C4

In regards to the whole story behind the Bell witch incident… Basically, all the loose ends have been wrapped up. Seeing how things ended this way, some people questioned: This so-called “official records,” just who provided this information? Why were there so many details included? Could these accounts be trusted? How were the authorities able to get down the personal experiences of the people involved? And was this really the Andrew Jackson who became president later on?

Though today it is very hard for us to directly conclude this: What seems like true events, might end up just being a completely fabricated story. Except for a few important details, most of the content in the “Authentic History of the Bell Witch” is hard to verify. A few reasons remain:

First of all, before the “Authentic History of the Bell Witch” was published in 1894, no evidence tied the famous Andrew Jackson to the incident of Witch Bell. Jackson passed away in 1845 but left many personal memorabilia, letters, and notes. Yet there was no mention in the records of him having anything to do with this incident.

Besides that, as a politician, Jackson would have countless political enemies. Yet his enemies never aired out this “embarrassing incident” as a way to ridicule and attack him. If what the book said was true, and the incident would become known to everyone in the state of Texas in 1820, then Jackson’s political rivals certainly would not have let this precious material die alone without making a public scene.

Secondly, according to Martin Van Buren Ingram, the author of the book, “Authentic History of the Witch Bell,” it turned out the source of the whole story was very suspicious indeed. But first a little background behind the author. Ingram was originally a veteran who took part in the Civil War. For a period of time after his retirement, he ran a newspaper. Poor sales prevented him from keeping the newspaper running, and he closed the door soon after losing his job. He then turned his attention to writing “Authentic History of the Witch Bell.”

According to him, the mains source of this story came from Richard Bell, who was then only six years old. In other words, all the details of the story were gathered from young Richard, who was six years old at the time and had only begun to write in his diary every day...

However, whatever happened to the original manuscript to the diary? According to Ingram, the diary unfortunately burned in an unexpected fire. Although no record of this diary currently exists, Ingram had more strong evidence that further backed the incident. On February 7, 1856, The Saturday Post reported the incident, citing that President Andrew Jackson was involved. But because their article featured the president, all evidence of the newspaper was destroyed. But according to the film archive of the paper, no news was reported about “Witch Bell” in The Saturday Post that day.

In the end, Ingram’s good friend, a descendent of the Bell family, Alan Bell, took over the Bell family farm. Instead of continuing to run it as a farm, he had transformed it into a tourist attraction. The cave that was first mentioned in the book had become a toll attraction at the time. It is still open for business to this day and if someone wanted to visit this “Witch Bell’s Cave,” you would need to pay an entrance fee of $8.