The Bell Witch
Although the Bell Witch of Tennessee is one of America's most famous supernatural legends, its African American dimensions are often overlooked. Enslaved people on the Bell plantation near Adams, Tennessee, had their own interpretations of the entity that tormented the Bell family from 1817 to 1821. While white accounts describe the witch as the ghost of Kate Batts, African American oral traditions viewed the Bell Witch as a 'haint' connected to the horrors of slavery itself—a spirit born from the suffering of the enslaved on the plantation. Some accounts from formerly enslaved people describe