The Bell Witch: An American Haunting [Paperback]

Brent Monahan (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 19, 2000

Known throughout Tennessee as "Old Kate," the Bell Witch took up residence with John Bell's family in 1818. It was a cruel and noisy spirit, given to rapping and gnawing sounds before it found its voices.

With these voices and its supernatural acts, the Bell Witch tormented the Bell family. This extraordinary book recounts the only documented case in U.S. history when a spirit actually caused a man's death.

The local schoolteacher, Richard Powell, witnessed the strange events and recorded them for his daughter. His astonishing manuscript fell into the hands of novelist Brent Monahan, who has prepared the book for publication. Members of the Bell family have previously provided information on this fascinating case, but this book recounts the tale with novelistic vigor and verve. It is truly chilling.

Editorial Reviews

From Kirkus Reviews

Ever-intelligent horror novelist Monahan (The Blood of the Covenant, 1995, etc.) retells a true story--true as far as the participants knew--about a poltergeist. The book purports to be a recently discovered manuscript written by Richard Powell, an eyewitness of the Bell Witch haunting in Robertson County, Tennessee, 181721. Monahan says that his first skeptical reading of the manuscript led him to six books confirming the authenticity of the events. Indeed, Richard Powell, the long-dead narrator, is himself a skeptic who seems to know all the devices of poltergeists, and in particular how poltergeist activity within a home reflects a family's psychic torment. Poltergeists (racket-makers) do not attack from without but rather are a spiritual pustule erupting from within a deeply troubled household. The poltergeist in this case seemed set on doing away with John Bell, the head of the family, while at the same time gradually evolving a rather homey tie with the other family members that lasted for three years and was witnessed by many. The spirit first showed up as something invisible gnawing nightly on bedposts, raining rocks on the roof, ripping covers off beds, and repeatedly slapping 12-year-old Betsy Bell and pulling her across the floor by her hair. At times the spirit allowed itself to be touched; it gathered news from afar for the family; lectured on theology; sang sweetly in four different voices; and rescued children in trouble. For three years, the spirit joked, lectured, ran off frauds and charlatans, and even nursed Bell's sick wife, producing nuts and berries for the invalid out of thin air. Even so, it afflicted the father with palsy, tics, and neuralgia, and at last watched him die. What produced the poltergeist? It's unfair to reveal here Monahan's reasonable yet supernatural answer. More artful, if less exciting, than Monahan's brainy bloodsucker operas--but all immensely satisfying. -- Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Review

"America's greatest ghost story." -Dennis William Hauck, Haunted Places

"Too compelling to put down." -Fangoria

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Product Details

• Paperback: 208 pages
• Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin; 1st edition (June 19, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0312262922
• ISBN-13: 978-0312262921
• Product Dimensions: 7.6 x 5 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (50 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #829,762 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

24 of 28 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars First Of All, It's A Novel, February 13, 2003

By 

J. D Suggs (Atlanta, Georgia United States) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: The Bell Witch: An American Haunting (Paperback)

This book probably intends to confuse you a little- it did me- by purporting to be a newly discovered diary of a known eyewitness to events in the historically-documented "Bell Witch" case. In fact, it's a very good novel. Monahan takes the basic facts (or claims) that we have and fleshes them out artfully, with a narrator, dialogue, and a point of view that work beautifully well. The gripping story takes the horror and suspense genres in a unique direction, and lives up to the incredible source material. A small complaint: he tries to wrap things in a too-neat 1990s package for us at the end- the only false note he strikes here.

The book left me very interested in this case, and my interest increased recently when I discovered close family ties to many of the people depicted here, including Elias and Sugg Fort.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars I Wish It Had Been A Non-Fiction Account--Those Are Hard To Come By, October 5, 2005

By 

Notnadia (Currently upstairs.) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Bell Witch: An American Haunting (Paperback)

This novel describes most of the significant Bell Witch facts as they have come to stand in American history/legend. The author chose the device of an unknown manuscript that gave inside information on the events of nearly 200 years ago, and took on the stance that this was as much a mystery (a murder mystery, no less) as it was a series of possible supernatural events. I didn't find this novel scary, but I don't know if I was supposed to. My own view is that this notorious case of a haunting witnessed by hundreds (including Andrew Jackson, if legend is correct) contains some unexplained elements but is also one that has grown in the telling over the decades. No one theory covers all elements here but the one that comes closest involves knowing participation by some of the family involved in the supposed poltergeist phenomena that surrounded them. Whatever else this matter was, it became deadly serious and the patriarch of the family did wind up dead, just as the spirit of the "witch" prophesied. More disturbing, true to her word, the witch did appear and she laughed at him at his funeral, as his casket was being lowered into the grave. I have read quite a bit about this disturbing folk history and have heard everything advocated from demonic presences to straightforward trickery. One recent claim was that the girl at the heart of the case was being molested by her father, that the pranks she claimed were a haunting were a cry for help, and that she got her revenge by poisoning her father to death. That may well be. Whatever the explanations are, the Bell Witch of Tennessee certainly deserves to be kept alive in memory, and it makes for a titillating study of the unexplained.

11 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars More like historical fiction, August 30, 2000

By 

"tlcyrol" - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Bell Witch: An American Haunting (Paperback)

In "THE BELL WITCH," the author asks us to believe that he has recently discovered a manuscript which documents the only case in US history when a ghost actually kills a man. At the same time, the author also admits that his story is a "faction," much like "THE EXORCIST." Whether or not some of the events really happened is up to the reader to decide.

I picked up "THE BELL WITCH" after the recent success of "THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT" and was hoping to find something as equally as entertaining but this time as non-fiction. Instead, what I read was a ghost story that was more amusing at times than frightening, more predictable than surprising and left me feeling like less of a believer than intended. The discovered "manuscript," written by the local school teacher, documents the haunting of the Bell family in too much detail to actually make the reader believe that this was a daily journal. This book is only one person's account of the poltergeist and the author/editor, Brent Monahan, tries too early in his preface to convince us that everything that lies within is all true. The only real mystery here is trying to decide what events may have truly happened.