07 The Bell Witch - Marcia’s Vacation

---

1 Sept 2007

Adams Tennessee

After spending a week and half on tour of TN and NC our group of 5 bikes and 5 riders were headed home, this is the second day of our three day trip home. We are all on Harleys and there is everything from my Sportster to Jerry’s Road King in the group.

Our day started at Murphy NC, real early in the morning. One bike had some troubles so we needed to be at Smokey Mtn HD in Marysville NC when the service dept opened that morning. So we were riding over the mountains at sunrise. I would like to say that we saw this great sunrise from the mountain top, but the reality was that I could barely even see the road. I was leading and found the only indications of the road contour was the GPS and the yellow line painted on the road. My visibility was under 20 ft. So what I am sure was a spectacular sunrise was not experienced by this group. We made the dealership and found the problem was actually a design feature of the new models. Our stop there ended up being a lost faster than we thought it would be. One couple in our group of 7 had opted to sleep in and catch up with us later. When the bike was ready we took a consenses vote and decided to head on out, hoping that the other couple could catch up to us on the road, but we were all eager to get some riding in.

We stopped for lunch at a Goodcents or Subway, some sandwich shop north of Nashville. The day was a great one for riding, it wasn’t too hot, I don’t even remember any rain, it was just great riding weather. We had been tooling along in TN riding on Hwy 41 following the Trail of Tears. We had started following the ToTs when we come out of the north side of Nashville. The plan was to follow it through the rest of TN, KY, IL and into MO. I am a big fan of the Historical Markers that are pegged all across the US hwy system. Usually on a trip I don’t pass one, but being part of a group, I would just glance at it as we went by and read the titles. As we headed through Adams, TN I noticed one was titled THE BELL WITCH. Adams is about 7 miles from KY. I pulled over a little ways down the road and asked the other riders if we couldn’t go back and read the marker. We headed back and all were intrigued by the story on it. Seems from 1817-1821 there was a witch that haunted a family in the area. Not being illusive it was viewed by hundreds of people it finally killed a farmer by the name of John Bell.

As we sit there talking about how cool was that, one of the riders sees a sign to the BELL WITCH CAVE, so off we head. We get there and there are probably 20 cars in the lot, this is big business in Adams. They have reconstructed the log cabin farm house that John Bell lived in and they have the cave, running separate tours to each one. Now none of our group has ever heard of the Bell Witch and we are all intrigued. The lady at the ticket counter give us some background about the witch and how famous she is. There are actually 2 or 3 movies that were made about her and more than 2 books. Okay we are all ready for more we wanted to go on a tour. The next tour on the schedule was the cave tour so we opt to go on the cave tour. The guide informed us the Bell Witch is taught in the schools of TN and that even Andrew Jackson (who would later become president) had been terrorized by the witch on his visit to the farm. The cave was maybe a half mile from the ticket cabin and it was all down hill. I was not looking forward to the climb out.

Now the guide tells us about orbs that show up in pictures are actually spirits. I had heard this before so I am snapping pictures all over the place but when I checked later I didn’t get any orbs in my pics. Jerry has a really nice digital so I checked his later and he didn’t have any either. There weren’t really any stories about the Bell Witch and this cave but there were plenty of stories about the cave being haunted. And there was some interesting formations in the cave. It was an enjoyable time we spent there, well worth the $8 for the tour, especially since Willie paid for mine.

Okay so there is all kinds of info about the Bell Witch on the internet, so here is a link to the place we were at is below. When you open that page up, the building in the picture is the ticket cabin, not the replica Bell cabin.
www.bellwitchcave.com


Here is a link with the full story and a lot of other info:
www.bellwitch.org

---

Photos

The Bell Witch Historical Marker
The marker is along the highway and in front of the school that the second Weblink talks about.

Picture in the rock
Okay so the chances are that anywhere this big with this much texture going on will have some kind of pictures or sculptures that are recognizable by us. So I am not putting any great spiritual influence as responsible for the following 2 pics.

The one I found by Jerry
So the guide is pointing out all these witches faces and images that people have found. I am trying to see them most of the time. I look at Jerry and over his shoulder there is this image. I pointed it out and Jerry immediately took a picture.