Bell Witch Cave

A cave on former Bell family land near Adams, Tennessee, run as a tour site tied to the Bell Witch legend of about 1816 to 1820, though Brian Dunning of Skeptoid says the cave played no part in the original story.

The Tennessee Encyclopedia says that around 1816 the Bell family began to notice strange events and at first kept quiet about them. Figures appeared, it says, and noises grew louder for over a year, and the house was said to shake as if in a storm. In the encyclopedia's telling, John Bell developed odd, painful symptoms soon after the spirit came, and the spirit slapped, pinched and taunted others in the family, but was only kind to Lucy Bell.

M. V. Ingram's 1894 book An Authenticated History of the Famous Bell Witch records John Bell's death on 20 December 1820. In that account the spirit, which Ingram's narrator calls Kate, sang and gloated as he died, then fell silent until after a large funeral. Brian Dunning of Skeptoid wrote in 2008 that the story is sold on two claims: that it is the one haunting said to have killed someone, and the only one to involve a US president directly.

Wikipedia cites Dunning as saying that the cave sits near the Bell homestead but had no role in the first Bell Witch stories, and that the tales of the Bell children's adventures in it were written years afterwards.

Today the Historic Bell Witch Cave Inc. runs the site, about 40 minutes by car from Nashville, as an attraction for people interested in the paranormal, folklore or history. The Tennessee State Museum says tours cover a cave on land the Bells owned and a copy of the family's cabin.