But by that time there wasn’t anyone left alive who had actually been involved with the events themselves. Stranger still, there are few contemporary documents mentioning any of the events of the story. There were papers in the area, but they didn’t report on anything either. There aren’t any notes on the phenomenon from the journals that exist from other neighbors, including the school teacher that taught the Bell children (although some tales imply that he might have been part of the phenomenon himself).
Even stranger, despite the fact that Andrew Jackson was in the midst of a very brutal presidential campaign (so brutal that he thought it was the cause of his wife’s early death) no one referenced the fact that he took time out from his campaign to go ghost hunting, or that he ran away from said ghost after barely a night of activity.
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| Although I would run from this thing too… |
There also isn’t a lot of detail about just what John did to earn the enmity of such a spirit. Was it simply a land deal gone bad? Was the spirit really the ghost of Kate Batts, an old woman who had sold John Bell some property and felt that she was cheated? We do know that John was eventually excommunicated by his church, but we don’t know if that was because of shady business deals or because of the very weirdness that surrounded his family.
Some of stories do look like classic poltergeist activity, centered around Betsy, the only girl in a family of boys. Some people guess that Betsy was being sexually abused by her father, and that the poltergeist activity that erupted thus centered around him and his destruction. But there isn’t any evidence that supports it, most people just see it as a likely reason for the “witch” to center its attention around Betsy and John, yet have positive or neutral relationships with other members of the family.
We might never know for sure. Whatever the truth or fiction of the matter is lost to the dark absym of time. But what we do know is while Kate seems to have left this world with the death of John some strange forces still seem to hover around the former homestead, especially the limestone cave at one corner of the property. People, especially skeptics, find themselves slapped and pushed, strange raspy noises sound at the cave entryway and electronics suddenly die for no apparent reason.
Stranger still, people who take keepsakes from the property- rocks and whatnot- often report that it seems like the phenomenon follows them home. They report poltergeists and forces beyond their control, frightening effects that only end when they return what they took to the farm.
Often times they don’t dare return themselves and face the wrath of whatever it is that still lurks in this wooded corner of Tennessee. Instead they opt for the much safer option of mailing the rocks and keepsakes back. Better to pay the extra postage than to test Kate and her infamous temper.