An American Haunting

Donald Sutherland, Sissy Spacek

The benevolent ghost of C. Y. Stephens might be haunting the auditorium named after him. You might hear the eerie moan of the only woman graduate of ISU to die in World War I while walking through the Memorial Union. You can pull off the Interstate into Story City, stop at the closest convenience store for a pop and a bag of chips and possibly the blurry phantom of a salesman who died of a heartattack in the 1970s when the place was a truck stop. Then drive on into town, find the building that used to be the first funeral home in town, go up the steps to the 3 apartments above, be careful someone might be following you. A person can have a field day in nearby Boone where ghostly watchmen and steam engines can be seen on the Kate Shelly High Bridge. Kate Shelley's ghost can be seen in the nearby hamlet of Moingona. Although I am sure the local newspaper staff will not like it, at night, mysterious footsteps can be heard in the building. Conclude your visit by going to where the State Nursing Home & Hospital used to be and screaming and crying can still be heard today. In Nevada, there was the old Story County Home where the area’s insane were held. Almost every college in the state has its specter, every cemetery its apparition, and every older building its things that go bump and creak in the night. In central Iowa alone, there are at least 5 ghost hunting teams that exploring the unexplained. According to a recent study, one in six Americans believes in ghosts and one in fourteen claim to have seen one. (I am not one of them.) This belief in specters and spirits probably goes back to when Lucy and her offspring were hanging out in her cave and using flint.

Maybe the most famous poltergeist in the history of America is the Bell Witch, a supernatural phenomena so famous that even a future president of the United States, Andrew Jackson, journeyed to Adams, Tennessee to see if there was anything to the supernatural tales he had been hearing about. Starting in 1817, John Bell, a successful farmer, and his family were terrified by something, nobody is clear what, but something. It started with the house being plagued by knocking, rapping, and scratching noises that no one could figure out where they originated. A strange black wolf with yellow eyes was sited near the home. Then invisible hands seemingly pulled blankets off the beds, various family members had their hair pulled, were kicked and scratched by a phantom perpetrator, especially 12-year-old Betsy whose body became covered in bruises. The family kept what was happening to themselves, fearing no one would believe them, but in time, John confided to a neighbor what was happening. An investigation committee was formed to discover what was going on. The spirit identified itself as the witch of Kate Batts, the late neighbor of the Bell’s, who had a fallout with the Bell patriarch over the purchase of some land and who on her death bed swore to haunt the family. The invisible specter would even shake hands with certain individuals. Kate became to appear on a regular basis in the Bell homestead and to anyone unlucky enough to venture into Robertson County. When General Jackson heard that his good friend was bewitched by a spirit, he, along with good friend Sam Houston, went to investigate and experienced the haunting himself. Approaching the Bell property, the wagon stopped in its tracks. The wheels locked in place by some unseen force. Once on the property, the “witch tamer” in Jackson’s party was beaten by some unseen force when he tried to call upon the witch. Whatever happened to Jackson over the next couple of days, he is reported to have said to a storekeeper in a nearby town, "I’d rather fight the entire British Army than to deal with the Bell Witch." After that, John became so ill that he was confined to bed. Friends found a strange bottle with a black liquid near his bed and his breath stunk of the contents. When a drop of it was placed on the tongue of a nearby cat, the animal died instantly. John soon followed and observers swear they heard Kate scream in joy at the moment of his last breath. Kate would not even allow the poor man a proper funeral, cursing and singing during the entire service. Even with her enemy gone, Kate continued to torment young Betsy, not allowing the young woman to marry her true love, Joshua Gardner. The witch then left the family but promised to return in 7 years. Which he did, plaguing the family for 2 weeks before departing again. During that time, she appeared in the household of John Jr. and made several predictions that he recorded. Among them was her prognostication of the upcoming Civil and World Wars, the emancipation of the slaves, the rise to world power of the United States, and the destruction of society due to rapid heat from a mighty explosion. Although she proved to wrong in one key prediction, she promised to return in 1935 and did not. Many believe that she has taken up residence in a nearby cave on the Bell property. Current owners have reported seeing strange figures and knocking sounds coming from the cave.

The Blair Witch Project was inspired by this tale and now the Bell Witch has a movie of her own starring Donald Sutherland and Sissy Spacek as John and Lucy Bell. (There are also 2 other idependent films about the Bell Witch, Bell Witch: The Movie and Bell Witch Haunting, which have come out over the last couple of years and are definitely worth missing.) Young Rachel Hurd-Wood (Peter Pan) is young Betsy. Based on the novel by Brent Monahan (There have been at least 20 books written about the Witch.), it is not a scary horror film, but rather an old-fashioned haunted house movie and stays really close to the reported events. The Bell story is bookended by a young woman who now lives in the Bell house who finds some old letters in the basement. The main reason for this narrative style seems to be to grind a few minutes off the run time, set the story in 1815, and allow some major product placement for a vodka company that was not around a century ago. (I was complaining about product placement just the other day when I was at Mayhem Comic, best comic shop in America, with wonderful service and a fine selection.) In the end, this is a B/B- movie that could have been tightened here and there. Spacek and Southerland are great, but a can’t image young people being interest in a ghost from the 19th century.

The story of the Bell Witch is wonderful until you start digging into the real facts. Kate Batts, the witch who was supposed to have died, outlived John Bell by 22 years and his daughter, Lucy, by 7. There is no reference to the witch at the nearby church where most legal disputes and community meetings where held. Andrew Jackson nor any of his close associates make reference to the witch in any of their personal papers. The ghost’s predictions to John Bell, Jr. were invented in the 1930s to sell a book. Like most legends and ghost stories, the stories of the Bell Witch have grown and changed over time. Is it the wind whipping through an old home? Mass hysteria? Child abuse? A future husband who used secret passageways and hypnosis to win the heart of a teenage girl away from her true love? A little girl whose stories and playfulness got out of control? A father’s Bell’s Palsy? A deceitful slave? The answer is lost in time. If you make a trip to the sleepy little town of Adams, Tennessee today, any of the 566 residents will delight you will ghost stories and then try to sell you a t-shirt, a book, or some other novelty item from the general store. For $7, you can tour the Bell Cave, for another $5, you can visit a reproduction of the home, and for a couple of bucks, you can walk around the one room museum. Ghost stories aren’t real. They are simply fun, hair standing up on the back of your neck type of things like the young girl who stares at you from the bell tower at Old College Hall at Simpson College or the Black Angel at the Oakland Cemetery in Iowa City, where if you touch it at midnight you will die, or the visiting the ax murder house in Villisca. Still, you don't have to believe in ghost stories to enjoy them.

Verdict: I liked it, Younger people will not.