by Alvin Spines

Created on: February 03, 2007   Last Updated: May 09, 2007

In 1817, John Bell was walking through a cornfield on his Tenessee farm. A strange animal with the body of a dog and the head of a rabbit appeared before him and made grunting noises. It occurred to John that this animal might make a good stew, so, like Jed Clampett would on his own Tenessee property, he took aim and fired upon the poor beast but hit only ground. Unlike Jed, who got good fortune and wealth from his bad shot, the gates of Hell opened up and the beast vanished. Later that night, a clawing could be heard at the walls of the farmhouse and the Bell family stayed up until morning, huddled on the parlor floor... and that was just the beginning. One hundred-and-seventy-nine years later, Sissy Spacek and Donald Sutherland would star in a retelling of the horrifying events that followed that fateful day and recurred for five years until the poisoning death of John Bell, by a witch or a ghost.

Legend has it that John Bell had a fight with a neighbor, Kate Batts, over the purchase of a slave. With her dying breath, Kate swore revenge upon him. It is said that her spirit spent the last five years of John Bell's life tormenting him until finally he was found dead holding a vial of medicine he had been recommended by his doctor. A few drops of the substance in the medicine bottle were fed to the family cat and it died instantaneously.

John Bell's daughter, Lucy, was ready to marry her sweetheart but every time they were alone and he was ready to propose, the Bell witch would make racket and he was unable to draw up his courage to ask because of it and she wound up marrying her schoolteacher, instead.

President Andrew Jackson is said to have spoken the words, "I'd rather face the entire British Army than the Bell Witch", after spending a night at the Bell farm.

To this day, it is said, a person can take a tour of the Bell farm for a small fee, and no records of: business dealings with Kate Batts, a visit from Andrew Jackson, neighbor/witness statements, or any record but the convoluted journals of a forty-year-old's recollections of his childhood have been found.

MOOHOOWAHAHAHAHAHA!

From Wikipedia.com:

A 2004 investigation by the Middle Tennessee Skeptics concluded that the tale of the Bell Witch is a fabrication founded entirely on later elaborations of the diary of Richard William Bell. Bell's diary was written some 30 years after the events they purport to describe, which took place when the author was 5-10 years old. The investigation turned up no evidence that

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