Back in Nashville the general talked freely about what had happened on the Bell farm. He was quoted in the newspapers—and those who had doubted previous Bell witch tales became firm believers.

Kate tormented John Bell until he became very ill. In December 1820, while she laughed uproariously, his lips and tongue swelled and his face muscles became paralyzed. When he died, Kate yelled, “I fixed him!”

The witch damned Betsy’s childhood sweetheart and so obscenely admonished the girl not to marry him that Betsy broke the engagement. She married her schoolmaster, as Kate directed, and the couple moved away. Betsy was never visited by the witch again.

In 1821 Kate announced that she was leaving the Bell farm, and she did. “Authorities” on the Bell witch disagree as to whether she returned once or twice after many years. All agree that she will never be forgotten.

The singing river

During the beginning of the eighteenth century, when European explorers visited what was to become the eastern part of the Mississippi Gulf Coast, a tribe of peaceful Indians, first called the Pushaoklas, or “Bread People,” lived there in cabins on a river. The Europeans, having trouble pronouncing the Indian word, called them Pascagoulas and the beautiful stream on which they lived the Pascagoula River.

The Pascagoula Indians told the explorers that before they lived on the river it was the home of a tribe of light skinned, gentle, pleasure-loving Indians whose ancestors had emerged from the sea; the “light skins” lived on seafood, worshiped a mermaid, and played music on strange instruments. One day a bearded stranger arrived among the light-skinned tribe; he wore long, flowing garments and always carried a book, which he often kissed, and a cross. He began preaching to the Indians, trying very earnestly to convert them from mermaid worship to a belief in Christ. Over a period of a few months he made some progress, but he was thwarted by a strange event.

On a quiet, bright, clear night, the river started to churn and roar and rise in great waves. The priest and the whole tribe rushed to the riverbank and from there saw, on top of a huge column of water, a beautiful mermaid. The Indians became hypnotically entranced by her and even more so by her voice as she sang: