- The Bell Witch case is one of the most documented, most violent, and most controversial hauntings in American history.

(tense music) Between 1817 and 1820, the Bell family of Tennessee claimed they endured a series of relentless psychological, verbal, and physical attacks by an unknown presence.

They believed this entity was there to destroy the family, and a mysterious death only fueled their paranoia.

This isn't a regular old ghost story.

What started as a community concern made national headlines decades later and left us with a paper trail we are still trying to make sense of today.

The Bell Witch became one of America's first true crime mysteries.

Because the strange witch entity didn't just haunt the Bells, it may have murdered one of them.

(spooky music) No text gives more notoriety to the Bell hauntings, and for some, more validity, than M.V.

Ingram's 1894 book "An Authenticated History of the Famous Bell Witch."

The book contains the journal entries of a member of the Bell family, Richard Williams, who vowed to record the facts as he knew them, some 26 years after the incidents took place.

Richard's son didn't permit Ingram to publish the story until the immediate family were deceased.

Ingram took Richard's records and collected testimonies of community members who witnessed the events, publishing the results and letting the public draw their own conclusions.

These accounts will be our primary source for attempting to decipher the case of the Bell Witch.

The story begins in 1817.

(gentle music) John Bell is a successful farmer living along Tennessee's Red River, with several hundred acres of land, a two-story home, and is widely considered a respected member of his community.

He and his wife, Lucy Bell, built a stable, quiet life for their six children there in Robertson County.

It was the kind of household where things were predictable and consistent.

But for the Bell family, that quiet, peaceful life was about to collapse.

According to the earliest accounts, the first sign of trouble started when John spotted a large, unknown creature that suddenly appeared in his cornfield.

John figured it was probably a dog, but far bigger than any hound he had ever seen.

John shot at it, (gun bangs) and it ran away, seemingly unharmed.

A few days later, John's son Drew spotted an extraordinarily large bird perched on a fence, which he thought was a wild turkey.

Drew ran inside the house and grabbed his gun.

As he approached within shooting distance, the bird suddenly flew off.

(wings flapping) Drew realized it wasn't a turkey at all, but instead some sort of oversized, unusual bird he had never seen before.

Then things took a supernatural turn.

(tense music) While walking the property one evening, the younger daughter, Betsy, saw what she described as an apparition of a little girl in a green dress hanging by a noose from a tall oak tree.

The Bell family didn't quite know what to make of what they had seen, but they decided to move on and try to forget it.

And for a while, life returned to normal.

Then came the inexplicable sounds.

(knuckles knocking) The family heard loud knocks coming from outside the house.

Inside, they heard gnawing sounds, like rats chewing on the bedposts, sounds of dogs fighting, and noisy metal scraping against the floor.

The origin of these sounds couldn't be determined.

As soon as anyone lit a candle to investigate the disturbances, they would suddenly stop.

And events kept escalating.

Objects began to move on their own, and the children mysteriously fell out of their beds.

Their horses were found (horse neighing) outside the stable, kicking and stomping like something was after them.

John and Betsy took the brunt of the physical and verbal abuse.

John reported frequent difficulty eating or speaking, feeling as if something was stuck in his mouth.

(person screams) Betsy was slapped and pinched by an unknown force.

She insisted something was after her, and she was terrified.

(person screaming) Matriarch Lucy, on the other hand, seemed to have the ghost's affection and respect.

When sick, it reportedly helped nurse her to health.

At John's insistence, the Bell family endured this treatment in secret for months, perhaps for up to a year, hoping the disturbances would stop.

No neighbor or friend knew what was happening.

Whispers of hauntings or witchcraft would bring unwanted scrutiny to the family.

And John had a bit of a shady past.

You see, John Bell used to be a plantation owner in North Carolina.

One day, John shot and killed his plantation overseer.

He claimed self-defense.

At trial, John was found not guilty.

He never saw jail time, but his crops and livestock declined rapidly in the following year, driving him to bankruptcy and forcing the family to move to Tennessee.

A woman enslaved by the Bell family who lived in their household told the family that the incident with the overseer was the cause of the haunted happenings.

She claimed that the haint, or ghost, of the overseer had followed them from North Carolina to Tennessee, and that it had attacked her one night as she sat up watching over the children.

Whether John's violent past conjured the Bell Witch remains a point of debate.

By some accounts, there is no ghost of the murdered overseer.

Some claimed it was once a happy spirit that only became malicious after the family intruded upon its space.

In other variations, the spirit was claimed to be that of an Indigenous person whose burial site was unintentionally violated by the Bell family.

The strange events eventually became so concerning that John broke his silence, asking his friend James Johnston for help.

Bringing this to the attention of a noted member of the church is a big deal deep in Bible Belt territory, and John was an elder at this church.

Though the Salem witch trials were about 125 years prior, claiming witchcraft was afoot was still a huge cause for alarm, at least in the rural South.

In 1817, the Bell's home region was a notable hub for a growing Methodist community.

And one of its founders, John Wesley, claimed that as a child in the 18th century, his family was haunted by a ghost they called Old Jeffrey.

Wesley saw the supernatural not as a possibility but a very real thing, and those beliefs trickled into Methodist teachings.

In addition, Protestant and Baptist revival meetings drew crowds of hundreds, including regular discussions of ghosts, demons, and the devil.

John knew the risks of crying witchcraft: additional scrutiny and some serious gossip.

So it's pretty clear he was desperate.

He decided to ask Johnston and Johnston's wife to stay in the house overnight to witness the events for themselves.

Johnston led the family in prayer and asked God to reveal the cause of their torment.

Soon after, everyone in the household went to bed.

(ominous music) Later in the middle of the night, Johnston and his wife were startled awake by the same strange noises the Bell family had described, and their sheets were violently ripped from their bodies.

Johnston was stunned, sitting upright in bed in disbelief.

Regaining his composure, he spoke directly to the presence, demanding it reveal itself and explain why it was there.

The response convinced him that the disturbances came from an intelligent source.

The next day, he urged John to make the matter public.

Johnston would go on to tell others that the devil and his demons from hell were to blame for the incidents at the Bell farm.

Soon, the farm filled with visitors eager to investigate.

Eventually, the presence got a name: the Bell Witch.

As rumors of the allegedly demonic presence spread, so too did the Bell Witch.

The story spread quickly throughout the county.

Neighbors began reporting their own encounters, claiming the unseen presence pulled the covers off of their beds and spoke to them.

It was said to be heard reciting scripture, having full conversations, and even repeating sermons.

Some believed it all fell on a woman named Mary Catherine Batts, known locally as Kate, who had a long-standing grudge against John over land dispute.

Originally from the North, Kate was labeled an outsider as soon as she arrived in the community.

She was described as a large, formidable woman who was unapologetically headstrong.

Kate cared for her ill husband, Frederick, raised their three children, and managed their sizable property.

Kate also maintained their land and business affairs.

And by most accounts, she did a fine job.

The Batts family was considered well-to-do.

At one point, the mysterious entity claimed to be Kate's fetch, or spirit.

Already seen as outcasts, the Batts were quickly shunned.

Kate was even labeled a witch by locals, although she was never formally persecuted as one.

The name Kate for the ghost, however, stuck around.

While the Bell Witch seemed to become a bit of a sensation, the Bell family still reported regular torment with escalating physical attacks.

Betsy continued to get the brunt of the witch's wrath.

She woke from night terrors with sleep paralysis, claiming something had been hitting her chest.

Birds would mysteriously appear in her hair.

After one incident, when the witch spoke to Betsy as she sat at her mirror, the family tried to shoot at it.

But whatever it was could not be struck.

Men who courted Betsy were scared away, the ghost intervening when talk of marriage was brought to the table.

In one story, suitor Joshua Gardner even claimed the ghost had warned him that his affections were in vain since the ghost itself loved Betsy and would let no one have her.

Soon after, Betsy became sick, her face strained of color, and she began to sleep more and more.

Similar stories from North Carolina began to overlap with the Bell Witch legend, like the story of Old Nance, another unseen ghost that verbally communicated with the father of a rural family, promising to follow him to the grave.

Also, like the Bell Witch, she was known to pull the covers off people's beds while they were sleeping.

News of the Bell Witch continued to spread, eventually reaching Andrew Jackson, a celebrated general and national figure at the time.

One of the Bell's sons had fought alongside Jackson in the War of 1812.

So when Jackson heard the stories of the haunting, he made a point to visit the Bell farm to investigate.

(horse neighing) As Jackson and his small party approached the property, their wagon suddenly came to a halt, as if caught by an unseen obstacle.

The men tried to free it, but the wheels refused to move.

Only after a disembodied voice mocked them, allowing them to proceed, did the wagon move again.

That night, Jackson and his companions witnessed the same disturbances described by the Bell family: loud knocks, disembodied voices, and violent interruptions of their sleep.

By the next morning, Jackson was eager to leave.

He allegedly said he would rather go to war with the British again than spend another night with the Bell Witch.

The disturbances at the Bell farm continued for years, wearing the family down both emotionally and physically.

Things came to an end only after a tragedy.

In December of 1820, John's health collapsed.

He became bedridden and deathly ill, struggling to speak or swallow.

His condition worsened rapidly over the course of a few days.

His family believed he was dying of natural causes, a grim outcome of years spent under constant strain.

John Bell died on December 20th.

Shortly after, his family discovered a vial of an unknown substance in his cupboard, something no one recalled seeing before.

When the substance was given to a cat, it died almost immediately.

According to those present when the vial was thrown into the fire, a bright blue flame shot up the chimney, which suggested arsenic.

So what happened at the Bell farm?

It seems that John was poisoned and died, and quite a few people swore up and down that they had direct contact with the spirit, and it was perhaps a disgruntled poltergeist.

To the Bell family and many in the community, the answer was clear.

Whatever plagued the household for years, tormenting them psychologically and physically, drove John Bell to his grave.

There were no further incidents after his death.

As the years went on, belief in the supernatural waned and people searched for other explanations.

One theory held that one of Betsy's jealous suitors staged the disturbances to frighten away other love interests.

There's another interesting theory, that Betsy herself was behind the haunting, having mastered the art of ventriloquism.

Supporters of this theory point out that the Bell Witch seemed to speak only when Betsy was present.

Others went further, suggesting a motive.

Betsy, under pressure to marry or perhaps just unhappy with her situation, created frightening noises and a disembodied voice as a way out.

But was it Kate the neighbor?

For what it's worth, John himself never believed that the spirit of Aunt Kate or Old Kate was behind the attacks.

But that didn't stop the rumors.

Because how else could you explain a strong, independent woman in charge?

The circumstances surrounding John's death have led some historians to suspect arsenic poisoning.

Perhaps a member of his family or one of the people he enslaved used the chaos of the Bell Witch as cover to settle a grievance or remove a powerful figure.

If so, the legend may have obscured not a supernatural crime but a human one.

As the years passed, the Bell children married, moved to nearby states, and started their own families.

The story of what troubled their family back in Tennessee was told in different ways, but their belief in its reality never wavered.

The validity of the tale seemed to seep into the community in profound ways.

In 1868, two Robertson County residents would go on trial for killing a man.

Their defense was that the deceased had claimed he was a wizard who had been gifted powers by the Bell Witch.

The suspects would ultimately be found not guilty.

Stories of the Bell Witch continued to be shared regionally in Mississippi and Tennessee into the 20th century, and regional newspapers continued to publish legends of the Bell Witch.

There was even a radio play featuring the Bell Witch.

Legend has it that if you stand in front of a mirror in the dark and declare that you do not believe in the Bell Witch three times, she will appear in the reflection and may even harm you.

(person screaming) Sound familiar?

Legends mix fact and fiction, real people with gossip, and the Bell Witch has all of that, plus a more-than-healthy dose of folklore, all tied up into a ghost story that still stirs us to this day.

Even with all the records, we can't be sure what really happened to the Bell family, but the events continue to speak to us as we comb through the testimony and enter that uneasy place between history and horror.

With several hundred acres- - (coughs) I'm sorry.

(people laughing) - Sorry, I shouldn't laugh.

Did you inhale the bug?

(chuckles) Neighbors began reporting their... Sorry, the bug just, okay, we're good.

Were to blame for the incidents at the Bell farm.

Hold on, I think the bug is on my hair.

No.

That's an angry bug.

♪ Do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do ♪ - [Cameraman] Love it.