Betsy

About the Book

What happened two hundred years ago to the Bell family of northern Tennessee? Was there a malignant entity who openly afflicted the family over a period of five years causing the death of John Bell and irretrievably disrupting the life of young Betsy Bell who bore the brunt of the punishments doled out by the Bell Witch? Numerous accounts and witnesses of the time indicate a supernatural origin of the Witch. Even the famous Andrew Jackson apparently ran afoul of the Bell Witch when he visited the Bell home. For over two centuries, supernatural and psychic explanations have been the accepted wisdom surrounding the Bell Witch. Now, author Paul Herndon, who grew up near the historic Bell farm in northern Tennessee, offers his own theory on the origins of the Bell Witch and the role of Betsy Bell as the central protagonist surrounding the two-hundred-year-old mystery.

About the Author

Paul Herndon was born in Knoxville, Tennessee, in 1920, spending his infancy and childhood living and working on his Father’s tobacco farm in Robertson County, Tennessee, near the town of Springfield. Scarcely ten miles away from the Herndon family farm was the historic Bell family home near Adams, Tennessee, the place that figured so prominently as the setting of the events of the Bell Witch, the malignant entity that haunted the Bell family over many years, thus entering into American folklore as one of the world’s most famous and documented ghost stories of all time. Herndon grew up steeped in the history and accounts of the Bell Witch, and he learned much about the local history of his home and about the history of Tennessee in general. As a young adult, Herndon became interested in rural missionary work, and during this time he met his wife Mary Iris Caplinger while on a missionary trip to Homestead, Florida. The newly married couple moved for a while to Searcy, Arkansas where they attended Harding College. Later Herndon got a degree in Biology from George Peabody College in Nashville, and he began working for the Tennessee Game and Fish Commission in the town of Lawrenceburg, Tennessee. During this time, he also became a laic preacher for the Church of Christ travelling on Sundays to different rural churches to deliver sermons as a circuit, guest preacher. Eventually, Herndon left the Church, citing disagreements with church members and leaders who were anti-progressive, parochial and non-inclusive in their religious views. He also separated from and divorced his first wife, remarried, and moved to Maryland where he worked for the Maryland Department of Natural Resources. Shortly thereafter, he gravitated to the Washington, D.C. area where he began a career as a Conservation Educational Specialist for the Bureau of Land Management of the U.S. Department of the Interior. Herndon died from cancer in 1986, a year after his retirement. He leaves two sons and two daughters. During his life Herndon wrote and edited numerous articles and essays for publication in Government journals during his career. He also wrote a profuse number of memoirs, stories, and novels that he hoped to publish for the general public upon his retirement. Unfortunately, his untimely death delayed the publication of his works, and several of his manuscripts are now being edited for posthumous publication.