Ghosts and Demons: The Truth of the Bell Witch

By KyL Cobb

As part of the Ghosts and Demon series, The Truth Behind the Bell Witch is a scholarly and skeptically review of the legends behind the 1817 Bell Witch Poltergeist case in Adams, Tennessee.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Apr 2, 2016
• ISBN: 9781365017315

Book preview

Ghosts and Demons: The Truth of the Bell Witch

Ghosts and Demons: The Truth of the Bell Witch

Other books by KyL T. Cobb, Jr.:

Ghosts and Demons: The Lost Things

Griffin, Georgia: We Could Have Been Famous… Vol 1- Glory

Griffin, Georgia: We Could Have Been Famous… Vol 2- Heroes

Ghosts and Demons: The Truth of the Bell Witch

Griffin, Georgia: We Could Have Been Famous… Vol 3

(coming Summer 2016)

Ghosts and Demons: Forgotten Lore

(coming Fall 2016)

Ghosts and Demons: The Truth of the Bell Witch

KyL T. Cobb, Jr.

Last Gasp Publishing

2016

Copyright © 2016 by KyL T. Cobb, Jr.

All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review or scholarly journal.

First Printing: 2016

ISBN 978-1-365-01731-5

Last GASPS publishing

1643B Savannah Highway, Suite 366

Charleston, SC 29407 USA

www.LastGasps com

www.GhostsAndDemons.com

Dedication

For my father, the late Senator Kyle T. Cobb and my mother Marian Tarpley Cobb, you gave me an impossibly great start…

For my hero brother Tonja P. Cobb, you were always saving people and fearlessly charging in where angels feared to tread…

For Amanda, you made me want to be a better person…

For the witch shaman that worked her magic to heal me while I was ill on Taquile Island in Peru…

And, for all the others that I have lost along the way.

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank my director at Dragon-con for many years, Nicholas Forte. Not only did he keep telling me that I needed to write a book but in 2015, he picked the last topic on my potential speech list as my headlining topic for Dragon-con. As a result, this tiny book was created.

Though I have never met him, paranormal researcher and skeptic Joe Nickell with the Skeptical Inquirer magazine has had a huge impact on me as a researcher. His masterful research and analysis of the Bell Witch has disproven much of the hype.

When asked about my writing influences, three men come to mind: Neil Gaiman, Douglas Adams, Lewis Grizzard.

Neil is the magical writer that has the innate ability to unravel reality and reassemble it in any fashion he chooses.

Douglas Adams was the first writer to ever make me laugh while reading. He was a brilliant man and his writing will remain timeless.

I am fortunate enough to say that I have had the pleasure of meeting both of these literary giants.

Brother Lewis Grizzard was the kind of man that you wanted to know. He was a great among the tradition of Southern humorist. Even though he dearly loved the University of Georgia, no one is perfect. In spite of his flaw, his columns in the Atlanta Journal always amazed me. They were funny and insightful. He understood what made life in the old south tick. His death was the first time the loss of a celebrity impacted me.

Introduction

As a Southerner and a paranormal investigator, the subject of the Bell Witch has often lingered on the outskirts of stories about haunting in the South. While many of my colleagues have a passing familiarity of the events that occurred in Tennessee, most never spend the time to do the difficult work of historic paranormal investigation. Hollywood and profiteering from the Bell Witch legend have only further served to distort the truth behind the alleged paranormal events.

Were the case to occur today, modern media outlets would surround Adams, Tennessee in a matter of days. In the event of activity on the scale described in the Ingram Bell Witch book, not only would proof of the paranormal be absolute but at least one television investigator would have been possessed. (Wait, a minute, he already was…) If all of the events surrounding the Bell Witch story did occur, then this is the single most important paranormal case ever to be experienced.

Two hundred years later, why is the case of a paranormal event in the wilderness of Tennessee still relevant?

During the late nineteenth century and early twentieth centuries, one of the leading forces of research into poltergeist events was the Society for Psychical Research. William Barrett and his teams of investigators canvassed Europe identifying and disproving hundreds of cases of alleged poltergeist events.

As part of their research the Society compiled what was considered the definitive list of documented poltergeist cases around the world. While most of the cases recorded by the Society were European, the 1817 incident of the Bell Witch in Adams, Tennessee is an import event on their list.

The following text is an attempt to clear the record on the truth behind the Bell Witch events. Two-hundred years of lies, legend, and profiteering have left the Bell Witch story an anomaly for paranormal investigators.

This book will look at the Bell Witch events in two parts. The majority of the book is designed to present a summary of the Bell Witch activities in a clear, concise form. The later portion of the book looks at the Bell Witch events from a skeptical perspective.

While the various forms of the Bell Witch legend can be fun and entertaining, from a historical perspective, the truth is just as noble an aim.

Figure 1 Frequent illustration of Betsy Bell from Ingram

Chapter 1: The Nature of Poltergeists

The term poltergeist is German (poltem- to make noise and geist- spirit). Generally, a poltergeist can be described as a series paranormal events involving the unexplained, and often agitated, movements of