Last Podcast On The Left - Episode 427: The Bell Witch Part I - Old Sugar Mouth

Episode Date: October 10, 2020

This week, we bring you the legend of the Bell Witch, a 19th century haunting. Farmer John Bell is pursued relentlessly by a gossipy entity. But what does it want?Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0

There's no place to escape to. This is the last stop. On the left. That's when the cannibalism started. What was that? Um, one thing I'm majorly confused on. One thing. Roast mode. Uh oh, set to roast mode. Set it at forget it. I am holding on by a thread. But how many descendants of the Bell family? How many are there? Oh.

There are hundreds of them. In every single documentary I was watching, each one has been like, well, as a direct descendant of the Bell family, I know exactly where the kitchen was, and it used to be right about here. It's just a man standing behind a bush, just like yesterday. This is where the kitchen was, and this is over here. That's where the bathroom might have been, and just him showing a rectangle with his hands. Meanwhile, it's just a field. Haunted house hunters. I like it.

They have no clue where anything is. And also, one thing that is very interesting about this entire phenomenon is how often you hear the name Dewey. No kidding. Like on a scream, huh? It is, I have not heard the name Dewey outside of a short bus so many times since all of this documentary series. Well, indeed, and I'm so tall, every bus to me is a short bus.

Welcome to the last podcast on the left, everyone. I am Ben with Marcus, and with Henry. Super excited for today's spooky tale, but before we get to that, I was thinking about this this morning. Does time tick down, or does time tick up? Because they say, oh, near the end of the game, it's a countdown. They say, oh, it's a final countdown, but then when you die, your time is up. Is this your fucking open mic?

No. Time, does it tick down, or does it tick up? I feel myself degrading. Because when they say it's a countdown, but then when you die, they say your time is up. Are you Brian Regans, handicapped cousin? Handicapable. All right, everyone.

Well, today's topic, wow, I thought that was going to go better, but you know what, does time tick up, or does it tick down? Countdown. That's nothing to do with the show. You're thinking about the playoffs. Yes. Oh, that's right. That's right.

We'll see if the Lakers can pull it off. By this time, the Lakers will be champions. All right, you want me to move on? I can see that you're upset with me. All right, I thought that was going to be a fun intro, but nonetheless, today we are on to a tale that I am super excited. We're all super excited about. We're talking about The Bell Witch.

The Bell Witch is one of the most famous ghosts in all of American history. The main ghoul and a terrifying tale in which this entity viciously attacked a young girl and her father on their Tennessee plantation over a period of three years in the early 1800s. The Bell Witch haunting is also somewhat unique and that it is one of those uncommon cases of paranormal activity in which death was directly caused by the poltergeist. Making The Bell Witch one of the few homicidal phantoms in American lore.

Very cool name. That'll be Johnny Depp's next pant. The Bell Witch also, it has surprisingly inspired a lot of different bands. There is a band called Bell Witch that is of a genre called sludge or doom metal. That I was reading the comments for and it seems the goal of sludge and doom metal is to play for as long with as little notes as possible. Marcus, our music historian, is that the proper description of sludge metal? That's a pretty accurate description, yeah. It's to give a sense of foreboding.

This story, The Bell Witch story, is also all the more horrifying for being inextricably wrapped in the cloth of the antebellum south and therefore the institution of slavery which blankets this entire tale in an extra layer of evil and darkness making it a true southern gothic yarn. As far as sources go, we had three. An American haunting by Brent Monahan, an authenticated history of the famous Bell Witch by M. Ingram,

and The Bell Witch, the full account by Pat Fitzhugh. However, the thing to remember about this story as we get into it is that all this happened between 1817 and 1820 and the first book about The Bell Witch was written 75 years after the original haunting. Damn, what is this? The Bible? It is old. Two Americans. This is very old. Oh, definitely.

But that said, people with intimate knowledge of the events did write tons of letters and some journal entries about what was happening as it was going on. And one of the Bell children did write about his experiences extensively even though he did document everything 30 years after it happened. This is such a proto, like, PR experience for America. It seemed to kind of set the precedent for how often this would happen with these types of ghost tales,

how the game of telephone would extend it into many generations. And it's interesting because we're going to see in this story a lot of the first times you would hear the structure of an American haunting, which it's interesting to see how this rural family suffered from a bunch of symptoms of the haunting that we now know are kind of boilerplate. Okay. And this haunting was also a regional phenomenon. It involved dozens, if not hundreds of witnesses.

And if that wasn't enough, the witch actually counts a famous United States president among its witness pool. Hmm, Wilford Brimley. Oh, he was never president. He was never president. Secretary of State. No kidding. So without further ado, let's get into the story of the Bell witch.

Yay. All right, we need some kind of wagon train music. I don't have coconuts. Right? I'm going to go to the bathroom, Daddy. Shut up. I'm going to turn this wagon right around. Look at that.

Now the bell which is so named not for the source of the haunting, but rather for the family that was the poltergeist victim. Hmm. John Bell, the patriarch of the clan, married his wife Lucy Williams in 1782 when he was 32 years old and she was 12. All right. Just have to clarify here, we are talking about the 1700s. When you say clan, is that with the C or a K?

It's a C. It's a C. Okay. But it's slowly morphed into a K. All right. Good to know. But I'm glad that you focused on clan and not his 12-year-old bride that, I mean, it's always important again, you got to raise your wife.

I don't think that's good. I like a fully raised lady. I do. I do like a mature. Yes. Within a few short years, the Bells had three surviving children out of four, which really ain't bad for a farming family at the end of the 19th century. That's incredible odds.

Yeah. Overall, the Bell family owned a 323 acre farm of cotton, corn and tobacco and owned nine people to do most of the work for them. On their first farm in North Carolina, it seemed like the Bell family farm was cursed. Although everyone else's crops in the region came up, John's routinely failed. Then his cows and hogs contracted an incurable disease

and all of his mules died of colic. It's because they weren't wearing condoms in the clubs. Oh, you want to be very careful, especially then. So the Bells moved to Tennessee to start anew and have even more children, adding three more to their brood. Although one of those did die, which gave the Bells a pretty impressive score of six children living and two under the ground. If those were free throws, you'd be an MVP.

Yeah. I mean, you're definitely on the team anyway. But there's weird stories about John Bell pre their move that have no substantiating facts whatsoever. There's a show that I watched called Cursed, The Bell Witch. The only way to describe it is that it's D&D being played by two old men that no one cares about in the whole fantasy world because one of them says that John Bell murdered a man named John Black

and that's why they had to flee North Carolina. And I went and I looked that up and there is not a single thing that says that. No evidence, huh? Not a bit. Well, you better believe it then. Now, think about there's no evidence saying that he didn't, though. You're right. That is true.

There's no evidence that says he did, though. What is this? Are we in court? Are we in dickhead court? Oh, my God. If Gary Beusey could be the judge like he's doing with all the animals, Gary Beusey, animal court, you got to check that out. It was on this farm in Tennessee that the Bell Witch hauntings would take place,

but the paranormal activity for the bells began well before the events of 1820. On their journey west out of North Carolina, the bells were witnesses to the infamous Brown Mountain Lights. I am a witness to that every morning. What are the Brown Mountain Lights? Here, if you go to 7-Eleven right now, you actually can get a whole pack of Brown Mountain Lights for 75 cents. I love that.

Oh, so you smoked half of the pack? That's right. Yeah. Well, somewhat similar to the Marfa Lights, these mysterious orbs, which still make appearances to this day, move through the Linville Gorge area in North Carolina, and science has still not been able to explain them. They're trying.

Yeah. Every night, there's a man with a lab coat out there trying to catch an orb and a fucking, like, he's got a big garbage bag. Really? Trying to catch him. They call him delusional, but I call him dad. Well, Folklore says that Brown Mountain

was the site of a great battle between Native American tribes, in which many Cherokees fell in battle to the Katabas, and the lights seen today are the spirits of Cherokee maidens searching for their lost loves. Aw. Cool fucking spectral loneliness. Yeah, that's sad. You wouldn't hope they would be happy in that plane, but...

Well, others say it's a UFO hotspot, but an author named Joe Nickel, writing for the skeptical inquirer, looking suitably skeptical and humorless, wearing a tan vest in his author portrait, says the modern lights are cars and trains, while the pre-auto accounts were merely Folklore and campfires. Boom.

Dog mean. Yeah, you gotta say it correctly. You actually have to use the proper accent, which is, um, the modern lights are cars and trains, while the pre-auto accounts were merely Folklore and campfire stories. Oh, my God. You missed one very important element. You missed the actually.

Actually. Actually. Put a handle on your undies, because I'm about to give you a Grundy. But regardless of what the Brown Mountain lights are, by journal accounts, the Bell family absolutely witnessed the Brown Mountain lights on their way to Tennessee in the early 1800s,

where the Bell family would pass into American Paranormal History. Can I do a slight reading from the authenticated history of the famous Bell Witch by M. Ingrin? Of course. The Bells were of the best blood of the land, men of brawn and brain. They came with the axe, the hoe, the plow, the encycl. They brought with them their customs

and notions of civilization in Christianity, having the Bible and the American Constitution for their guide. So by 1816, John Bell was one of the wealthiest and most influential men in his entire community, being it was around the Red River area of Tennessee. He was highly respected for his integrity, his Christian devotion, and his generous hospitality. In other words, no neighbor had anything bad to say

about John Bell. Is that common when it comes to people who see paranormal activity? Because oftentimes, they tend to be a little bit aloof. They tend to be sort of the town character. I mean, this person seems to be held in high regard. Well, this is before the hauntings. This is before.

And then normally what we see hauntings happen in isolated areas, which in the Antebellum South, they all were isolated areas. Every one of these houses were very deeply spread across the land. But also, is it in the Antebellum South, is anybody having nothing bad to say about John Bell actually bad?

Yeah, because I guess he fit right in with the Antebellum South. That's a good point. Sometimes you want to rebel a little bit, especially if you're in a slave-filled South. Well, the only neighbor who had anything bad to say about John Bell was Kate Bats, aka Old Kate. Now, despite the nickname, Old Kate was only about 40 years old.

I guess when you marry your wife at 12, you look at a 40-year-old like, Kate was a frightening redhead. And from accounts, she possessed no greater height than most women, but certainly greater girth. That's a roast. But this wasn't necessarily a fad chain. Kate was just enormously stout,

with biceps that were said to be inassimily used at the time as thick as a young man's thighs. Now, Kate had taken over the family farm after her husband Fred had his legs crushed by a falling tree. It was said that after the accident, Kate, who'd always been outspoken, became even more so. Well, now she had the man's position. She had to move to the head of the farm

and had to take over everything. Kate, I think, is a classic example of a somewhat modern, quote-unquote, modern woman being born in an old time, where she was very independent, very intense. She just was kind of jacked. She's just like my grandmother. My grandmother wasn't jacked,

but she was a modern-day lady in the 40s. Their essay drove her completely insane. Really did? Really did. But Kate wasn't alone on her farm. Besides the invalid Fred, there were also her sons, Jack and Calvin, who were said to be spindly and gawky boys who, quote, didn't take to society.

Oh, my God. Is it just like, just see dog meat standing next to his big stout brothers? You know, like they're all looking, all right, now Charlie, you're going to take care of the ranch. Nice. And Tom, you're going to take care of the horses. And Marcus, you're going to take care of the farm poetry.

Isn't that nice? You can write it right there on the rocks. Gal, have you know that cowboy poetry is a long and storied tradition? Of course it is. Yes, it is. Absolutely. This one's called the girth of a calf.

Yes. Round and round, the calf does go. Round and round, my balls do flow. Honestly, I need to spend more time on my poetry because I am. You know what, lift up the tail and let her go. You know. Yeah.

That's a wonderful couplet. Isn't that nice? Well, Jack, Calvin, Fred and Kate, they were joined by Kate's daughter, Mary, who does not really show up in this story at all, besides this one mention, because Mary was actually said to be beautiful and bright. And it sounds like she got the fuck out of the bats farm

as soon as she could. Didn't we see the same thing with Jeff? Yeah. Wasn't it the same thing? There's always like one kid. That's what I like about any sort of story about a fookie, like the monsters. Oh, yeah.

There's always one kid who is normal, who has to look at all of his shit and just being like, can I just not be in any of the like historical reenactments? Can you just like cut me out of it? Because I'm just going to go make fashion hats. Fan fiction, Adam's family versus the Munsters, who wins straight up brawl,

Mortal Kombat style. Adam's family. You think so? Absolutely. They're more clever. The Munsters are pretty, I'd say they're, I don't know, if you did not let any tricks into play,

if it was straight up bare knuckle boxing, Munsters are going to take them. Gomez was an incredible fencer. But I'm talking about straight up bare knuckle brawl. No weapons involved, no tricks involved. You know Pugsley isn't fighting. Pugsley. Wednesday is fighting,

but Pugsley is literally just being like, I made a sculpture out of sand. You see, that's interesting because my take is that Pugsley is the most dangerous member of the Adam's family. I think he's the one that actually is a serial killer. Wow. I think that's you projecting. No, I'm just saying.

Now Kate, being a woman in a man's world was headstrong and overly paranoid in her dealings with men. Constantly accusing everyone of trying to screw her out of this and that and she never hesitated to verbally tackle any man who displeased her. Kate didn't take no shit from no fools.

All right. It was quite possible that it was this behavior that caused everyone in the Red River area of Tennessee to consider Kate to be, quite possibly, a witch. A witch. Although thankfully, America's execution of witches

was about a century behind, you know, the whole bell witch saga. But to be fair, Kate also engaged in witchy behavior. For example, Kate would uncomfortably beg for a brass pin from every woman she met, which, according to folk belief, was a way for a witch to gain power over the brass pin donor.

Can I have a pen, please? Can I have a pen? I need for my collection. Can I have a pen? I'm not TD Bank. I can't just give you a pen. Mary gave me a pen. Well, why do you want a pen?

I just like it. I just want it. OK, here you go. You're funny. Now dance, bitch! What? Oh, my God! Dance in news, bitch!

But besides that, there was actually a rumored incident in which there was supposed proof of witchery. Now, as we all know, back in those days, the witch's favorite trick was to spoil a farmer's butter. I tell you how to spoil a farmer's butter. You just tell him to tell me, hey, your grandma's outside, and she's taking a shit on the lawn while he's masturbating. Wow!

That's one way to spoil the butter. I had never heard that before, the spoiling of the butter thing. We've talked about it in every witch episode that we've ever done. I said that I have never heard that before. I didn't see you never said that before. And as it happened, a girl in Kate's vicinity was attempting to churn butter one day when she found that despite her best efforts,

no butter was coming after a brutal two-hour churn session. You know how that is, Marcus, with your psychological medication? We rolled in there, haven't we? My God. What's the point? That's the point, you know? For some reason, this girl immediately decided that old Kate had bewitched the milk,

and this girl set upon proving it. She stuck an iron poker in the fire, and after it became white hot, she plunged it into the butter churner, curdling the milk inside. After that, she made an excuse to go visit Kate, and lo and behold, the girl claimed to find the accused witch nursing a burnt hand,

claiming she'd grabbed the wrong end of her hot poker earlier that day. That's what I did. I should've got it by the back end. I guess. I think that this time period is interesting because folk magic is deeply embedded in a lot of country culture. You saw it in the story of the rise of Mormonism,

how casual folk magic was often used because people had to learn how to use the medicinal values of the forest lands, all the fucking plants and shit. These people just had them getting vilified for it because a lot of times, they showed their titties a lot. Oh my goodness. Actually, I think it's Massachusetts, where there is a whole folk magic discipline

called Pow Wow. I watched a whole documentary on it the other day, which it still survives to this day. It's just nerds doing it now, but that folk magic in rural communities was very prevalent in America. But it's interesting how they flip it on it because it's such a common part.

They all have experienced folk magic and have probably used their benefits quite often, but as soon as it becomes convenient to label someone a witch, especially to demonize them socially, literally demonize them, that he weaponized it and it's just a, wow, it's just always been in the American system. You just flip your crimes on someone else

just immediately and it always works. But before you give a Yas Queen to Kate Bats and her witchery. Yas Queen. No, don't give a Yas Queen. Don't give one. Yeah, she would be, oh. No, Princess. She's not a Yas Queen.

She was a slave owner. Just like the majority of landowners in Tennessee in the 1820s. And that's partly how she got into her first tiff with her neighbor, John Bell. See, after Fred Bats had his legs destroyed by a tree, John Bell offered Kate Bats a sum of cash for an unused parcel of land. And after negotiating, it was decided that Bell

would trade the parcel for a human and a cash loan. I don't like the way that you blame the tree for smashing his legs. They're not ants. I guarantee you he was doing something so jackassy that the tree just had to give him some kind of ramification for his actions. Working the land is dangerous.

It is. I know. It shit happens. Accidents just happened in ranch work. It's just, yeah. It's not always, yeah. It's sometimes just a fuck up. I know exactly what you're talking about.

I played Red Dead Redemption 2 and I remember what it was like to be John Marsh fucking making all the polls and making them have sex with the cattle. But in the bill of sale, John didn't write down a specific interest rate. And when Bell revealed an abnormally high rate when the first payment was due,

Kate publicly shamed him for his usurice ways. He got canceled. Really? She stayed on his ass for five years. And eventually, John Bell was excommunicated from his church in 1822 for usury and coveting his neighbor's land. Okay.

True question. Is this unique that the man would end up losing this verbal battle or this financial battle to the woman? It seems interesting that he was the one who was like, no, bro, you got to go. We're keeping the witch. He committed usury, which is a massive sin in that time period, especially because the idea

of raising interest rates, because again, America was founded because we didn't want to pay taxes. It was all financial bullshit. So this was like a high crime to the church. So this is like a home loan scandal? Kind of. Kind of sort of. Yeah.

And well, I think what some people say as far as him getting excommunicated is that in 1822, when he got excommunicated, that was after the bell witch haunting had been occurring for years by that point. I think it had been going on for like four years. And some think that this is just sort of the excuse they needed to just tell John Bell, just get out of here. You got a demon in your house.

Why don't you just leave? We're all tired of dealing with it. Yeah, and you seem to be maybe profiting off of it, even though he said for years that they weren't profiting on it, they called it our family's trouble for years and years. So it's a weird angle. I wonder, I wonder exactly how much he was using

the bell witch story. I don't think he profited off it at all. I don't think so either. I think he lost money on it. He did ruin his life, yeah. Yeah. Makes sense. That makes a lot of sense.

But long before the excommunication came, John and Kate had a conflict in their local house of worship. Now, this bickering between neighbors and church might have been unimportant, if not for the fact that it coincided with the beginning of the bell witch haunting. And it's this incident that made some think that old Kate was behind the whole fucking thing.

Now, Kate never missed a Sunday at church, but she also never showed up until the service was halfway over. Nevertheless, she was always known to have the most vocal amens in addition to being the church's loudest singer. That's what I learned as a class clown in high school, which is you can sleep for most of the class, but if you just make one solid comment, you're saved.

You're good. I like to get it in at the top of the class, then sleep through the rest of the day. And if you don't show up halfway through, but you're the biggest, widest woman in the back going, hey, man. They're going to be like, well, at least she's keeping the energy up.

Yes, indeed. It's very important. They did say she was the best singer. They said she was merely the loudest singer. Yes. That's a big difference. Like we're the loudest podcasters. Yes, indeed.

And the other thing to know about Kate is that for some reason, she loved putting on airs when it came to her vocabulary, oftentimes wrongly using complicated, sometimes made up words in every conversation. Yeah, but that's what Shakespeare did. No one called him a fucking asshole. They did his entire life.

He died alone. Did he die in a grave or something? No, everybody dies in a grave. That's a ground poll. That's a ground poll, yeah. Shakespeare wasn't well respected, was he? Yeah, he was. He was famous during his time.

No kidding. Except he was five guys, each one of them cornhole in each other. Whoa. Well, then isn't that just one large guy? When they're all finally are each one inside of each other, I think technically... I think that's how you summon Captain Planet.

The Captain Planet hate continues. So one Sunday, the community was attending a sermon presided by the Reverend Sug Fort. This particular sermon was of the Fire and Brimstone variety, and at right about the halfway point in the service, a center named Joe Edwards decided that this was his time to repent. I'm doing it.

I'm doing it, y'all. So the congregation followed Joe's lead, formed a prayer circle around the center, and commenced with the hallelujahs, the amens, and the laying of hands as Joe Edwards fell to all fours and began howling out the sin. I think I'm a dog and I wear a chain. My master milks me and I make dog milk.

Amen, amen. Then right on cue, Kate Bats entered the church 30 minutes late and have a no fucking clue what was going on. This is the story of my freaking life. Without even knowing the context of the situation, Kate broke the circle of worshipers, threw her skirt over her shoulder,

and plopped her full 200-pound weight right on Joe's chest, bellowing so loud herself that she drowned out Joe's sin-cleansing howls. Is this my birthday party? Yeah, absolutely. Just coming in, sitting on a man and going, I'll take it. That's called being a natural closer.

Absolutely. Now, first, the congregation was stunned into silence. But finally, Joe Edwards, having been brought out of his howling trance by the enormous pressure on his chest, yelled, quote, Lord, save me. Sweet Jesus, lift Satan off of me, or I will surely sink down to eternal torment. It's at this point that one of the parishioners

tapped Kate on the shoulder and lightly suggested that maybe she should think about letting Joe off the ground. But Kate refused, saying, quote, No, thank you, Professor Powell. This altitude is so consoling to my disposition that I feel amply corrugated. I love her. Then when she was told that she was crowding the mourner,

she said, quote, Oh, that don't disperse my perspicuity. I'm a very plain woman and do love to homogate near the altar while their Lord am making configuration among their sinners. She sounds like she listens to Bill O'Reilly and has the word of the day just ready to go. With no context whatsoever. Then when she was told that she was suffocating Joe,

she said, quote, Let him suffocate, preacher. I'm helping him get closer to the Lord. I love her. Now one might think that this mockery of a man's salvation would have offended the congregation. But actually, most of them thought this whole scene was the funniest goddamn thing they'd ever seen. She's a fucking closer.

I kind of like this congregation. They seem sort of fun. And some of them even had to leave the building because they couldn't stop laughing. They dilate the weasels in Who Framed Roger Rabbit. Their souls left their body. But the only person who wasn't laughing was John Bell, who by account said, quote, Is it not enough

that you belittle the worship of the Almighty by a constant, late-ness woman? Must you also make a mockery of a man's awakening to the light? And without missing a beat, Kate misquoted the Bible, saying, quote, Well, you take the log from your own eye-center that ye shall see clearly to remove the mole from mine. John then called her a lying witch, to which Kate took great offense.

But instead of denying her witchery, she supposedly responded with a full-on curse in the middle of a church, saying, quote, Witch am I? That let me offer you a witch's malefaction, old John Bell. You may have your broad acres as well as mine. Purchase that appendices. You may have your big house and your salubricated health right now.

But just wait and see what sad changes shall soon descend upon you and more than you among the bells. She's scary now. That's the problem. She was funny, and now she's scary. Independent women just go from friendly to scary really, really fast. Thanks.

But even the curse couldn't break up the laughter caused by old Kate nuzzling her munch on poor Joe Edwards' chest. And you know what? He stopped fighting, too. So Reverend Sugg decided to call it a day, and everyone headed home as Joe shot up from the floor and declared himself delivered from sin. And I just want to say a big group thank you to everybody, to everybody involved today. It's been a nice day for me.

Now that curse was most likely a narrative invention created by authors whose point of view was that Kate Bats was definitely a witch, because it's hard to imagine a woman in 1817 throwing spiritual threats in the middle of a church service. But what isn't in question here is that it was indeed around this time that the trouble at the Bell Homestead began. The haunting itself targeted two people in particular,

John Bell and his daughter Betsy. As it goes with oh so many poltergeist hauntings, Betsy was 12 years old when the haunting started, which, according to her family, was when Betsy began to blossom into womanhood, causing all sorts of emotional turmoil, as it always does. Because she got that menarche? Oh my goodness. I love the name Betsy.

It's a great name. It's a beautiful name. It is really nice. You know what name I like? What's that? Steven. What name do you like, Marcus? I like Ruby. Ruby's a fun name. Ruby, Steven and Betsy. Apparently those three were all arrested

on their way to kidnap the governor of Michigan. Interestingly though, the paranormal activity did not begin with Betsy as it usually does. Instead, it began with John. In September of 1817, as John was inspecting his cornfield, he saw an enormous black beast sitting at the edge of the crops. John later said that this creature, like a lot of the supernatural beasts supposedly seen on Skimwalker Ranch,

was a chimera, combining the body of a dog with the head of a rabbit, and nestled in its skull were bright green eyes. Oh, that's kind of fun. It's cute, but it's interesting how this goes far. Every sighting or brush with the quote-unquote devil, especially during the time period, involved mysterious animals.

But it's weird how it goes all the way to modern times, to all the way to bonko the everything dog from Skimwalker Ranch. Do you remember Skimwalker Ranch? Yes, I do. He was just like, I'll tell you what, it is really nice finding another specky dog, hanging out with somebody not being so lonely, but I'll tell you what, this new dog I just met,

he's got some pretty interesting opinions on black people that I don't agree with, and anyways, shape or form. That's because you're a good person, bonko. Well, John and the creature just stood and stared at each other for several long minutes, until John finally pulled out his flintlock pistol and fired. But when the smoke cleared, the creature was gone from sight. Can you manage just staring at a creature for a while,

and just being like, all right, is that some kind of rabbit? No, no, it's got, this dick is too big. No, obviously the ears seem to be hanging different. What should I do? Should I feed it, or should I try to pin it? I guess I'll shoot it. Shoot it, stare at it, and shoot it. Because it takes a full minute to shoot it, in this time period.

Sure, 1700s, yeah. I don't know why this seems to be just kind of the default in rural areas when it comes to cryptids, and kind heroes, and things like that. The default is always, kill it. What else are you supposed to do with it? You don't know if it's going to kill you or not. You have to protect yourself and your family.

Milk it. Not every animal can be milked, and we're not doing this because it's not meat to fuckers. That's my new Robert De Niro impression. We're so good. I got nibbles. You think you can milk me, huh? That's so good.

But the seemingly impossible animals kept coming. A few weeks after the dog rabbit, both John and his son Drury said they saw a gigantic bird, a flying beast larger than a turkey, which flew off before anyone could get a shot going. Gigantic birds and cats and dogs, for me, honestly, are very creepy to me for some reason. This idea of, because it reminds me of the movie The Witch,

where you're slowly, your world is changing, and you're seeing fantastical beasts, and slowly your brain is opening up to a whole other existence. Imagine walking through, you just saw a dog rabbit, and then you see this giant bird just sitting out there going, ah, ah, you know, and then, you know, and you milk it. Yeah, then you milk it.

Speaking of giant cats, yeah, it's that story, the scary stories to tell in the dark that wait till Martin comes. I remember that was one of the first stories that scared the shit out of me. Yes, really scary, something about it being, it's because it's not a monster or like Annabelle, all these types of other kind of ways we receive evil, seem kind of so horror moving, so separate from reality, but something about like the uncanny,

I don't know if the term would be uncanny valley, or like seeing something that looks vaguely normal, but then you register, like there's something not normal about it. To me makes me heebie dee jeebie dee. Heebie dee jeebie dee indeed. Around that time, both Drury and Betsy said they also saw a strange old woman in their orchard who mysteriously appeared and disappeared, but it was decided by the family

that it was probably just a new neighbor, or just someone passing through. What was weird is that when the kids told this story at dinner that night, John stopped eating. He just sat at the dinner table for a long time in silence, then finally just stood up and went to bed, obviously disturbed. He's slowly becoming the father from the Amityville horror where he's just like, do I kill him now?

Then Betsy saw another apparition. This time she was walking with her brothers Richard and Joel when they suddenly felt all the energy being drained from their bodies as dark clouds gathered above. They then looked ahead and saw something green hanging from a tree. When they got closer, they saw the green was from a dress and wearing it was the lifeless body of a young, dark-haired woman hanging from a limb by a noose.

Who, despite being obviously dead, still had tears streaming down her face. The children said they were rendered motionless in the presence of the apparition and felt all the energy being drained from their bodies, but they were finally able to break away and run. And when they looked back, they saw that the girl and the green dress had vanished. And throughout history, the color green is often been associated with fairies, the Hildefirk, it has been associated. It's also, they told the essentially head slave of the family what they saw,

and she said, you better beware because the green is the color of the devil's hag. Really? I didn't realize that with the color green. You think of the color red often with the devil, not the color green. It wasn't until the late 19th, early 20th century that red started being associated with the devil. Before then, the devil was, for many, many, many years, the devil was depicted as green. The green man that you see often, and he's associated with pan, it's associated with any sort of, like the idea of a changeling, like being a lot of times people would follow someone in a green cloak,

and then they said that's how children would disappear. They would see someone in fancy green wear, and then they would follow them out into the woods. And then that is a common correlation to the modern abduction experience. By the Christmas of 1817, the mysterious goings-on had moved from the outside of the bell home into the home itself, where the poltergeist activity began in earnest with the tell-tale nox. And the nox were seemingly coming from the outside, so John immediately assumed that it was Kate Bats, because he thought that Kate was sending her slaves to his house in the middle of the night to pull pranks. Oh yeah, Kate Bats definitely, she sent people over there to booby-trap the whole house,

like Kevin McAllister from Home Alone 2. I definitely missed that scene in 12 Years a Slave when they just got to go pull pranks, because it seemed like it was really miserable and horrible, but I guess they also got to be like throwing eggs at houses? I don't know. But every time the family heard the nox, usually between the hours of 10 and 12 p.m., John would race outside to try and catch the culprits, but never found anything but air. Then the noises got more specific.

The children would be awoken by the disgusting sounds of rats gnawing on the footposts of their beds. But when the bells tried investigating the source of the noise, it would simply move to another room. What the fuck? Ghost rats! Now the rat noises were soon joined by the unsettling sound of smacking lips and the throaty noises of someone being strangled. I told you what, I knew it was a mistake to move next door to Riley Reid. Oh, Riley Reid! Love Riley Reid! Unbelievable!

One of the most beautiful, talented actresses of our time. I'll let her listen to the show if you know her. Absolutely, we love her. No, it's just all night long, just... Weep, weep, weep! Weep, weep, weep! Louis Anderson, comedy special, playing in the basement? Hell yeah, gotcha again, Louis Anderson!

Love Louis, he's actually a very sensitive person, so old jokes done with love, Louis. Loved Ian Baskets, Louis. Doing life of Louis! It's too late, guys, we have been making fun of Louis Anderson for years, there are literally five, you yourself put at least three Louis Anderson jokes into our book! Then the noises increased in frequency, expanding from the hours of 10 to 12, well into the 3 a.m. hour.

The witching hour. Pretty soon, bangs were coming from the roof, as if someone was dropping stones. Storms would rage with no weather to accompany the sound, invisible dogs would fight and snarl throughout the house, ghostly chains would drag across the floor, and most bizarrely, ducks could be heard angrily flapping and quacking. Quack, quack! It was scary until the ducks.

Then it just gets to a point being like... Are you kidding me, the ducks are the scariest part! Quack, quack! Have you ever, honestly, have you been confronted with a duck ever? Ducks are fine. Ducks are not. It's geese. You're thinking of geese.

No! But it does make it sound like at some point, do you sit in a living room and you're hearing all of these different sounds and you're like, am I in the home of a man who makes Halloween sound effects? Like, who listens to this all day? Turns out our son is a Foley artist. Isn't that nice? By the time 1817 turned to 1818, the entity got physical.

Like that song. Sheets were ripped off the beds with great force, and by October, the entity actually started physically attacking Betsy at night. It all began when Betsy awoke to an invisible force, yanking her hair hard enough to pull her out of bed. She screamed for help, but at the same time, her brother Richard was dragged out of bed by his hair as well. Eventually, Betsy began struggling against the entity,

but she found that when she resisted the pull, the entity would strike her in the face with the force of a full grown adult slapping her. The harder she struggled, the harder she was slapped. Meanwhile, she's having her first period, and she's just about to get married for the first time. That's a lot of bullshit, because you're 12. Well, yeah, as soon as the egg fucking drops, you can get married. It was a few years after that that she got married at like 15 or 16.

Yeah, it's never good when Chris Hansen officiates your wedding, and then immediately arrests the groom. And when John came into Betsy's room one night to find her hair tangled in knots and her face covered in welt, he naturally got a little dramatic. He started crying out something along the lines of why would God let this happen? Why? Why? God, why? But as soon as John tucked Betsy back into bed and left the room, he heard another scream,

and returned to Betsy to find her holding her ears as tight as she could with blood-soaked hands. Can I ask you a question, dogmeat? Yeah. At this time, I was trying to figure out the research line to figure this out. Maybe we need to sick Joel on this for next week. I would love to find out whether or not this family could have had access to literature that would talk about the symptoms of a haunting that they would know, or how deeply embedded in the church.

Like, would they have explained things about demonic possession, or the ideas of, you know, even just the general ghosts like showing up at your house? Like, because people immediately want to say, of course, are they making this shit up because they're bored and they're out in the middle of nowhere? Is this all due? Because we're going to see this quite often again. Betsy's called a gifted natural ventriloquist again and again and again. But when it comes down to it, like, how would they know how to make up the details

without maybe hearing about it first unless they are just, like, fucking on fire. This is, like, the let it be. Like, they're, like, figuring out how to invent new, like, poltergeist shit that then would become the, like, the static, like, exactly what a poltergeist activity would look like in the future. Yeah, the stooges of poltergeist victims. Like, I don't think they had any access to anything. I don't think they would have had any access to anything

because I don't know if anything was really written at this point. Like, horror literature wasn't really created until, like, Dracula. You know, like, like, Bram Stoker, you know, Mary Shelley, like, those sorts of people. And that was many decades after this. I know. Frankenstein. I'm looking at this right now because I'm just trying. I'm honestly very curious at the beginning of this.

Frankenstein, modern Prometheus, Frankenstein came out in 1818. But would they have been able to see or read Frankenstein at this time period? But Frankenstein wasn't a paranormal story. It was a science fiction story. Whoa. Indeed. Dracula was made in 1897. Wow, we can go through a whole series of dates.

No, I'm just asking this question. Horror literature, paranormal literature, all that shit did not exist yet. At this point. Like, the only literature they might have came across is something like the Malleus malefactorum. You know, actual manuals on witch hunting. You know, but that's mostly witchy type of shit. But I wonder if they have a description of what looks like a witch's presence in something like that. Like, have they been taught how to look for supernatural activity?

I think at this point it's mostly the weird curses. It's mostly things like, oh, she spoiled my butter. You know, she ruined my crops. You know, it's all very practical type of things. You know, it's ruining livelihoods. No matter how many squats I do, I can't get a big booty. And then they say, oh, that must be Becky's fault. And then you're learning asses in the diet.

Oh, no kidding. Mostly at this point. Yeah, like there's possession. You know, the Salem witch trials had occurred 100 years earlier. That's part of American history. But Poltergeist, that was not. So I, at least I don't think so. Maybe I'm totally wrong on this, but I don't think Poltergeist were a part of just general knowledge at this point.

John Tenney, I'm looking at you. John Tenney, if you are hearing this, I need you to reach out and tell me this for sure. Now, of course, the first place John Bell went to for answers was the church. But he didn't call on Reverend Sug. Instead, he went with Reverend James Johnston. Because from what I could tell, this tiny community had no less than three reverends on standby. That has to be a feud, right? That's another story.

These three must hate each other. They must, or something. Or they just get together and they always like run a reverend train every Sunday. Oh, no kidding. So Reverend Johnston came to the house. He read a bunch of Bible passages. He did a whole Lord's Prayer song and dance. Then he went to bed in the bell home, satisfied that he was successful in his godly duties.

And everyone knows the Lord's Prayer song and dance is when you arrive in a home, put on a corset, and immediately, Life is a mystery. Everyone must stand alone. I hear you call my name. And it feels like home. Just like a breath. But it's important to have the interracial sex in there.

Absolutely powerful stuff. Thank you Madonna. And truly a wonderful woman. She dated Dennis Rodman to be a fly on the wall during that relationship. I'm just, I can't with you. I can't with you today. But as holy man after holy man would find out in the coming years, God didn't mean shit to the bell witch.

That night when Reverend Johnston tried to go to sleep, his sheets were ripped from his bed and the ghost began spinning up that night's haunt with some rat noises. Damn. The Reverend lit a candle which stopped the noise in his room, but the noise simply moved elsewhere and filled the whole house with the noises of a snarling dog. Then the entity moved to Betsy and pulled her hair before slapping her seven times and dragging her to the ground. Wow, this is scary. That's kind of fun because I go one, two, three, four, five, six, seven.

Now it's at this point that the Reverend Johnston realized that he was a bit out of his depth. So he told the bell family that they were going to have to confess to the community that a demon was loose in their house. Why do they have to do that? Can we not do that? Well his reasoning was that if the whole community knew it was going on, they would summon the power of their collected Christian faith to banish the evil spirit forever. Somehow. Is this community that religious?

I honestly think that this was a mistake and they should not have done this. You can't just be like, oh, it takes a village with the demonic haunting. I actually wonder, again, very old case, all of this has been telephoned for years. The game telephoned has been happening for years so we don't really know the objective truth. But the idea of, if Reverend Johnston, imagine all of this shit did happen, and he was so fucking scared by what he saw, that he's like, I'll just think and honestly, we're just going to need to get everybody in here. I'm going to need someone on my front and I'm going to need someone on my back.

I agree and someone on your sides as well. This is very scary. John Bell agreed that this was the way to go, so pretty soon, word of this supposed demon was spread to the Carnies, the Norfleets, the guns, the Goochies, the Ruffins, the Herrings, the Chesters, the Gorums, the Dardens, and half a dozen other local yokels. Really, all you have to do is tell the Carnies and they'll do the rest. That's what they do. Because they love to gossip. Yes, they do.

I'm calling the Goochies myself. What is a Gooch? It's a family with the last name Gooch. Jim and Jamie Gooch. Have you ever met them? They live right between the ball family and the asshole family. Upon hearing this news, the snubbed Reverend Sugg dismissed the demon as nothing more than a prank, which to me sounds a little bit like sour grapes. He's like, well, I was fine. You don't have to call me to handle your little prank.

He actually subscribed to John Bell's original theory that Kate Bats was ordering her slaves to bother the bells by drilling holes in the roof so they could let down fish hooks on wires to rip the sheets off the beds at night. That's kind of like if Michelle Gondry directed Hellraiser. That's a deep cut. That's a deep cut, but it fucking, it reads, man. As far as the slaps went, Sugg stuck with the whole theory, saying that whoever was behind this was most likely using pea shooters to produce a stinging sensation.

And this theory, however, was dismissed when no roof holes were found. And by November of 1818, Betsy was 13 years old, which in 1818, Tennessee meant she was ready to be courted for marriage. Can you imagine how annoying a 13-year-old wife would be? Can you imagine being 13 and then be like, this is Herb, he's 48, he's your husband? Well, it wasn't quite that bad, her suitor was 31. Oh, nightmare. His name was Richard Powell, he was a local school teacher.

I just feel like... The whole thing is just, honestly, it's all disgusting. It just feels like you shouldn't be getting high in your own supply. Yeah, that's your take on all of this. If you're the only school teacher in town and then you're just also surveying all of the 13-year-olds that you're teaching of, which one's gonna be the wife? I feel like you're not concentrating on the teaching part. R.I.P. Mary K. Leterno.

No, on one occasion, Powell had showed up at the Bell Homestead to at first discuss Betsy's education. Oh, there's always a fucking under-reasoning, man. But eventually, the conversation turned towards Betsy's romantic prospects. But it wasn't Richard who fucking brought it up. It was Lucy Bell, her mother. Okay. Yeah, because she did the cluck, cluck, cluck, cluck.

He's like, what's doing there? She's like, my daughter's just become a chicken. And he understood without a curse. Okay. Well, she said like, I know you'll sweet on my daughter. Oh, this is great, thank you. Very good. I watched this in the Honey Boo Boo series, I know.

But Betsy was also being courted by the much more age-appropriate Joshua Gardner, who was 18. Sure. And at that point in time, all of Betsy's attention was focused on him, which was a fact that Lucy relayed to Richard with Lament. It's like, I'm sorry, Dick, I know how much you fancy my daughter Betsy, but she's looking over Joshua right now. What if I hang him?

Why would I hang him? We just go teach the kids. Actually, don't teach the kids. I'm sick of science, I want to teach love. Maybe just get into like, become a seaman, go out to sea, and then never come back. Maybe be a sailor. But just as they got back to the subject of Betsy's schooling, they heard a blood-curdling scream come from Betsy's room.

So Richard ran to the door, but found it blocked by bedsheets. When he finally got the door open, he saw Betsy in her nightgown with her arms covering her face, trying to protect herself from more poltergeist attacks. But suddenly, her right arm was flung away and her head jerked to the left as the sound of a slap echoed throughout the room. There was then silence, followed by the disgusting sound of someone hawking flam and spitting it out. Oh, I hate that sound. Okay, we don't have to do it.

The audience is also just listening and no one likes that sound. And now it's sound for chalkboard, fingernails on a chalkboard. I hear a knock and it's just Riley from Extra's Night. Hi guys, I just wanted to see if you guys had any sugar on your bar. We love Riley Reid. Have you been experimenting with Riley Reid lately? Have you been looking at some of her wonderful films? Truly, I mean, love Riley Reid.

She's very popular. Yes, she is. The candles then extinguished themselves, and the sound of the loogie hawk repeated over and over and over again, on a loop until the poltergeist finally burst into fading laughter. A lot of people in the community had decided that this probably wasn't a demon because most of the attention was focused on Kate, and therefore she was probably just pulling an extended prank for attention.

But what refutes this theory is the claim that even when Betsy stayed overnight at a friend's house, the entity would still attack her while simultaneously continuing the noisy cavalcade of barnyard horrors back home. Two different locations for haunting at the same time. Whoa! It is interesting, and it follows Betsy. Yeah. Almost like she's the locus of it. Maybe the creatrix of it.

Intriguing. Now, once that claim came to light, word spread that the phenomenon was indeed real, and the community, and looking for an explanation, decided that Kate Bats was the most likely culprit, acting as a malevolent witch. I actually, I'm getting on team Kate here. I think she's been maligned.

She hasn't done anything wrong at this point. She just sat on a guy. The slave owning. Oh yeah, no more, because I know that! But at that point, that's like, I know that! Oh now you've done this to me! Now open the corner! All of a sudden!

Don't you smile at me like that. I'd like to see it. So Kate, already not the most popular person in the region, was further ostracized from the community, and people began to refer to the spirit haunting the bells as Kate Bats Witch, Old Kate, or simply, The Bell Witch. Oh yeah, she's got names now. I love that.

And once you name something, it becomes much more powerful. Yes it does! Think no further than Skingeely Man! Why did you fucking say it out loud? It hasn't been said in a while. You guys stop saying it! We don't know if it's the witching hour, the veil between the living and the dead to get thinner each day.

Well that's what I was wondering when it comes to the witching hour. I've been talking about time a lot today, and I'm thinking about time zones. Is it 6 a.m. in New York for the witching hour, and 3 a.m. in LA, or 3 a.m. in New York, and midnight in LA for the witching hour? Oh, we had a fucking confirmation history, like a confirmation hearing for fucking the Supreme Court.

Like this is like one of those, I feel like five minutes of time. Ben, I can give you a legitimate answer to that. Thank you so much. If it is true that magic is related to the moon, then it would all depend on the relation of the moon in the sky to where you are. So yes, time zones do apply. Thank you very much. Hey, at least, I mean, he gave you a concrete answer.

Yes, he did, that's all I was asking for. It's at this point that the bells figured that they did indeed have some sort of conscious entity in their presence. So they decided that if they could communicate with it, they could find out what it wanted and why it was there, and maybe they could figure out how to get it to leave. At this point in the witch's tenure, it had not yet learned how to speak.

So the bell family decided that they would open communication by asking it a series of questions that could be answered in numbered knocks. And invariably, the entity would give the correct answer. When asked how many rooms the house had, it knocked six times. When asked how many miles to Port Royal, it knocked seven. And when asked how many people the bells owned, it knocked nine. And how many miles to the South Dakota Corn Palace? Twenty-five hundred times it knocked.

It's been a lot of horrible question, horrible question to ask. Finally, Richard Powell, the 31-year-old suitor who made it his business to be involved, began asking questions to the entity in Latin and Greek, going off the belief that all demons speak Latin and Greek. He wasn't speaking Latin or Greek. He might have, like, at least said hero and he might have said carne asada. I don't know what he said.

But it's interesting to have the adult man who's trying to fuck your daughter. Just getting deeper and deeper in the house. And John Bell at some point just needs to be like, why don't you just shut the hell up? How did you get out of my goddamn house? I'm sinking in the air with my daughter and you're drinking my milk. Absolutely. You want that 18-year-old hunk who's still viral?

He is still viral. And sure enough, it was after this that the entity actually began speaking in a clear voice everyone could understand. In early 1819, well over a year after the entity had first appeared, the family began to hear whispering, a feeble hollow noise that sounded suspiciously like the voice of Reverend James Johnston, whom the entity began to refer to as old sugar mouth. That's going to be my nickname at the nursing home.

Yeah. How'd you get that nickname, Henry? I got diabetes. Oh, isn't that nice? In fact, the entity seemed to be mocking Johnston's attempted exorcism, repeating the Bible passages James had read and ending each one with the Lord's Prayer before adding, quote, Demon, the name of Jesus Christ, be silent and go out to this house forever. That's scary.

Yeah. Then after each mocking recitation, the entity would switch to a feminine voice and say, quote, Well, that old sugar mouth feel weird. Once the entity began speaking, the members of the household began asking it direct questions, although they always got indirect replies. I have a question. What would you do for a Klondike bar? I will kill the daughter to kill the father.

Hey, great. All right. When John Jr. asked the entity who it was and what it wanted, it said, quote, I am the spirit of someone who once was happy and who has been disturbed. After that, the entity, it seemed to move on. Okay. It came back months later with a vengeance. Once everything had been deemed safe and the spiritual storm had seemingly passed,

Betsy's friend, Thinny Thorn, came to stay the night. The girls were talking on Betsy's bed when Betsy fell backwards and her feet flew up into the air. Holy shit. Oh my. Then her tightly laced shoes flew off her feet and hit the wall before her tortoise shell combs flew from her hair. She was then slapped in the face several times and an unseen hand was clasped over her face so tight she couldn't open her mouth.

Damn. Some kind of shoot for kink.com. Oh my goodness gracious. Now, after this incident, a family friend named Frank Miles, known as the strongest man in the community, decided that he'd had enough of all this bullshit with the witch. Dude, I love this character. Frank Miles is the first ever ghost hunting bro. Really?

He really is. He was huge for the time. Over six feet tall, over 200 pounds, barrel-chested, big old cattle boy. Come at me ghost. Literally, he's doing come at me ghost. His logic was that if the entity could hit Betsy, then he could hit the entity. Yeah, dude. He's great logic.

I love this guy. He decided the best thing to do was to go to the house and challenge the ghost to a wrestling match. This is my favorite part of this story. He legitimately thought I could arm bar the devil. It makes sense. Yeah, if the devil can hit you, I guess you can hit the devil back. However, unsurprisingly, it did not work out well for Frank. Once he made the proclamation in the bell house that he was going to punch the witch back to perdition.

Come and face me ghost bitch. The witch was heard to say, quote, do you think so? It then struck Betsy so hard her body spun around. For Frank, for Frank, this signal fucking go time. Hey, hey, hey, hey, it's cold, it's cold right now. All right, we'll tussle then. We'll get out, we'll tussle around. Absolutely.

So he left across the room and tried to grab the invisible spirit, but of course just fell to the fucking floor right out of space. That's embarrassing. The spirit then laughed and started moving around a nearby chair. So Frank got up and again, left into the air towards the chair and smashed it into fucking pieces. This is literally a scene from a Chris Farley ghost comedy that should have existed. And again and again, the spirit would move something in the room and Frank would pounce into every fucking piece of furniture in the room was fucking destroyed. Frank, at this point, you owe us $300 for the furniture and the ghost is still here. No, I just want to wrestle a goddamn ghost.

Finally, Frank ran out of steam and gave up, but the spirit wasn't done with Frank. That night, as he was sleeping in the bell house, the spirit pinned him down with his sheets so hard, the sheets ripped in half. And the next morning, Frank was found hiding under the bed. I'll tell you what, I may be big and I may be strong, but it's still easy for me to get frightened. That's sad, Frank. You definitely changed a lot from the last time. Yeah, I was brave before, but then... It was just really breaking all the chairs.

I mean, kind of, if you break a chair, it becomes like a bunch of tiny little chairs. It does, if you were really small. Yeah, I guess you could sit. Yeah, why don't you get out of the house? But Frank wasn't quite ready to give up. The next time he came to the house, he brought a bag of flour. Again, thinking logically that if he covered the spirit in some sort of powder, he'd have an easier time catching it. And I guess just beating the ghost to death.

He isn't wrong, but he really isn't wrong. If it's real, all of this works out. It's the whole hotel room scene where he just destroys the entire house trying to get rid of his cup. But Lucybell put a stop to that after Frank covered every room in the house with flour. Just walked from room to room, throwing flour and fucking yelling, trying to get the ghost to come out. And then the spirit just kicked Frank in the butt and called him as dumb as a sack of turnips. And then Frank just gave up. Well, you don't have to insult me.

God, the kick in the butt is always the ultimate disrespectful gesture to tell someone that they're fucking nothing. I mean, I think it's a wonderful thing to do. And also, you're nothing but a sack of turnips. That is what I'm going to say from now on whenever I'm angry. Yeah, but I guess what? Frank just has to go next door to Wrigley Reed's house and I'm sure she'll make his ego soothe. I don't think that she will. She's very choosy and very picky. Have you been reading interviews? No, I haven't.

Why, no, she did do an interview though. She did do one. Sure, of course she has. Didn't we meet her at Comic-Con? We saw her at Comic-Con. No, we saw her at Comic-Con. She was just walking around, yeah. But what was interesting about Frank's encounters with the spirit was that he found that the angrier he got, the more the spirit would hurt Betsy, as if emotion was inextricably linked with whatever it was that was haunting the bells.

Now it wasn't long after the fight with Frank that the witches attacks on Betsy changed tack, and in March of 1819, Betsy began having what looked like for all intents and purposes to be a possession, although they also sounded a hell of a lot like seizures. Oh, it's true. But we see this often in possession cases where you wonder whether or not, because some people say that it's undiagnosed epilepsy. Yeah. Because it can change your whole behavior, you can have crazy mood swings,

all of this kind of shit happens with epilepsy. But it doesn't really explain all the sonic shit happening in the house, but it depends on whether or not you believe in ghosts in any way, shape, or form if you buy this at all. Perhaps you get the nutmeg challenge where you eat a full bottle of nutmeg. Do not do it. It swells the brain. You can almost die and you do hallucinate, but it's very dangerous. So watch the YouTube video on it.

Great. That's a wonderful PSA. Don't do the nutmeg challenge. A year ago. Well, it was a recent, I watched it last night, the YouTube video. Time passes for the videos. You know what I mean? Time for us.

Like time, I mean, time stands still for the videos. Time passes for us. Right. Well, that's an interesting point. Interesting point indeed. Time, does it tick down or does it tick? This is not a philosophy show. It actually does matter though, that question.

I want the audience to think about it. Well, by what journal entries say, Betsy would begin a fit by fainting. Then upon waking, she would take high-pitched panting gasps until she passed out. Her eyes would then open and roll back to the whites, while her pulse would drop as she rolled from side to side as if something was crushing her. These fits would last for anywhere between 20 and 40 minutes, with Betsy reviving and relapsing throughout. And every time, the bellwitch would appear afterward, having apparently drawn strength

from the young girl. But what's strange is that instead of the demonic taunts that one might expect, the witch instead appeared after the fits with the sole purpose of gossiping about the neighbors. What? That's all I wanted to do. I have taken more of your doctor's life energy. It was coming back like saying, you know, Mr. Johnston drinks a little too much. That is all I did.

It was just a little narc. Wait, is this ghost Wendy Williams? What's going on? So why would the ghosts do that? In my mind, it's to show its power and show its ubiquitousness, is the fact, ubiquity, that it would be able to be in any place in any time. Oh, okay. Yeah.

I mean, it talked about every person in the community who'd skip church, everyone who'd slept through a sermon, everyone who drank too much, everyone who beat their children, and anyone who idled away their hours. It is my grandmother. It really is my grandmother. Yeah, the witch also loved calling people assholes. And in the same breath, would unironically praise the virtues of living a Christian life while declaring Jesus Christ to be king of kings.

But that's why in the world of, I was listening to Art Bell cover the Bell Witch. I like listening to a good episode of Coast to Coast from 2002, where he had a, this was kind of one of the, he had one of those guests, I love Art Bell the way he handles guests, the way they would talk especially, because this came from my super Christian ghost hunter that was talking about the Bell Witch. And you know, Art Bell's like, really, about every single thing that a guy said is incredible. But he said that there's a whole stripe of people who, they always want to slap the word demon on these things.

People want demons. Sure. Demons, Zach Baggins who we love, they love demons because demons, they're not human ghosts, quote unquote, they are malevolent entities that only exist to cause pain. And what this one Christian ghost hunter was talking about is this idea that a demon often would invoke Jesus Christ and talk about the king of kings and say all of these things as a way to mock people's belief. So they would do all of these things and show all of this impossible shit and abuse the family

but then also praise Jesus Christ as the ultimate fucking, like making fun of God. Interesting. And of course the real king of kings, Triple H, Hunter Hearst Helmsley. King of kings, great character. The witch was also, again strangely, a virulent racist. And we refer, the ghost was racist. The ghost was racist. What do you mean?

The ghost would refer to the enslaved people living on the Bell Farm by the worst epithetic possible while going on and on about how much he hated them for simply existing. And there was no reason for it. Life is already bad for a person who is enslaved. You then had to be brought into the house. This is what they did because they realized that the Bell Witch hated the slaves on the family. They hated the slaves that were on the farm so they would bring them in to stay the night to try to scare away the ghost.

What? You're forced to be a ghost repellent in someone's house and this disembodied voice is just calling you every name in the book. Oh my goodness. This is a horrible weekend. Absolutely. I'm not good. But nonetheless, word of the Bell Witch was spreading far outside the small community

on the Red River in which the bells lived. And visitors began showing up in great numbers, treating the haunting as if it was a tourist attraction. And inexplicably, John Bell welcomed them all, making straw mattresses in the dining room and allowing visitors to pitch tents outside. And lest you think this was a profit making venture, John Bell provided shelter and food free of charge and refused any compensation whatsoever for fear of appearing as if he was profiting off his family's misery. Honestly, that's stupid on John Bell's part.

Yes, he's fricking dumb. But it's also weird. It seems like he's trying to do it at first by let's embrace the story PR-wise. Let's invite people into the house so we can act like we are not phased by what's going on in the house. It's this weird thing because it's about secret shame. Right. Because to them, they're not ashamed of owning slaves. They're not ashamed of everything else.

Of all the things they should be ashamed of. They're not ashamed of what's up. But what they're ashamed of is having a ghost in their house. Yeah. So it's about like to them, this maybe this idea of if we bring people in, we don't have to walk around like we have some horrible secret. Okay. I don't know. Yeah.

And like Jeff the Talking Mongoose, the Bell Witch had a different answer concerning her origins depending on who was asking the question. If someone was merely curious but still open to the idea of the paranormal, the witch would answer with scripture or deflect by asking the curious party's personal opinion on her origins. What do you think? Well, what do you mean? What do I think? I'm asking you. Yeah, exactly. What the hell is this?

Is that a question? Yeah, it's a question. Where the hell are you from? Where the hell are you from? What the fuck is going on here? What the fucking is going on here? I'm seriously pissed off. I'm seriously pissed on.

Well, when a third reverend, Reverend James Gunn, declared that the witch had no fashion sense at all, which declared that the witch had no idea what it was, the witch said, quote, I know exactly who I was, and I have been waiting for you to ask, Jim. You are one of the only ones who ask intelligent questions, and so you deserve an honest reply. I was one of the first white men to explore the region. Whoa! Well, that explains the racism. Now, this seemed unlikely, but when Reverend Gunn pressed the point, the bell witch claimed it had proof. It said that in life, it had buried some gold nearby, and it could give directions to the location where the gold might be found. As far as where it was, the witch said it had buried a box under a large rock at a nearby spring southwest of the bell property. Huh. However, there were stipulations. The entity claimed that the treasure could only be found if Betsy's brother Drury, a man named Alex Potter, an old sugar mouth, were the only ones to go on the expedition.

Furthermore, the witch also stipulated that all of the money, if found, had to go to Betsy Bell. So, after agreeing to the conditions, the three chosen men walked to the location and began the backbreaking work of moving a gigantic flat stone so they could dig the ground underneath. Can I ask again why we're doing this? Oh, that house phantom witch told us to do it. Yeah. Yeah, so that's it. There's like no map or anything. There's like no proof or anything about being under this rock. No, sir. Just the opinion of a racist ghost.

Okay, well, better get back to work then. Of course, there was nothing there. And when they returned home, dirty, tired, and sweaty, the witch gleefully laughed about how they'd worked so hard for nothing. And when the men said anything in response, she'd mockingly repeat their statements. It always works. Which is Henry's justice to you. I'm gonna kill myself. It always works.

I'm so mad. But then in my mind, it reminds me of speaking with aliens, the idea of speaking with entities, and they always lie. They always lie, which is like why you can't trust. You have a very negative view of the alien. Very nice. I watched Close Encounters of the Fifth Kind and I'm a Steven Greer fan. Wow. Because he thinks that they're nice.

No, it's because their agendas are nowhere near our agendas. Okay, well, we gotta get back to witches. But what was interesting was that the witch could recount what each man had done during the dig. How Alex had dug furiously while Old Sugarmouth looked on in prayer and did nothing. Oh, he didn't do shit. Yeah, he didn't do anything. What the hell? He was praying.

He was giving him strength through prayer. Come on. That is what I'm saying from now on. I know you're an atheist, so I know that that is not true. No, I've changed. That's once no work is involved. I didn't realize you could get out of it. When Alex had given up, Drew apparently greedily dug the hole deeper with his bare hands.

There's gold there. I've gotta find the gold. Now, at this point, the witch had turned into pretty much a full-on entertainer. And everyone present, except the three men who'd been sent on the fool's errand, couldn't help but laugh at the way the witch told the story. Because the witch was telling the story in a really funny way. So the bell witch essentially added the story to her set and retold it to every newcomer, making the men relive the humiliation over and over and over again. But the interesting thing about the visitors to the house was that the entity seemed to treat everyone differently depending on their disposition. If you showed up claiming to be able to rid the house of a spirit, you'd get pranks, ridicule, and physical abuse.

Skeptics, on the other hand, who arrived with accusations of ventriloquism and flimflabbery were treated to ear piercing noises, the screams of family members, and hallucinations so vivid the skeptics often left the farm in a state of temporary psychosis. Cool. This is not a bit. There was a lot of interest in the bell witch very, very early, and they had a lot of visitors. Kind of like Jeff. It couldn't have been easy to get there, right? Don't these people have to like take horses and carriages and stuff?

Yeah, well that's why people would stay overnight, because it was that isolated. But you wonder, I mean, I think everybody is going to jump on me immediately saying like, because I'm a fucking... What are you about to say? No, it's just, it's strange to have so many people experience it. I know that mass, like the idea of mass hysteria is a thing, and a bunch of people can convince each other that something's happening. I do understand that. But it is interesting just how many people went to go see the bell witch and got a show. Absolutely.

But even those who believed were sometimes treated poorly. One afternoon, a curious Englishman visiting relatives in Kentucky stopped by the bell house, treating it as nothing more than another stop on his tour of America. Now, he'd planned to spend three nights at the house, but John Bell insisted he stay for longer after the Englishman commented on how much he missed his family. Yeah, I'll be your family. What you doing all of you sweet little Englishman? What do you just use to name John Oliver? You stay here, you thin-neck little Englishman. Well, for some reason, the bell witch took the statement of the Englishman missing his family as a cue to attack.

That night, the Englishman began hearing the voices of his parents clear as day. A full-on conversation about how much they missed him and how they hoped he'd return soon. This went back and forth all night, terrifying the poor fucking tourist. Now, I mean, this could have been one of those half-awake dreams that last for hours. We've all had those. Screaming and screaming and thrashing and fighting and running into the street. I do this every night, almost every night. No, that's basically true. But the Englishman nevertheless took it as reality, and he lit out of the bell house without telling a soul as soon as the sun was up.

But even though Betsy was the center of the activity for the first two years or so, the bell witch was about to turn its deadly attentions to what many believe was the true target all along. John Bell. Whoa! And that's where we'll return for part two of the bell witch. This story gets darker. It gets more snakey. We're going to go into next episode. We saved it for next episode. The idea of talking about the reasons why. Because we're going to reveal information about the build-up to this entire story that it's very interesting, that might explain a little bit of what was going on. And I think it's got a lot to do with the Monarch.

The Monarch is a horrible thing to call the wonderful thing of growing up. I don't know actually what the technical... What the fuck is the Monarch? I've never heard that. I know it's superior. It's nice. I know that, but I've never heard anyone say the word Monarch besides Henry. Is this something you met up? I guarantee you Jackie said it when she was talking to me. And then it was like that's when Miss B went all the classy girls call it.

I learned it in high school for some reason. Are you googling the word? What does Google say about it? Monarch definition. The first occurrence of menstruation. And the reason why I don't know why, we learned it maybe in biology. It actually is a real source. We learned it in biology. Oh my god, do not of course me. Do not of course me. Do you mind if I pour you make up? I'm an author now. I'm a New York Times bestselling author.

I can make up words. I don't think you're supposed to say Monarch. I think it's probably like Menache. It's something much more delicate than Monarch. All I know is that we do... The way we handle subjects are so subtle, smart, of course. Oftentimes people compare us to NPR with their level of sensitivity and just the subtle way we can approach a topic.

And so that's why my job is to make sure we're entertaining the people of America. Every time I think of NPR, I'm reminded of when I sent them the Roundtable of Gentlemen episode. Can you fucking imagine? And I was like, do you think we're going to fit on the network? The innocence. Of course. Well, speaking of Roundtable of Gentlemen, thanks to everyone who supports the shows here on the Last Podcast Network. Obviously able to get stopped at Roundtable of Gentlemen,

Wizard of the Bruiser. We have a wonderful show here. Fraudsters coming out constantly, which is great. It's coming out constantly. Every second of every day it's coming out. And of course, no dogs in space. And again, spooky all month. Very, very excited.

We've got the listener posse is going to be coming up on Side Stories. So email sidestorieslpotl at gmail.com so that we can start going through your scary tales and read them in the coming weeks. We have a lot more content coming your way for the Halloween season. And check out this Saturday, tomorrow, twitch.tv slash last podcast network. 6 p.m. Pacific, 9 p.m. Eastern Standard Time. We are going to be doing our series called Haunt Your House, which will be for charity this week. It's for the American Diabetes Association.

And your hosts are Jackie Zabrowski, Amber Nelson, Ed Larsen, and Holden McNeely. All pre-diabetic. And each one of them desperately is going to need treatment in the future. I believe they're watching a movie called Werewolves in the Girls' Bathroom. Something like that. Werewolf in the Girls' Dormitory, I think is what it's called. And the bathrooms do reside there. I want to thank everybody who watched last week's Haunt Your House.

We watched White Zameh, which was a... I'm going to say it was a slow movie, but very fun. You watch with friends. It's not a lot of plot, but that's what's good about it. Yeah, beautiful. I want to thank everyone who donated. We got over our $2,000 goal for Being Art Zero. Honestly, that was so unbelievably sweet.

We got to our $2,000 limit by like 20, 25 minutes in. You all are just incredible. So thank you all so much for that. And yeah, just thanks so much for supporting the network and supporting us. And do we have any other news? We'll be on tour coming up next weekend. We're going to be over in Lubbock, Texas now. Obviously, we'll see you as soon as we possibly can.

Literally, we'll never go to Lubbock, Texas. No, that's never happening. Well, apparently I'm going to have to cancel my vacation plans then. We tried and they rejected us. They did not. There's no one is there. No one is there. The counterculture is dead.

They killed KTXD and neutered it. And the counterculture is never recovered. This is the real core, isn't it? It's a great place to get Burger King and COVID-19. Water Burger, my friend. All right. Well, thank you all so much for listening. We love you.

Hang in there. Keep on trucking along. We'll get through all this together. Never forget. Hail yourselves. Hail Satan. Hail King. Magustalations.

Hail me, you gotta hail me. Absolutely. If you're gonna hail someone, you gotta hail me. And your goal today is if your house is haunted, make friends with your ghost. Make friends with the ghost. Absolutely. How do you do that? Do you put out jelly beans or something for it?

Suck it's dick. Oh. This show is made possible by listeners like you. Thanks to our ad sponsors, you can support our shows by supporting them. For more shows like the one you just listened to, go to lastpodcastnetwork.com.