The Bell House

If you happen to be in Lowndes County & drive a few blocks north of the old courthouse on North Ashley Street in Downtown Valdosta, you'll see an old house that was built in 1882 for a woman named Mary Elizabeth Shelton Ashley. She was the widow of a man named Jonathan Maxcy Ashley. She lived in the house until the end of the 1800s, and a few other families occupied the house between 1900 until the early 1930s, when a man named David Bell bought the house & moved in & lived there until 1964. That’s where the name it’s known by today came from: The Bell House! Some say David has haunted the house long after his death. It’s also rumored that a previous owner owner hung himself inside the home & still lurks around inside!

David was a depression-era medicine man who traveled to many small towns peddling “elixirs” that he claimed could cure almost anything. He was known to pay off the sheriff if they started question what he was really doing. He caught the attention of the FBI by selling “Bell’s Re-Nu Tonic." It was 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 left! The house has been home to a number of businesses since then: a Bed and Breakfast, a few restaurants, & a small concert venue. Guests & employees would claim to see & hear strange things around the building, such as dogs barking from certain rooms & obvious impressions on beds with no guests in them, as if someone had been sitting or laying on them; random people who didn’t know the history of the house would claim to have “close encounters” with a figure, mainly guests staying overnight at the bed & breakfast. 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! 

Eventually, after so many claims, professional paranormal investigators came to visit; electric field measurements would record 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. Despite the opinion of the paranormal investigators, strange things kept happening & being reported by people who didn’t know the history of the house; 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 & people would complain of random cold chills in the rooms. 

A renovation on the house was started over 7 years ago & restoration work is ongoing but slow; I was told the owner is planning on opening it as a bed & breakfast, but no tentative opening date has been set & it still has a long way to go before it is complete. If you are in Valdosta & want to see the house for yourself, It's easy to get a good view as you drive or walk by; the sidewalk & road are only feet away from the house. Since It's currently being renovated, please be respectful & STAY ON THE SIDEWALK- don’t walk onto the porch or try to go in- its close enough to get any photos you’d want, almost too close- when I captured this shot, I had to stand in the turn lane to get the entire house in the frame. Another good reason to stay on the sidewalk: there’s lead paint being removed from the interior!

Jay Blanton | The Georgia Photography Fanatic