The Creeps! || Book of Spooky Stories (COMPLETED ✔️)

77 ~ Bell Witch

If you live in Kentucky like me or Tennessee, where these horror stories originate, you're familiar with urban legends such as Skinless Tom and the all horrifying Bell Witch. Actually, my grandpa as gone into and toured the Bell Witch house, to which I screamed about. Bell Witch house? So lucky!

The Bell Witch is a scary true story about a poltergeist that haunted Adams, Tennessee in the 19th century. It is also one of the few cases recorded where someone was killed by a ghost.

One day, in 1817, John Bell was inspecting his corn field when he came across a strange looking animal in between the rows. Shocked by the appearance of this animal, that had the body of a dog but the head of a rabbit, Bell shot at the creature several times. Bell thought nothing of the incident until after dinner time. That evening, Bell began hearing "beating" sounds on the outside walls of their log house.

The sounds continued with increased frequency and force each night. Bell and his sons often ran outside to catch the culprit, but would always return empty-handed.

In the weeks that followed, the Bell children would often wake up frightened, complaining that rats had been gnawing at their bedposts. Not long after that, the children began complaining of their blankets and pillows being pulled off their bed by a seemingly invisible entity.

As time went on, the Bells began hearing faint, whispering voices, which were too weak to understand, but sounded like an old woman singing hymns. The encounters escalated, and the Bells' youngest daughter, Betsy, began having brutal encounters with the invisible creature. It would pull her hair and slap her relentlessly, often leaving welts and handprints on her face and body.

The entity's voice began getting louder and unmistakeable over time. It sang hymns, read scriptures, carried on intelligent conversation, and once, even quoted, word-for-word two sermons that were preached at the same time on the same day, 13 miles apart.

The worst thing about this was that it's the first case recorded where a supernatural entity actually killed a human.

John Bell let out his last breath on December 20, 1820, after slipping into a coma the day before. Immediately after his death, the family found a vial in the cupboard filled with a strange liquid. John Bell, Jr. gave some of the liquid to the family cat, which died instantly.

The entity then exclaimed joyfully, "I gave Ol' Jack a big dose of that last night, which fixed him!"

John Bell, Jr. quickly threw the vial into the fireplace, which burst into a blue chemical that slowly crawled up the chimney.