Since that time, the apparition has been seen many times by both Westover residents and visitors. One midnight in December 1929, a guest from Washington awoke and felt compelled to go to her bedroom window overlooking the gardens. She saw the “gauzy texture” of a beautiful girl’s graceful figure floating just above the lawn. The girl looked up, waved, and then slipped out of sight. The guest’s description of the girl was about the same as that of a local woman who saw her on the entrance path to Westover in 1965; Evelyn, the “beautiful specter,” had a “great glow” about her black hair and white dress; she simply “sank into the ground” when anyone drew close to her. Through the years, there has been general agreement that she must be “the Prettiest Ghost in America.”

The Bell witch and Andrew Jackson

In 1804, 54-year-old John Bell moved with his wife, Lucy, children, household belongings, and slaves from North Carolina to a thousand-acre farm in Tennessee. The Bell family, which grew to include nine children, prospered and lived happily for thirteen years. Bell became the wealthiest and most influential man in western Robertson County. Then, in 1817, mysterious ghostly manifestations began that were to distress the family for many years thereafter.

The first sign of trouble was with the Bell slaves, who reported seeing “ghostlike animals that melted away.” One of them, Dean, claimed he had been chased by an enormous two-headed dog that had vanished in the moonlight. A few days later, he reported that a witch had turned him into a mule and ridden him all night.

By this time John Bell had begun to believe the slaves’ tales, as he had seen a fiery eyed, doglike apparition peering at him as he walked through his fields. His son Drew had shot—at close range—at a huge, oddly shaped bird that disappeared in the sky, and his pretty daughter Betsy, then fourteen, had seen a “shadowy ghost-girl dressed in green” swinging from a high oak-tree limb.

Nights in the Bell home became times of terror: The house shook violently when there was no wind; there were loud bangs on the doors when no visitors were knocking; and sounds that seemed to be heavy stones falling, chains dragging, and furniture overturning kept everyone awake and frightened. The younger Bell boys were jerked from their beds and thrown on the floor, and Betsy’s hair was yanked and twisted. One night John and Lucy heard Betsy screaming and ran into her room. Betsy said her cheeks and hands had been slapped. Family members recorded that the blows left red welts and fingermarks on her.