MIDDLE TENNESSEE SKEPTICS

Giving Common Sense a Chance    

  The 2006 movie The American Haunting starring Donald Sutherland and Sissy Spacek received terrible reviews and consequently I chose not to see it.  However, when it appeared on my Netflix list I succumbed to my curiosity. Not only did the movie live up to its horrible reviews, but it misrepresented what few facts we do have in evidence about the Bell Witch Legend.

   The opening scene specific to the legend  has John Bell in front of the First Baptist Church elders arguing a case of usary against Kate Batts for which they excommunicate John Bell.  The usuary case against Bell, unlike many other reports for the legend, has good independent third party documenta-tion both in the church minutes and in the Springfield Circuit Court.  The usuary incident was not with Kate Batts.  It was with Benjamin Batts, the brother of the husband of Kate and no evidence exists that Kate harbored any unusual ill-will regarding Benjamin's affair.  From this point the movie went downhill fast.

    The only "source" documentation of the Bell Legend is the book by Martin Ingram. However, it is based entirely on second generation hearsay and the diary of a elementary grade-school boy written nearly a quarter century after the incident.  One might argue that we really have no facts associated with bizarre occurrences from which this legend grew and that the theories presented in this movie are just as good as any others.  That claim is acceptable if this version attempted to offer a reasonable explanation, but it doesn't.  For the sake of its dismal attempt to create suspense, the movie provides horrible concoctions of events invented in a totally disjointed fashion that often leaves the audience confused. 

     For those of us familiar with the Bell Witch, we found it difficult to identify the legend in this cinema.  It scambled what little we think we know so badly that it left us more in the dark than the tenebrous scenes in the movie.

      For additional review of this movie read The Little Ghost on the Prairie by Grady Hendrix