 Welcome, Weirdos, I'm Darren Marlar and this is Weird Darkness. Here you'll find stories of the paranormal, supernatural, mysterious, macabre, unsolved and unexplained. If you are new here, be sure to subscribe to the podcast on Apple or Android so you don't miss future episodes. This is a special 12 Nightmares of Christmas episode. Each day from December 13th through December 24th, I'm posting a new episode of Weird Darkness featuring material from the new book, The Spirits of Christmas, The Dark Side of the Holidays by Sylvia Schultz. Be sure to come back every day between December 13th and December 24th for more holiday horrors. Now, bolt your doors, lock your windows, turn off your lights, put another log onto the fire and pour yourself an eggnog and come with me into the Weird Darkness. It's been 200 years since the Bell family of Tennessee was tormented by a mysterious entity known only as the Bell Witch. But the events that unfolded between the years of 1817 and 1821 have remained evergreen in American ghost lore and they are some of the most amazing tales in Tennessee history. John Bell, a prosperous cotton farmer was born in North Carolina in 1750. He, his wife Lucy and their nine children moved to Robertson County, Tennessee in 1804. Bell purchased many acres of land along the Red River and set about improving it even more. He cleared fields, planted orchards and built a home for his large family. He even built a one-room schoolhouse where his children and his neighbor's children could get an education. This being Tennessee in the early 19th century, John Bell's cotton plantation was worked by slaves. But Bell and his family were very devout and Bell himself seemed to let his religious beliefs dictate his treatment of his slaves. He doesn't seem to have been a particularly harsh master. John Bell knelt to lead his family in prayers three times a day and he opened his house as a gathering place for prayer meetings, Bible studies led by Lucy Bell and other worship services. John Bell was socially and politically active as well. He dressed the part of a wealthy influential businessman and landowner. When he went to town on business he made an imposing figure in his tailored coat with silver buttons and his fashionable beaver hat. Bell made many speeches in support of political candidates whose values aligned with his and he was known for personal integrity and wasn't afraid to speak up for his beliefs. John Bell was an upstanding citizen, a devout Christian, the benevolent head of a large family, a careful steward of his land and property and a prosperous businessman. That's what made the events to come even more startling. One day in 1817 Bell was inspecting a cornfield when he saw a bizarre looking animal crouched in the middle of a row of corn. The creature had the body of a dog but the head of a rabbit. Then horrified by the anomaly Bell shot at it several times. He didn't hit it but the strange animal vanished. After this encounter odd things started to happen in the Bell home. At first the activity was very subtle. Family members would hear tapping on the windows at night or rats gnawing on the bed posts or a sound like an animal scratching at the doors. Nothing could ever be found to account for the noises. Then the noises got violent. The Bell children would be woken from sleep by the sound of vicious dogfights in their rooms. Other times they would hear the clink of heavy chains being dragged across the floor or the racket of furniture being thrown around the room. The weird noises continued for a year. Then suddenly things got much worse. The poltergeist activity escalated from noise to physical attacks on the family. The entity started with pulling bedcloths off of sleeping children. An overnight guest was woken by the covers sliding off of him. With a shout he grabbed the covers which were bunched up to look like a human form. He felt something solid under his hands and yelled in triumph I have the ghost. The fire in the hearth was still burning and the man jumped out of bed still holding the bunched sheets in his fisted hands. He intended to throw the ghost sheets and all into the fire and get rid of the tormenting entity forever. But before he got to the fireplace the room suddenly filled with an overpowering stench. The smell was bad enough that the man started to wretch. Instinctively he dropped the wadded sheets and ran out of the room for some fresh air. When he could breathe without heaving he came back into the room. The nauseating stink was gone but so was the ghost. Another time John Bell's son Richard was rudely jerked from a sound sleep by something pulling his hair hard. It felt like the top of his scalp was tearing right off. He screamed in agony and John and Lucy came running into the bedroom. Then an equally ear splitting shriek came from another bedroom. Betsy Richard's sister was being attacked in the exact same way. To add to the physical attacks the entity had upped its repertoire of sounds. Replacing the animal scratching and gnawing were a variety of noises that sounded almost human. Lip smacking, throat gulping and an exquisitely horrifying choking gurgle that sounded like someone being slowly strangled. A family friend James Johnson wanted very much to help the Bells with their troubles. He started talking to the ghost trying to get it to answer questions to explain its presence in the Bell home. At first the only response he got was a faint whistling noise. Over the next few days the air became filled with a feeble whispering that grew in volume until unmistakably there was a voice. By now it was clear that Betsy Bell was increasingly the focus of the entity's attention. The haunting was a great source of stress for her, even more so because at one point visitors to the home all but accused her of faking the voices using ventriloquism. John and Lucy called in a doctor to debunk this. The phantom voice spoke and the doctor laid his hand on Betsy's throat. He swore he felt no vibrations from her vocal cords. This convinced him that Betsy was completely innocent of trickery or games. The Bell family and James Johnson peppered the ghost with questions. But the entity refused to give a straight answer. One day it claimed to be a Native American whose bones had been disturbed. Another day it said, I am a spirit who was once very happy but have been disturbed and now am unhappy. That did nothing to narrow things down. The most specific answer the entity gave about its identity was that it was Kate Bat, a local woman accused of being a witch. But it wasn't Kate's ghost. Kate Bat was very much alive at the time, although she'd been driven out of the area by an angry mob some time before. The voice became many voices, sometimes stumbling over each other in their clamour to be heard. The voices called themselves the family of Kate Bat, which the Bell family assumed meant that the witch had summoned a host of spirits in a dark ritual. With the arrival of multiple voices came multiple personalities, although the family still referred to the entity as the witch. Not all of these personalities were malevolent, the witch had its favourites. On one occasion the entity saved the life of one of the Bell children. One of the boys was crawling through a cave near the house. He was navigating a narrow passage when he got stuck in some quicksand. The cave suddenly glowed with an unearthly light and a disembodied voice shouted, I'll get you out. Something grabbed the boy's legs. He said later it just felt like strong hands and pulled him to safety. It was Lucy Bell, John's wife, who was the witch's particular favourite. The ghost sat in on the Bible study groups that Lucy led in the Bell home. When the group decided to take a break, fruit would materialize out of thin air, falling into the laps of the stunned guests. Another time Lucy was very ill and lay sick in bed. The witch cooed, loose, poor, loose, how do you feel now? Then in a show of solicitous affection it gently showered Lucy's lap with heasel nuts. When Lucy pointed out that the nuts were still in their shells and she had no way of cracking them, the entity shelled the nuts for her. But other members of the family were victimized by the witch. It seemed to focus much of its malevolence on Betsy Bell. It would pull her hair or slap her face. The attacks would come without warning and Betsy soon became a shivering, nervous wreck. 16-year-old Betsy was engaged to be married and the witch would have none of it. When Betsy's fiancé, Joshua Gardner, came to court her, the entity would fill the air with crude talk about the couple embarrassing poor Betsy to tears. Sometimes the entity took a gentler tactic. When Betsy lay in bed at night, she would often hear the phantom voice pleading, Please Betsy Bell don't have Joshua Gardner. Eventually Betsy just gave up and broke off the engagement. The witch saved its most savage ire for John Bell. Early in the haunting John had been plagued with a weird stiffness in his mouth. He said it felt like someone had jammed a stick in his mouth and was turning its sideways, forcing his jaws apart. Whatever was going on in John's mouth caused his tongue to swell. He couldn't speak or eat for days at a time. His face would spasm and twitch embarrassingly. Lack of proper nutrition and the sheer strangeness of his suffering took its toll and John began to fade. By December 1820 he was seriously ill. He was in bed for a week, suffering almost continual torment from the witch. After several days John seemed to rally a bit and he felt well enough to go outside for a walk in his garden with his son Richard. But the pair didn't get far. Moments after they stepped outside the house, John's head rocked back with a force of a blow to his face. Stunned he sat down on a log to catch his breath. His face started convulsing as if someone was squishing his face and pinching his cheeks without mercy. Then to add insult to injury, John's shoes flew off. Richard scrambled to grab them and knelt at his father's feet to slip them back on. But every time Richard put the shoes back on, they would yank themselves off and go flying again. The ghost cackled with delighted malice. The old man sat in his garden with tears of frustration rolling down his face, crying like a kid being tormented by a schoolyard bully. On the morning of December 20, John Bell fell into a coma. Thinking to Rouse's father, John Jr. went to the cabinet to fetch the medicine the family doctor had prescribed. It was gone. In its place in the cupboard shelf was a strange flask about one-third full of a dark, evil-looking syrup. In a panic, John Jr. sent a servant to fetch the doctor. The voice of the witch rose in a cackle filling the room with the sound of its triumph. I put it there and gave old Jack a big dose of it last night while he was fast asleep. I guess that fixed him. The witch bragged. The doctor arrived and inspected the suspicious-looking liquid. He decided to test it on the family cat. The cat licked a little bit off of the spoon. Then it leaped into the air, whirled around three times and dropped to the floor, stone dead. Instead of handing the mysterious flask over to the sheriff, as he should have done, the doctor poured the rest of the flask's dark contents onto the fire where it could do no more harm. By doing so, though, he destroyed any evidence that could have helped identify Belle's murderer. Had Belle been poisoned by someone very much of this world. But the harm was already done. The next morning, John Belle succumbed to the mysterious poison and slipped into death. The witch didn't even let the family hold John's funeral in peace. It interrupted the service with shrieks of glee and a crude drinking song. Christmas in the Belle House was a somber affair that year, but the witch was ecstatic. On Christmas Day the family was rudely awakened by the raucous voice of the witch, shouting carols at high volume and cackling maniacally. The family hadn't planned any celebration, but they did decide to have a low-key exchange of presents. When they came downstairs, though, they found shredded wrapping paper all over the room. The presents were destroyed. Betsy Belle lived in two or eighties. To the end of her life, she swore that the most horrendous episode of her life was the haunting, and that she would always remember 1820, as the year Satan stole my father and Christmas. And Jesus wept with us. I've known and respected your husband for many years, and what's good enough for him is good enough for me. Routal Marks from the Movie Monkey Business Hollywood. Bright lights, movie stars, fame so close you can taste it. The glamour of the movie business has lured many eager souls to California. Some hopefuls become stars, some stars become legends, and some stars burn brightly and then explode, victims of their own incandescence. Thelma Todd was born July 29, 1906 in Lawrence, Massachusetts. She was a bright little girl, a good student who had dreams of becoming a schoolteacher. After graduating high school in 1923, she enrolled at the Lowell Normal School to work towards a teaching degree. But life, and Thelma's mother, had other plans. Seeing Thelma's fresh blonde beauty, Mrs. Todd encouraged her daughter to start entering beauty contests. Thelma did well in local pageants and even won Miss Massachusetts in 1925. The prestigious win sent her onto the Miss America pageant. She didn't win, but there were talent scouts in the audience who were looking for fresh new faces for the young film industry. Thelma was invited to see her fortune in Hollywood, which was just what Mrs. Todd had wanted all along. Thelma proved to be a natural on the screen. The 1920s were a heady time for the film industry. Hollywood was making a transition from silent movies to talkies. Some actors and actresses just couldn't make the leap, mostly because their voices didn't match their appearance. Thelma started her career in silent movies and played numerous supporting roles that showcased her beauty but gave her little chance to act. That changed with the coming of sound to movies. Thelma blossomed in the talkies. Thelma's voice, a bright, clear soprano with just a trace of a northeastern lilt matched her image beautifully. She had enough of a New England accent to sound aristocratic without coming off as snobby. Acting roles poured in for Thelma. In a Chicago Tribune article written in 1991, she was described as a cross between Goldie Hawn and Farrah Fawcett, only more popular. She played all kinds of roles, including parts in dramas and gothic horror films. But it was as a comedic actress that Thelma really shown. She made 115 pictures between 1926 and 1935. Producer Hal Roach paired her with Laurel and Hardy and lent her to other studios where she made films with Buster Keaton and the Marx Brothers, including Horse Feathers and Monkey Business. Stan Laurel was a particular friend of Thelma's and he often requested that she be cast as the leading lady in his films. Thelma picked up a couple of nicknames in the business, she was known as Hot Toddy or the Ice Cream Blonde. But Thelma's life wasn't all ice cream and belly laughs. She married Pat DeSico in 1932 and divorced him in 1934. Even before that, in 1931, she had started an affair with director Roland West. Soon, she and West were living together, sharing a house with West's ex-wife. The phrase It's Complicated is particularly apt here. And that wasn't the worst of it. When Thelma started working with Hal Roach, the producer made her sign a contract that included something he laughingly called the Potato Claws. But it was no laughing matter. The Potato Claws said that if Thelma gained over five pounds, she'd be fired. This had the potential to seriously damage Thelma's career. Sucked into the lavish Hollywood lifestyle, Thelma went to a lot of parties and did a lot of drinking, filling up on empty calories. Her mother worried that Thelma would jeopardize her meal ticket, helpfully introduced her daughter to diet pills. With her movie earnings, Thelma bought a restaurant in the Los Angeles neighborhood of Pacific Palisades. Tourists, as well as Hollywood royalty, flocked to the popular restaurant called Thelma Todd's Sidewalk Cafe. The second floor of the building was a nightclub called Joyas and the third floor. The third floor was an issue. The riches of Los Angeles had attracted the attention of the mafia. The mobster Lucky Luciano had dreams of setting up an empire of prostitution, gambling and extortion in LA. He introduced himself to Thelma and started to make himself indispensable to the young actress. He got her hooked on potent amphetamines that kept the weight off better than her prescription diet pills. Thelma was intrigued by the air of rakeish danger Lucky Luciano represented. Mobsters were rich, with their own brand of glamour. But even though she herself was a movie star, there was still a part of Thelma that tried to keep her New England school teacher innocence. Thelma Todd's Sidewalk Cafe and Joyas were intensely important to the young star. The restaurant and club were the first things Thelma owned that were really, truly hers and they were wildly successful. Visiting Thelma Todd's Sidewalk Cafe in the 30s was like dining at Spagos today. It was a place to see and be seen. Thelma was protective of her investments. So when Lucky Luciano approached Thelma with a proposition, he wanted to rent the third floor of her building above Joyas and turn it into a gambling parlor. Thelma was appalled. She didn't care that Luciano was one of the biggest names in gangland history. She channeled the gutsy, wise-cracking heroines she played on the silver screen and she told Lucky Luciano to go get stuffed. Another man with a compelling interest in Thelma Todd's Sidewalk Cafe was Thelma's boyfriend, Roland West. West wanted Thelma at the restaurant drawing customers in with her star power, more than she wanted to be there. West called Thelma his money magnet with rough affection. He told her, you're my money maker, if you're not there, I'm not making money. On the night of December 14th, Thelma went to a Gala Hollywood party thrown by her friends Stanley Lupino and his daughter, actress Aida Lupino. Unfortunately, one of the other guests at the party was Pat Desico, Thelma's ex-husband. When he heard Thelma was going to be there, he apparently requested to be seated next to her at dinner. This obviously was not someone Thelma wanted to party with. Thelma threw back a few drinks and she and Desico argued. Thelma was also in the doghouse with her boyfriend, Roland West. Theater owner Sid Grohman called West as the evening wound down, saying that Thelma was headed home and was a bit under the influence. Grohman tactfully suggested that perhaps West might want to pour Thelma into bed when she got home. But Thelma never made it home. Sometime in the wee hours of Monday morning, December 16, 1935, Thelma Todd died in the garage of West's house. She was found by her maid, Mae Whitehead, slumped in the front seat of her Lincoln. The official cause of Thelma's death was carbon monoxide poisoning, resulting from sitting in an enclosed garage with the car's engine running. But this doesn't explain the injuries. Thelma suffered immediately before her death, a split lip, a broken nose, several broken ribs and bruises. Besides that, she'd been hit in the mouth hard enough to dislodge one of her dental fillings. She'd made an enemy. But who? Was it Roland West, who had locked her out of their apartment that chilly December night? Was it Pat Desico, who had ties with the mob? Could it have been Lucky Luciano? According to one story, when Luciano brought up the idea of putting in a gambling parlor on the third floor of Thelma's building over dinner one night, Thelma snarled at him over my dead body. If the story is to be believed, Luciano melodramatically replied, that can be arranged. Whether Thelma's death was accident, suicide or murder, it shocked the acting world. The sassy, beloved comedian, not yet 30 years old, was gone. On the morning Thelma's body was found, the day's mail delivery brought her Christmas card to Stan and Ruth Laurel's home. The trunk of Thelma's car was full of Christmas presents for her friends and family. On December 23, 1935, Thelma Todd was laid to rest at Forest Lawn Cemetery. Crowds gathered to pay their respects to the actress who lay in a casket covered with mounds of yellow roses. Thelma was gone, but her spirit still wanders the hills of Hollywood. Her ghost has been seen near the restaurant that bore her name. Even in death she is still glamorous, still dressed in the evening gown, mink coat and jewels she wore to her last party. Sometimes she appears on the staircase of the building where she and Roland West lived, and in the garage where she was found dead, witnesses have heard a car running and have smelled the sharp tang of gasoline. The garage hasn't been used to store cars in decades. If you enjoyed this episode, consider sharing it with others and help build the Weird Darkness community by converting your friends and family into weirdos as well. This special episode is part of my 12 Nightmares of Christmas series, the collaboration with paranormal blogger and author Sylvia Schultz. The stories I used in this episode are from her book The Spirits of Christmas, the Dark Side of the Holidays, and you can find a link to the book in the show notes. Also in the show notes, you can find a link to Sylvia Schultz blog. Do you have a dark tale to tell? Share your story at WeirdDarkness.com and I might use it in a future episode. Music in this episode is provided by Midnight Syndicate. Find a link to purchase and download this dark, creepy Christmas music in the show notes. I'm your creator and host, Darren Marlar. Merry Christmas and thanks for joining me in the Weird Darkness. And click the notification bell so you don't miss future videos. I post videos seven days a week. And while you're at it, spread the darkness by sharing this video with someone you know who loves all things strange and macabre. If you want to listen to the podcast, you can find it at WeirdDarkness.com.