The Bell House

This is a supposedly haunted house in Lowndes County. It is named for the man who lived in the house: David Bell. David was a depression-era medicine man who traveled to many small towns peddling “elixirs” that Bell claimed could cure almost anything, paying off the sheriff if they started question what he was really doing. He caught the attention of the FBI by selling “Bell’s Re-N...u Tonic”; practically a pyramid scheme where the “customer” would purchase a bottle of tonic, sending a dollar to a name on a list, where they would then get their name on a list to receive money from others doing the same thing. Before being shut down by the FBI, the scam was actually pretty successful; there were quite a few “secretaries” helping Bell in his house to organize and deposit the large amount of money received from the scheme. Bell died inside of this house at age 70; his body was kept here for two days before his burial, but quite a few people seem to think he never REALLY left- the house has been home to a handful of businesses since then- a Bed and Breakfast and after that it was a couple different restaurants. Guests & employees at the bed & breakfast would claim to see & hear strange things around the building, such as dogs barking from certain rooms and obvious impressions on beds with no guests in them, as if someone had been sitting or laying on them; random guests and employees who didn’t know the history of the house would claim to have “close encounters” with a figure. Curiously, when explaining what the figure looked like, the description they gave would usually fit the description of how David Bell looked before he died! This led professional paranormal investigators to visit; electric field measurements would record VERY high magnetic field readings in the rooms where the sightings typically occurred. The investigators stressed that old wiring could cause the unusually high spike in the electromagnetic field & they didn’t think it was haunted. When the bed and breakfast closed, the building was turned into a Restaurant. Despite the opinion of the paranormal investigators, strange things kept happening & being reported by people who didn’t know the history of the house; restaurant chairs would randomly move, the sound on the sound system (installed when the restaurant opened) would randomly cut out on a regular basis, lights would randomly cut off and people would complain of random cold chills in the rooms. A renovation on the house was started over 5 years ago, but looks to have come to a standstill- The house has sat empty & unused that entire time. 

Jay Blanton