The Bell family lived in a farm house in Tennessee, close to the Kentucky border. The residents were John Bell, his
wife Lucy, their daughter Betsy and their two sons. At the time their other two children did not live there because they had
married and moved out. The start of the paranormal activity started in 1817 when John Bell saw an apparition that looked like
a dog in his cornfield. Not knowing it was an apparition he shot at it and watched it vanish before his eyes. He also saw
another ghostly creature and is also vanished when it was shot at.
Not long after the creepy apparitions, the Bell house endured
continues rapping's and scrapings on the outside of the doors, walls and windows like it was attempting to get inside.
Eventually it succeeded. It chewed on the bedposts, kicked the ceiling, knocked over some furniture, and pulled ghostly, invisible
chains across the floor. After a year the home was filled with strange, unwanted noises. Soon the ghostly visitor became violent,
hitting and slapping visitors of the Bell home for no good reason. The Bell children were also struck by the entity and it
pulled their hair when they tried to sleep at night. The ghostly entity also hailed rocks and sticks like typical poltergeists
do.
The only daughter Betsy Bell began to have convulsions and would pass out at times as the intensity of the poltergeist activity
grew. At first it could not talk. Then it was able to make whistling noises. Then it became able to whisper until after awhile
it found the ability to talk clearly. Eventually the evil witch's' voice could be heard through the whole house. In
time the ghostly visitor referred to itself as a witch and said it would plague John Bell forever. The witch would beat John
and once she beat him so bad he could not talk because his jaw and tongue was too swollen. The actual identity of the spirit
was never made clear but the family started to refer to it as Kate after hearing it say " I am nothing more or less than
old Kate Batts, witch."
Before John Bell married Lucy, He was in love with a Kate Batts when he lived in Halifax, North Carolina. John once proposed
to her but never went through with marrying her. In the end of the 1770's Kates' lifeless corpse was found next to
a well near her home. The cause of death was never discovered. John Bell tied the knot with Lucy right after Kates' funeral,
getting over her death unusually easy. Some people believe that Mr.Bell had murdered Batts because he realized he could not
spend the rest of his life with such a crazy, moody, and unpleasant woman. Perhaps she just sought revenge against John because
he ruined her happiness by not marrying her.
The word got around about the Bell witch and soon, people began making visits to the Bell
home to see if the rumors were true. What the received when the got there was a lot of punches and kicks by the ghostly witch.
The Bells family minister, James Johnson, performed an exorcism on the home but it did little good. Members of the parish
would stay at the Bell home to record any paranormal activity but this only intensified the poltergeists efforts. After awhile
most members of the parish refused to set foot in the ghostly dwelling. Once President Andrew Jackson(actually General at
the time) went to the Bell house with an exorcist to face the crazy spirit. They took off when the poltergeist
threw the family dishes and furniture at him.
After about three years of torture and abuse dished out by the heartless spirit, John was
so messed up and unhealthy that he could not leave his bed for months. He was even twitching uncontrollably. The ghostly witch
grew from abuse and hatred, to attempted murderer when it replaced Johns Tonic with poison. This attempt had failed. However,
on December 19, 1820 the poor, abused John Bell was discovered in a coma. One of his sons rushed to check the medicine cabinet
(probably because of the previous incident) and saw only a vial of dark liquid which was only a third full. The twisted poltergeist
admitted she gave him a good amount of it when John was sleeping and said he will never awaken again. John Bell died the next
day. The dark liquid was indeed poison because it was tested on a cat and the animal died instantly.
