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Short Stuff: The Bell Witch · Stuff You Should Know

• 0:04
  Speaker 1: Hey, and welcome to the short Stuff. It's Josh and
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: Chuck here in our scary October rolls on. It's rolling
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: along with the short stuff on the bell Witch.
• 0:14
  Speaker 2: That's right rolling along the Red River of Tennessee, because
• 0:18
  Speaker 2: that's where the Belwitch is now Adams, Tennessee. But that's
• 0:21
  Speaker 2: where the Belwich story finds its roots, about an hour
• 0:23
  Speaker 2: north of Nashville. And that was a family, the Bells,
• 0:27
  Speaker 2: that moved from North Carolina in eighteen oh six to
• 0:29
  Speaker 2: Tennessee and did pretty well. They were landowners, they were
• 0:33
  Speaker 2: very respected, they had a pretty good life. And about
• 0:37
  Speaker 2: nine uh years after they moved there, they started to
• 0:40
  Speaker 2: get haunted by a angry ghost witch.
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: Yeah. And before we get too much deeper into I
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: want to shout out a historian named Pat fits You
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: who runs Bellwitch dot org and wrote the book The
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: Belwitch Colon the Full Account Legends of America Victoria Kleine
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: Peter at the Tennessee State Museum.
• 0:59
  Speaker 2: Okay, got it, Rocky top baby.
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: So the haunting of the Bell family began in eighteen
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: seventeen when John Bell, the patriarch of the family sometimes
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: called Old Jack Bell. Just remember this is eighteen seventeen
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: in Tennessee. Yeah, he was in his fields. He was
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: a huge planter in the area and he was in
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: one of his fields at one point and he noticed
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: a big animal sitting in his field. So he looked
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: at it a little closer, and he found that it
• 1:29
  Speaker 1: was quite disturbing. This large animal had the body of
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: a dog but the head of a rabbit.
• 1:34
  Speaker 2: Okay.
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: John Bell was like, did I eat mushrooms this morning?
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: He's like, no, I didn't. And he said, well, I'm
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: going to shoot at this because I'm a homesteader in
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: Tennessee in eighteen seventeen. And when he did, the animal
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: either vanished or scurried off to the nearby woods, depending
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: on who's telling the story, but either way, John Bell
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: let it be.
• 1:53
  Speaker 2: Yeah. So that's dad's first incident. There would also be
• 1:57
  Speaker 2: successive incidents with kids. Dewy his son, and Betsy his daughter.
• 2:04
  Speaker 2: Dewree saw and if you're wondering how that's spelled, it's
• 2:07
  Speaker 2: d E w r Y. I've never seen that name before,
• 2:10
  Speaker 2: but I think I love it.
• 2:11
  Speaker 1: I I'm glad that you love it. I think I
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: misspelled it. I think it might be Drury because I
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: also saw him referred to as Drew before.
• 2:20
  Speaker 2: I like Dowy.
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: I like more too, so we're gonna rename Drury Bell.
• 2:26
  Speaker 2: Yeah. So Dewrey was haunted by a giant bird, supposedly
• 2:29
  Speaker 2: a bird that he had never seen before. It was
• 2:31
  Speaker 2: sitting on a fence post, so of course he shot
• 2:33
  Speaker 2: at it as well, but it disappeared into thin air.
• 2:36
  Speaker 2: And then daughter Betsy maybe the most frightening thing, although
• 2:40
  Speaker 2: the dog rabbit's pretty frightening. Yeah, but also so is
• 2:43
  Speaker 2: a little girl in a green dress hanging from a tree,
• 2:46
  Speaker 2: and I assume that means by a rope and not
• 2:49
  Speaker 2: just by her hands.
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: I could not get any further uh information about that.
• 2:56
  Speaker 2: Okay, I mean, if it was haunting, it had to
• 2:59
  Speaker 2: be like that girl's hand there as a child or
• 3:01
  Speaker 2: writer and came back.
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: Yes, So these appearances seem to portend all of the
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: haunting that followed haunting by the ghost of a witch.
• 3:10
  Speaker 1: Don't forget that's the worst kind. Yeah, because I think
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: the same night after John Bell saw the rabbit dog
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: or the dog rabbit, I guess, depending on your perspective. Yeah,
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: the family was awakened by beating noises on the outside
• 3:25
  Speaker 1: of the walls of their home like it was being
• 3:27
  Speaker 1: pounded on. And that was just the first night. These
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: things continued night after night after night. Sometimes they would
• 3:33
  Speaker 1: be pounding really hard, sometimes kind of light, but either way,
• 3:36
  Speaker 1: Bell and his sons, he had several sons. They would
• 3:39
  Speaker 1: get out of bed and try to catch the person
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: who was pounding on their house. This is basically like
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: eighteen seventeen Ding Dong ditch, I guess. But they never
• 3:48
  Speaker 1: found a trace of anybody.
• 3:51
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and the hauntings or the sounds continued. Rather, the
• 3:55
  Speaker 2: children know were haunted by the sounds of what they
• 3:57
  Speaker 2: thought was rats chewing on their bedposts at night, which
• 4:01
  Speaker 2: was probably just rats to the other.
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: Bed post to night. But you gotta toss that one in.
• 4:06
  Speaker 2: You gotta toss that in because it's scary. The hauntings
• 4:08
  Speaker 2: would turn physical. Sometimes the sheets were pulled off of
• 4:11
  Speaker 2: the kids while they slept. Young Betsy was ghost slapped,
• 4:15
  Speaker 2: apparently hard enough to leave welts and bruises. She was
• 4:19
  Speaker 2: ghost pinched, she was ghost hair pulled, and it became
• 4:23
  Speaker 2: pretty clear that Betsy and old Jack the dad, were
• 4:28
  Speaker 2: the main targets in this family.
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: Yes, and we'll see why in a few but I
• 4:34
  Speaker 1: think probably what makes the whole thing the most disturbing
• 4:37
  Speaker 1: is that the witch began to talk. It's one thing
• 4:40
  Speaker 1: for poultry guys activity. Poultry guys don't talk. Everybody ask
• 4:43
  Speaker 1: your parents. The witch started speaking, the witch ghost, and
• 4:48
  Speaker 1: at first it was faint. They were just barely whispered.
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: You couldn't really make out what the ghost was saying.
• 4:54
  Speaker 1: But over time the voice grew louder, clearer, and would
• 4:58
  Speaker 1: sometimes hold conversations, like entire conversations with the Bell family
• 5:02
  Speaker 1: and their home, so much so that John Junior was
• 5:05
  Speaker 1: known to debate the witch voice. Sure, I don't know
• 5:08
  Speaker 1: over what nuclear energy maybe, and whether it was safe
• 5:13
  Speaker 1: or not. Probably, But he later wrote the conversations down
• 5:16
  Speaker 1: that he had with the Bell witch and he published
• 5:18
  Speaker 1: it I think self published in nineteen thirty four.
• 5:21
  Speaker 2: That's right. And if you think maybe just this family
• 5:24
  Speaker 2: had some weird mold in their house, it was driving
• 5:26
  Speaker 2: them all to the brinks of sanity, not true, because
• 5:31
  Speaker 2: you know, unfortunately it was eighteen seventeen and they had
• 5:33
  Speaker 2: enslaved people on their land, and they also had similar experiences,
• 5:38
  Speaker 2: the most famous of which was an enslaved man there
• 5:41
  Speaker 2: named Dean, who encountered the witch multiple times in the
• 5:46
  Speaker 2: form of a two headed dog man with o sensibly dogheads.
• 5:50
  Speaker 1: I saw a drawing of it of this Dean being
• 5:53
  Speaker 1: met by a two headed dog, and it actually kind
• 5:56
  Speaker 1: of missed the mark because it looked like it was
• 5:58
  Speaker 1: hopping up to like play with them. Well maybe it
• 6:00
  Speaker 1: was because in this picture the drawing, Dean is holding
• 6:04
  Speaker 1: a ball, but it's not supposed to be like a
• 6:07
  Speaker 1: ball that the two headed dog wants to him to
• 6:09
  Speaker 1: toss for it. It was a witch ball that Dean's
• 6:12
  Speaker 1: wife made, and that's a real thing. A witch ball
• 6:15
  Speaker 1: is a blown glass spear, usually kind of colorful, and
• 6:19
  Speaker 1: depending on where you're using this or who you ask,
• 6:22
  Speaker 1: it's either used to trap witches reward off witches. And
• 6:26
  Speaker 1: Dean's wife made it for him, I think after the
• 6:28
  Speaker 1: first time he saw the bell witch to protect himself.
• 6:32
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and he was like, you know, a no, tradition
• 6:35
  Speaker 2: says it's got to be a ball, but these this
• 6:37
  Speaker 2: two headed dog just wants to get that ball. Can
• 6:40
  Speaker 2: we go with something else?
• 6:42
  Speaker 1: She's like, sure, how about a witch's dick?
• 6:44
  Speaker 2: Right exactly? Shall we take a break, all right, We'll
• 6:49
  Speaker 2: come back and finish up with the Bell Witch right
• 6:50
  Speaker 2: after this, all right, So where we left off, there
• 7:22
  Speaker 2: were two headed dogs wanting to play with that witch ball.
• 7:24
  Speaker 2: Betsy's getting ghost pinched, Dad is getting haunted, the whole
• 7:30
  Speaker 2: family's getting haunted. And it became pretty clear that Betsy
• 7:33
  Speaker 2: was getting haunted because this belwitch did not like the
• 7:36
  Speaker 2: fact that she was engaged to a guy named Joshua
• 7:39
  Speaker 2: Gardner local kid, and she tried to keep this wedding
• 7:42
  Speaker 2: on but eventually would break it off in eighteen twenty
• 7:45
  Speaker 2: one and marry an old guy so old. How old
• 7:49
  Speaker 2: was he? He was so old that she ended up
• 7:52
  Speaker 2: nursing the man for eleven years before he eventually died.
• 7:57
  Speaker 1: Yeah, Betsy fell on hardships of her own after she
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: moved out of her father's house. She had eight children,
• 8:04
  Speaker 1: and four of them.
• 8:05
  Speaker 2: In that eleven years with the old sick guy.
• 8:07
  Speaker 1: I don't know if it was during or before. I
• 8:11
  Speaker 1: don't know how long they were married before he fell ill.
• 8:14
  Speaker 1: I don't know. But yes, they had eight children for sure,
• 8:18
  Speaker 1: but only four made it to adulthood sadly, so, Betsy
• 8:22
  Speaker 1: had her own troubles because of the Joshua Gardner thing.
• 8:25
  Speaker 1: But John Bell, the Witch saved the worst for him.
• 8:29
  Speaker 1: Like she was verbally abusive to him, she was physically
• 8:32
  Speaker 1: abusive to him. Shortly after she appeared, John Bell was
• 8:36
  Speaker 1: afflicted by some unknown illness and just kept getting worse
• 8:40
  Speaker 1: and worse over the next few years. As the haunting
• 8:42
  Speaker 1: war on, he would have seizures sometimes Chuck, and as
• 8:46
  Speaker 1: he came out of the Caesars seizures, the Bell Witch
• 8:48
  Speaker 1: would slap him around.
• 8:50
  Speaker 2: Man.
• 8:50
  Speaker 1: She was really mean and ruthless toward John Bell. She
• 8:53
  Speaker 1: hated John Bell.
• 8:54
  Speaker 2: Can you imagine that that? Like he comes out of
• 8:56
  Speaker 2: a seizure and she's like, hey, what do you think
• 8:58
  Speaker 2: of this?
• 8:59
  Speaker 1: Smack smacks, man, I've been waiting for you to come
• 9:01
  Speaker 1: out of it. O.
• 9:03
  Speaker 2: He sadly passed on in December eighteen twenty. He believed
• 9:07
  Speaker 2: that the Witch had poisoned him, and apparently the Witch
• 9:10
  Speaker 2: confirmed this, and the day before he died said, it's
• 9:13
  Speaker 2: useless for you to try and relieve Old Jack. I've
• 9:16
  Speaker 2: got him this time. He will never get up from
• 9:18
  Speaker 2: that bed again. I put it there and gave Old
• 9:21
  Speaker 2: Jack a big dose of it last night while he
• 9:24
  Speaker 2: was asleep, which fixed him.
• 9:26
  Speaker 1: Nice. There's a nice little preview of our Halloween episode.
• 9:31
  Speaker 2: Oh, I hope. So the neighbors found out about the
• 9:33
  Speaker 2: stuff too.
• 9:34
  Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, so he swore his family, John Belswar's family
• 9:38
  Speaker 1: to secrecy. This is just kind of not the thing
• 9:40
  Speaker 1: that you wanted your fellow townsfolk in eighteen seventeen Tennessee
• 9:43
  Speaker 1: to know about. But it just became such a big
• 9:46
  Speaker 1: deal that it spread and got out, and so some
• 9:50
  Speaker 1: of the townsfolk tried to catch the witch. They tried
• 9:53
  Speaker 1: to one guy tried to shoot the witch to no vail. Right,
• 9:59
  Speaker 1: No one could do anything to asswage the Bell Witch.
• 10:02
  Speaker 1: They even came up with their own legends too. The
• 10:04
  Speaker 1: one that stood out to me the most was that
• 10:07
  Speaker 1: at one point, the Bell Witch recited two different sermons
• 10:11
  Speaker 1: verbatim that were being given delivered at two different churches
• 10:16
  Speaker 1: at that moment, miles away from one another. And I mean,
• 10:20
  Speaker 1: if that's not an eighteen seventeen Tennessee folk superstition, that
• 10:25
  Speaker 1: you'd just be like, damn when somebody told you that, Yeah,
• 10:28
  Speaker 1: I don't know what it is.
• 10:29
  Speaker 2: Yeah, because that's literally impossible in that time to know
• 10:34
  Speaker 2: exactly what was being said in two different places at once.
• 10:36
  Speaker 1: There's a lot there's a lot of holes in that
• 10:39
  Speaker 1: legend for sure.
• 10:41
  Speaker 2: Thankfully, after John died, maybe taken care of by the
• 10:45
  Speaker 2: Bell Witch, the hauntings basically stopped. I don't think we
• 10:49
  Speaker 2: mentioned that at his funeral the witch even haunted him.
• 10:52
  Speaker 2: There was like singing, drinking songs and interrupting the wake
• 10:55
  Speaker 2: in the funeral. But much later, in eighteen forty nine,
• 10:58
  Speaker 2: the Saturday Evening Post would publish a story that people
• 11:03
  Speaker 2: basically said, it's like the first commercial publication of this story,
• 11:07
  Speaker 2: and it accused Betsy of being behind the whole thing,
• 11:10
  Speaker 2: and she threatened to sue unless they printed an apology
• 11:14
  Speaker 2: and a retraction, which they did so I guess they
• 11:16
  Speaker 2: did make that up, and Betsy just, you know, she
• 11:19
  Speaker 2: never wanted to talk about it, she aged, she never
• 11:21
  Speaker 2: spoke of the Bellwitch.
• 11:23
  Speaker 1: Yes, so the Bellwich, I'm pretty sure even at the time,
• 11:27
  Speaker 1: but certainly shortly afterward. In Tennessee and the parts of Tennessee,
• 11:31
  Speaker 1: it was attributed to a local woman named Kate Bats.
• 11:34
  Speaker 1: And there's a couple different explanations for why Kate Bats
• 11:37
  Speaker 1: would care about the Bell family so much that she
• 11:39
  Speaker 1: would hound them beyond the grave. The first one takes
• 11:43
  Speaker 1: place entirely in Tennessee, because we didn't say but not
• 11:46
  Speaker 1: just Tennessee, but also North Carolina and Mississippi put some
• 11:49
  Speaker 1: claim on the Bell Witch even though it all happened
• 11:52
  Speaker 1: in Tennessee. But in the first explanation, John Bell, remember
• 11:56
  Speaker 1: we said he was one of the bigger planters. He
• 11:58
  Speaker 1: had a three hundred plus acre homes dead that he'd
• 12:00
  Speaker 1: built by acquiring land from neighbors. And there was one
• 12:04
  Speaker 1: land deal that he had with the brother in law
• 12:07
  Speaker 1: of Kate Bats, a man by the name of Benjamin,
• 12:09
  Speaker 1: and Bell is said to have taken advantage of Benjamin
• 12:13
  Speaker 1: on the deal, and that in her death Kate hounded
• 12:17
  Speaker 1: John Bell to the grave and revenge for this land deal.
• 12:20
  Speaker 2: Why would he do Benjamin Brant like that, I don't know,
• 12:23
  Speaker 2: such a fine actor.
• 12:24
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 12:25
  Speaker 2: The other version, like you said, takes place also in
• 12:28
  Speaker 2: North Carolina, because they also do lay claim. And this
• 12:31
  Speaker 2: is that Bell well, seemingly he had sex with Kate
• 12:37
  Speaker 2: Bats and had an affair with Kate Bats and that
• 12:40
  Speaker 2: is why he left to go to Tennessee because he
• 12:43
  Speaker 2: had had this affair broke it off. Kate was really
• 12:47
  Speaker 2: sore at this, obviously, and threatened to tell everybody, including
• 12:50
  Speaker 2: the family, and so, as the legend goes, Bell tied
• 12:53
  Speaker 2: her up in a smokehouse and left her there to die,
• 12:55
  Speaker 2: and she haunted him there, and so they had to
• 12:58
  Speaker 2: pack up and leave the Tennessee and she was like, Oh, no,
• 13:01
  Speaker 2: I don't think you know how ghost witches work. We
• 13:03
  Speaker 2: can we can travel interstate Tennessee's and not that far away.
• 13:07
  Speaker 1: Yep. The whole way. She just kept going, are we
• 13:09
  Speaker 1: there yet? So one of the things that makes the
• 13:14
  Speaker 1: story so unsettling, aside from all the details of it,
• 13:17
  Speaker 1: and if you really want to dive into it, check
• 13:19
  Speaker 1: out Pat Fitzhugh's website Bellewitch dot org. Like really has
• 13:23
  Speaker 1: a lot of exhaustive research on it. But one of
• 13:26
  Speaker 1: the things that makes it unsettling, like I was saying,
• 13:29
  Speaker 1: is that these people like really did live in North
• 13:31
  Speaker 1: Carolina and Tennessee at the time. This legend covers like, Yeah,
• 13:35
  Speaker 1: genealogists have found Kate Bats in Edgecombe County. They found
• 13:39
  Speaker 1: Kate Bats and Adams, Tennessee. Apparently Bats is still live
• 13:42
  Speaker 1: in Adams, Tennessee, and there's Bells as well. That the
• 13:47
  Speaker 1: Bell family graveyard has all these people's headstones from the
• 13:50
  Speaker 1: correct timeframe. So the idea that these people really did
• 13:54
  Speaker 1: live and that at the time they believed that this
• 13:57
  Speaker 1: was happening to the Bell family, as did the Bell family.
• 14:01
  Speaker 1: That that, I don't know. I think that makes it
• 14:03
  Speaker 1: even cooler. It's not like it's not like the the
• 14:06
  Speaker 1: the hitchhiker with the hook hand or something like that,
• 14:10
  Speaker 1: Like this actually happened.
• 14:11
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean this, I think throws it in there
• 14:13
  Speaker 2: with a category of like the Amiteville House and stuff
• 14:16
  Speaker 2: like that, of these supposed real hauntings that took place,
• 14:19
  Speaker 2: for sure, but you can still go there. It's like
• 14:22
  Speaker 2: a tourist destination. Apparently, the town of six hundred and
• 14:25
  Speaker 2: seventy four people. It's a pretty big boon for their economy,
• 14:29
  Speaker 2: you think, because they have rebuilt the house has gone,
• 14:31
  Speaker 2: but they really rebuilt a replica and it's in its place.
• 14:34
  Speaker 2: It must be so popular.
• 14:37
  Speaker 1: Yeah, you can tour it inside the replica of the house.
• 14:40
  Speaker 1: There's also a cave on John Bell's property that they
• 14:43
  Speaker 1: believe the Bell Witch lives in, and you can tour
• 14:48
  Speaker 1: that cave as well. I can't remember how much it was,
• 14:51
  Speaker 1: but it was reasonably priced. It's not going to break
• 14:54
  Speaker 1: you for a family of four and again, it's just
• 14:57
  Speaker 1: an hour north of Nashville. It looks quite quite neat.
• 15:00
  Speaker 1: They also offer lantern guided tours in the dark, so
• 15:04
  Speaker 1: if you're really feeling scary, maybe do that one.
• 15:08
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and if they don't have some sort of animatronic
• 15:11
  Speaker 2: rabbit dog, they're doing it wrong.
• 15:13
  Speaker 1: That's right. The whole town's saving up for it. Don't
• 15:16
  Speaker 1: you worry. Tell them, Chuck.
• 15:19
  Speaker 2: I think that means short stuff is out.
• 15:24
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• 15:27
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• 15:31
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