Her Voice in the Walls - The Bell Witch

In a farmhouse in Tennessee, a family heard a voice in the dark that knew their names and their secrets. They called her the Bell Witch — a presence that scratched, mocked, and promised a death she finally kept.

Tonight, while the storm strokes the cellar window and the fire breathes low, I’ll tell you why the house never seemed empty again.

Thank you for enjoying my podcast! Take a listen to the other podcast at Candlelight Storyworks

Midnight Scares - Fall Asleep to Spooky Storiesl
Candlight Classics - Classic Short Stories to Help You Sleep
Candlelight Romance - Fall Asleep While Falling In Love
True Crime by Candlelight - Drift Off to Dark Mysteries

Find them all on your favorite podcast right here:
https://linktr.ee/candlelightstoryworks

If you are tired of commercials, you can always follow me on Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/candlelightstoryworks

I am also writing a few horror and gothic romance books. If you're intrested, please follow me on my other Patreon at
http://www.patreon.com/sarahmarshalking

**While this is my voice, sometimes I use an AI cloned version of my voice because it helps with my dyslexia.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
The rain has a way of sounding like footsteps. When
it's late. It slides down the glass of my cellar
window in long silver threads and pools in the frame
like its waiting to be invited. In the fire is
stubborn tonight. It snaps and settles, then snaps again, like
it can't make up its mind whether to roar or reminisce.

(00:27):
There's a draft at my ankles. The stone keeps its
own chill no matter how close I sit. And there's
a little hollow just behind the wall where the wind
likes to speak. If you press your ear there, you
could swear the house is practicing words. So draw your
chair closer and keep your hands wrapped around the warmth

(00:49):
of your cup. I'll tell you about a farm house
in Tennessee two hundred years ago, and a family that
learned what it means when a voice comes out of
the dark and says your name, like it has known
you all your life. They were the bells, John the father,
broad shouldered and stubborn, Lucy, steady as bread and daylight.

(01:12):
And the children, including Betsy with her bright little laugh
that people said you could hear from the yard. The
land was good there, corn that rose up sweet, a
stand of timber that kept the worst wind off the roof,
and a spring that ran cold even in summer. The
house wasn't grand, but it was honest, boards tight, hearth

(01:34):
swept a bible near the bed. That kind of home
is supposed to be safe. One evening, John came in
from the field with dusk clinging to him like dust.
He was rubbing his neck where something had stung him. Snake,
he said, though he hadn't seen one. His eyes flicked
to the fence line, where a shadow had been standing

(01:57):
a moment ago. He shut the door and told himself,
if it was a trick of the half light, men
tell themselves things like that, otherwise they don't sleep. The
first sound came later, scratching, faint at first, like a
mouse behind the boards, then a thump, then another, moving
along the wall, the way a person would run their

(02:18):
hand from room to room. John went outside with his lantern.
He found nothing. He tapped the sighting with his knuckles
and listened to the empty knocking. When he came back in,
the sound started again. The children huddled. Lucy said a prayer,
and in the place where a child's bedtime story might
have gone, the house told one of its own. It

(02:40):
grew bolder, covers tugged off in the night, hair pulled,
Betsy's cheeks, pinched, and welted by fingers. No one could see.
The voice came after the hands, whispering, first nonsense syllables
like someone learning to use a mouth, then clear as
you or me, here I am. There are haunted houses

(03:04):
that just want you to leave. This wasn't one of them.
This one wanted an audience. Neighbors came to listen, a
preacher too, James Johnson, who slept on their floor with
his wife to witness it at three in the morning.
The voice recited prayers with him word for word, correcting
him once where he'd skipped a line in the Psalms.

(03:25):
It laughed, then, not the way a person laughs at
a joke, but the way a barn laughs when the
wind pushes through all its missing boards. Missus Johnson crossed
herself and cried, and the voice sang a hymn to
hush her, sweet and slow, like lullaby poison. What are you,
john asked? Men always want names and measurements. It's how

(03:49):
they think they can own things. Kate, it said, I
am Kate, I am the witch. But the word didn't
sound like broomsticks or warts. It sounded like a person
who has learned exactly how much of a name to
give to keep the rest of herself safe. It had favorites.

(04:11):
It liked Lucy said she was the best woman in
the county. And it would leave ripe fruit on her pillow,
turned down her sheet, smooth her hair like a mother
does when a mother wants to claim the goodness in
a child. It hated John, hated him clean through when
he sat. It shook his chair when he tried to eat.

(04:34):
It slapped the spoon from his hand. When he prayed,
It prayed louder. And it loved Betsy in that sour
way that envy loves beauty. It pinched her, bruised her,
braided her hair so tight her scalp burned, then yanked
it loose, so the room smelled of panic and comb oil.

(04:56):
Word spread the way rot spreads along a fence post. Slow,
then all at once. Riders on the road would stop
and tie their horses just to stand under the eaves
and listen. Through the cracks. They heard gossip told in
other people's voices. They heard secrets from other cabins, repeated
in a sing song, and sometimes right at midnight, the

(05:20):
witch would mimic a crying baby until every woman in
the room reached for a phantom child and found only
her own empty hands. Some say the witch started with
a quarrel over land Kate bats a neighbor wronged in
a deal, Her bitterness seating a hunger that grew teeth.
Others say the witch fed on the Bell family's pride,

(05:43):
or the father's temper, or the city of tiny sins.
Every home grows like mold in damp corners. I am
old fashioned about these things. I think a voice like
that doesn't need a reason, it needs a home. A
captain came once, a man proud of his horse, and
his pistols and his name. He boasted that no witch

(06:06):
could trouble a soldier who'd faced cannon smoke. The voice
called him by his full name, his secret one, the
one only his mother and the man who'd taught him
to write had used. His horse shied and refused the gate.
His saddle cinch unknotted itself and dropped him flat into
the red dirt, while the witch clapped and howled and

(06:27):
told a story from his boyhood. He'd never spoken aloud.
He left red faced hat in hand dust on his back,
where the whole county could see it, and he didn't
come back. Pride doesn't like a crowd. As for the preachers, well,
some came righteous, some came curious. Some came with sin

(06:48):
they thought they could hide behind the cross. The witch
pulled that sin out like handkerchiefs from a conjuror's sleeve.
She told one man's wife what he did while he traveled,
named the woman he did it with, including the birthmark
she had, where polite people don't mention marks. She quoted
scripture at another until he forgot which testament he lived in.

(07:12):
She debated the devil with a third and one, which
is a trick even when the devil isn't speaking. But
the house was worse at night, when the lamp ran
low and the children coughed in their sleep. The voice
would lean in by the eaves and tell stories about
graves opening and boots filling with creek water, and eyes
that never learned to stay shut. It would knock on

(07:35):
the wall and make the knock travel like footsteps across
the room. Betsy would cover her ears, and still hear
it through the bones of her head. Why us, John
asked once, his voice as tired as an old preacher
on Christmas Mass. Outside, the crickets went quiet all at once,

(07:56):
the way they do when they decide the night has
shifted its weight. Because the Witch said, in a voice
that was no longer mocking, but something like tender you listen.
The year Lucy fell sick, the Witch went soft as
rain around her, no pinches, no hair pulled. She sang

(08:16):
Lucy to sleep and woke her with old recipes onion
on the chest, mint in hot water, honey at the
root of the tongue. Lucy got better, and the house
smelled like sweet things for a week. People said, See,
she's not all bad. But the Witch just liked the
sound of Lucy's breath. You can love a bird and

(08:38):
still want to keep it in a cage if you
are that kind of creature. Betsy grew up with bruises
like maps. She fell in love the way girls do
when their hands have not yet learned how to defend
their hearts quick then forever Joshua Gardener kind eyes. The

(08:59):
Witch hated him. When Betsy and Joshua walked out to
the place by the river where girls liked to pretend
the world is theirs. The voice rose up out of
the reeds and told Betsy what their children would look like,
then promised they'd never be born. The air turned tin cold,
their fingers went stiff, as if the blood had retreated

(09:19):
to the spine. Betsy tried to be brave. She let
her mouth form the word Mary, and the witch hissed
so hard the white of her eyes showed. The engagement broke.
People called it sense. Betsy called it mercy. But the
kind the tastes like iron. As for John, he started

(09:40):
to shrink, not in stature, in spirit. Sleep does that
to a man when it stops visiting. He'd sit by
the fire and blink like something under a bell jar.
His food tasted wrong, His pipe went out, and when
he re lit it, the smoke curled into letters he
couldn't read. He found little things put where they didn't belong.

(10:03):
His knife in the flower tin, his hat in the
wood box, his Sunday shirt nailed to the outside of
the door. The witch liked games. She liked to take
something you believed was yours and place it where it
could watch you and learn your habits. I'll kill you,
she said to him, finally, like a promise made between friends.

(10:26):
I'll put you down, and when you go, I'll sing.
He told no one. Men have a way of believing.
Threats don't stick when they come from mouths you can't see.
The winter came hard. The cow's breaths hung in the
air like ghosts practicing their shapes. Woods split with that
white crack that means your knuckles will ache for days.

(10:50):
John's hands shook when he laced his boots. He spilled
his coffee and didn't curse. Some mornings he stood half
way between door and table, as if he'd forgotten and
which one meant work and which one meant home. Lucy
found a bottle by his bed that December medicine, he
told her, good for the tremors. He took it between

(11:12):
cracked lips and lay back with his eyes open, like
a man who wants to look at the roof beams
one more time to be sure their sound. He slept.
He did not wake When they discovered the bottle near empty,
and the powder inside turned sour. The witch laughed till
the room felt smaller. I did tell you, she said,

(11:36):
and she sang, not a funeral hymn, something older, something
the ground knows by heart, The neighbors say. The song
curled out under the door and over the yard and
into the edge of the woods, where the crows fluffed
their black shoulders and kept time. After that, the house
learned a new quiet, not peace, the quiet of a

(11:59):
church before the first word, when everyone is wondering whether
God is listening. The witch stayed awhile longer, satin voiced
and scratch fingered. She went gentler with Lucy, almost nurse like,
as if she felt a duty to the woman she'd
orphaned of a husband. Then one evening, when the light

(12:21):
was that particular copper that makes the fields look like
coins stacked to heaven, she said she would go seven years,
she promised, and then she would return, and again after that,
she added, almost as an afterthought to a child with
eyes I remember. People argue about whether she kept that promise.

(12:45):
Some say she came back and spoke to a bell's
son about wars and plagues and names he shouldn't trust.
Some say she never truly left. That a voice like
that is a sickness. You learn to live around I
your own houses, where you can hear some one practicing
their first words long after the crib is gone. It

(13:06):
isn't hard to believe time made a story of it,
like it always does. Men rode out to see the
Bell place and brought their own ghosts with them. A
general came once, proud boots, proud hat, and something spooked
his wagon horses until they refused to pass the gate.

(13:27):
He told his men to camp somewhere else, and then
didn't speak much. At supper. The wives clucked their tongues
and said, men scare easy when they don't hold the
Bible as often as they hold their rifles. The husbands
stared at their plates and tried not to flinch at
the wind. What I know is this, There are voices

(13:49):
that belong to rooms. They wear the dust, they learn
the grain of the wood. They ride the draft along
the floor, and they sleep in the pockets behind cupboards
where old shoes used to live. The Bell Witch was
one of those. If you brought her a new house,
she would learn it the way a bright girl learns
a new book. If you brought her a new family,

(14:12):
she would love them in pieces. This one's kindness, that
one's temper, the other's laugh, and use those pieces like tools.
If you ask me whether she was a woman wronged,
or a devil with a surname, or the wet dark
of grief finding a tongue, I will tell you the truth.

(14:32):
I don't care what to call her. I care that
when Betsy lay at night and heard a voice by
her ear, it knew which word to use to send
her heart running, And it knew when to be cruel
and when to be kind, and it used both with
the same expert hand. A storm only needs a hole
in the roof to get in. After that, it behaves

(14:55):
like it owns the place. The rain has softened. Now
it skates over the glass instead of hammering, like fingers
that have decided to be gentle. The fire has settled
into that even breath fires make when they're listening. And
somewhere above us the house is counting, not numbers, breaths,

(15:16):
the space between them, the way the wind plucks at
the chimney like its tuning an instrument for a song.
You almost remember. If you ever find yourself in Adams, Tennessee,
step quietly by the old places and listen at the seams,
not the tourist places, not the stories on placards, the seams,

(15:37):
the places where two boards meet and light has to
choose which side to bless. Sometimes right there you'll hear
the walls. Remember how to say a family's name. And
if late at night the air turns tin cold, and
your hair tightens at the root, and something dear to
you shows up where it does not belong. Your ring

(15:59):
hanging from a nail. You never drove your mother's comb
in a tree, your best psalm on a stranger's tongue.
Go to your door and sit with your back against it,
and speak kindly to the dark. Do not promise, do
not bargain, do not dare, Just say I hear you,

(16:21):
Then say not tonight. Then keep the lamp burning till morning.
And do not count the knocks on the wall, because
some voices do leave, and some voices learn you instead.
And the oldest ones, the ones that loved a house
enough to bury a man and still miss the sound

(16:43):
of his boots on the floor, will wait in the corners,
practicing your name until the day you decide to listen.
The wind tugs at the cellar window one last time
and lets go. The fire cracks and then folds in
on itself. Like a letter closed without being sealed. Somewhere,
not here, not now, but somewhere a little too much

(17:06):
like here. A girl lies awake and hears a hymn
sung in a voice that knows when to laugh and
when to hush. They called her the bell Witch. She
called herself Kate, and the walls called her by whatever
name makes a house feel full.