the middle of the church. She did stuff.
Rumble: 15:21
I kind of like her.
Magan: 15:23
Sounds like my kind of person. But apparently when the bells first moved to the area, there was some kind of a disagreement between John Bell and Kate Bats. Again, there's multiple different versions, but in one of the more mainstream stories she was over the rights to a slave.
Rumble: 15:44
Oh yeah, and I don't know exactly what the disagreement was.
Magan: 15:47
But there was some disagreement for that.
Rumble: 15:50
At the beginning when they moved there. Is that what you said In that timeframe when they first got there? Okay, gotcha.
Magan: 15:55
So was it 17 years earlier? Yeah, so 17 years earlier when they first got there, because the first haunting didn't start happening until 17 years later, 12. Didn't?
Rumble: 16:05
you say 12?.
Magan: 16:06
Well, whatever Somewhere around there, it wasn't.
Rumble: 16:08
Right, it was a long time. Okay, it was a long time. Yeah, it was a long time, but anyway.
Magan: 16:13
So this happened right at the beginning, when they first got there. So, yeah, it was a long time. Oh then, okay, yeah, so she had said, apparently reportedly, when she was on a rant later, a few years later, maybe in church, maybe wherever Kate Bats was on a rant, she had said something like I'm gonna get even with John Bell, oh my God. So now people just believe that this is Kate Bats's witch or whatever. The problem with this is that Kate Bats wasn't dead.
Rumble: 16:46
So I was gonna say like did she die and is she coming?
Magan: 16:49
back. In fact, she actually outlived John and a good portion of the Bells by a long time, holy shit. So I don't know. So it's obviously not like her spirit, no, but she summoned a demon. But okay, so that's the other part. Did she conjure something? There is, but I would just like to say there is like little to no. Actually there is no evidence that Kate Bats like conjured something, to like go after the Bells. I think people just like a good story and they thought she was a witch. Why not? It makes sense to them. Right, it doesn't make sense to me, but it makes sense to them At that time period?
Rumble: 17:26
Yeah, yep.
Magan: 17:29
And so, once this thing, started to vocalize, started to talk to people it got really, really strange, it would sing songs.
Rumble: 17:46
Oh, I don't like that at all.
Magan: 17:49
It would have full on conversations with people. No, and it was even reported that it quoted word for word two sermons that were going on at the same time but like miles apart from each other. So it apparently had this ability to I don't want to say teleport, because I want you to be physical to teleport, to go other places like at the same time, to be everywhere. Yeah, because there were other stories where people would ask it. Okay, I'm going to outsmart this thing right. So ask it, say, what does my mom in you know London say to? I don't know say to anyway so then then, apparently this thing would come back the next day and said, oh yeah, she said this, which would be something. It was some kind of a phrase that the parent would say all the time. So, like that kid knew right away oh, okay, yeah, it was legit, right, well, they felt like it was legit. A lot of people did because this there was. There's a lot of different stories of people going well, then I asked it to do this, and then it did this, and then, you know, or that it would like give its own sermons, or it was just, it was very, very strange. It was like the sound of its own voice, that's for sure, oh my God. And it even gave nicknames to John, to John and Lucy, referring to them as old Jack and old loose. Oh, and apparently this thing really liked Lucy, like it just had a. I mean, everybody liked Lucy, remember, she was just amazing. Yeah, it never really targeted her at all. It never really did anything to other than, you know, mess with her children which I'm sure pissed her off. Yeah, but it was never anything direct at her. It would oftentimes tell people how much it just adored her, how cool she was, oh man, lucy's the best.
Rumble: 19:35
Oh man, that poor woman, like those stalkers, yeah, like there's no escaping it, it would always be with you. Think about that, oh, oh.
Magan: 19:46
But Lucy, poor Lucy, yeah. And then. So one evening there was a family friend. His name was William Porter, so he was one of the people that agreed or wanted to stay overnight at the Bell's house to help them out or probably to witness it. So he agreed to stay over and while he was staying, the night he was laying there in bed trying to listen right for all these scratching sounds and all this stuff that's going on.
Rumble: 20:12
He wants to hear it.
Magan: 20:13
So he's laying there awake in bed and at that time he felt something crawl into bed with him. Oh, oh, like a human, like a human size thing, not a mouse, not whatever.
Rumble: 20:27
He felt this like no, I imagine it being a bigger thing, Person-ish thing crawling in bed with him.
Magan: 20:33
So he immediately freaks out and jumps into action and he turns over and wraps the thing in a bed sheet, like, really quick, and he's grabbed, grabs hold of it, got it in a bed sheet and he's trying to carry it over to the fire, like with his intent is to throw this thing in the fire and just be done with it. Oh, my God. Well, okay, but unfortunately that didn't work out. No, it didn't go well. It was so math, it was so heavy, there was just this massive weight and it's just this putrid smell and he couldn't hold on to it, he couldn't drag it over there. So it got away. He was not able to rid them of that and that was kind of like. The last big massive thing that happened was that this thing was actually physical. So they found out that they could actually you caught it in a sheet, it's a ghost, catch it, catch it, I guess. But you know this, all of this stuff went on for years and it kind of ebbed and flowed in intensity. Hmm, so it was singing. Sometimes it was very pleasant having conversations with Lucy, probably in the kitchen, you know, very pleasant. Sometimes it was not. It was just. It really just didn't see, it was so random. It didn't seem. Nothing triggered it, nothing. They didn't know what was happening with it. It wasn't until 1820, so three years after John sees the creature for the first time. That is when the entity, for whatever reason, set its sights on John Bell, and then things really really started to take a turn for us. So the entity had been violent towards people before but it wasn't really anything. It's definitely violent but it's not really anything like like it would push the kids or it would slap or pinch their young daughter Betsy. There was one story where it tried to drag her up the stairs by her hair.
Rumble: 22:28
I was going to ask was it a hair? Pull it yeah.
Magan: 22:31
Yep. But things really started to ramp up in, like the physical intensity of it, when it turned its sights on John. Wow, so now the entity was starting to expressively state that it wanted John dead oh my God and that it vowed to be the one to do it. So at that point John starts to experience things like paralysis in his face. Half his face wouldn't work and it became extremely difficult for him to eat and to swallow, oh my God. So he would eventually become very weak because he wasn't given enough nutrition. Look at the stress that you'd be under. Well, and people would say that through this, as this was going on, john, was this just huge guy, big, tough? Well, he was very wealthy too, so he's not like he was a skinny dude, probably.
Rumble: 23:25
I mean, he was just a big guy.
Magan: 23:26
Yep, he just started to deteriorate in front of everybody and he was like he would be confused. He wouldn't know where he was, he wouldn't know what he was doing. And then he couldn't eat. It was hard to hear him or understand him because he couldn't speak. And then, once John started getting really weak, it would start doing things like taking his shoes off while he was walking, oh my. So he would fall, oh my God, he would stumble and fall, and then it would just kind of do shitty stuff like that. Yeah, he would mess with them while he was super vulnerable, and then John would also start to, at this point, start to experience like seizure-like activity Awesome, thanks for your time. And eventually he could no longer continue. He was weak, he was malnourished, his body was just battered. And then it finally did give out. One winter day he passed away in bed, december 20th 1820. Wow, that was fast, yes. So after the family found him in bed, they noticed this weird looking bottle on the nightstand and they had this strange kind of like black, blackish liquid inside. They had no idea what this was. They'd never seen it before. It's not something like. It's not a medicine that they would have given him. It's not something they just didn't know what it was, yep. And then so they called the doctor. Obviously they called the doctor to come in and the doctor was like, well, I don't know what the hell that is. Yeah, why don't you give it to one of the animals to see what it does? I don't know that's how they test his stuff. I know it doesn't make it right?
Rumble: 24:56
I don't know but that is how they tested it. Find that weird rabbit dog thing, give it to them, or the other bird thing.
Magan: 25:08
Turkey thing, give it to that thing.
Rumble: 25:10
Yep.
Magan: 25:11
So, not knowing what the liquid was or where it came from, the family did give it to one of their animals and that animal, like, quickly died.
Rumble: 25:19
Okay, yep.
Magan: 25:21
And then they heard a voice from the entity, or the entity's voice, just screeching at the top of its lungs throughout the entire house. I gave old Jack a big dose of that last night, fixed him right up.
Rumble: 25:34
Oh my God, what the.
Magan: 25:40
That entity's a dick. And then at John's bell, John Bell's funeral, the mourners said that they could hear the witch laughing and singing.
Rumble: 25:49
Oh, my Throughout the funeral. Did they have it at a church?
Magan: 25:54
That I don't know. I don't know. I would think so Okay, it would make sense, yeah, but yeah, they could just hear it, yeah, laugh and. Wow Oof. The entity hung around for about a year after John's death when it told Lucy, it's bestie, john's widow, that it was leaving and it would be back in seven years.
Rumble: 26:18
Oh Well, get it, sir. Fuck it up. We got seven years to do it. Fuck, fuck which it did.
Magan: 26:24
It returned as promised seven years later, but then it vanished again for good. Oh, and there's a lot more to the story, because again, this didn't end with John's death. It just kind of like petered out after John's death. But there was a lot of stories of like it interfered with Betsy getting married. Oh my God, like it didn't want Betsy to marry this guy. So it was like you know, if you marry him, I'm going to haunt you, and she's like not doing this anymore. Nope. Done yeah, so she's like ends up not marrying the guy because she's like I cannot do this. Oh, so it hung around for a while and then it eventually did just go away.
Rumble: 27:04
I wonder who was haunting in that seven years that it went away Because you know it was doing something. It wasn't just like taking a break, it wasn't like it was napping. I'm just like this is boring.
Magan: 27:18
I've been doing this for a while, yeah.
Rumble: 27:20
And then I'm like I'm going to move on.
Magan: 27:21
I'm going to mess with some other people. Yeah, and there's not. Really. Nobody really knows where it came from, right? So there's a. It's called the Bell Witch Cave, so there's cave next to the property that supposedly is very haunted. There's demonic activity in the cave. That's a theory, I guess, of where this thing like lives in the cave and it came out. But it does, I don't know. It's weird. You know there was a lot of. There was an area that had a lot of like Native American people like you know, that's really cliche but like you never.
Rumble: 27:51
It is true, it is true. I mean, you can't just, well, right, you can't just move in somewhere and build your house and like this is good, I'll live here.
Magan: 27:58
You know. So it could have been that, but nobody really knows. Nobody knows if it was Kate Bats, oh my God. But yeah it just. It came, hung around for a long time, killed off John and went. So this was a big deal back then obviously as you can imagine. It might be today. Maybe it wouldn't be today. To be honest, you know we had the earlier this year beginning of, so we're in 2023, beginning of 2023, like we had five UFO confirms because, like by our government and everybody's like whatever.
Rumble: 28:31
Yeah, I didn't know what did. That's what I did. I'm like, oh well, cool.
Magan: 28:35
I mean, we know they're there.
Rumble: 28:37
Thanks for you know the information.
Magan: 28:40
Right. So I don't know, maybe this wouldn't be that big of a deal today.
Rumble: 28:43
We've been through a lot. I don't know. I'm not that scared of the alien stuff, but this demonic stuff freaks me out big time. But yeah.
Magan: 28:51
So the Bell's story was told to newspapers, books were published about it. Again, there was a lot of people that were involved in this and there's even a claim that General Andrew Jackson at the time was coming through. He had heard about this and he wanted to check it out Because they weren't far. He's like I want to go check this out. So the story goes that Jackson and his troops, they were near the Bell's farm and so they wanted to go check it out. So they got closer. The closer they got to the farm, all their wagons broke.
Rumble: 29:22
And like their horses wouldn't go any further. Well, they're into it.
Magan: 29:25
Yeah, they get it, so they actually weren't able to get to the Bell farm because they couldn't get there. So they were like, yeah, we're good, we got enough stuff going on right now. Thank God.
Rumble: 29:36
This is like the last thing I should go with.
Magan: 29:38
So let's talk about, kind of, the aftermath of all this and the growth of this legend. So, like I mentioned in the beginning, this is one of my favorite stories. The reason that I love this story so much, aside from just that it's creepy haunted history and I love creepy haunted history is because, to me, this is the perfect example of how legends are formed.
Rumble: 29:59
Yeah.
Magan: 30:00
Okay, so again, this is a very well documented thing. There's lots of people that saw this, lots of people that, as well as lots of newspaper articles and books that were written about it and the Bells, totally existed in real life. These are not made up people, neither are the people that are named in the stories. All of these people are real people. But we have these written accounts from people who are are sending because you know you have to write it down or Sending their stories to love one. Oh, my god, you gotta hear about this, you know what's happening in my neighbor's house. It gets there four months later because it's, you know, being taken by course, and and then there's yeah, there's these articles that are written based off of interviews with people who are recalling what they saw, yeah, what they heard, yeah, but it was years later, huh, years years later. There was an article written in 1880, so almost 60 years later, and it was titled haunted house. So you can imagine if you're interviewing somebody 60 years, yeah, after the event occurred.
Rumble: 31:00
That's a, that's an impression.
Magan: 31:02
Yep yeah and then there's even probably one of the most well-known and most cited Publications on it, which I actually used for writing this episode. Oh nice, it's a book by an author, mv Ingram, and it's called the authenticated history of the Bellwitch, and it was published in 1894. Okay, but even this book, yeah, so even this book, which is, again, probably most recognized and most well-cited, when people, you know, like us, make podcasts, yeah, tell stories from the Bellwitch, but it's not without criticism. Yeah, you know, there are some historians that are like, oh my gosh, yeah, this is totally so accurate. This is like. They're like this is what happened, wow. And then there's other historians that are like this is bullshit. Like, he made it up, he left out critical parts of it. And also, he, he may have embellished or left out important facts, but he also did make a profit off it, mm-hmm. So he, you know, he sold his book, yeah, so there's always that to take into consideration. But my, my point is is that something happened? Oh, yeah, right, none of these stories came from nowhere? Yep, something happened and it was significant enough for people to talk about and want to tell their version of what happened over time. Yeah, and it's like a. It's like a really large game of telephone. Yeah, yeah, yeah yeah, yeah, one person whispers a story into a friend's ear and then that person whispers it into another person's ear, and then that person. Then, by the time it gets to the end, it's all. It's almost a different version of the story, yeah, but time it gets the end, because it evolves. It evolves to each storyteller's perception, right of how, of what they heard.
Rumble: 32:42
So that's again.
Magan: 32:43
I love this for multiple reasons. I think it's a great story and I also think it is just a perfect evolution of folklore in action yeah, of a storytelling and kind of how we keep making it. We got to make it a little bit scarier, right.
Rumble: 32:58
Right, just a little bit scarier.
Magan: 32:59
Yeah, yeah, yep, but that. So that is our story for today.
Rumble: 33:03
That is okay. Well, I have questions. Okay, currently is the bell which Still haunting the property? Depends on who you ask.
Magan: 33:12
So if you watch stuff, now People will there's lots of I mean you just, you know, go to YouTube and look up, like the legend of the bell, which, okay, there's lots people that that will go to the cave, yeah, and, and I try to look around at the cave and try to find stuff in there which is creepy. Don't get me wrong, it's creepy. Yeah, the the bells home is no longer standing. So there are other people who are like we're in the bell witch house. That is not the original house, it's just a house that was built. That's open. It's like a touristy thing now. Okay, so I did a reel for Facebook and Instagram on this a few months ago and One of the people in the comments was from Adams County oh Tennessee and she did a. Really she was like you know, like basically I can appreciate the storytelling and stuff, but you know, if you're from the area, mm-hmm, the house isn't there anymore. So there's all these people that are like we're in the bell witch house. Yeah it's not. It's a tourist attraction. Yeah yeah, and kind of the same with the cave Mm-hmm is it's? It's a. It's basically just used for people who make videos to go in and. Try to find demons and stuff. So is the bell, which still around. I guess you could, you know, take it with a grain of salt. Hmm, but again, this was one person from there, but from that opinion of somebody who actually lives there, is it you know, this is not like a daily occurrence that the people yeah, I'm not a really like Tennessee or just haunted the roots and relentlessly by this thing, but yeah it is a good story.
Rumble: 34:41
Yeah, sure.
Magan: 34:42
It's a great story. I would like to know what you guys, the listeners, think. Do you think it's been embellished over time? Do you think that this is accurate? Hmm, where we're at today, leave your thoughts kind of down in the comments or head over to the haunted Grove Facebook or Instagram to comment on the episode. Shameless plug, it's the spookiest Facebook page out there and we will Feature comments in the next episode. So what do you think? Rumble? Do you have anything else you want to?
Rumble: 35:12
add for this, I don't, and I just have to say, if there's nine kids and that's a lot of kids to Witness things and see their parents go through, I believe all, I believe all of it right and I and a lot of the kids.
Magan: 35:25
One of the youngest kids, believe his name was Joel, is a Catalyst for a lot of these stories, right, because he's he's the youngest one, so he's obviously been around longer and he had written some, written down his thoughts kind of stuff that had happened over time. Yeah, but he was young, he was one of the youngest kids and now he's writing down memories. You know, yeah, 60 years later, yeah, 60 years later, yep, not saying that that stuff didn't happen, but how accurate can your memories be? Mm-hmm, especially for that super traumatic stuff.
Rumble: 35:54
Oh, those memories are I don't know. I'm not saying it didn't happen, I'm just ingrained in that.
Magan: 35:59
I will always have a little bit of skepticism. To be true, it's too good to be true, but but I just I loved. I love this story. So I'm glad, true or not, that it just lives on.
Rumble: 36:13
Yeah, it's so great. No, it was awesome.
Magan: 36:17
All right, so thank you so much for joining us. If you've enjoyed the episode, go ahead and give it a like, share it with anyone that you think would enjoy it as well, and Follow or subscribe so you can stay tuned to see what wanders into the haunted grove next week.