"[6] The spirit offered diverse explanations of why it had appeared, tying its origin to the disturbance of a Native American burial mound located on the property, and sent Drew Bell and Bennett Porter on an unproductive search for buried treasure.

[7] John Johnston, a son of James, devised a test for the witch, something no one outside his family would know, asking the entity what his Dutch step-grandmother in North Carolina would say to the slaves if she thought they did something wrong.

[12] In an independent oral tradition recorded in the vicinity of Panola County, Mississippi, the witch was the ghost of an unpleasant overseer John Bell murdered in North Carolina.

[14] In the manuscript attributed to Richard Williams Bell, he wrote that the spirit remained a mystery: Whether it was witchery, such as afflicted people in past centuries and the darker ages, whether some gifted fiend of hellish nature, practicing sorcery for selfish enjoyment, or some more modern science akin to that of mesmerism, or some hobgoblin native to the wilds of the country, or a disembodied soul shut out from heaven, or an evil spirit like those Paul [sic] drove out of the man into the swine, setting them mad; or a demon let loose from hell, I am unable to decide; nor has anyone yet divined its nature or cause for appearing, and I trust this description of the monster in all forms and shapes, and of many tongues, will lead experts who may come with a wiser generation, to a correct conclusion and satisfactory explanation.

Due to lack of provisions, Long and Bell led divided parties after they reached the Rocky Mountains and rejoined in Fort Smith, Arkansas.

[17] The journal's connection to the Bell Witch legend was discussed by local historian David Britton during a television broadcast produced for the Discovery Channel in November, 2020.

[18] Rather a singular circumstance was here related to me, of a young girl of about 15 years of age, residing but 3 miles from Murphey, a voice accompanies her which says she should marry a man a neighbor - thousands of persons have visited her to hear this voice, in many instances, it will reply to questions put to it, the visitors have left as little satisfied in their curiosity as before they heard it, many are under the impression, that it is ventrelequism [sic] imposed upon the hearers either by the girl or her brother - who it seems is generally in her company, her family is respectable.The publications New England Farmer of Boston and the Green Mountain Freeman of Vermont in January and February 1856 published an article regarding the Bell Witch legend and the publications ascribed the origin of the text to the Saturday Evening Post.

The matter, however, was settled without litigation, the paper retracting the charges, explaining how this version of the story had gained credence, and the fact that at the time the demonstrations commenced Betsy Bell had scarcely advanced from the stage of childhood and was too young to have been capable of originating and practicing so great a deception.

The fact also that after this report had gained circulation, she had submitted to any and every test that the wits of detectives could invent to prove the theory, and all the stratagems employed, served only to demonstrate her innocence and utter ignorance of the agency of the so-called witchery, and was herself the greatest sufferer from the affliction.

[25][26] Ingram published an interview with Lucinda E. Rawls, of Clarksville, Tennessee, daughter of Alexander Gooch and Theny Thorn, both reported as close friends of Betsy Bell.

[34] A several page account of the Bell Witch legend was included in a sketch of Robertson County and was reportedly written for Nashville's Centennial Exposition in 1880.

[1] Goodspeed Brothers' 1886 History of Tennessee, recorded a short account of the legend that identified the spirit as female and stated that interest in the phenomenon was widespread in the region at the time.

[33]The week of January 20, 1890 hundreds of persons were reported to have visited a house 2.5 miles east of Hopkinsville, Kentucky as word spread of coal mysteriously falling from the ceiling in the family room.

The house was occupied by a prominent minister of the Cumberland Presbyterian Church, W. G. L. Quaite, his wife, step-daughter Belle Hall, as well as an unnamed sixteen-year-old female servant.

He became a citizen of Clarksville forty years ago and from that time practically until the day of his death his greatest concern was the advancement and welfare of his adopted town and county ... A man of true mold, he despised all deceit, trickery, and littleness, and with a courage which nothing could daunt, he laid on the journalistic lash unsparingly whenever he thought the occasion required.

[48] On July 13, 1892, a report in the Leaf-Chronicle was published of Ingram's travels to Adams Station and Cedar Hill with John Allen Gunn, "for the purpose of viewing the grounds where historic and most intensely thrilling events were enacted seventy-five years ago," and interviewing individuals, who "were then living and familiar with the wonderful phenomena that awakened such a widespread sensation."

[51] Ingram subsequently traveled to Chicago in October 1893, while editor of the Progress-Democrat, in an attempt to publish his manuscript, An Authenticated History of the Famous Bell Witch.

[56] In the introduction to the book, Ingram published a letter dated July 1, 1891, from former TN State Representative James Allen Bell of Adairville, Kentucky.

Dunning also concluded that Ingram was guilty of falsifying another statement, that the Saturday Evening Post had published a story in 1849 accusing the Bells' daughter Elizabeth of creating the witch, an article which was not found at the time.

[61] Keith Cartwright of the University of North Florida compares Ingram's work with Uncle Remus folklore as recorded by Joel Chandler Harris and also as an expression of the psychological shame of slavery and Native American removal.

[63] Mahala Darden detailed what she understood family and friends were experiencing at the time of the haunting, expressed her great fear the witch would come to visit her home and also related the spirit sang "Row me up some brandy, O" at the conclusion of John Bell's graveside service.

According to Dunning, "The 1824 Presidential election was notoriously malicious, and it seems hard to believe that his opponent would have overlooked the opportunity to drag him through the mud for having lost a fight to a witch.

[72] A group from the local Epworth League were reported to have attended a wiener roast in a rock quarry near the Bell Witch Cave on July 29, 1937.

[74] Jim Brooks published in 2015 that his mother was in attendance at the roast, and relates that the minister caught up to the youth on the road to town after discovering no explanation for the figure.

[75] In November 1965, an article was published involving an antique oak rocking chair said to have been previously owned by attorney Charlie Willett, a Bell descendant.

Every Sunday, Willett would accompany his sweetheart, Miss Jerry Cullom Gardner, for ice cream in Clarksville and dinner at Richardson's Restaurant on the return home.

[80] In 1986, staff writer David Jarrard for The Tennessean and photographer Bill Wilson, the latter also a member of the National Speleological Society, were given permission to sleep in the cave over night.

Dunning concludes, "I chalk up the Bell Witch as nothing more than one of many unsubstantiated folk legends, vastly embellished and popularized by an opportunistic author of historical fiction.

"[59] Joe Nickell has written that many of those who knew Betsy suspected her of fraud and the Bell Witch story "sounds suspiciously like an example of "the poltergeist-faking syndrome" in which someone, typically a child, causes the mischief.

[18] Charles Faulkner Bryan, as a part of a Guggenheim Fellowship, composed The Bell Witch, a cantata which premiered in Carnegie Hall in 1947 with Robert Shaw conducting the Juilliard Chorus and Orchestra.