What Is/Was the Bell Witch?

Much has been made of what, exactly, the Bell Witch was. Obviously, many of the contemporaries thought her to be a witch, but this wasn’t long after the whole witch-burning thing that swept through the Western world, so that is understandable. With advances in parapsychology, it has often been referred to as a poltergeist, or “noisy spirit,” but this is not accurate, either. There have been several poltergeists recorded over the years and they do not possess the powers the Bell Witch did - or, if they do, they never show them.

I have said before that the Bell Witch was/is an Elemental and have gone to some lengths to explain what, exactly, an Elemental is. In case you don’t feel like doing the reading, an Elemental has never lived in the way we know it; it has never been human and has never experienced life or death the way we know these things.

Even many of the contemporaries dismissed the witch theory and considered it to be a “spirit from Hell” or “Greater Spirit.” The family itself referred to the Bell Witch as the “Spirit.”

And while reports conflict (at least one claims the Spirit identified itself as an Indian, while the name “Kate” came from an incident in which the Spirit claimed it was the spirit of a woman with whom John Bell had been involved in a court dispute over land [and won]), this particular quote comes from Charles Bailey Bell’s The Bell Witch of Tennessee, when the witch was speaking to James Johnston:

“I am a spirit from everywhere, Heaven, Hell, the Earth; am in the air, in houses, any place at any time; have been created millions of years; that is all I will tell you, Mr. Johnston.”