Other Worlds (3 page)

Mr. and Mrs. Johnson duly arrived and were entertained by the Bells with their usual hospitality. John and Lucy must have found it an enormous relief to talk about their experiences. Evening drew on, and as the shadows gathered, the Bells and their visitors adjourned to the reception room for prayers. Mr. Johnson was a noted lay preacher, admired for his fluent tongue. On this occasion he outdid himself, leading the group in a hymn and praying for the deliverance of his friends from their affliction. When it was time to retire the Johnsons were given the room next to Betsy's.

No sooner had the visitors climbed into bed than the fun began—scratching, knocking, growls, and the uncanny gulping and smacking. Mr. Johnson got out of bed and struck a light. As usual, this put an end to the activity in his room, but the sounds only moved elsewhere. Accompanied by the Bells, Johnson followed the sounds from room to room, increasingly awed and amazed. He was particularly struck by one set of noises—the smacking as of invisible lips and the impression of air being sucked between the teeth. Was it possible, he wondered, that the unseen entity had a mouth capable of speech?

"In the name of the Lord," he cried. "Who are you? What do you want? Why are you here?"

The sounds stopped. The Bells stared at one another. It had not occurred to them that their tormentor might be able to hear and understand. Alas, though Mr. Johnson's questions received a response, it was not the one he had hoped for. The raps and rattles broke out again, louder than before. Betsy shrieked and clutched at her head as something tugged viciously at her golden locks, bringing them tumbling down her back.

A badly shaken Mr. Johnson threw up his hands. "It is
beyond my comprehension," he confessed. "It is evidently preternatural or supernatural, but clearly of an intelligent character. Did it not cease action when spoken to? I advise you, my poor friend, to invite other friends into the investigation and try all means to detect the mystery."

Mr. Bell took Johnson's advice. The Bell Spirit ceased to be a private "family trouble" and turned into a neighborhood circus or sideshow. Scarcely an evening passed without a group of spectators sitting around the fire in the reception room hoping for a demonstration of mysterious powers.

Not all the visitors were moved by idle curiosity Mr. and Mrs. Johnson and their sons were constant in their attentions, and the ministers of the local churches lent spiritual comfort. The Bells' pastor was Reverend Fort, of the Drakees Pond Baptist Church. The Methodist ministers, James and Thomas Gunn, were closely connected with the family by ties of kinship as well as affection. Jesse Bell, John and Lucy's oldest son, had married Martha Gunn, the daughter of Reverend Thomas, and in due course three more of the Gunn girls would marry into the Bell family

In the presence of these pious and intelligent gentlemen the demonstrations not only continued but increased. Strange lights were seen around the fields and farmyard; sticks and pieces of wood pelted the boys when they came in from work in the evening. Mr. Johnson insisted that the manifestations were produced by a guiding intelligence, and he continued to question it: "How many fingers am I holding up?" "How many people are present?" Eventually answers came, by means of raps or scratches. It never occurred to this innocent gentleman, untrained in the techniques of the spiritualist seance, to demand that the Spirit reply to more complex enquiries by spelling out its responses alphabetically. He exhorted the Spirit to speak—and it did.

Picture the scene,
gentlemen, in all its antique charm: the women in their prim print dresses and aprons, the sober, bearded faces of the men, eerily shadowed by the glow of the fire. A few candles and lamps added to the illumination, but by modern standards the room was dark and the furnishings were of Spartan simplicity—straight wooden chairs, braided rugs made by Mrs. Bell and her servants, a cupboard holding the glasses in which Mr. Bell was accustomed to serve his excellent whiskey; on the wall, perhaps, a sampler embroidered by Betsy, with pious Biblical verses worked in colored wools. Picture, as well, the looks of surprise and horror and morbid fascination as that first faint whispering reply is heard.

At first the Spirit had trouble speaking, as if it were experimenting with a type of apparatus unfamiliar to it, or in poor repair. The initial sounds were faint and broken, interspersed with whistling breaths; but as the audience continued to question it the voice gained strength and distinctness. Its first coherent utterance seems to have been a repetition of Mr. Johnson's prayer and hymn delivered on the night he first encountered the Spirit. The voice sounded exactly like his.

The response to this performance must have gratified the Spirit. On succeeding occasions it demonstrated an astonishing knowledge of Scripture and a talent for debate. Its own voice was exceedingly sweet; it enjoyed singing and knew every hymn in the book.

Intrigued as they were by this insane parlor game, some of the visitors never lost sight of their main interest—to discover what the entity was and why it had come. If they could learn its origin and purpose, they might find out how to get rid of it. After hours of interrogation the voice finally answered the oft-repeated question.

"I am a spirit who was once very happy, but have been disturbed and made unhappy."

A thrill ran through the assembled group when this faltering explanation was heard. Excited questions followed. Why was it unhappy? What had happened to disturb it?

Solemnly the mysterious voice explained that it was the spirit of a person who had been buried in the nearby woods. "My grave has been disturbed, my bones disinterred and scattered. One of my teeth was lost under this house and I am here looking for that tooth."

Ridiculous, of course! But we can hardly blame the beleaguered Bells for grasping at any straw. One of the family recalled a half-forgotten event of three or four years earlier, when some of the farmhands, clearing land, found a group of graves. Old Indian cemeteries were common in the region. Mr. Bell ordered his men to work carefully around it without disturbing the dead.

However, his son Drewry mentioned the discovery to a friend and this young man, Hall by name, suggested that they dig up the graves in order to look for relics.

Hoping for tomahawks and arrowheads, they were disappointed to find only scattered bones. Idly, young Hall picked up a
jawbone and carried it back to the house. No doubt he and Drew handled the fragment unceremoniously, joking and laughing with the frivolity of youth. Hall finally threw it against the wall. One of the teeth was jarred loose and dropped into a crack in the floor. Mr. Bell happened to pass by just then and was annoyed at the boys' irreverence. After scolding them, he ordered one of the slaves to return the jawbone and fill in the grave.

Undoubtedly the whole family knew about this incident, but they had forgotten it until the Spirit jogged their memories. Mr. Bell thought the matter worth investigating, but though the floor was taken up and the dirt beneath sifted, no tooth was found. After the work was finished, the Spirit laughed. "It was just a joke to fool old Jack Bell," it remarked.

This performance ought to have made the Bells wary of any similar explanation offered by their uncanny guest, but the Spirit's next invention was accepted even more eagerly, perhaps because it was sweetened with an appeal to greed.

"I am the spirit of an early immigrant. I brought a large sum of money and buried it for safekeeping until it was needed. In the meantime I died without divulging the secret and I have returned in the spirit for the purpose of making known the hiding place. I want Betsy Bell to have the money."

Betsy probably felt she deserved it. The Spirit had taken to slapping her as well as pulling her hair.

After waving this golden bait before the audience, the Spirit played coy. It insisted on a number of arbitrary conditions before it consented to tell where the treasure was buried. Drew Bell and his brother-in-law Bennett Porter must do the actual digging. Mr. Johnson, whom it referred to familiarly as "Old Sugar Mouth," must go with them to make sure the work was properly carried out and to ensure that every penny of the treasure would go to Betsy.

There was laughter and incredulity at this remarkable offer,
but in the end the persons mentioned decided to have a go at it. Don't look superior, gentlemen; wouldn't you have done the same? The Spirit's directions were detailed: the money was buried under a large flat rock on the southwest corner of the farm, near the river. It obviously knew every inch of the property.

So the party got up at the crack of dawn—obeying another of the Spirit's demands—and set out, shovels and pickaxes in hand. The rock was enormous and so deeply sunk in the earth that it took the sweating boys hours to raise it. There was nothing underneath but dirt.

After some angry discussion, the party decided not to give up yet. Mr. Johnson had helped with the raising of the stone. Now he sat down to rest and supervise while Drew and Bennett dug. By the time the light began to fail they had excavated a hole six feet square and almost as deep without finding anything.

Disheveled, dirty and disgusted, the duped party returned to the house. When they were relaxing in the reception room after supper the voice of the Spirit was heard, cackling with laughter over the trick it had played on them.

"Drew can handle a sight of dirt," it chortled. "His hands were made for that, and are better than a shovel. No gold can slip through his fingers. And Old Sugar Mouth looked on, praying and encouraging the boys. Oh, how it made them sweat!"

Its mirth was contagious. The whole family—except, perhaps, the exhausted Drew—burst into peals of laughter.

The visitors continued to ask questions and the Spirit continued to tease them. It informed Calvin Johnson it was the ghost of a child buried in North Carolina; Calvin's brother John was told that it was the witch of his stepmother. Its next invention was not so harmless.

"I am the witch of old Kate Batts, and I have come to torment Jack Bell until he dies."

In another time and place this malicious lie might have had serious consequences. For in that quiet rural community there was no more suitable candidate for the position of witch than Mrs. Kate Batts.

We all know, gentlemen, that it is not advisable to allow the ladies to go into trade or follow masculine professions. There is a danger they may find out they are as competent as we! The illness of her husband had forced Mrs. Batts to play a man's role, and she had displayed a remarkable aptitude for business. The family was well-to-do, with a good farm and many slaves. In addition to running the farm Kate had developed a nice trade in woolen goods, keeping her slave women busy spinning and weaving and sewing. This gave her an excuse to call on her neighbors, selling the finished product and buying raw wool. She was an immensely stout woman, and when she set out on her weekly circuit at the head of her troop of servants, she gave the neighborhood quite a show. A servant girl led the way, with Kate's old gray horse. Kate walked behind, dressed in her finest clothes. She had never been seen to ride the horse.

If Kate Batts had been poor and meek, her eccentricities might have gotten her into trouble. Being wealthy, and the possessor of a particularly vicious tongue, she enjoyed the unwilling respect of her acquaintances. They got their revenge on her by laughing at her behind her back and by repeating stories of her odd behavior—like the time she sat down on a repentant sinner at a revival meeting, and pressed the poor man half to death before he could gasp out a confession of sin and a plea for salvation.

When word reached Mrs. Batts that the Bell Spirit had claimed to belong to her, there was music in the breeze, as a contemporary witness put it. Her eyes flashed and her tongue flapped at both ends, spitting out curses mixed with the malapropisms for which she was famous. She could not have
invented a better defense; the grim accusation became just another funny story about crazy Kate Batts.

Still, there were a few superstitious people who believed it, especially when they remembered that John Bell had once gotten the better of Kate in a business transaction, and that she had told him what she thought of him in no uncertain terms. These people whispered of Kate's mysterious powers—which no one had happened to notice before the Spirit spoke. So the strange entity that haunted the Bells became known as a witch, and from then on it readily answered when visitors addressed it as "Kate."

It was a harmless conclusion to an affair that might have ended with the gibbet or the noose or mob violence, and part of the credit must go to John Bell, who consistently and vehemently scoffed at the accusation. Yes, Mrs. Batts had called him rude names and promised to get even with him; she had done the same to other people who had proved sharper in trade. No doubt she was peculiar, but she was a good, pious woman at heart, and the idea of witchcraft was absurd.

As if annoyed at John Bell's contradiction of its claim, the Spirit proceeded to try his patience to the limit. It introduced four new characters—an entire Witch family. Their names were Blackdog, Mathematics, Cypocryphy and Jerusalem, and the voice that had hitherto been sweet and soft changed to suit these personalities. Blackdog, the head of the family, spoke in a harsh but distinctly feminine voice. Jerusalem's tones were those of a young boy. Mathematics and Cypocryphy had different voices, but both were female. However, their language was quite unbecoming to the gentle sex. The vilest blasphemies and threats shocked the listeners. They sounded, said Richard succinctly, "like a lot of drunken men fighting."