An American Haunting Movie

[Maggie Szydlowski]

AnAmerican Haunting is a 2005 supernatural horror film written and directed by Courtney Solomon and starring Donald Sutherland, Sissy Spacek, James D'Arcy, and Rachel Hurd-Wood. The film was previewed at the AFI Film Festival on November 5, 2005 and was released in the UK on April 14, 2006 with follow-up in US theaters on May 5. The film is an international co-production between the United Kingdom, Canada, Romania, and the United States.[citation needed]It opened #2 in the US, staying in the top ten films for 6 weeks. This success resulted in a long-term distribution and co-production arrangement with Lionsgate Films.

The film is based on the novel The Bell Witch: An American Haunting by Brent Monahan. The events in the novel are based on the legend of the Bell Witch. The film switches from the 21st century to the 19th, and features a subplot about a recently divorced mother (Susan Almgren) whose daughter (Isabelle Almgren-Dor) is going through something like the same experience as Betsy Bell.

A terrified young girl runs through the forest and into her house to escape from an unseen threat. When she sees the Bell Witch, a ghost that takes the form of a girl, she awakens with a scream. Her mother dismisses it as a dream and reminds her that this is her week to visit her father. The mother goes to her desk and picks up a binder full of old letters, with a note from someone who claims to be an ancestor. The letters appear written in 19th-century script.

The story goes back to the early 19th-century to show the Bell Witch's story. John Bell is taken to church court and found guilty of the theft of a woman's land. The church releases him with the verdict that his loss of honor is sufficient punishment. The offended party, Kate Batts, is infamous in the village due to claims of witchcraft.

Strange events begin to occur and John believes that Batts cursed him. Betsy starts to look very sick and the haunting worsens. Her young teacher, Richard Powell, notices the change in Betsy's behavior. The Bell family tells him they fear that the cause is paranormal. Powell attempts to prove that this is impossible because spirits don't exist. It is implied that Richard is in love with Betsy.

Richard stays in the Bell home to observe Betsy's behavior. His theory is proven wrong when he witnesses Betsy dangling in the air, as if someone is holding her up by her hair. Betsy is sexually assaulted by the spirit. John loses his sanity and sees many forms of the Bell Witch. John asks Kate Batts to kill him and remove her curse. She refuses and tells him that he cursed himself. John tries to kill himself, but the spirit stops him.

Betsy is struck with a revelation that the attacks on her and her father are caused by a supernatural being who was born out of her innocence. She needed to "remember" that the true cause of her pain is her father's child sexual abuse of her. Lucy, Betsy's mother, has the same revelation because she witnessed the sexual assault, which she and Betsy repressed. Betsy poisons her now bed-ridden father with medicine while her mother watches. Betsy is then seen at her father's grave, and she is never haunted again.

In present day, the mother's daughter says her father has come to take her for their weekend stay. She sends her daughter to her ex-husband, who is waiting outside. Betsy's ghost suddenly appears and looks ominous. The mother realizes Betsy is trying to warn her that something is amiss between her daughter and her ex-husband.

She runs out of her house and catches a glimpse of her daughter's worried face peering out from the car window as it drives away; the implication is that the father is sexually abusing her. She runs after her ex-husband's car, frantically yelling his name.

An American Haunting was panned by critics, holding a 38/100 rating on Metacritic, indicating "generally unfavorable reviews".[2] Rotten Tomatoes reports a 14% rating from 71 reviews; the consensus states: "Well, it looks good. But wasn't it supposed to be scary?"[3]

The book claims to be an edited memoir of a man, a local school teacher, who married the daughter of the man whom the Bell witch wanted dead. His perspective on the events that transpired in the early 1820s is both that of an outsider and an insider. As the outsider, he retells the events that the local populace sees, hears, and talks about. The witch is a most interesting character, with four specific and distinct voices and not a few quirks and eccentricities. He tells this part of the story with a great deal of color and the lingering sense of dread that a continual haunting presents.

American Hauntings Podcast, hosted by Troy Taylor and Cody Beck, discusses history, hauntings, legends, lore, and all things paranormal. Season 1 covers the hauntings of Alton, Illinois, exploring locations such as The McPike Mansion, Mineral Springs Hotel, Milton School, Blue Pool, First Unitarian Church, Alton Penitentiary, and more.

I found this novel on a Buzzfeed list of scary novels to read around Halloween. I had high hopes that it might be a historical account of the Bell family and the facts surrounding the numerous accounts of the Bell Witch. I was very, very wrong.

The Bell Witch is a short little novel, under two hundred pages. All I can say is thank goodness. By page one hundred, I was frustrated. Fifty pages later, I was getting ready to tear my hair out. I finally finished the book yesterday evening and actually gave a sigh of relief.

I can sum up my problem with The Bell Witch in one short sentence. It is boring. Presented in its book jacket as nonfiction, this is instead a fictionalized account masquerading as a recovered letter. This letter, which drags on with no chapter breaks, chronicles in agonizing detail the account of the least frightening spirit ever recorded. An unnecessarily racist spirit too, as the author insists on dropping the n-word around like bigoted breadcrumbs. If this was supposed to add historical accuracy it was a horrid misstep, as it simply upped my lack of sympathy for any of the idiots that were supposedly involved in the haunting.

What if we re-interpret Indian hauntings as a nation grappling with its own violence, struggling against the tremendous grief created out of American settler colonialism? What if we attend to the ways Indigenous peoples, our histories, and ongoing relationships to lands have been altered by American settlement?

Sasha Maria Suarez, direct descendant of the White Earth Nation (Band of Ojibwe), is an Assistant Professor at the University of Wisconsin. Her work has been featured in Indian Cities: Histories of Indigenous Urbanization (University of Oklahoma Press, 2022). She is currently working on her first book.

Belt Magazine is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization. To support more independent writing and journalism made by and for the Rust Belt and greater Midwest, make a donation to Belt Magazine, or become a member starting at just $5 a month.

In the interest of full disclosure, I should also state that if you go back in my family tree far enough, you encounter the Bell family of Tennessee. Which might also explain some of my own affinity for the weird, who knows?

Finding Adams, Tennessee and the Bell Witch Cave is easiest when taking the correct exit, which I did not do. Instead we were treated to some rolling farmland, which still hinted at the wilds the Bell family would have encountered when they first came into the area. Eventually we found ourselves in Adams, made the proper turn at the crossroads and soon found ourselves on Halloween, at the Bell Witch Cave and Cabin.

One theory about who Kate, the Bell Witch actually was, is that she was a native American whose grave had been disturbed. Our guide related to us that the bluff above the cave contained ancient Indian burials, and that legend had it that several had been disturbed in the early days of the settlement. She then pointed to the floor of the room where we were standing, to a small rectangle carved into the stone. For all intents and purposes, this appeared to be a box grave, a staple of Mississippian era native american burials.

Onward we marched into another room with a large blob of stone in the middle, the result of centuries of water dripping from the ceiling. Some of the shapes in this room are truly outstanding, particularly one which favors a demon straight out of the nether regions of hell itself. It was here that a certain war veteran once dismissed the tales as poppycock, only to find a few minutes later when he tried to get up, that he was held fast to the stone. He certainly became a believer in the Bell Witch very quickly, and vowed never to return to the cave.

Then it was the slippery hike back out of the cave and huffing and puffing up the hill to where the Bell family cabin has been reconstructed. Believed to be an accurate recreation of the cabin that once housed John Bell, his daughter Betsy and the rest of the clan, it does not however sit on the same spot as the original. As it turns out, that spot is a ways off, on land still owned by the Bell family estate.

There was another book written abt. the Bell witch after Betsy & her husband were married. When their dgtr. became a teenager, they began hearing things on the roof at night, much like things which had happened hen Betsy had been ateenager. They Betsy & her husband) figured out what had actually been behind the Bell witch. Was the witch real? Yes.

Astime went on, the Bells began hearing faint, whispering voices, which too weak tounderstand but soundedlike a feeble old woman singing hymns. The encounters escalated, andthe Bells youngest daughter, Betsy Bell, began experiencing brutalencounters with the invisible entity. It would pull her hair and slap herrelentlessly,often leaving welts and hand prints on her face and body. The disturbances,about which John Bell had vowed his family to secret, finally escalated to thepoint that he shared his "family trouble" with his closest friend and neighbor,James Johnston.

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