Lore - Episode 56: Going Viral

Episode Date: March 20, 2017

Fear has a way of spreading. It’s contagious, moving from person to person. Given enough time, fear can consume an entire community. Sometimes, though, there’s good reason to be afraid. * * * Official Lore Website: www.lorepodcast.com Extra member episodes: www.patreon.com/lorepodcast Access premium content!: https://www.lorepodcast.com/support

On August 31st of 1944, a man in southern Illinois woke up in the middle of the night to the smell of something odd. It wasn't a skunk or that tell-tale odor of something burning. This was different. Mostly because of the acrid, almost venomous nature of the smell, but mostly because of the effect it had on him. The man said that the smell left him feeling weak and nauseous, and that it induced a violent fit of vomiting, and his wife didn't fare any better.

She wondered if maybe their gas stove was still on, so she tried to get out of bed and go check on it. But she couldn't. In fact, she seemed to be completely paralyzed. The next day, another resident of the same town reported a similar experience, an odd smell followed by paralyzing effects. Day after day, more reports just like those trickled in. The result, as you might imagine, was group panic, and everyone wanted to find the person

responsible. They called him the mad gasser of Mattoon, and even now, over 70 years later, no one's really sure what happened. It's amazing how quickly hysteria can spread, isn't it? One minute, there's nothing, and the next, an entire community is wrapped up in something dark and horrifying. It might be political panic, or religious fervor, or a simple, primal fear of the unexplained. Whatever its flavor, it always has the potential to be powerful, sometimes even deadly.

Over two centuries ago, something took place that fit the definition of hysteria to the letter, but with a twist. This event had more depth, and more power than usual. In fact, it had everything a good fairy tale needs, cryptids, and witchcraft, and ghosts. Oh my. But it also had something else, something that's helped it survive to this day. You see, with hundreds of witnesses on record, this one just might be true. I'm Aaron Mankey, and this is Lore.

The first British settlers along the Atlantic coast of North America stayed pretty close to the ocean, and for good reason. Those early colonies were deeply dependent on ships from England to bring them supplies and help, and to stray too far from the Atlantic meant putting yourself and your family at risk. But as time went on, settlers felt more and more comfortable moving farther inland. They followed the rivers. They aimed for the mountains they could see on the western horizon.

They chased the dream of wide open territory, ripe for the taking, which wasn't a pleasant idea for the tens of thousands of Native Americans who already called those lands home and had so four millennia. To help, the British issued the Proclamation of 1763, which prohibited moving westward past the Appalachian Mountains. But when the British were forced out after the American Revolution, that political borderline evaporated. Thousands of newly independent Americans flooded westward, and by 1800, places like

Kentucky and Tennessee had been transformed from wilderness into rustic civilization. By the time John and Lucy Bell rolled into the newly formed state of Tennessee in 1804, there were already a good number of people waiting there for them. Not that they needed more company, but John and Lucy were traveling with their five children. Their sixth and oldest wasn't with them, having gotten married before the family left North Carolina. True to the social climate of pre-Civil War South, the family also traveled with a number of slaves, nine by most accounts.

The entire group aimed for the Flatlands around the Red River, where a number of other settlers had already put down roots. And then they did what settlers were born to do. They built a new life in a strange place. A couple of years later, they welcomed another daughter, and then a son, and then another son. And as their family was growing wider, it was also growing deeper. John's family deepened their friendship with the neighboring family, the guns, so deep that

their families were woven together by marriage. But in the early 1800s, the primary focus was on the mundane, until 1817, that is. That was the year something unusual happened to John. He was out in the cornfield one day when he looked up to see an odd animal a dozen or so yards away. It was odd because it seemed to be a mixture of two very different creatures. The body was very clearly that of a dog. The head, though, well, John was sure it was a rabbit.

John raised his gun. No settler on the edge of civilization went anywhere without a gun, after all, and fired at the unusual creature. The shot missed, so he fired again. And again. But whatever it was, it just turned and ran off toward the woods. By the time he walked back into the farmhouse that evening for dinner, he'd almost forgotten about it.

There was a lot on his mind. The crops, the livestock, the approaching winter, being a practical man, he wasn't one to dwell on what had so clearly been a figment of his imagination. But, however, is when they heard the noises. The sounds came from outside and sounded for all they could tell, like someone was beating on the house. They ran out to see who it was, but found nothing. A few days later, John's son Andrew was outside when he saw what he described as a

giant turkey. It was larger than any bird he'd ever seen before, but it flew away before he could shoot it. John's daughter Elizabeth, just 11 years old at the time, was outside not long after that when she claimed to see a dead woman hanging from a tree on the property. The sight of it frightened her enough to send her running back to the house, but when she glanced back over her shoulder, there was nothing there. One of the most unusual stories came from one of their slaves, a man named Dean.

Years before, he had found true love in the eyes of another slave at the nearby gun farm, and the couple had married shortly after that. So each night, after Dean finished his work, he would walk over to the guns to see his wife and spend time with her. It was always late when he came back. Late and dark. But even though the frontier wasn't the safest place to walk alone, Dean knew the road well enough.

It's just that, well, he was seeing things lately that didn't seem normal. One thing specifically, actually, a dog. Every night on his return trip home, a large black dog would step out of the darkness and cross his path. It wasn't random, according to Dean. It was regular, happening each night and had for at least a week before he reported it. Large and unusual animals on the property, noises, visions of dead people, ominous black dogs, none of it was comforting and all of it went on for months.

But they could always run home, shut the door, and feel safe again. It was unsettling, for sure, but at least it was containable. And that's when the unexplainable moved inside the house. At first, it was just knocking sounds. They seemed to creep in through the walls like a winter chill. Odd sounds in a distant part of the house, always without an explanation. But then it changed. Or maybe it adapted.

It all depends on how you look at it, I suppose. Because not long after the noises moved indoors, the children began to complain about disturbances in the night. It sounded to them like rats were chewing on the bedposts. Some of the children claimed they could hear chains being dragged around the house. Others said that their blankets were being pulled off of them while they slept. On at least one occasion, Elizabeth ran into her parents' room in the middle of the night, crying hysterically.

They lit a lantern and discovered that she was covered in red welts and bruises, as if she'd been beaten. That night set off a string of attacks that all seemed to focus on her. Houses that followed her, physical assaults, visions. The new focus wasn't contained to the house, either. One story tells of how Elizabeth, known to her family and friends as Betsy, even tried spending the night at the home of a school friend. She hoped that the distance would help.

She hoped it, whatever it was, would leave her alone. But it followed her. It always followed her. One of the odd symptoms of these unexplainable attacks was that John began to have trouble eating. He said it was like his tongue had a mind of its own. He would put food into his mouth, but it would be pushed back out. It didn't happen all the time, but once was enough to put him on edge.

John Bell was apparently a patient man, though. For a long while, he assumed that all the trouble would go away and be forgotten. For over a year, he and his family bravely endured their mysterious torment, the beatings. The noises. The blankets and chains and all of that. But when Betsy's friends found out, word began to spread. John didn't like that because he had a reputation to maintain. That might seem selfish, I know.

On the surface, it looks like John was content to do nothing while his family suffered. And then, the moment his reputation seemed to be at risk, he gave in and started to worry. But before you judge him, you have to keep in mind the common beliefs of the time, especially in this part of the country. This all took place long after the witchcraft panic of the 17th century had died off. The Salem trials were the last of their kind in America, and that was over 125 years before the bells. But on the edges of the frontier, away from the civilized modern cities of the coast,

old superstition still ran deep. So deep, in fact, that half a century later, in the very same town as the bells, a man named James Smith would be murdered. The reason, according to his killers, was that Smith was a witch. So yes, John Bell's obsession with his reputation does seem a little petty, but it was also rooted in self-preservation. To find help, John called on his local minister, James Johnson. Johnston arrived later that day with his wife, and the couple agreed to spend the night at

the farmhouse and offer their own opinion of the activity. And they apparently had a plan to help with whatever might come their way. After dinner, the Johnstons led the Bell family through a selection of Bible readings and then followed that up with a few hymns and some prayer of blessing for the house and people inside. Then, with the evening at an end, everyone retired to their rooms for the night. It was only when the lights went out and the darkness took over that the invisible force became active.

And that night, it seems, the focus would be on the newcomers. That night, the Johnstons woke to the sound of loud noises, and then later, their blankets were pulled off the bed. Frustrated and more than a little frightened, the minister jumped out of bed and shouted into the darkness. In the name of the Lord, who are you and what do you want? But his demand was met with silence. No more noises, no invisible forces tugging on their blankets.

Silence. But that silence wouldn't last long. In fact, it turned out to be the calm before the storm. Within hours, the spirit did something that no one else in the house expected. It spoke. When the Bell family gathered for breakfast the following morning, the Johnstons joined them. There was conversation about the previous night.

There were panicked looks. There was frustration and fear and a lot of hopelessness. But the minister couldn't help them after all. What chance did they really have? It was sometime during that conversation that something unexpected happened. Something that defied all laws of nature. Because according to everyone at the table, that's the moment when the spirit in the house actually spoke to them.

What did it say? Well, it appears to have taken a liking to the words of the minister. The otherworldly disembodied voice repeated back word for word the Bible passages the group had listened to the night before. It repeated the prayers, too, then it vanished. After that, word spread fast. John and Lucy received a letter from their oldest daughter back in North Carolina and she mentioned hearing of their troubles from someone else.

This was more than just a bit of family drama now. It was a public spectacle. And the odd occurrences just kept piling up. Weeks later, the bells hosted two local ministers for lunch on a Sunday afternoon. The two men were from churches separated by 13 miles and both had preached their sermons at the same time that day. Yet the spirit seemed to have heard both, reciting each of them back to the people gathered at the table word for word, which didn't help solve the mystery.

Because if we assume one of the older children was responsible for all of this, then how could that one person have listened and memorized two sermons so far apart at the exact same time? Of course, they tried to figure out who or what the spirit was. Some thought maybe it was the ghost of a local Native American angry about the settler's presence. Others thought it was a demonic spirit that inhabited a local witch. The voice even identified itself as Kate, apparently named in honor of the witch in

question. Even in name, didn't make the problem go away. When things began to escalate, it got so bad that the family started to discuss moving away. Some of the older children suggested returning to North Carolina. Others didn't care where they went, they just wanted to leave the farmhouse forever. But could they really get away from it? It did, however, reveal a helpful side at least once during the spring of 1820.

That's when Betsy's mother, Lucy, became horribly sick with a lung infection, it hurt to cough, it hurt to breathe, and she wasn't getting better. That's when Kate, if that was her name, literally dropped the remedy into Lucy's hands, grapes and hazelnuts, which were thought at the time to hold powerful medicinal purposes, simply appeared out of thin air. Lucy apparently recovered a short while later. The worst of it all, however, fell on John Bell. Maybe it was because he was the most prideful and resistant to believing the spirit actually

existed. Perhaps it was because he was the one dragging the local church into the situation. All we know is that the spirit, Kate, did not care a bit for John. Insults would often be heard shouting at him from thin air. He was called names and told that his life wasn't worth carrying on, that he should end it. Other times, though, the spirit became violent, and that odd thing with his tongue returned in force, leaving him unable to eat or even speak.

Whether it was the lack of food or some other influence from the spirit, John spent much of 1820 very ill. By autumn, he was forced to spend over a month resting in bed. When he did recover, it wasn't for long, but John tried to make the most of it. His son, Richard, told the story of how John followed him outside one day when he needed to check on the pigs. I can imagine John was feeling a bit helpless and just wanted to contribute. Farms are a lot of work, after all, but while they were out of the house, Kate decided to

attack. First, it was his shoes. Richard described how, no matter how tight John tied them, his father's shoes would fly off his feet. When they turned around to return to the house, Kate slapped John across the face. The older man sat down to recover himself, and the spirit filled the air with laughter and song. By early December of 1820, John took a turn for the worse and returned to bed for rest.

On the 19th, John slipped into a coma, and no matter what the family or neighbors did, they couldn't wake him up. They didn't know what had brought it on, but they had a theory. John's wife, Lucy, found a small glass vial among their household medicines, but she'd never seen it before. There was a dark liquid inside, or at least there had been, there wasn't much left of it. So Lucy did what any desperate person would do in her situation.

She shouted out to the spirit for answers. What was this mysterious medicine? The spirit refused to tell Lucy what it was, but she admitted giving it to John the night before. Horrified, Lucy opened the vial and gave the last few drops to one of the cats, who died just moments later. The following day, John's breathing slowed, and his heartbeat became harder and harder to find.

Until finally, hours later, it stopped for good. If fear were a virus, it would be declared highly infectious by the CDC. Fear has this way of spreading from person to person like the common cold in a grade school classroom. Give fear enough time, and it'll infect everyone in the room, or the house, or the town. Which is why we have folklore, because folklore has this way of inoculating us against fear. It provides us with explanations and answers when there's just too much mystery. Folklore creates the illusion of logic, and that can stop the spread of fear.

Unless, of course, that folklore is more frightening than the mystery it explains. It's hard enough to not be afraid of odd noises in your own home, but when the only explanation involves evil spirits and witchcraft, well, you can see how that might fan the flames. Of course, it could all have been a hoax. History is full of hoaxes that prey on the fears of the superstitious. It's possible that a few of the bell children were in on that hoax, and that they somehow managed to work together to pull it all off. It's also possible that the whole family sat down, planned it out, and then performed

the entire mystery. But for what reason? It's been two centuries since those events, and we still don't know what really happened. What we do know, however, is that the stories have fascinated people, and still do. Even while they were taking place, words spread far enough that hundreds of people traveled to witness them firsthand, and most of them got what they wished for. One story stands out above all the others. Five years before the events on the Belfarm began, John's three eldest sons fought in

the War of 1812. They fought in the Battle of New Orleans, serving under General Andrew Jackson. So when the evil spirit's reputation reached Jackson's ear, he decided to come see for himself. He arrived one day in 1819, along with several other travel companions. Just outside the Belfarm, though, their wagon became stuck. The men worked hard to make sure none of the wheels were caught on a rock or in thick mud, but no matter what they did, they couldn't get the wagon to roll free.

That's when a voice spoke up and welcomed Jackson and his friends to the farm, a voice without a body. It called itself Kate and told them it would see them all later that evening. After that, the wagon miraculously unstuck itself and they were able to move on. One of Jackson's friends didn't care for the suggestion that there was something supernatural going on at the farm. Later that night, after dinner, the man waved his pistol around in the air, claiming there was a silver bullet in the chamber and threatening to shoot the spirit, or witch, or whatever

it was. Instead, the man was struck with a fit of seizures. He shouted out that someone was poking him with needles, that they were violently beating him, but no one was touching him. Then, before it all ended, the front door of the house opened on its own and the man was kicked out into the night by an invisible force. Jackson and his men left the following morning. This episode of lore was researched, written, and produced by me, Aaron Mankey.

Lore is much more than a podcast. There's a book series in bookstores around the country and online, and the second season of the Amazon Prime television show was recently released. Check them both out if you want more lore in your life. I also make two other podcasts, Aaron Mankey's Cabinet of Curiosities, and Unobscured, and I think you'd enjoy both. Each one explores other areas of our dark history, ranging from bite-sized episodes to season long dives into a single topic.

You can learn about both of those shows and everything else going on all over in one central place. The World of Lore.com slash now. And you can also follow the show on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Just search for Lore podcast, all one word, and then click that follow button. When you do, say hi. I like it when people say hi. And as always, thanks for listening.

I'll see you in the next one.