Rhapsody's Page

The Bell Witch of Tennessee

by RhapSody
(Cleveland, TN)

Photo of Candy with See-thru Man Behind Her

The State marker on Highway 41 North in Adams tells visitors about the legend.

This picture of Candy was taken at the entrance of the Bell Witch Cave in 1995. She was sitting there by herself, and this image of a man showed up behind her.

Although first believed to be a double exposure until the differences of the hair lighting and clothing were noticed.

This photo was checked out by some professional photographers who couldn't explain where the image came from.

The Legend of the Witch

John Bell, a farmer, along with his wife and children settled in northern Roberts County Tennessee in 1804. Their farm consisted of 320 acres of rich farm land. They lived a quite peaceful life here for the first 13 years. They were members of the church where John became a deacon. The family grew and became somewhat prosperous. In the late summer of 1817 something would happen that would change their lives forever.

Some members of the family began seeing strange looking animals around the property. Then late at night they started hearing knocking sounds on the doors and outer walls of the house. Later sounds were being heard inside the house. Sounds of a rat gnawing on the bed post, chains being drug through the house, stones being dropped on the wooden floors, then gulping and choking sounds.

The family was terrified but kept the problem to themselves for over a year. When things became intolerable, John confided in a neighbor, James Johnson. He invited Mr and Mrs Johnson to spend the night. After several nights of witnessing these strange things, Mr. Johnson suggested that more people should be told. And a committee was formed and an investigation started.

It was not long before people were coming from miles around to hear and witness this unseen force that was terrorizing the home. Before long this unseen force had gained enough strength that it now had a voice. When asked who and what it was, it gave different identities. It once stated that it was the witch of a neighbor woman named Kate Batts. This is what many people believed, and from then on, this unseen force was called "Kate".

It seemed that Kate had two main reasons for visiting the home. The main one was to kill John Bell. For what reason no one knows because Kate never gave a reason why. The second reason was to stop John's youngest daughter Betsy from marrying a certain neighbor boy named Joshua Gardner.

Over the next three years "Kate" tormented members of the family almost daily. John and his daughter Betsy was the ones who received the worst of the physical abuse. Betsy had her hair pulled, she was pinched, scratched stuck with pins and even beaten. While John Bell began suffering from spells of swelling of the throat and often had the feeling of a stick being stuck sideways in his throat. Then came the twitching and jerking of the facial muscles. Kate would blast him with curses and hideous threats during these spells. As time went on John Bell became weaker and weaker.

Kate was becoming well known and drew large crowds of people. She seemed to be very intelligent in many things: the bible, people's past and the future. She could be in two places at the same time - miles apart from each other.

Another major development in the story is the involvement of future U.S. President Andrew Jackson, who heard of the disturbances and decided to observe them in person, in 1819.

On approaching the property, he encountered an invisible presence that stopped his wagon in its tracks, until he acknowledged that the witch was responsible, upon which the wagon was able to proceed unhindered.

One of the men in Jackson’s entourage declared himself to be a witch tamer who intended to kill the spirit. The man began screaming and contorting his body immediately after making these statements. Jackson and his entourage left the property by midday the following day. He is quoted as later saying “I’d rather fight the entire British Army than to deal with the Bell Witch.”citation needed

Betsy Bell’s engagement to a neighbor named Joshua Gardner was another focus of the invisible entity’s displeasure, and followed and taunted them whenever they were alone together, leading Betsy to break off the relationship on Easter Monday in 1821.

The disembodied voice continued to communicate its dislike of John Bell, and its intention to kill him. was by then suffering frequent facial seizures, often rendering him speechless. The family blamed John's affliction on the witch, but modern analysis of his symptoms indicates that he may have suffered from Bell's Palsy,12 a paralysis of the facial muscles. The name "Bell's Palsy" comes from Charles Bell, the anatomist that discovered the condition. Charles Bell is no relation to the Bells of Adams, TN. The name is a coincidence, and Bell's Palsy was not identified until 1821, the year after John Bell's death.

She(Kate) finally accomplished her mission for coming to the farm. On December 20, 1820 John Bell had died. It was believed that he was poisoned by Kate, and Kate took full credit for his death. And then in March of 1821 young Betsy broke off her engagement with Joshua Gardner.

Kate then bid everyone farewell and promised to return in seven years. She did return in 1828 for a few short weeks. During this visit she came to the home of John Bell Jr and had long talks with him about the past, the present and the future. She made some predictions for the future. Kate also said there was a reason for John Bells death. However she never said what the reason was. After the second visit, she said her next return would be in One Hundred and Seven years. That would have been in 1935. But some believe that she (Kate) never left the area at all due to the strange things that has occurred in and around the town of and the over these many years.

Mowery House Mystery

by RhapSody
(Cleveland, TN)

Mowery House

MOWERY HOUSE MYSTERY

My husband and I purchased this old farm house. The main part of the house was built before the Civil War with the remainder completed after the war was over. It had remained in the Mowery family for many generations prior to our ownership. The house had been empty for several years.....the last remaining heir, Jerry Mowery, was reluctant to sell. A few years earlier, Jerry's mother, a 89 year old woman, suffering from dementia and other health problems, went missing from the home. After an entire neighborhood search of the house and surrounding property, her body was discovered at daybreak by my husband. She was lying, face up, at the bottom of a fifteen feet deep well, which was just outside

Jerry Mowery, the son, made us a deal on the farm we could not turn down. All was well until things began to get a little disturbing for me there. The house was in desperate need of repair so we began our restoration prior to moving in. It was a labor of love and we wanted to keep the house as original as possible. A few things were unnerving for me as our project began. Furniture, clothing and other items that had belonged to the Mowery's were still in the house. Jerry Mowery, the son, had removed everything he had wanted to keep and told us we could have anything left in the house and barns. A few beautiful antique pieces of furniture, three fireplaces with ornate mantles and crystal door knobs. What a beautiful place! I guess, if you're not looking for something to be haunted, you make up explanations for strange things that occur in the beginning. I know I did but in private, I thought I was losing my mind at times.

I would have tools that I was working with disappear if I turned my head or left the room. No matter where I’d look, I would not find the paint roller I had just been using a few minutes earlier or the hammer I had used to remove a stray nail from the wall I was painting. Then, just as magically as the items disappeared, they would be back where I left them. I thought I was absent minded with my tools and became very frustrated as the remodelling continued.

During the week, I would go out to the house to do painting or whatever things I could do. My hubby could only work at the house on the weekends so I was pretty much alone out there, except for the kids. My son was six and my baby girl was three years old. I would drop my son off at school and go to the house to work until time to pick him up in the afternoon. In thinking back now, my daughter would talk about people she had talked to at the old house. I just figured she had a vivid imagination at three years old and didn’t think anything about it. I remember her telling me about the old man at the barn or the old woman working in the flower beds outside.

Then, there was this door to the right of the fireplace in the dining room. It was a closet with shelves and hooks where an old coat, hat and apron hung on the door that opened. Numerous times that door would be open when I went through the room, then be closed when I came back through. I didn’t think a thing about it at that time. The thought never occurred that someone who had passed away could be doing it.

As time progressed and the house became near completion, I begin noticing the coat, hat or apron would sometimes not be hanging there. I’d search the floor of the closet to see if anything had fallen off the hooks and would find nothing. The real shocker was when we completed our renovations and I began cleaning up the place. I wanted to paint the insides of the closets and put down shelf paper in the closets that had shelves in them…….like the one in the dining room that also held the coat, hat and apron.

There was also an old tool box with an assortment of very old tools inside. It was clear that Mr. Mowery had kept his tools in good order as none contained any rust or dirt. The closet was full of spider webs, dust and odds and ends that people store up throughout the years. Jars of canned goods, bars and bars of this old timey soap called, Oxydol with Lye. I figured she must have used that for doing the laundry or cleaning. Heaven knows I wouldn’t want to use lye in my bath!

I dragged all the unusable stuff and toss them into a large trash can and carried the things I thought were worth keeping onto the shelf on the back, screened-in porch. After using my vacuum to clear out all the webs and dirt, I gave the closet a good coat of paint. I wanted to get another coat on before I put down my pretty floral shelf paper but knew it would have to wait until the following day because I had to pick up my son at school. I left the door to the closet opened when I left that day and honestly didn’t think about it when I returned the next day and the door was closed. It did not dawn on me that anything was out of the ordinary as I opened the door to begin painting the closet again.

As I pulled open the door, I was startled by something that kind of rustled and moved when the door was pulled opened. I jumped back as if I had seen a mouse or snake. The real fear set in when I saw the coat, hat and apron hanging in their old place on the door of the closet. It was time to pick up my son at school and meet my husband at the house to measure the doors and windows for new trim. I pondered how I could get out of going back in that house without giving my husband this crazy story.

I could think of nothing to tell him and I knew that I would have to face my fear sooner or later. I also knew that I would never be able to go into that house after dark for as long as we owned the place. I was scared I might see something that would make my foolish fear of ghosts be known to the world. It amazes me to this day how my husband was never aware of my real fear of that place.

Following the closet scare, nothing more happened during the renovation of the house. I was grateful for that but I was still on my guard. I watched for anything out of the ordinary.

Not much time passed before things began to happen. We were on the eve of Christmas and I had the house decorated to the hilt. Since it was so cold and we did not have the insulation upstairs, we usually kept the doors from the foyer closed into the living room and downstairs master bedroom. There were times when we used the fireplace for ambience; we had to open the living room door because it would get too hot.

It was on this particular, late afternoon that I had the fireplace going and the door into the foyer from the living room open. Afternoon drifted into evening and it began to get dark outside. I plugged in the outside Christmas lights and the children and I sat on the sofa in the living room watching, "It's A Wonderful Life," on television. Both the children fallen asleep by the time the movie had ended. The grandfather clock in the hallway chimed the hour was eleven in the evening. . .

From my position on the sofa, I could only see into the foyer if I turned my head to the right. I could see reflections of lights in the foyer from my peripheral vision. Our family poodle, Sugarbabe, jumped onto the sofa and curled up beside my daughter. I went to the kitchen and thought I heard my hubby’s truck pull into the driveway in front of the house. I had just turned off the kitchen light and entered the living room when I heard the front door open and caught a glimpse of someone going past the living room door.

I walked on over to the sofa and sat down beside the children, wondering why my hubby would be going upstairs. I know I heard the footfalls on the steps as he went up the stairs because Sugar’s head followed the sound on the living room wall as the sound of the footfalls went up to the landing . I figured he may have had a present for me that he did not want me to discover until Christmas day so I just sat there on the stairs and waited for him to come back down to join us. I waited and waited and waited.........at least fifteen minutes passed and I was beginning to wonder why he had not joined me in the living room.

I stepped into the foyer and looked upstairs. It was dark upstairs, he had not turned on the landing light. I called to him a couple of times and he did not answer. I finally decided to ease up the steps more and yell, thinking he could not hear me from where I stood. It occurred to me as I called to him again, the dust on the second landing steps was still there. Since we didn’t use the upstairs, I only dusted the first landing stairs. I stopped and yelled louder to him. I noticed my shoes left prints in the dust on the steps but there were no other prints from where he had gone up before me. It took a moment for my brain to grasp this but the reality hit me hard and I was enveloped with fear like I had never felt.

I turned and ran down the steps as fast as I could, slipping on the bottom step and landing on my hiney on the foyer floor. I jumped up, ran into the living room, slammed the door. I could not think. The dead silence was broken by the sound of my hubby’s truck pulling into the driveway.

By this time, I was on my feet and in his arms trying to tell him what had just happened. I begged him to look on the stairs and see where my lone footprints marred the dusty steps. I knew there was no person upstairs because there were no footprints in the dust but I wanted him to check the upstairs all the same. Of course, he found nothing. Only my footprints in the dust.

I don’t know if he believed me or not but I know what I experienced and I know it was not my imagination. Needless to say, I no longer wanted to live in the house. ~~~

Do you think there could be any ghosts still lingering around that site???

~The Grim Reaper Ordeal~

by ~RhapSody~

I had totally forgotten about this happening to me until Robert brought up the Grim Reaper in a thread at Watcher’s Forum the other day. Here goes~~~

During the time we lived at the Mowery farm, I purchased a book store where I hired my sister to assist with the business. She would open up the store and manage it during the day hours and I’d come in and keep it open until ten or eleven in the evenings.

My sister was a very talented artist and one of the sales items we had, besides our books and magazines, was air brushed “T” shirts. People could bring in a photo or whatever they wanted her to air brush onto a t-shirt. It was a pretty good business in itself and I let her have all the profits from the air brushing. It brought people into my book store and hopefully to purchase their books or magazines too.

It was in early winter when I was on my way home from the bookstore. All the leaves were off the trees and there was this bright moon that lit up the sky brightly. My thoughts now return to the movie, Moonstruck, to describe the moon and the light it reflected. It was close to midnight by the time I turned onto the old, country road that led to our house. No traffic anywhere, all was still and quiet. I was suddenly startled by this large, dark shadowy thing that caused me to swerve my car, almost running into the nearby pond. I glanced up through the right side of my windshield in time to see this, dark something I could not give a name to. It was hovering about the height of the telephone lines that ran along beside the road and then it just seem to spread out and mist away. I know no other way to describe it. It had appeared so clearly to me as the moon was its backdrop and the outline of what appeared to be the image we all call, Grim Reaper. I could see no face, just the dark cloak and the sickle propped against its shoulder.

I drove quickly home, my heart racing, my legs feeling like rubber. I was totally terrified at what I had seen. If I was seeing things then the fear of being totally crazy raced through my thoughts too. I knew I had seen this thing. It had darted out in front of my car making me swerve to keep from hitting what I thought was a person at the time. I can’t begin to tell you how frightened I was. My thoughts raced wondering if this was a sign someone I loved was going to die or maybe I was going to die. I knew I wasn’t crazy……..I knew I had seen it. It was so clear on that bright night. I tossed all night long but finally fell asleep from exhaustion.

I was determined to not mention my experience to anyone. After all, I had gone through so much whenever I mentioned strange things happening at the Mowery house. I knew I would only be made fun of or people would think I had totally lost my mind if I told them of my experience.

It was time for me to go relieve my sister at the book store and I couldn’t wait to drive by where I had seen the mysterious thing the night before. Since it was an old country road and no traffic, I stopped and looked all around the area. I looked up at the area in the air where I had seen it so clearly. There was nothing that could have made me see something in that area………no tree limbs, nothing! I drove on to the store but didn’t realize I was in for an even greater shock. I came in and there was my sis working on another t-shirt. I couldn’t see what she was doing from where I was standing but I nearly had a heart attack when I moved around to an area where it was clear what she had been working on. There across an x-tra large t-shirt was the Grim Reaper I had seen the night before. Now, I had said nothing to anyone about what I had seen. I was so shaken I know my voice was a little harsh when I asked her why she was painting that on the shirt. She told me she didn’t really know but she had the urge all day long to put this on a shirt. She said she thought she’d do it because some of the heavy metal rockers loved shirts like that but why she had chosen the Grim Reaper was as much a mystery to her as it was to me. After seeing that, I had to tell her what had happened to me the night before. We were both so shaken; I closed the store and put a note in the window that we were called away on an emergency. I simply could not work that night.

The Unknown Voice That Called My Name

by RhapSody
(Cleveland, TN)

The Foyer When We Had A Wedding

More of the Mowery House Mystery

It’s true I was pretty frightened about the strange things going on at the Mowery house and this terrible fear I had only served to feed my latest mystery at there.

It was a beautiful, crisp winter day. A little warm for that time of the year but it was such a beautiful day I had decided to wax the hardwood floors in the foyer. Since I was from the old school where you used Johnson’s paste wax then let it dry to a haze and use the floor buffer to make it shine, this would be a bit of a chore. Anyway, the foyer has a lot of traffic and was in desperate need of a good waxing.

Since I already had a good layer of wax on the floor, I just wanted to lightly apply wax and then buff it........this all completed, I had a call come to me so I sat down in the foyer at my antique phone table to take the call. The call was from my mother and we were having a lovely chat. The children were in the living room watching one of their favorite shows on the television.

Since they were occupied with the TV, mom and I were free to chat without interruption. It was close to 7 p.m. in the evening, already dark outside, when there came a knock at my door.

I told mother I needed to go because someone was at my door. Being a mother, she insisted I keep the connection on the phone and see who was at the door. She did not like getting callers after dark and she was concerned about me having a late caller with my hubby away from the house. To satisfy her fear, not my own, I laid the phone down and went to the front door. The door was all glass but I had a sheer type of curtain to allow me to see out without someone seeing in.

To my surprise, it was a couple that went to our church. They wanted to drop by to share photos and adventures they had while on their extended vacation. I took their coats and placed them in the coat closet in the foyer and insisted they come to the kitchen where I was completing our late dinner. We usually had dinner earlier but my husband had to check on some kind of problem his evening manager was having at our business in town so I was keeping dinner warm until his return. Buddy and Sue knew we spent a lot of time in our large kitchen because they were frequent visitors of ours.

We sat down at the kitchen table and pictures and stories of their trip were so interesting, we all lost track of the time. Half an hour had passed and we all grew quiet as we listened to a strange sound that appeared to be coming from somewhere in the house. It was a little freaky because all the chatter had ceased instantly.

It was like we all heard this sound at the same time and stopped talking to listen.

I had never shared my ordeal with the closet or the stairs with anyone but my mother and my hubby but it was as if Buddy and Sue had some kind of instant awareness of something unknown.

We all strained to listen to the soft voice that bounced off the walls and the high ceilings of the old house.

You could not understand what the voice was saying but you could tell that it was a voice and not some kind of object making a sound. Buddy and Sue looked at me as if to ask, “What is that”? Since I had no answer for them, I stood up and walked into the dining room, listening to see if I could detect where the voice was coming from. It did seem louder in the dining room but I still could not understand what it was saying or where it was coming from.

Buddy and Sue followed me.......we were all listening intently.

I knew this was NOT my imagination because the both of them heard the calling too. The voice appeared to be coming from all directions at one time.

It echoed throughout the large house. We all started going from room to room to see if we could discover the cause of the sound or voice as we were beginning to realize it was a voice. Someone, a female, calling to someone. I walked out onto the front porch to see if it could be my neighbor calling to her children. It was strange, I could not hear the calling voice outside at all.

Both Buddy and Sue walked out onto the porch to see. It was so strange........the voice was coming from somewhere in the house.

By this time, we were all growing a little uneasy. "Ghost" never crossed any of our lips but I could tell thoughts of that nature came to mind from the couple. I had already assumed it was my stair or closet visitor but did not want to share this thought with someone I feared would think I had totally lost my mind. Still, I could see, they were beginning to think something out of the ordinary was happening to us too.

We walked back into the house and the voice appeared to have grown louder. A shiver ran down my spine as we could make out the voice was calling my name.

“Thhhheeeerrrrrrrreeeeeeeessssaaaaaaaaaaa”!!!!!!! “Thhhheeeerrrrrrrreeeeeeeessssaaaaaaaaaaa”!!!!!!!

Now, I was scared. Not only was this disembodied voice louder, it was now calling MY name! Buddy and Sue looked at me in disbelief and all I could do was stand there and look back at them. I still did not want to say anything about a ghost. These good Christian people would think me a real nut if I said it was a ghost.

I was lost in my thoughts about what to tell them when Sue asked me if this place was haunted.

There, it was out in the open. I did not say a word about it being haunted. It was Sue’s assumption. I gave a deep sigh of relief but just at that same moment, the voice that was calling changed.

It now sounded very strange and you could not make out what it was saying. It sounded more like some kind of machine making a noise now. How very strange!

We all looked at each other, puzzled even more now. I suggested we go into the living room to check on the children just as my husband was driving up into the circular driveway. Buddy and Sue sat on the sofa and I went to the door to meet my husband. As he walked through the door, I could tell by his expression he heard the strange noise too.

He greeted Buddy and Sue and we all proceeded to tell him about the voice and it clearly calling my name. You could tell he was not accepting this story but I could also tell he was reluctant to disbelieve Buddy and Sue.

The front door had not closed completely and I went back into the foyer to close the door. That’s when I saw it. The phone was off the hook. I rushed over to pick it up, remembering I had left mother on the line when Buddy and Sue arrived. It was making this noise, “arrrrrrrrrrrrrrr arrrrrrrrrrrrrrhhhhhh”, over and over. You know the sound, when someone has left the phone off the hook and the phone company makes this loud sound to alert you?

I quickly called mother and she told me that she was about ready to contact the police. She knew I had gone to the door and she could hear something but when I did not return, she had yelled into the phone hoping she could get me back on the line. She said she placed her hands on either side of the receiver and yelled my name as loud as she could for ten minutes or more.

I started laughing and quickly relayed what had been happening at the house over the past thirty minutes. I told her I would get back with her and went into the living room to share my findings. I could barely keep my chuckles quiet enough to tell the story to Buddy and Sue.

Apparently, whenever mother yelled into the phone, the phone was in the foyer. The foyer had hardwood floors and the ceiling was two stories high. The yelling spilled out into that foyer and echoed up through the second floor and all the little nooks and crevices throughout the house.

It had been my mother calling my name . . .laffing

We couldn’t stop laughing at our fear of this "unknown voice." It was a bit of embarrassment for us all but it turned into a wonderfully funny story to share with friends.

So much for the Mower Ghost that called my name.

At least, this time, things were explained.

The Bell Witch of Tennessee

Weathercheck dropping by to say (buzz click) Hello

Mowery House Mystery

Hi Rhaps!

My Favorite Haunt is WATCHERS

~The Grim Reaper Ordeal~

Lucky 13 came to visit

The Unknown Voice That Called My Name