This is the second reading in a series of five that focuses on specific hauntings that exist throughout the continental US. In an attempt to execute paranormal research from a distance, as well as improve my intuition and mediumship abilities I will be performing these readings with very limited prior knowledge of the places I am reading. Each location I’m attempting to go in as “blind” as possible, so I’m choosing places where I have little to no knowledge about. I’ll go more into depth about what I know from just random experience before reading these places fully with cards.
Nothing about this one makes me feel good. I’m almost questioning my decision to try to explore this place, and haunted places in general. There’s a lot of pressure at the back of my head when I’m “looking” by pulling cards for readings and I’m supposed to see or understand something specific, but haven’t quite figured it out. A lot of times I will feel this in the car, then I’ll remember something about a certain place and the loose ends all begin to tie together. All in all, this place gives me an instant headache. Long gone are the fuzzy warm welcoming feelings from the open arms of the Crescent Hotel. If this is to work on intuition and my ability to connect to places from a distance through divination, then consider my intuition and my ability telling me to not look too deeply into this one, because she’s angry.
With the injustice in the world I don’t really find myself surprised at the very real possibility of a vengeful spirit confined to the mortal realm because of their powerlessness to forgive and move on from the chains that bind them. People trap themselves everyday with their victim mentalities or inefficacy to let go, why shouldn’t that carry on into the afterlife? That seems like purgatory to me and I would only hope to try to prove to myself as an example of how we’re allowed to crush ourselves into tightly wound balls of pain, only to release and cast out exquisite torment and transform into a sovereign being composed of the material from the stars and above.
Prior Knowledge
I have some basic folklore understanding about this place. The cave itself is an ominous death trap and severe ankle twister type looking place in the deep greenery of Adams, Tennessee. It looks filthy and my comprehension of what truly occurred on this land beginning back in the 1800’s is skewed and limited. From my perspective, a man named John Bell was cursed for cheating his neighbor out of land, the vengeful Kate Batts, who’s reign of terror being some of the most documented stories about the supernatural occurrences that took place at the Bell farm.
It wasn’t just John Bell who suffered from the wrath of the Bell Witch. Known from anguished looking drawings as Queen of the Haunted Dell, his daughter Betsy was also forced to endure the witch’s rage. Betrothed to a man named Joshua Gardner, Betsy called off her engagement after her father died. There are stories of the Bell Witch screaming with delight about poisoning John and being the reason for his passing. Three years later, Betsy married Richard Powell, a school teacher who had once approached Betsy’s parents for her hand, but was denied due to her promise to marry Gardner. Powell taught Betsy in his classroom, and this man is often attributed to the truthful summoning of the Bell Witch, a long ill-fated maneuver to steal the hand of Betsy Bell.
I have so many questions about these stories and this cave. Paranormal activity associated with whispering and violence regarding stolen land makes me think of the Fae or some type of angry elemental spirit. That’s a story for an entirely different time, and these aren’t necessarily the only types of spiritual beings angered and forced to ruin lives over sacred ground being taken to those it does not belong to.
It’s also entirely possible that Betsy somehow faked everything, but I’m making notes to look deeper into actual photographs of her, something about her haunted drawn portraits in her nightgown stick with me and make me think that there is so much more to this story than even the cards can tell.
The Reading
Confusion, corruption, mystique are three words that come to mind analyzing the overall energy of the Bell Witch. Deep seeded secrets, darkness, occult, something seeps deadly profound in the dirt there, but every time I think about tapping into it there’s haze and distraction. Who better to act as an enigma than a witch, not to mention a witch with a forbidden love story embedded gravely throughout their legends.
The first row of cards are from the Archetype Cards by Caroline Myss. This is where we can establish what type of person they are, what three main features of their energy did they present themselves with most prominently. Starting off there is the Child: Magical. They are preternatural, fae like, innocent, full of possibility. Next to that, there is the Goddess, blossoming into womanhood, accepting oneself as they truly are, still strongly connected to nature and femininity. Then, the third card , it’s as if a shadow falls over the moon. It’s not even as if they simply turn cold with contempt. They are fuming, pathological, wild and abominable. It’s unfortunate that there’s only a single caring connection that holds the thread to this individual’s sanity, but here it is in the cards, right directly in the middle.
As I’m writing about this currently I remembered a quick visual I had in the kitchen the other day, cutting vegetables and contemplating the Bell Witch. There was a large white framed six panel frame all cut classically into a farmer’s daughter’s window. Two sets of hands on the window sill. The feminine smaller hands were reaching outside while the larger more masculine hands were reaching in. “Much too young,” are the words I hear about this secret meeting at the window at night and then it all blurs out again and hazes up like the Bell Witch loves to do.
The Energy Oracle cards on the second row of the reading illustrate the power behind this person and all they were able to do, even spiritually. It’s confusing when unloved children grow up and are expected to automatically know how to reciprocate romantic love in an appropriate, age matching sort of way. They take action that another child that turned grown up, from a different family, who in fact did receive an acceptable amount of caring from their parents, would not have taken. Present them with a rose, a promise, a proposal, even, and they are yours, eternally forever. They would travel a thousand miles on horseback for the one they loved, they might even cast a spell or place a giant abysmal curse on a huge acreage of land that lasts for centuries.
Astrologically speaking in the bottom row with the Ask the Witch Tarot, there’s Taurus with the Hierophant, depicted here by Simone Pace as Saraswati, a figure of mastery, education, and tradition. Don’t cross this person. Their passion when directed at you with love feels like the world couldn’t possibly be better, transformed by hate this intensity burns with bitterness laced with hell fire.
The Eight of Swords is associated with the sign of Gemini, blindfolded and trapped by fear. As if all of this trouble could have simply been avoided if they had been given the love they so rightly deserved as a child. Mistakes were made, and measures had to be taken, swift as two horses in a field at sunset. Instead of facing fears they became the victim and the guilty party by working with those who remain hidden. There are two individuals flared out by a glare from the gloss on the cards, but this feels significant somehow. Only the woman on the stool reaching high towards the Three of Pentacles can be seen, the one making obvious moves towards the creation of a construction massively larger than all of them combined. The card represents the sign of Capricorn, the sea goat of ambition, determination and materialism.
Then, thrumming loudly underneath it all is 18. The Moon card represented by the triple goddess of night herself, Hekate. The moon indicates spirits just as similarly does the deity represented on the card. It is Hekate who holds the torches that lead souls to the underworld. She holds the keys to all realms and would gladly offer you answers, if only you are willing to seek them out for yourself.
Ask the Witch Tarot felt like the perfect deck of cards to implement when performing my second reading, the truth about the Bell Witch and her cave. The first row explains to me something quite simple about the curse the witch brought upon Adams, Tennessee, could also be seen as not a curse at all. The Bell Witch was given the public recognition she felt she so rightly deserved, an acknowledgement depicted by Six of Wands gallantly trotting through town on horseback. Simultaneously, the Bell Witch underwent a fair amount of 20. Judgment illustrated on the card as Bafana, an old witch that rides through the night on New Years. The gifts rained down on the Bell Witch as so many stepped through to test her powers. This also brought a lot of anxiety and fear towards her, there was no ability to have restful sleep this way insomnia would have been prominent in this person.
Knight of Wands indicates a wild goose chase, a passionate hunt, perhaps an uncultivated person known for flights of fancy. These knights are known for unpredictability the same way in a goose, a power animal of family and symbolic of the calling for legacy. Two of Wands, the card of making a decision whereby other paths are closed off as a result. The witch in this card is portrayed as holding the vast world in her hands, she is called to use her inner knowing and trust her instincts in order to calculate the best plan for departure. 7. The Chariot rides the night skies as Holda, a huntress of Germanic legends. Aloft on her cape she carries the spirits of those passed on, men, women, children and animals alike, so many that they look like the many twinkling of stars. No matter what type of obstacle presents itself, there’s no stopping the great stag of the forest, success is guaranteed.
Here again on the last row are the Three of Pentacles, 5. The Hierophant and Eight of Swords, only this time the Eight is on the right side of the reading, the portion that leans more towards the future or at some point further down the line of time. Self deprecating Gemini energy, surrounded by too much mental anxiety is slightly whited out by the glare on the card, but not completely. I’m feeling that towards the end of all of the situations regarding the Bell Witch there was a large flare up of guilt and fear, and unfortunately, silence.
Conclusion
A big part of my uncomfortableness with the events surrounding the Bell Witch and who she truly was, or why she came to be has to be this, plain and simply: John Bell Sr. was murdered, and because of the supernatural circumstances surrounding him and his family, the murderer got away free from any legal consequences. In some of my research on my readings I referred to an article by Katie Nixon for the Clarksville-Leaf Chronicle written in 2021 you can find here:
In this article, Dr. Meagan Mann, an assistant professor of chemistry discussed her research and subsequent theories on the Bell Witch during a Science on Tap event held last October. Basically, she deduced that the most likely substance used to poison John Bell Sr. had been arsenic, which would contribute to the blue flame after the vial of the substance was thrown into the fire. This is something that would have occurred over an extended period of time, a slow deliberate poisoning that would make sense for the strange neurological issues that appeared in John Bell over time, and then a final life ending dose. However, no specific individual was ever arrested or accused of murdering John Bell, it was all chocked up to the Bell Witch. This was an entity that is reported to having called herself Kate Batts, the angry neighbor, at different points, which has in fact been made up over time and altered through different tellings of the story.
See “Kate Batts”: https://sharetngov.tnsosfiles.com/tsla/exhibits/myth/bellwitch.htm
My own personal opinion after researching and finishing the reading is that Betsy had more to do with the Bell Witch than she was willing to admit. Maybe her father John Bell Sr. wasn’t as good of a man as he could have been to his daughter. Maybe there is no Bell Witch at all, but just a series of well timed and staged hauntings that trickery and rumor allowed it to have lasted through the ages. My reading brings up something different, a deep secretive relationship and a lot of denial from the truth. With the moon on the bottom of the reading I don’t think anyone is really meant to know the absolute truth about this witch or ghost or cave or daughter or man in love with a minor or any of that. There’s no way to tell who really killed John Bell, as any real evidence has been lost to dust and decay. You will just have to be satisfied with not ever really knowing and hope that you don’t ever start to hear whispers of the Bell Witch around you.
