Shock Totem 1 by K. Allen Wood

Author:K. Allen Wood
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Horror
Publisher: Shock Totem Publications
Published: 2011-06-20T04:00:00+00:00

–John Boden

The Bell Witch Legend, by Zac Adams (director, writer); 2008; 42 min.

The Bell Witch Legend is a documentary that tells the story of the strange events surrounding the Bell family, who lived in Tennessee’s Red River Valley in the 1800s. Beginning in 1817 and ending sometime around 1821, a malicious presence tormented the family. Unearthly animals were spotted on the farm, disembodied voices taunted the family, pigtails were tied to bedposts, and ultimately the patriarch of the family was poisoned by the spirit.

The legend of the haunting has survived because the legend was published in book form in 1894. Authenticated History of the Bell Witch, by M.V. Ingraham, catalogued the oral history of the haunting and is referenced by all of the historians appearing in the documentary. And it tells the story in painstaking detail.

The tale begins with the marriage of John and Lucy Bell in 1782. It meanders along as they have babies, buy land, sell slaves, fight with relatives, get excommunicated from the community church, and then, ultimately, die. And somewhere in the middle of the begettin’ and the fussin’ and the feudin’, some weird shit happened.

The first 20 minutes of the documentary are interesting, detailing the migration of the Bell family from North Carolina to Tennessee and other events that preceded the haunting. The story is told through interviews and voiceovers by historians and locals, with actors in period dress depicting the beleaguered Bells. After the entity supposedly prevents the marriage of Bell daughter Betsy to an unworthy suitor, the hauntings ceased.

The second half of the Bell Witch Legend documents the strange goings-on in and around the town of Adams, Tennessee, where the Bell farm is located. A descendent of the family is interviewed along with more historians and local residents. Here, the documentary becomes disjointed. At one moment a local is telling stories of odd things that happened in a house on/in/near Bell land, and the next moment the curator of the Bell Witch museum is telling a story about a guy in a Camaro desperate to return a cursed rock to the haunted Bell cave. Then historian Bo Adams stands in front of the Bell family cemetery and rambles for about 10 minutes about…well, I’m not sure, but he has a lot of books and he mentions Dinah Shore.

The problem with a 42-minute documentary about the Bell Witch legend is there really is not enough information to warrant a documentary at all. It’s an interesting piece of American folklore, right up there with the New Jersey Devil and Sasquatch, but the story is almost two hundred years old; there’s nothing that can be said about the legend of the Bell Witch that hasn’t been said already.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.