For more than an hour Tuesday night at the Trigg County Historical Society, noted national storyteller and Adams, Tennessee historian Rick Gregory brought truth to fiction around the haunting “Bell Witch” story — one that has pervaded curious minds around the world since its characters embraced it from 1817-1820.
Because it is there in Robertson County where farmer John Bell Sr. and his family were peacefully living along the Red River, until a supposed poltergeist plagued their privacy up until Bell’s untimely passing.
But even now, all these years and iterations later, Gregory can only ask one simple question.
It “ain’t true,” however, only because of his point of view.
Gregory noted that — to this day — many hold the “Red River Tale” straight in the heart, spooked at the very thought of the supernatural perhaps slumbering in the shadows.
After all, many of the story’s elements — no matter how many times passed down — have stayed as a core. At the story’s heart: a man whose wife and children dealt consistently with pranks, sounds, mild mischief and even some joy and laughter.
As Gregory puts it, however, nothing of the sort came for Bell. Only misery, after months and months of torture.
Therein, however, lies the beginning of tales. Of folklore. Gregory noted that, at first, the Bell’s didn’t want to ask for help from the surrounding community — afraid they’d be judgmental, self-righteous or damning of the family.
After seeking assistance from a few neighbors, however, Gregory said one story became 10. Ten became 100. One hundred became all of northwest Tennessee and west Kentucky.
“And truth,” Gregory said, “is whatever we want truth to be.”
Eventually, the Bell family would move to Mississippi — certainly taking the story with them and spreading it along the south.
In 1894, though, Gregory noted a momentous occasion changed everything the “Bell Witch” legend.
Martin Van Buren Ingram, a Guthrie native and original member of the Clarksville Leaf-Chronicle editorial staff, published the “Authenticated History of the Bell Witch” — following a visit to what was then “Adams Station.”
Gregory has a book from UT Press set to deliver this September, in which he thoroughly discusses not the “Bell Witch” story itself — but how the tale formulated and spread from county, to the state, to the country and to the world.
The idea, he said, came from two weeks of travel, in which folks from both Oregon and Maine, as well as a couple from Sweden, understood the story and the history of Adams, Tennessee — having heard its words and spins all through childhood.
Having already visited the Trigg County Historical Society in 2019 to discuss the Night Riders, Gregory said he would return to Cadiz this fall for a book signing event.
FULL VISIT:
