An Authenticated History of the Famous Bell Witch

By: Martin V. Ingram

Narrated by: Amanda Stribling

The Bell Witch: Robertson County, Tennessee, 1817-1828. The Bell family are terrorized by an invisible, talking poltergeist that has taken up residence in their home. While the children are beaten and harassed in their beds, their father is stricken by seizures, and visiting skeptics are confounded by a hateful, disembodied voice that ridicules their attempts at investigation. Centered around the person of young Betsy Bell, the Bell Witch haunting has been called the 19th century's answer to The Exorcist and has been the inspiration for such popular films as The Blair Witch Project and An American Haunting.

Nicknamed the Red Book, An Authenticated History of the Bell Witch was the first published book on the legend. It contains the full text of Our Family Troubles, the purported diary of Richard Williams Bell as well interviews with the descendants of some of the characters who figure in the story. Written in 1894, it stands alone as the single most important source for historians of the Bell Witch haunting.

Public Domain (P)2021 Amanda Stribling

So so retelling

This book needed a good editor. I felt like it would tell the story and then repeat the same story in later chapters. Still overall a interesting depiction of the old tale.

Comprehension

The pronunciation is maddening. The word pious is pronounced: PIE-us, not PEE-us. I dont feel like she understands what she is reading. I get it’s an obscure tome & a hard one to read aloud, but don’t sell what you don’t have.
Also, I feel this one should have been read by a man.

Okay

This was just okay for me. I certainly can understand the attraction to the subject matter, but this take did not even come close to meeting my expectations. I wanted this to be spooky, like Howard's horror stories. Instead I got an entire chapter with quotes from the Bible and so much mixed up and time distorted story that I found myself board almost to the extreme.

However, the topic is still intriguing. When I consider it as a History book, instead of a work of fiction, which to be clear I do think it's fiction, then the formatting isn't as frustrating.

As a side note about the reader of the audio book: She does not know how to pronounce a lot of words. Some are easy to recognize and mentally replace, others, not so much. Ironically, she also can't pronounce demonic, just like the man that reads Howard's stories. And just like him, she mispronounced it the same way. De-mo-nee-ak.

Weird.