Poltergeists

Cannon here: I've run into a couple of interesting political stories, which will appear here (probably) before long. It's not every day a humble blogger slurps up a bowl of Minestroni soup while chatting with a potential future president...

For now, I would like to indulge in a non-political weekend post. The topic, this Sunday, is poltergeists. The imminent release of a new film called An American Haunting -- which finally brings to the screen the tale of the Bell Witch -- forces us to confront this burning issue.

Puh-leeze don't confuse this yarn with the The Blair Witch Project. This ain't that. The Bell Witch is real.

Well...purportedly real.

Which is to say, I grew up with the story. I must have been eight or nine years old when I first read a "true" account of these events, which took place in Robertson County, Tennessee between 1818 and 1821. Scared the bejeebus out of me, it did.

If you haven't heard the legend, it's about a family named Bell whose household was invaded by a talking poltergeist, which they called a "witch" because the word "poltergeist" was not then in common usage. Unlike the rather lethargic ghosts found in most other 'true" haunting accounts, the Bell Witch took action, traded quips, altered lives -- and, in the end, commited murder.

I'm surprised that Hollywood has ignored the story until now.

The first screenplay I ever wrote (everyone in Los Angeles writes screenplays -- car mechanics, cops, water heater repairmen, Mayor Villaraigosa, everyone) was about the Bell Witch. That youthful effort was no doubt quite laughable. Every few years, I've thought about returning to the task, but one problem always seemed insurmountable: Starting in the 1970s, audiences came to expect buckets of gore from a scary movie. The Bell Witch tale, which ends with a single poisoning, has an insufficient body count.

All the individuals named in the legend provably existed, even the ones with very improbable names: Betsy Bell, Theney Gooch, Richard Rowell Ptolemy Powell, and a batty lady named Katt Batts. Betsy's brothers fought under General Jackson at the Battle of New Orleans. Powell, Betsy's schoolteacher and eventual husband, later became a Tennessee legislator; he died in debt after a business reversal, and family members had to care for his widow. An oral tradition of the Witch manifestations exists within the Bell family to this day.

Many family members (including Betsy) later moved to Mississippi, where there arose a version of the legend quite different from the one you may have read about. This version appears to conflate Betsy's tale with that of Katt Batts' daughter Mary, who died young. Some folklorist argue that the Mississippi variant of the story contributed to the "Bloody Mary" game which girls still play at slumber parties.

But aside from the family's oral traditions, do we have any evidence that something supernatural actually took place in Robertson County in 1818?

Not really.

These folks were a literate bunch who often corresponded and kept diaries, and many of their letters and other writings survive. Yet not a single resident of Robertson County left any contemporary reference to the Witch. Even the clergymen who (it is said) were called in to witness the manifestations did not see fit to mention the matter in their record books.

The first definite published reference to the Bell Witch appears in The Goodspeed History of Tennessee, a now-rare book which appeared some sixty-five years after the Witch made her exit. In 1893, a respected journalist named Martin Ingram -- publisher of the Clarksville Leaf-Chronicle, which is still going strong-- put together the first book-length account of the Witch manifestations. His work includes what appears to be raw materials, including interviews with elderly witnesses. He also reprints a manuscript called "Our Family Trouble," allegedly written in 1846 by Betsy's brother Richard.

Ingram also references a 1849 edition of the Saturday Evening Post which, supposedly, published a story on the Witch -- one which implied that Betsy was the "author" of the phenomenon. However, researchers who have checked every issue of the Post published during that year have found no reference to the Bell Witch. I would offer the humble suggestion that the typesetter for Ingram's book made an error; perhaps the actual date was 1846. (If you've ever set type by hand, you'll know how easy it was to confuse a 6 with a 9.)

"Our Family Trouble" remains the only account written by an alleged eyewitness, and it did not see publisher's ink until many years after the author's death. The legend of the Witch -- rather like the story of Jesus -- became codified a generation after the events.

Advance word on An American Haunting (filmed in Romania!) is positive, although -- as one might have predicted -- some teen viewers appear distressed by the lack of grue and gore. Even so, I hope this wonderful old folktale still has the ability to provoke a nightmare or two. The advertising copy says that the movie is based on "the terrifying true story." It was indeed terrifying at one time, at least to eight-year-old boys reading past bedtime. But was it ever true?

You be the judge.