Speaker 1: You're listening to an airwave media podcast.
Speaker 2: It probably all began when old man Bell started seeing
Speaker 2: an odd looking animal on his farm, something half rabbit,
Speaker 2: half dog, queer looking creature. And then late one night,
Speaker 2: the crashes began, Noises rattled across the house, and a
Speaker 2: voice from the darkness told the family terrible things, the
Speaker 2: legend of the Bell Witch. Next to plon Monster Talk,
Speaker 2: it's actually quite unlike anything we've evering before. A giant,
Speaker 2: hairy creature.
Speaker 3: Part eight, Part mast in Luckness, a twenty four a
Speaker 3: mile long bottomless lake in the Highlands of Scotland.
Speaker 2: It's a creature known as the Luckness Monster Monster. Welcome
Speaker 2: to Monster Talk, the science show about monsters. I'm your
Speaker 2: host Blake Smith, and together with Ben Radford and doctor
Speaker 2: Karen Stoles, now we dig into monster stories to find
Speaker 2: out what truths we can and what facts there are.
Speaker 2: Today we discussed the bell Witch Haunting, a strange story
Speaker 2: from the eighteen hundreds in Tennessee which includes an amazing
Speaker 2: array of paranormal events and some famous people in voting
Speaker 2: Andrew Jackson. Before we go on with that, I want
Speaker 2: to take a quick moment to tell you about an
Speaker 2: important project that's going on right now. I'm recording this
Speaker 2: intro on January twenty second. It's the birthday of quack
Speaker 2: cancer treatment guru Stanislaw Brazinski. Brazinski's expensive and ineffective treatments
Speaker 2: deplete the fiscal and emotional resources of desperate cancer patients.
Speaker 2: A group of concerned skeptics are trying to raise awareness
Speaker 2: of this and support effective cancer research at the same time.
Speaker 2: Please take a moment and go to crowdrise dot com
Speaker 2: forward slash Fight Childhood Cancer. I'll put a link in
Speaker 2: the show notes as well. This fundraiser is part of
Speaker 2: a joint effort of many people in the skeptics community
Speaker 2: and is a worthy cause. Thank you. Today's Monster Talk
Speaker 2: interview comes from October and has been delayed due to
Speaker 2: a series of ridiculous technical issues. But here it is,
Speaker 2: and I hope you enjoy it. The bell Witch Morebstertle.
Speaker 2: You're a little faint, am I?
Speaker 1: Okay?
Speaker 2: There? That sounds better? Don't if you leaned in or whatever.
Speaker 2: It's high tech stuff, very very.
Speaker 3: All that all the experience in book learning just lean.
Speaker 2: In, as as outlined in the Podcasting for Dummies, the
Speaker 2: book upon which this entire show is based.
Speaker 1: I didn't read that.
Speaker 2: How was I feel like I'm just wrapping up because
Speaker 2: the the there was like a real world mystery of
Speaker 2: why is water shooting out the back of my house?
Speaker 1: And pressing and urgent things to attend to.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is the plumbers here finishing that up. So
Speaker 2: that mystery turned out to be broken water pipe was
Speaker 2: the solution.
Speaker 1: Oh you came home to that or yeah?
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, that was great. It was nice. I thought
Speaker 2: it was Ben. How was your Did you have a
Speaker 2: good time.
Speaker 3: At the conference? Yeah? Yeah, it was busy visibly, but
Speaker 3: you know, I gave a talk on mass hysterios and
Speaker 3: then I was I did an investigations thing with.
Speaker 2: Jim and Joe, Jim Underdown and Joe Nicol.
Speaker 1: Yeah all right, yeah, so do you talk Blake?
Speaker 2: No, I didn't talk. I was there for free because
Speaker 2: of winning the costume contest the year before. Where I
Speaker 2: went I went as Auckham shaving Cream.
Speaker 3: Still very clever.
Speaker 2: It was funny. I thought, well, my gosh, we're really
Speaker 2: close to the bell Witch's historical site. I thought, would
Speaker 2: it be silly to come this far and not right
Speaker 2: out there and at least take a look around and.
Speaker 1: So is that to Nashville.
Speaker 2: It's about it's probably like thirty five miles and fifty
Speaker 2: minutes because it's a bunch of country roads. But I
Speaker 2: looked around for Joe to see if I could find
Speaker 2: him since he was there, and we couldn't. All right,
Speaker 2: I couldn't find him. And then Ben and I headed
Speaker 2: out and we stopped at the state road sign marker
Speaker 2: for the Bell Witch and then all of a sudden,
Speaker 2: this car whips across and parks in front of us,
Speaker 2: and it's Joe Nicol and In von Reese having just
Speaker 2: left the site.
Speaker 1: So some kind of synchronicity.
Speaker 2: Well, you know, it's not really what you'd call a coincidence.
Speaker 2: I mean, I guess they I mean, or is it?
Speaker 2: I don't know. It seems like every time, you know,
Speaker 2: Joe makes a point when he travels to try to
Speaker 2: go see these kind of sites, and I think Ben
Speaker 2: and exactly right, everybody's so inclined. Uh, so you know
Speaker 2: it's it's there's as I'm sure we'll talk about. There's
Speaker 2: not a lot to the story from a historical perspective,
Speaker 2: but the site does exist where the story takes place,
Speaker 2: so it was interesting.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I saw the photograph on Facebook with Ben very
Speaker 1: nice and why wasn't there one of you?
Speaker 2: Like? I never got it uploaded. I got a little
Speaker 2: distracted by the whole water thing. I'd gotten a call
Speaker 2: to saying that there was a problem with the water
Speaker 2: at the home coming out of the back of the house,
Speaker 2: and I was just anxious to get back and find
Speaker 2: out what was going on.
Speaker 1: So maybe it was because you visited the sign.
Speaker 2: That's so. Yeah, my wife did mention that there was
Speaker 2: some mysterious voices and the house that had banging. No,
Speaker 2: she didn't, and you were gone. Apparently, not only is
Speaker 2: it it's not unusual to have uh water pipe breaks,
Speaker 2: you know in our neighborhood. Apparently were the just the
Speaker 2: plumber I'm working with, We're the fourth one he's had
Speaker 2: to fix in our neighborhood.
Speaker 1: So he needed the tap skies out there.
Speaker 2: Yes, I don't have a ghost, but I do have
Speaker 2: a plumbing problem.
Speaker 1: So they qualified for that.
Speaker 2: Lunch, so we I thought this would be fine. I
Speaker 2: had my truck been and I hopped in and drove
Speaker 2: out there, and it was a little I don't want
Speaker 2: to I don't want to disparage the place, but the
Speaker 2: Lincoln cabin. It was a little sketchy. I mean it's
Speaker 2: a little bit. The first thing you see when you
Speaker 2: get out there is this like a toe behind trailer, UH,
Speaker 2: and there's a sign above it this is psychic readings,
Speaker 2: and there's a guy who does psychic readings. And I
Speaker 2: don't think this was my imagination. He looked at me
Speaker 2: and Ben and then went back inside his trailer and
Speaker 2: closed the door. He was yeah, maybe he was.
Speaker 1: I think sense the negativity.
Speaker 2: I don't know what happened there. And then we told
Speaker 2: him we were in kind of a hurry, which is
Speaker 2: totally true because Ben had to talk to get to UH.
Speaker 2: And the way the cabin is set up, First of all,
Speaker 2: it's not the original cabin it is. To ask about that,
Speaker 2: it's a replica cabin, and it looks really nice. You know,
Speaker 2: my family, my dad, part of what he does is
Speaker 2: build log cabins and restore them. So I appreciated some
Speaker 2: of the craftsmanship for the way it was put together,
Speaker 2: but it wasn't entirely off. It looked like the oaklogs
Speaker 2: were you know, properly chained and everything, but the floors
Speaker 2: were you know, kind of modern pressure treated wood.
Speaker 3: Floors, and yeah, it was sort of a disnified version
Speaker 3: of you know, oh yeah, well said I only kind
Speaker 3: of knew how roughly what it is like then you
Speaker 3: could pull it off, but you know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and then they had no animatronics or anything, but
Speaker 2: they had the pre recorded audio that they played in
Speaker 2: various rooms of the cabin to tell you the story.
Speaker 2: And so as you kind of moved through the different rooms,
Speaker 2: you stop, sit down and listen to this audio, and
Speaker 2: it was you know, I thought that was nicely done.
Speaker 2: In fact, if I had stayed, if I hadn't, I
Speaker 2: had to rush home. The uh the in the evening
Speaker 2: they have candlelit tours, which would probably be genuinely creepy
Speaker 2: to hear that really well produced audio. And sitting in
Speaker 2: a dark cabin with the wind blowing outside. The weather
Speaker 2: was perfect for it was overcast and windy. Yeah, it
Speaker 2: was a good place for a ghost story. Part of
Speaker 2: it began much like a traditional i'd say a witch
Speaker 2: story more than a ghost story, because so the senior
Speaker 2: Bell was out on his property and he sees this
Speaker 2: mysterious animal. It looks like it's part rabbit and part dog,
Speaker 2: and well, that's kind of creepy. I think in one sense,
Speaker 2: it's also very consistent with the kind of things that
Speaker 2: happened in European witch stories. People would see a mysterious animal.
Speaker 2: Usually it was something like a hare and a hair
Speaker 2: does look something like an oversized rabbit, and and then
Speaker 2: you find that you can't kill it. You shoot at it,
Speaker 2: you try to kill it, and you can't kill it.
Speaker 2: And that's one of the first science that you're having
Speaker 2: witch problems. Yeah, well maybe you know, so.
Speaker 1: Did he attempt to kill this creature?
Speaker 2: I don't know that I have.
Speaker 1: That was in one version that I the.
Speaker 2: Best one of the part of the problem, there's the
Speaker 2: book and then there's lots of different folklore about it.
Speaker 2: I've read stories where they found a dead animal, and
Speaker 2: I've read stories where he saw a lie of it animal.
Speaker 2: But that seems to be a consistent part of the story.
Speaker 2: The problem is, let's just I don't want to gosh,
Speaker 2: I hate to just jump to the conclusion, but there
Speaker 2: just doesn't seem to be a lot of facts to
Speaker 2: back up the story. The story is very elaborate, but
Speaker 2: the whole story seems to come from a book about
Speaker 2: the acts or the activities there that took place decades later,
Speaker 2: Like was it sixty years later?
Speaker 3: So yeah, I was like sixty seventy five years later.
Speaker 3: I have the book in front of me, the Ingham
Speaker 3: version of the book, and I think it's worth just
Speaker 3: reading the first few sentences because it's the preface and
Speaker 3: it really sort of sets the stage for the whole thing,
Speaker 3: all right. The preface from the book, it says, it
Speaker 3: is not the purpose of the writer to present a
Speaker 3: romance for the entertainment of lovers of fiction, nor to
Speaker 3: establish a theory to please the fancy adherence to so
Speaker 3: called theosophy, but simply to record evidence of historical facts,
Speaker 3: stained by a powerful array of incontrovertible evidence, as it
Speaker 3: comes to hand, testifying to the most wonderful phenomena of
Speaker 3: the world. Has any account of a visitation known as
Speaker 3: the Bell Witch, believed at the time by many to
Speaker 3: have been of supernatural origin, which appeared in Robertson County,
Speaker 3: Tennessee some seventy five years ago, inflicting unendurable suffering on
Speaker 3: John Bell, the head of the family, and was said
Speaker 3: to have ended his life, and which also awakened a
Speaker 3: sensation that has lived through a generation. So that's that
Speaker 3: just struck me when I was reading the preface to it,
Speaker 3: because you know, it's the very first line is saying, look,
Speaker 3: this is a true story, was sustained by a quote
Speaker 3: powerful array of incontrovertible evidence end quote. So I'm like, wow,
Speaker 3: this is I would love to see a powerful way
Speaker 3: of controvertible evidence. And then of course the story goes on.
Speaker 3: But it's just a it's a very telling preface.
Speaker 1: So there weren't any contemporary accounts.
Speaker 2: No, not contemporary, but inside the story it has the
Speaker 2: there's a lot of letters from people who attest to
Speaker 2: the veracity of what has been told, but these are
Speaker 2: two the problem is and there's also supposedly a diary
Speaker 2: from the son, but it doesn't matter because none of
Speaker 2: the original source material in the diary exists.
Speaker 3: Right, I mean, that's that's exactly right. I mean the
Speaker 3: you know, it's a typical, you know, friend of a
Speaker 3: friend's story. I mean, it's pure folklore through and through.
Speaker 3: You have this guy Martin Ingram who is sort of
Speaker 3: retelling what he heard from what he read about a
Speaker 3: handwritten diary by Richard Bell, who is one of John
Speaker 3: Bell's sons, you know, from sixty seventy five years earlier.
Speaker 3: And then, of course, as Blake noted, there were different
Speaker 3: incarnations of the story still. So again, I've read probably
Speaker 3: at least a dozen different versions, and I'm sure there's
Speaker 3: many more. So it's it's interesting how, you know, even
Speaker 3: different writers put their own little spins on it. And
Speaker 3: because the story is so old, dating back at least
Speaker 3: to the you know, to the eighteen hundred, it's obviously
Speaker 3: because that's when the book first came out, you've had,
Speaker 3: you know, well over a century to to mangle the
Speaker 3: mangle the story and add details and do all those
Speaker 3: fun things that happens to folklore.
Speaker 1: And so with these letters, were they from eyewitnesses or
Speaker 1: family members or friends.
Speaker 2: Right, they were from people who had they were eyewitnesses,
Speaker 2: are people who had heard firsthand the stories of the events.
Speaker 2: But we don't have those letters either, I mean, they
Speaker 2: only exist inside this book. So, man, I read your
Speaker 2: piece for a skeptical inquirer and so, and I'd also
Speaker 2: listened to Brian Dunning's episode that he'd of a skeptoid
Speaker 2: talking about this, and of course one of the you know,
Speaker 2: one of the big things is that inside the work
Speaker 2: of the Belwich book, it talks about a like authenticating
Speaker 2: material that would have been temporaneous but that doesn't exist. Like,
Speaker 2: for example, they say that Andrew Jackson came, but his
Speaker 2: travels are actually well documented. He wasn't in the area
Speaker 2: at the time. And as Dining points out, I think
Speaker 2: very nicely that the the election of Andrew Jackson to
Speaker 2: president was really contentious. People were really looking for anything
Speaker 2: to sling mud at the other guy, right, so both
Speaker 2: candidates were being really awful. If they could have said
Speaker 2: that Andrew Jackson had been bested by a ghost, I
Speaker 2: think that would have happened, you know.
Speaker 3: Yeah. In fact, that the Andrew Jackson Stories is actually
Speaker 3: one of the interesting parts of it. It's it's not
Speaker 3: just sort of mentioned briefly. It's given quite a few
Speaker 3: pages to it in some detail, and everything from direct
Speaker 3: quotes from you know, from from Jackson addressing the ghosts
Speaker 3: and the ghost addressing him back. It's it's rather detailed
Speaker 3: and melodramatic.
Speaker 2: Oh, it's very exciting. I mean, he pulls up in
Speaker 2: his wagon and all of a sudden, the wagon won't
Speaker 2: go any further and the mules are straining at it,
Speaker 2: and finally a voice comes out of thin air and
Speaker 2: tells him he may proceed, you know, and then suddenly
Speaker 2: he can he can go stay at the cabin, and
Speaker 2: it has a horrible night there with you know, banging
Speaker 2: and clatter and noises, and leaves the next day saying
Speaker 2: he'd rather face the British than face the ghost, right right, So.
Speaker 1: It's exciting something I've come across in a couple of
Speaker 1: other stories as well, with the Winchester Mystery House in
Speaker 1: San Jose that was owned by the Winchester family. Apparently
Speaker 1: Teddy Roosevelt had paid a visit and was turned away
Speaker 1: by Sarah Winchester, and I think one of their rifles
Speaker 1: had been named after him. So I've just come across
Speaker 1: a couple of stories here and there where there's a
Speaker 1: president or a future president involved. I guess that's just
Speaker 1: to add credibility to the story.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's interesting. I had forgotten about that element of
Speaker 3: the Winchester House. But I think you're exactly right. I mean,
Speaker 3: it's you know, what more credible eyewitness can you ask
Speaker 3: for than that? I mean, to this day, UFO proponents
Speaker 3: still Harpo and Carter's president. Carter's you know, a legislating
Speaker 3: of a UFO back in seventy something, so yeah, I mean,
Speaker 3: you know, I'm high right.
Speaker 1: It is a haunted hotel in Santa Cruz called the
Speaker 1: Brookdale Lodge, and apparently I think Herbert Hoover visited there
Speaker 1: and saw a ghost as well. And he actually did visit,
Speaker 1: he was a guest at the hotel, but I don't
Speaker 1: think there are any there's any evidence that he saw
Speaker 1: a ghost or or made any claims about that. I
Speaker 1: think again, it's just trying to build some kind of
Speaker 1: credibility to the stories.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think having somebody reputable being involved does help,
Speaker 2: but I think it, you know, casually. I think it'd
Speaker 2: be nicer if we had their first hand accounts, which
Speaker 2: in these cases we don't because I don't think they exist.
Speaker 2: But what I thought was interesting about the Bell witch
Speaker 2: case is it starts out and it sounds like a
Speaker 2: classic haunting or a poultry geist attack much more than
Speaker 2: a witch attack. Once it gets going, there's banging on
Speaker 2: the walls, people are being poked and prodded, Dishes are
Speaker 2: flying around and breaking. So even as you know, well,
Speaker 2: I don't know a lot about pre nineteen hundred pultruc
Speaker 2: iiced attacks. This sounds much more like a poultry iced
Speaker 2: attack in the way it's written.
Speaker 1: So, well, this was sort of around the time or
Speaker 1: just after the witch crazes in Europe, wasn't it?
Speaker 2: No, this is eighteen Well, you mean that allegedly took place, right, mean,
Speaker 2: so there's the events took place in the very early
Speaker 2: eighteen hundreds, But then the book's actually written in the eighteen.
Speaker 1: I mean, when the alleged events took place, that would
Speaker 1: have been around the time of the end of the
Speaker 1: witch craze. So I'm wondering if Witch was an interpretation
Speaker 1: of the phenomena at that time.
Speaker 3: That's actually interesting. In the book they use of variety terms.
Speaker 3: At one point, it's referred to as a goblin, a gnome,
Speaker 3: and a gremlin, and a witch and a ghost. It's
Speaker 3: there's I counted about a half a dozen. Yeah, pretty
Speaker 3: much whatever you want, I mean, And which of course
Speaker 3: helps for the reader in terms of similaritude, because that way,
Speaker 3: you know, if if whatever Ingram is telling you, if
Speaker 3: it doesn't fit your conception of which or a ghost,
Speaker 3: well if you think it if you believe in goblins
Speaker 3: or gremlins or fairies or whatever the hell you want.
Speaker 3: You can sort of say, well, okay, because it's given
Speaker 3: a variety of possible labels, that sort of gives you
Speaker 3: a bunch of different outs. If you don't think that
Speaker 3: it really fits the characteristics of any one of them,
Speaker 3: let me go ahead, Go ahead.
Speaker 1: Kind of reminds me of Jeff the Talking mongoose a bit,
Speaker 1: does y Poltergeist. Yes, that sort of changes in the
Speaker 1: way that people perceive it.
Speaker 2: And it's interesting because you know, with Jeff the Talking mangos,
Speaker 2: we know that whether that was a real animal or not,
Speaker 2: or a real you know, a real it really took place.
Speaker 2: In other words, even though it was almost certainly a hoax,
Speaker 2: that people really did write down contemporaneous records from multiple
Speaker 2: sources that they went there and heard strange things.
Speaker 1: Right, Oh yeah, there were journalists who went there and
Speaker 1: they even sent evidence to the British Zoological Society. So
Speaker 1: it's not an urban legend.
Speaker 2: As such, right right, And in this case, it appears
Speaker 2: to have sprung, you know, fully formed from Ingram's imagination,
Speaker 2: because there doesn't seem to be or at least there's
Speaker 2: no written record of these events that predates his book,
Speaker 2: which is a telling clue.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's that's one thing that struck me because I
Speaker 3: actually read the book on the plane on the plane back,
Speaker 3: and I, in fact, I really recommend that, you know,
Speaker 3: just as just as part of a course of you know,
Speaker 3: when when possible, consulting the original source. People are really
Speaker 3: interested in, you know, in getting into the story. You know,
Speaker 3: you're much better off reading the original source because we
Speaker 3: actually have it here rather than you know, any of
Speaker 3: the different variations. It's called authenticated History of the Bell
Speaker 3: Witch and Other Stories, the world's Greatest unexplained phenomena by M. V.
Speaker 3: Ingram And And that's exactly right. I mean, as I
Speaker 3: was reading the book, I was taking notes on the
Speaker 3: plane and writing in the margins, and repeatedly it refers
Speaker 3: to all these experts that came from far and wide,
Speaker 3: the committees, and you know, uh, you know, Andrew, Andrew Jackson,
Speaker 3: just everybody. And there's you know, there's dozens and dozens,
Speaker 3: if not thousands of people who were supposed to have
Speaker 3: been witnessed to this, either first hand or secondhand, or
Speaker 3: heard about over elms. And where are they? I mean,
Speaker 3: if if this really is a true story, you would
Speaker 3: think that this is well known throughout the county, it says, uh,
Speaker 3: and it would lists all these people that came, detectives came,
Speaker 3: and yet there seems to be no written evidence, written
Speaker 3: by anybody else anywhere that that mentions this.
Speaker 2: Yeah. In fact, the if you're interested the you can
Speaker 2: get the kindle edition of this for ninety nine cents.
Speaker 2: So it's and it's really well done. Plus you can
Speaker 2: search it, so I find that extremely helpful. Wh I'm
Speaker 2: doing researches. You can actually do a word search to
Speaker 2: find particular things within the text.
Speaker 1: Naughty words.
Speaker 2: Well, well, you could look for the word cave and
Speaker 2: find out why they've got a cave on the property
Speaker 2: that's inside a barn and cost twelve dollars to visit.
Speaker 1: Yeah, what is the connection of the cave?
Speaker 2: Apparently there's a story that Betsy Bell and some friends
Speaker 2: went into the cave and while they were in the cave,
Speaker 2: a boy got stuck in a hole, and the witch
Speaker 2: pulled the boy out of the hole and then lectured
Speaker 2: the kids on the dangers of going into a cave. Oh,
Speaker 2: so it was a good Well, see, here's the thing.
Speaker 2: Intermittently in the story, the witch does good things and
Speaker 2: friendly things and then really bad things and by the
Speaker 2: end murder.
Speaker 3: No, it's absolutely yeah, it's just you know, I was
Speaker 3: reading the story, and you know, the story has and
Speaker 3: they use the word story advisedly. It has long passages
Speaker 3: of long conversations, very pleasant conversations. The belle Wich gives
Speaker 3: the family gifts. They they talk about matters of the day,
Speaker 3: they hang out, they chat, you know, they and then
Speaker 3: in other parts, you know, there the bell which is
Speaker 3: making making one of the daughters vomit up pins and needles,
Speaker 3: and it's it's just remarkable, you know, the the if
Speaker 3: this really is a true story, then then it's amazing
Speaker 3: how how bad the ghost communication has gotten over the
Speaker 3: past one hundred and fifty years. You know, I mean
Speaker 3: there's you know again, pages and pages of direct quotes
Speaker 3: of you know, clear language, you know, creative language, you know,
Speaker 3: all these sort of things and these days were reduced
Speaker 3: to e vps. It's it's like wow, points.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So it creates this interesting distinction, especially if you're
Speaker 2: right about your hypothesis. Been let's we'll talk about that
Speaker 2: in just a second. You've got authentic ghost stories where
Speaker 2: people really believe they seen a ghost. And then you've
Speaker 2: got ghost legends, word of mouth stories that are ostensibly
Speaker 2: based on true things but are really part of folklore
Speaker 2: where the original person is never identified, or if they
Speaker 2: are identified, they never really took place the way it's
Speaker 2: claimed are it's a friend of a friend. And then
Speaker 2: you've got fiction which is given credibility by its use
Speaker 2: of real people, and in which one of those three
Speaker 2: do you think this has been.
Speaker 3: I think this is fiction that's given credibility by the
Speaker 3: use of real people. And again, this is a This
Speaker 3: is certainly not unknown today. I mean, you know, you
Speaker 3: can't you can't, you know, go in a video store
Speaker 3: rent a movie without you know, some horror film routinely
Speaker 3: being claimed as being based on a true story or
Speaker 3: based on true events. And of course there's been a
Speaker 3: couple of films made adapted from this. But this is
Speaker 3: nothing new. You know. Sometimes I talked to people who
Speaker 3: are like, oh, well, you know this was written you know,
Speaker 3: one hundred years ago. It must be true. It's like, yeah,
Speaker 3: because nobody, you know, nobody, nobody told falsehoods. There's no
Speaker 3: sorts of real journalism or newspaper hoaxes, you know, one
Speaker 3: hundred two hundred years ago. But yeah, I mean obviously
Speaker 3: if you can, if you can, if you can use
Speaker 3: real places and real people, then that adds to to
Speaker 3: the realism. And in fact, this actually reminded me quite
Speaker 3: a bit of my investigation into the White Witch of
Speaker 3: Rose Hall in montego By, Jamaica, which I wrote about
Speaker 3: in a couple of places, including one of my books,
Speaker 3: where you Know it was there's this whole elaborate ghost
Speaker 3: story based on ostensibly real people. They're you know, real
Speaker 3: real names that happened a long, long time ago, but
Speaker 3: when you look more closely at it, there's just simply
Speaker 3: nothing to it.
Speaker 2: So in modern times, the people who did the blair
Speaker 2: Witch Project actually based the idea of the blair Witch
Speaker 2: Project after having heard the Belwich story, and in the
Speaker 2: way they presented the blair Witch Project was as though
Speaker 2: it were a real event. It was a found footage
Speaker 2: and part of the story. Although you could find the
Speaker 2: answer pretty readily on the internet, that was at a
Speaker 2: time when people still really didn't understand, you know, there
Speaker 2: wasn't It wasn't as easy apparently because lots of people
Speaker 2: didn't know if it was real or not, and thought
Speaker 2: it was real and in fact, the filmmakers still get
Speaker 2: contacted by this disturbed me police departments wondering what happened
Speaker 2: with the case.
Speaker 1: Well, I saw a midnight screening of it in Sydney
Speaker 1: at the time when it came out, and it was
Speaker 1: presented in Australia at its release as being a true story,
Speaker 1: and so there's a lot of hype and media about that.
Speaker 1: That was the way that everyone saw it there, at
Speaker 1: least to begin with.
Speaker 2: So your contention, Ben, is that this book is doing
Speaker 2: the same sort of thing. It's a fiction, but it's
Speaker 2: being presented as real to give it greater I want
Speaker 2: to say, very similar to but I don't want to
Speaker 2: say it incorrectly because that's one of those words I read,
Speaker 2: but don't say.
Speaker 3: That sounds right. No, I've heard Yeah, the Paradigams and all.
Speaker 2: Those exactly No. I think there's a vast chasm between
Speaker 2: the words I know and I know how to.
Speaker 3: Say the ones who knows. No, I think that's exactly right.
Speaker 3: And the thing to keep in mind is that is
Speaker 3: it unless you're writing some sort of uh, you know,
Speaker 3: fantasy or science fiction that's really out there, you know,
Speaker 3: you are sort of constrained to using real places. The
Speaker 3: most you know, elaborate fiction novels of you know, serial
Speaker 3: killers and monsters and lever else are set you know
Speaker 3: here now War the World's the nineteen thirty eight broadcast
Speaker 3: was supposed to be going on, you know, in h
Speaker 3: on the East Coast in New York and New Jersey,
Speaker 3: of course, adapted by it by Wells. But but again,
Speaker 3: so you know, in a way, it's it shouldn't surprise
Speaker 3: anybody that writers use. Writers use what's around them, and
Speaker 3: they use real places, and sometimes they use real figures.
Speaker 3: That has nothing to do with whether or not whether
Speaker 3: the story is actually true or not.
Speaker 2: And now they say, right, what you know, which is
Speaker 2: why all my stories are about fast food and masturbation exactly.
Speaker 1: That won't make your story.
Speaker 3: What's that you do?
Speaker 1: A plug for your story now, which I still haven't.
Speaker 2: Great I'm looking well, I plugged it in the last episode,
Speaker 2: so we're cool. Although if you want to read an
Speaker 2: incredibly good story, go find Weird Tales and read my story.
Speaker 3: What's the title of it.
Speaker 2: I believe it's called The Thing in the Cellar. It
Speaker 2: was originally called The Horror in the Cellar, but when
Speaker 2: they did a title search, they found that that was
Speaker 2: already used.
Speaker 3: So they thought you meant horror in the cellar, right right.
Speaker 2: It was autobiographical. It was about my experience raising money
Speaker 2: for my family by performing terrible, terrible acts in the
Speaker 2: basement for money.
Speaker 3: Frankly, I'm interested in that one. So if you could
Speaker 3: write that one, that'd be great.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's good stuff. The Kiddel addition will be out
Speaker 2: later today. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Well, I have to say that that when I was
Speaker 3: reading it, there's there's one particular phrase in the in
Speaker 3: the whole book that I really enjoyed, and it was
Speaker 3: occurs on page two one when they ask Uncle Zeke.
Speaker 3: He says, it's it's great. I mean, it could have
Speaker 3: been ripped from from you know, ghost hunters. He says,
Speaker 3: it's because it's a Native Native American burial ground.
Speaker 1: That explains everything.
Speaker 3: Right, Well, there you go. You know, we got an
Speaker 3: Indian barrel ground. What else could it be?
Speaker 2: Uh?
Speaker 3: And it was just funny to just see something written
Speaker 3: so long ago that that again in many ways that
Speaker 3: the whole ghost hunting law and vernacular and all that
Speaker 3: really hasn't changed much. Well, it was interesting when I
Speaker 3: was researching the Skeptical Inquiry article for u S. I.
Speaker 3: One of the first things I did, which apparently no
Speaker 3: one else did in terms of, you know, certain the
Speaker 3: ghostwriters is I went back and looked at the folklore
Speaker 3: on it. In fact, there's quite a bit of folklore,
Speaker 3: and they'll bell which stories identified as legend as far
Speaker 3: back as the nineteen thirties. Yeah, and was discussed in,
Speaker 3: for example, of the Journal of American Folklore in nineteen
Speaker 3: thirty four. I found a couple of references there, and
Speaker 3: I looked that up.
Speaker 1: So now it's true.
Speaker 3: Right there you go then right, sort of sort of
Speaker 3: whitewash into the truth. But yeah, I mean, so you know,
Speaker 3: it's not as if folklsts are unaware of this. In fact,
Speaker 3: the folklorsts have been writing about it for you know,
Speaker 3: eighty or more years. It's just that the ghost hunters
Speaker 3: and ghost investigators either haven't thought to look at the
Speaker 3: folklore research or just ignored it because they're just so
Speaker 3: convinced that it's a true story and not folklore.
Speaker 2: Well you go ahead.
Speaker 1: Have you gone onto YouTube and seeing some of the
Speaker 1: very convincing evidence that these people come up with.
Speaker 3: I haven't. Can you summarize for us oh alps. Oh
Speaker 3: there you go.
Speaker 1: Strange inexplicable lights and voices e vps. Of course, you
Speaker 1: know the drill, the usual stuff come today.
Speaker 2: Not good enough? You know, this focal are thing is
Speaker 2: funny because I had There's a an old house north
Speaker 2: of where I live called Barnsley Gardens. It was the
Speaker 2: Barnsley family built this huge European style estate and like
Speaker 2: built this elaborate European garden and brought in trees and
Speaker 2: fancy plants, fancy imported things. Anyway, beautiful place. But it
Speaker 2: went into ruin and became this sort of desolate you know,
Speaker 2: ruined with this what looks almost like a castle on
Speaker 2: the grounds, and ghost stories abounded, and a lot of
Speaker 2: them centered around this terrible feud some of the family
Speaker 2: members had over a particular girl, and there was a
Speaker 2: story about a poison duel and anyway beautiful story. But
Speaker 2: I had the occasion to read the actual history of
Speaker 2: the site, from the history of Bartok County, and like
Speaker 2: the stories I'd heard my whole life, these these sort
Speaker 2: of romantic Gothic love stories were just completely fabricated and
Speaker 2: the real story is very interesting, but nothing to do
Speaker 2: with the ghost stories. So that kind of thing happens.
Speaker 2: And I think these stories, as with all folklore, take
Speaker 2: on a life of their own and continue to evolve.
Speaker 2: So you know, if there may still be versions of
Speaker 2: that story told, you know on the tours of the grounds,
Speaker 2: because I know they still talk about ghosts up there.
Speaker 2: But I imagine over the years as people passed the
Speaker 2: stories along and different you know, people come and go,
Speaker 2: and those stories are going to continue to change.
Speaker 1: So I think which stories sound like choose your own adventure.
Speaker 1: They're just so many variations.
Speaker 2: There are a lot of variations if you.
Speaker 3: Believe go to page five, page thirteen if you think
Speaker 3: this is both the end of the book, if you
Speaker 3: believe it by another book.
Speaker 2: So there's a movie, at least one movie that there's
Speaker 2: actually three, I think, but one movie that was got
Speaker 2: mainstream release, and that's an American haunting that has Donald
Speaker 2: Sutherland and what's Sissy's basic I think, And well, I
Speaker 2: don't that story changes a lot of things which annoyed
Speaker 2: some you know, ghosts, u you know, paranormal people or
Speaker 2: people who like the paranormal. They like some authenticity in
Speaker 2: their story. But apparently the source materials.
Speaker 1: Authenticity in Folk.
Speaker 2: Right. Well, you know, I guess what I was gonna
Speaker 2: say about it. The real claim to fame for that film,
Speaker 2: in my mind, is that it's the second film by
Speaker 2: the guy who directed the Dudges and Dragons movie. That's uh,
Speaker 2: which was a huge disappointment. Although it's the only film
Speaker 2: I remember that has a beholder in it.
Speaker 3: So they had Jeremy Irons in it, didn't it?
Speaker 2: He did it ever?
Speaker 3: Man, Yeah, Jeremy.
Speaker 2: If you like to watch Jeremy Iers chew up some scenery, man,
Speaker 2: that that is the film to watch. You Just he
Speaker 2: cranks it up to eleven in that movie. So it's
Speaker 2: a piece of crap, but it's very engaging, it's very
Speaker 2: fun to watch. So yeah. So, but that's the Dudges
Speaker 2: and Dragons movie. I haven't watched The American Haunting yet.
Speaker 2: I haven't. I'd kind of like to watch it this
Speaker 2: week since it seems very fresh in my mind. But
Speaker 2: you know, I I think it's just kind of disappointing
Speaker 2: that what is widely touted as being one of the
Speaker 2: most best documented ghost cases in American history is only
Speaker 2: documented through fiction. That's just really really sad.
Speaker 3: Well, I mean well, I mean yeah, as you know,
Speaker 3: to my mind, the remarkable thing is just you know
Speaker 3: how often it's been written up as a true story.
Speaker 3: I mean over and over and over again. Ghosts write,
Speaker 3: you know, ghost ghostwriters, people write about ghosts, you know
Speaker 3: Brad Steiger for example, and you know many others. They
Speaker 3: just repeat it and they just assume it's true. And
Speaker 3: there's again there's no attempt to investigate it's all. It's
Speaker 3: all just laid out there as if well, this is
Speaker 3: this is the real deal. Let me, let me I
Speaker 3: have one particular section that I want to read from
Speaker 3: this book called The Haunting of America by William Burns
Speaker 3: and Joel Martin, because again it really, it really crystallizes
Speaker 3: their argument. It says, this is on page one forty five.
Speaker 3: It says, was young Betsy the poultry agent whose own
Speaker 3: telekinetic energy caused some of the horrific activity in her
Speaker 3: family's home. Some reachers, some researchers, have theorized that Betsy,
Speaker 3: under emotional stress, may have acted out of some sort
Speaker 3: of subconscious resentment for her father that manifested itself in
Speaker 3: the form of psychic energy, responsible for creating the poultrygeist
Speaker 3: havoc skeptics blamed Betsy, accusing her or fabricating the Bellwich phenomena. However,
Speaker 3: no one has ever proved that, and Bessie never again
Speaker 3: spoke of her family's troubles. Now you just did. There's
Speaker 3: so many things when you're just like there, it's you
Speaker 3: to to see. To see skeptics blame Bessie accusing him, fabricating,
Speaker 3: fabricating the Bellwich phenomena. You know, it's it's totally misses
Speaker 3: the point. It's like arguing whether or not you know
Speaker 3: Huckleberry Finn's father actually did beat him in the Mark
Speaker 3: Twain novel. Well, in the novel, yes he beat him,
Speaker 3: but it's a fictional character. You're you can't take it
Speaker 3: out of the fictional context and ask these questions. It's
Speaker 3: it's just ridiculous.
Speaker 1: It's a very modern theory about how that occurred, exactly
Speaker 1: the geist. But it reminds me again, I'm making drawing
Speaker 1: lots of parallels. But I think we've talked about the
Speaker 1: guy Ry ghost before, haven't we.
Speaker 2: Briefly?
Speaker 1: Yeah, the place it's about six hours north of Sydney,
Speaker 1: and I was a puled thegeist claim going back to
Speaker 1: the nineteen twenties, and yeah, I'm just drawing lots of
Speaker 1: parallels to that. And again it was a famous person
Speaker 1: that visited there. It was Sir Arthur Conan Doyle who's
Speaker 1: gone to investigate the sign. It was a friend of his,
Speaker 1: it wasn't actually him. But again you have the same
Speaker 1: young girl who is experiencing all of this phenomena, and
Speaker 1: then she's discredited in future. But this is a true story,
Speaker 1: not in so far as that it's a paranormal case,
Speaker 1: but in so far as that had actually occurred and
Speaker 1: that it is well documented. So that's where it differs.
Speaker 1: But yeah, I think this might be just a very
Speaker 1: early predecessor to all of these contemporary claims as well,
Speaker 1: and an explanation for a lot of contemporary claims how
Speaker 1: they came about.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it'd be interesting to know how many copies of
Speaker 2: this book got sold, because I know that the story
Speaker 2: is well known in Tennessee. But there seemed to be
Speaker 2: kind of a resurgence of interest when this, you know,
Speaker 2: American Haunting film came out. Then everybody wanted to do
Speaker 2: a kind of a knockoff Bell Witch movie, right, And
Speaker 2: so I don't know when Blair.
Speaker 1: Witch came out as well. I think the two were
Speaker 1: feeding off each other for publicity.
Speaker 2: Oh, I think so. And also the you know that
Speaker 2: that excerpt being just read reminds me of that most
Speaker 2: important thing. It's really easy to hear this case to go, oh, well, listen.
Speaker 2: You know, they had a teenage girl, her name was Betsie.
Speaker 2: She was having trouble with a lover. There was a
Speaker 2: lot of stuff going on. You know, easily she could
Speaker 2: have been hoaxing this whole thing, and that this could
Speaker 2: have been just a case of her acting out. And
Speaker 2: that's a great explanation, you know, except for the part
Speaker 2: where you really need to check first to see if
Speaker 2: anything happened at all. Right, right, you know you have
Speaker 2: to take the null hypothesis. Yeah, so I'd say that's
Speaker 2: more of a scofftick tactic than a skeptic.
Speaker 3: Well, no, I mean you're exactly right. I mean it's
Speaker 3: you know, it's essentially, you know, you go back to
Speaker 3: Raeheyman's category categorical imperative, you know, where before you try
Speaker 3: to explain something, make sure that it actually happened, you know,
Speaker 3: before you start positing theories about what the ghost could
Speaker 3: have been. Was it her psychic energies. Was it? This
Speaker 3: was it? That was it? Actually? You know Native American
Speaker 3: bariograms as the old consequential dark. He said, you know what,
Speaker 3: what was this? Before you spend a lot of time
Speaker 3: and energy, you know, going to explanations, question your assumptions,
Speaker 3: question your premises, and say well is this true? Is
Speaker 3: this real? Before you go any further.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, very first.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's a right inside the cave, there is allegedly
Speaker 2: an Indian burial ground. There's sort of a rectangular shaped
Speaker 2: box that appears to have collapsed, and in the legend,
Speaker 2: apparently I guess, at one point the witch claims she's
Speaker 2: the ghost of someone who died and the part of
Speaker 2: their skeleton or their tooth was under the house. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, there's this weird section where or they spend like
Speaker 3: four or five pages like this witch is pissed off
Speaker 3: because she's missing a tooth, and I'm like, go find
Speaker 3: a dentist.
Speaker 2: I don't know, right, it's really odd, But again, I've
Speaker 2: seen the picture of the Indian so called Indian burial. Now,
Speaker 2: my understanding was that the Cherokee, who would have been
Speaker 2: the predominant, you know, tribal presence in that region buryed,
Speaker 2: did ground burials, and they did it usually like a
Speaker 2: day or two or like either like the day of
Speaker 2: a right after the death, you know.
Speaker 1: Books.
Speaker 2: Well, no, I don't know if they used the box
Speaker 2: or not. You know, eighteen, you know, nineteen would have
Speaker 2: been you know, and then this would have predated that,
Speaker 2: so this would have been probably the late seventeen hundreds.
Speaker 2: I'm not really sure if they buried in coffins or
Speaker 2: if they're just buried in the ground, but I doubt
Speaker 2: they use coffins, just because their burial beliefs, as I
Speaker 2: understand them, were that they understood that the body goes
Speaker 2: back to nature, and that it makes sense to bury
Speaker 2: so that the you know, body can feed the trees
Speaker 2: and the plants and you know, very circle of life, right,
Speaker 2: you know, so inside a cave, inside a stone box
Speaker 2: doesn't sound right. I actually reached out to Ken Fader
Speaker 2: for end of the show to ask him about this.
Speaker 2: I sent him some documentation about the claims, and hopefully
Speaker 2: he'll get back. I don't know if he'll get back
Speaker 2: in time for this recording, but if not, I'll update
Speaker 2: the Facebook page of the show notes.
Speaker 3: It's my understanding just fyo that he doesn't respond to
Speaker 3: emails unless use the F word, so you might want
Speaker 3: to we send that.
Speaker 2: Oh, don't worry. I did, yeah, by which I mean
Speaker 2: yeah answer. I said, hey, ken, I got a question.
Speaker 2: If you have a minute, then not too much of that, folks.
Speaker 2: I hate putting all those beepcent.
Speaker 1: At this time.
Speaker 2: So yeah, I'm hoping. You know. My gut feeling, which
Speaker 2: is what most skeptics go by, right, is that this
Speaker 2: is probably not an Indian barrel, that there's some other
Speaker 2: purpose for that box besides being uh, the location of
Speaker 2: dead Indians. One thing I can't tell from the photo
Speaker 2: is how big the box is. And I know that
Speaker 2: while we were talking with Joe Nickel, he said he
Speaker 2: had some ideas about that box as well, so he
Speaker 2: may be writing something up.
Speaker 1: We'll see Gus buried by the family or someone else.
Speaker 2: Well there was, I mean, there's nothing in the box.
Speaker 2: It just looks like it could be, you know, a
Speaker 2: trough for an animal, or it could be and it
Speaker 2: could be a number of things. I don't know what
Speaker 2: it really is.
Speaker 3: It could be an Indian dwarf.
Speaker 2: It could be an Indian dwarf. I like that expert
Speaker 2: than It could be it could be a storage box
Speaker 2: for the cave troll that you still live there.
Speaker 3: You could be feeding trot for chupacabra. Who knows.
Speaker 2: That's right, we don't know. We don't know this, so
Speaker 2: we don't know.
Speaker 3: Let's just admit that we don't know.
Speaker 2: Right, we start with saying we don't know, right anyway,
Speaker 2: I think that's that's the heart of this. So what
Speaker 2: what can we learn from from the Bellwich? What what's
Speaker 2: a lesson for skeptics or for anybody who wants to, uh,
Speaker 2: you know, investigate famous hauntings.
Speaker 1: I think to keep looking for prior sources, to try
Speaker 1: and find an original source and then to question that
Speaker 1: and uh to to not look at a lot of
Speaker 1: contemporary sources and but able to to find the original
Speaker 1: one as best you can, and then to see if
Speaker 1: there's any any truth to that, any historical truth to that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, I would agree with that. And also just
Speaker 3: to you know, look at these things in context. I mean,
Speaker 3: if you read, if you read the book, if you
Speaker 3: read you know Ingram's book about the Bell which it's
Speaker 3: clearly a novella. I mean, it's it's it's it's it's
Speaker 3: one of the novellas, it's Steve nevella, it's the long
Speaker 3: lost novella Brother. But no, it's it's obviously a novel.
Speaker 3: I mean it's you know, it's it's got direct quoted dialogue,
Speaker 3: it's got drama, it's got being Lost in the Cave,
Speaker 3: which of course, you know Mark Twain wrote about in
Speaker 3: Tom Sawyer. I mean, this is it's got so many
Speaker 3: literary devices that that to to to to think or
Speaker 3: assume that this is somehow uh you know, a you know,
Speaker 3: an accounting of documented historical fact is ridiculous. I mean,
Speaker 3: you just I don't know how you can read the
Speaker 3: book unless unless unless, of course, you know, you're unless
Speaker 3: you you're working backwards and you know for a fact
Speaker 3: that the bell which case is true and this is
Speaker 3: evidence for it. If you're reading, if you're working forward
Speaker 3: from the evidence to the conclusion, you're going to say, well,
Speaker 3: hold on here, this is you know, this is just
Speaker 3: patently absurd.
Speaker 2: It would be interesting to go back and see if
Speaker 2: there were any reviews, contemporaneous reviews of his book In
Speaker 2: the in the in the in the Air, in the region,
Speaker 2: you know you don't. That would be interesting because that
Speaker 2: would be the kind of thing like, really, I've never
Speaker 2: heard this story, but it sounds fascinating, you know, you
Speaker 2: would think that that would be well known if that
Speaker 2: that sort of legend was in your region. But what
Speaker 2: we can't we can't document negative evidence very well. We
Speaker 2: can search for it and say we can't find it,
Speaker 2: but it's really hard to say, you know too much
Speaker 2: about the fact that it's not there. Right, So, so far,
Speaker 2: no one's found Betsy's uh, you know, any written allegations
Speaker 2: that Betsy did anything. No one's found the diary that
Speaker 2: William Bell, Williams Bell supposedly gave the author these just
Speaker 2: there's nothing in the letters that were supposedly sent to him.
Speaker 2: Those don't seem to exist.
Speaker 3: And it's also the stuff with Jackson.
Speaker 2: I mean, yeah, there's so much stuff that doesn't exist
Speaker 2: that that's enough to call it a fraud in my opinion.
Speaker 1: But oh yeah, but with what does exist, the stories
Speaker 1: of witches and goblins, those were all popular beliefs of
Speaker 1: the time as well, and seems to be reinterpreted for
Speaker 1: today true.
Speaker 2: And he mentions that in the book that you know,
Speaker 2: as he points out in the intro, you know, I'm
Speaker 2: not here to talk about the theosophy or spiritualism or
Speaker 2: whether or not ghost surreal. I'm just going to tell
Speaker 2: you these facts right, a lot easier, so he acknowledges,
Speaker 2: you know, most people don't believe in ghosts, you know,
Speaker 2: especially not in the daytime.
Speaker 3: Right right, Again, if you read there's quite a bit
Speaker 3: of the Bible in there. There's you know, you know,
Speaker 3: messages and and you know, and we mentioned earlier about
Speaker 3: how in some cases the bell which has this sort
Speaker 3: of this benign social control, this you know, you know,
Speaker 3: the teaching kids not to do bad things. Again, that
Speaker 3: that hearkens back directly to like Lairna, you know, the
Speaker 3: the evil witch. That's you know, telling kids to keep
Speaker 3: out of the ditches for their own safety, or you know,
Speaker 3: don't go in the lake because you know, don't don't
Speaker 3: go in the woods because boogieyman will get your the
Speaker 3: big photo of route. So again, these are if you're
Speaker 3: looking at from a folkloric perspective. Uh, it's you know,
Speaker 3: all the elements are there. I mean, it's it's it's Christmas.
Speaker 3: The message here, message, messages, messages always do the right things.
Speaker 3: In fact that there's one section of the book where
Speaker 3: where the bell which actually punishes a lazy worker. There's
Speaker 3: a farm hand there who's who's not quite doing things
Speaker 3: up to stuff, and the bell witch comes and gives
Speaker 3: gives the boundary good shaking, and from that day on
Speaker 3: the boy worked harder than ever. Blah blah blah blah blah.
Speaker 3: So frankly we need more of them.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, as our moral guidance witches, right exactly? All right, Well,
Speaker 2: well now I feel like we're just here to pee
Speaker 2: on ghost stories and that's not quite right. So I
Speaker 2: mean I love ghost stories. I just I continue to
Speaker 2: have this problem be forere they're supposedly true. You know.
Speaker 2: That's that's the thing, you know, when people think that
Speaker 2: stories that are clearly made up or not clearly made
Speaker 2: up but presented is true and are not true, and
Speaker 2: the perpetrator knows they're not true, you know, is it
Speaker 2: entirely for fun? You know? And now people are making
Speaker 2: a business on it. I mean there's quite literally a
Speaker 2: cottage industry of bill Wich support.
Speaker 3: T shirts and cave tours and canoe tours, and you know, yeah,
Speaker 3: I mean there's there's lots of money to be made.
Speaker 3: And as you know, as Karen has pointed out before
Speaker 3: the same thing with Bigfoot. You know, you go into
Speaker 3: the Bigfoot country and there's Bigfoot burgers and Bigfoot Cafe
Speaker 3: t shirts and stuff, and so there's definitely an element
Speaker 3: of explaining it for tourism.
Speaker 2: Monster Thanks for listening to another episode of Monster Talk.
Speaker 2: You heard myself, Blake Smith and my co hosts doctor
Speaker 2: Karen Stolesnow and Benjamin Radford discussing the historical paranormal case
Speaker 2: known as the Bell Witch. Monster Talk is produced with
Speaker 2: the help of Skeptic Magazine. If you like magazines, you
Speaker 2: should get one. The opinions expressed on this show do
Speaker 2: not necessarily reflect those of Skeptic Magazine or the Skeptic Society.
Speaker 2: We have got some fantastic interviews lined up already for
Speaker 2: this year, so please stay tuned to Monster Talk. In
Speaker 2: twenty thirteen, we got giant spiders and leaping strangers in
Speaker 2: so much.
Speaker 4: More coming your way. Monster Talk theme music was by
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