Fresh off the plane, Ben Radford wrote to me about his visit to the Bell Witch house in Adams, Tenn. Apparently he had visited the house while attending CSIcon in Nashville, and wondered what the Wikipedia page looked like. He was surprised that the page did not have skeptical content, though he and Brian Dunning had written articles about the place.
I told him I would look into it, and vowed to only devote one hour to the page rewrite. After about 3 hours I had a good working rewrite of the page. Fascinating story and as editor Brad McDowell pointed out, a great example of Hyman's Maxim, don't try to research something until you know there is a there, there. As you will see from the page, the ghost writers base their writings on a book that was written 70+ years after the event. Even that book was based on a (never seen) book that was from a 30 year old man's childhood memories of the events. So not very reliable.
Anyway, as usual it is always fun to see how many views these pages get, so before you check this URL, make a guess how many people in October 2012 have visited the Bell Witch page. And to prove that this is a Halloween story, you will see a major drop in visits from September.
The Bell Witch before
The Bell Witch after
I told him I would look into it, and vowed to only devote one hour to the page rewrite. After about 3 hours I had a good working rewrite of the page. Fascinating story and as editor Brad McDowell pointed out, a great example of Hyman's Maxim, don't try to research something until you know there is a there, there. As you will see from the page, the ghost writers base their writings on a book that was written 70+ years after the event. Even that book was based on a (never seen) book that was from a 30 year old man's childhood memories of the events. So not very reliable.
Anyway, as usual it is always fun to see how many views these pages get, so before you check this URL, make a guess how many people in October 2012 have visited the Bell Witch page. And to prove that this is a Halloween story, you will see a major drop in visits from September.
The Bell Witch before
The Bell Witch after
Just added to the external links, the newly released MonsterTalk podcast episode. Great job with your analysis Blake Smith and Ben Radford. http://monstertalk.skeptic.com/the-bell-witch-of-tennessee
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