The Bell Witch is an old piece of creepy Tennessee folklore that presents a gameable variation on the standard haunting: a dangerous, powerful, profoundly malicious spirit with whom you can nonetheless hold a normal conversation. The story was codified in the 1894 book An Authenticated History of the Famous Bell Witch. Much of the book purports to be a simple reproduction of eyewitness accounts, though there’s ample room to suspect author M.V. Ingram fabricated his sources. I’ll be writing as if everything in the book is true, because it’s tiring to read “Ingram claims” over and over again.
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Thanks also to Patreon backer Robert Nichols for encouraging me to look into the Bell Witch!
The story started in 1817 in Robertson County, Tennessee, north of Nashville. Middle Tennessee’s frontier era was coming to a close, but was not quite over. The titular Bells were a well-off farming family who lived in a large, two-story house and owned several enslaved Black laborers. The Bells and their forced laborers started seeing odd things: a strange black animal like none they’d seen and with no fear of humans, a big bird of an unknown species, and a pretty girl in a green dress playing and swinging from an oak tree. Soon the Bells were afflicted by strange events with no visible source. At night, they were kept awake by sounds of rapping, scratching, animals gnawing on wood, and the wet noise of someone sucking their teeth and smacking their lips. Their sheets were yanked off in the middle of the night. Their hair was pulled, their faces slapped, their bodies stuck with pins. When they crossed the yard, some unseen person threw rocks and chunks of wood at them. Lights flitted across the yard, held by no visible hand. Two among the Bells were particularly targeted: the patriarch, John Bell Sr., and his daughter Betsy, everyone’s favorite.
The spirit behind these events is called the “Bell Witch,” but it has more in common with poltergeist stories than witch ones. Ingram, the storyteller who set the tale down in its modern form, speculated the witch might be a human sorceress, a demon from hell, a natural being that inhabits the Tennessee woods, or a soul (possibly of a Native woman) who can’t get into heaven or hell.
The Bells soon picked up that the spirit could understand their speech. It paused its torments when spoken to, then would resume more intensely. Visitors to the Bell house kept trying to get the spirit to answer questions, which it eventually did by rapping, then developed into whistling, and finally to a low whisper. Once it started talking, it seemed the witch never wanted to stop. It offered little prophecies, like “don’t go on that trip, nothing will come of it.” She seemed to know everything that happened in the county, even events that happened simultaneously or while she was talking to someone else. She quoted scripture inerrantly and debated theology. For anyone to get any sleep, the witch had to be kept constantly entertained with conversation. But her chattiness served a wicked purpose. She knew about old quarrels that had been settled or forgotten and found ways to reignite them by mentioning the odd detail.
The witch offered all sorts of explanations for her origins. First she told the Bells, “I am the spirit of a person who was buried in the woods nearby, and the grave has been disturbed, my bones disinterred and scattered, and one of my teeth was lost under this house, and I am here looking for that tooth.” This happened, so the witch said, when one of the Bell children (Hall) dug up a Native grave, brought the jawbone home, and threw it at the wall. His father John had Hall put the jawbone back and bury the grave back up, but in the throwing one of the teeth popped out and fell through a crack between the floorboards. But no tooth was ever found. The witch later mocked the family for believing her story.
She also said, “I am the spirit of an early immigrant, who brought a large sum of money and buried my treasure for safe keeping until needed. In the meanwhile I died without divulging the secret, and I have returned in the spirit for the purpose of making known the hiding place, and I want Betsy Bell to have the money.” The witch let the Bells and their guests—for by this point the Bells were constantly overrun with guests wanting to speak with the witch—wheedle the hiding place out of her. She described a spot by a spring under a giant rock. Everyone spent all day at hard labor moving the rock and digging under it, but found no treasure. When they got home, the witch laughed at them and recounted all they did by the spring in the most mocking terms.
At one point the witch claimed to be the spirit of Mrs. Kate Batts, a nice—albeit eccentric—lady whose husband was insane and had to be looked after. For her misfortunes, some people shunned Batts. When the witch claimed to be her, those who were already predisposed to mistrust Batts doubled down on it. The witch later denied being Batts, but the name “Kate” stuck, and everyone called the witch “Kate” for the rest of its time with them. In this way, the witch was able to torment Mrs. Kate Batts with hardly any effort.
And of course through all this, the witch continued to physically abuse the Bells, mostly at night.
Among the Bells’ many curious visitors were those who came to formally investigate the witch. One was a detective who sought to debunk her. Kate stayed silent all day, then beat the hell out of him after everyone went to bed. When someone lit a candle, she stopped, but hung around all night verbally abusing him while he sat on a chair in the candlelight, waiting to depart at daybreak.
Another investigator was a wizard, Dr. Mize of Simpson County, Kentucky. Kate kept silent for four days while Dr. Mize puttered about the Bell house making potions and casting spells. When she finally spoke to him, she chatted about his spellcraft and revealed a depth of knowledge that terrified him, and he lit out of there.
A third investigator was General Andrew Jackson, hero of the Battle of New Orleans and future president of the United States. He brought his hangers-on and friends on a festive trip up from Nashville. Among them was a witch-slayer who packed a horse pistol loaded with a silver ball. As they entered the witch’s country, Kate seized their wagon and stuck it in place until Jackson acknowledged her power. When the party made camp that night, the witch visited them a second time. The witch-slayer tried to shoot where Kate’s voice came from, but the gun wouldn’t go off. Then the witch beat the hell out of him until he ran off. Spooked, Jackson’s party returned to Nashville the following day.
Kate’s physicality was variable. She was able to shake hands, but only did so with people she trusted. She said outright that she was afraid someone would grab her hand, not let go, and catch her. Was that actually something she feared, or just another one of her lies? One time, the witch traveled to William Porter’s cabin and got into bed with him. He couldn’t see her, but could see and feel the space she occupied when she rolled herself up in his blankets. He picked her up and tried to throw her in the fire, but she grew heavier and heavier (and fouler- and fouler-smelling) so he had to drop her and she disappeared from his cabin.
Kate sometimes let herself be seen, or perhaps conjured images she let people believe were her. In addition to the weird black critter and the big bird from the start of haunting, she appeared often as a rabbit, once as the biggest fish the Red River ever saw, and sometimes as a black dog with one, two, or zero heads. One time, Kate caused the apparitions of two young women and a boy, but not everyone could see them. Some of these apparitions may have also been among the four personalities Kate’s voice divided into for a few months. These four voices were Blackdog (harsh and feminine), Jerusalem (a boy’s voice), and Mathematics and Cypocryphy (delicate and feminine). The four made intolerable rows: quarreling, singing, blaspheming, and swearing. This was a mercifully temporary affair, and the four voices were soon replaced again by Kate.
The health of the Bells deteriorated from the years of stress. Father John Bell Jr. developed epilepsy. Eventually Kate gave him poison as he slept, which, combined with the seizures and the constant beatings, killed him. After John’s death, Kate grew less demonstrative, then disappeared in 1821 after her other usual target, daughter Betsy, called off an engagement the witch had always opposed. But Kate promised to return in seven years. When she returned in 1828, the family set about ignoring her. And though she practiced all her old torments, they did not give her attention. After two weeks, she left for good.
At your table, you might have your PCs hear about a haunt based on the Bell Witch. This spirit is terrorizing a community—John Sr. and Betsy in particular—beating people up, reviving old feuds, and generally being a menace. But others have already tried and failed to banish the creature. Detectives, wizards, witch-hunters, and generals have all proven inadequate to the task. PCs might want to start by investigating the avenues taken by their failed predecessors to learn from their mistakes.
So what actually works against the Bell Witch? The first solution in the story, letting Kate kill John and break up Betsy’s engagement, is obviously a no-go. The second solution, ignoring the witch, makes sense but is a little anticlimactic. Defeating a mystery being should be cooler than quieting your annoying little brother. The most fun solution at the gaming table, in my opinion, is figuring out what the Bell Witch actually is. Set up little tests and experiments to probe her nature. But be careful not to let this all-seeing being spot your attempts, because she will definitely attack you if she catches you! If you can determine her nature, you will know her weakness: salt against ghosts, iron against fairies, bismillah against jinn, etc.
Separate from this adventure hook, I love how the Bell witch gradually learns to speak. First, someone notices that it seems to understand language. After many, many attempts at questioning the spirit, it finally starts to respond through rapping. Over time, its answers develop into whistling, and finally whispering. At the table, you don’t have to limit this sort of development to ghosts. Awakened spells, baby AIs, or anything else intelligent but alien could start out mute. But every time the PCs interact with it as if it can speak, it moves one step further along in its development.
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An Authenticated History of the Famous Bell Witch by M. V. Ingram (1894)