Class Exercise # 4 Bell Witch Nicholas Caron 1. What parts of the movie seem to be historically accurate? What parts seem to be embellished? 2. The movie the American Haunting is based on the events of the Bell Witch. The movie is set in A part of the movie that seemed historically accurate was John Bell Sr., who made his living as a farmer, lived with his family in Adams, Tennessee in the early 1800s. In 1817, his family came under attack by a witch, who was believed to be a woman called Kate Batts. The witched attacked the Bell family because John apparently charged Kate Batts a twenty percent interest rate for her land. As everyone's leaving, Batts says that her sentence will be much worse than the one the court gave, and that Betsy John …show more content…
He fires a shot at it, but the wolf disappears. The legend says that it was a creature with a rabbit head and the body of a wolf. Also, John Bell hears the wolf howl later that night and goes outside to hunt it down. Based on this time period, wars were fought where people stood in line and took turns taking shots at each other. This was done to increase the chances they would hit something. Therefore weapons at this time were very inaccurate. Moreover, later in the move we see John in a field, where he begs for mercy from the spirit and tries to kill himself, but the gun keeps misfiring while the spirit whispers, "Not yet, John". This is another account of how inaccurate weapons were at the time. Furthermore history indicates that, President Andrew Jackson may have visited the Bell household to check out these hauntings. There was nothing said about this fact and I believe it would’ve made the movie a bit more interesting. Another thing that was embellished is that the Bell house is no longer standing. At the beginning of the movie we see a young girl, Julia, running through a forest pursued by something. She screams and …show more content…
The truth to the story I do believe is that John Bell took advantage Kate Batts charging her twenty percent interest rate for her land. I do believe there were witches back in the day as well. However I think John Bell died as a result of exhaustion not a ghost poisoning him. In the movie when credits start, a definition of a poltergeist as a spirit who haunts a person, or a supernatural energy created by a young girl under enormous pressure. We then see a disclaimer saying that this film has depicted just one of the many theories surrounding the events of the Bell haunting, and that the haunting has been documented in over twenty books. I think this movie was terrible. I didn’t see anything historical in it. I think people need to be aware when movies says “based on true
In the following paragraphs I am going to show how Hollywood portrays the Salem Witch Trails and the 1690’s compared with what actual happened in history and that in the film "The Crucible". 	During the winter of 1691 and 1692 Salem Village had a mass hysteria over the possibility of witchcraft in their village. The movie shows this was brought on after Reverend Parris discovered some girls dancing in the woods. A black slave known as Tituba supposedly led the rite. Tituba was really American Indian Arawak in history though.
One night in the minute New England town of Salem, Massachusetts, three young girls and a slave from Barbados were caught dancing naked in the forest around an immense kettle. This wasn't something that girls normally did in the 1600s and was also socially unacceptable. These girls, Abigail Williams, Betty Parris, Mercy Lewis, and Tituba were immediately accused of being witches just because they were dancing. To get themselves off the hook, the girls pointed their fingers at other women in the town of practicing witchcraft. They indicted some women because their names popped into their heads, but one particular girl, Abigail Williams, accused a woman named Elizabeth Proctor because she had lust for her husband, John Proctor. Abigail Williams and John Proctor had already had an affair. However, unlike Abigail, John wanted to leave that horrible mistake in the past and forget about her. Abigail also did not like other women in Salem because they called her names. They knew of her lust for men, so Abigail took the initiative and they were also charged.
At any rate, very few Indians were converted, and the Salem folk believed that the virgin forest was the Devil’s last preserve, his home base and the citadel of his final stand. To the best of their knowledge the American forest was the last place on earth that was not paying homage to God.” By this, the narrator is explaining to the audience why the forest was important to the people of Salem. The forest was considered an evil place, thus being the reason why the people of Salem reacted in a huge panic once they found out that the girls were actually dancing there. The situation gets worse once Abigail blames Tituba for alluring her to sin because this causes Tituba to admit that she has seen the Devil. After that, the town of Salem goes on a complete witch hunt from being so paranoid and concerned. They start to believe any false accusation and start pointing fingers. The same situation occurs after 9/11. During the time of the horrific event, safety for America became a big concern. Once again this demand for safety caused mass hysteria. People of America began to also accuse the innocent, in fear of their own safety. Back before 9/11, arrests were so aimless and random. However
The Bell Witch is the most common name for a well-known haunting that occurred in Red River, Tennessee, which is now known as Adams. The Witch is also known as “Old Kate” or “Kate Batts’s ghost” due to the belief that the Bell family was targeted after Batts laid a curse upon his family. She is described as a woman that “possessed no greater height than most average women but certainly greater girth. The flesh of her upper arms were as thick as a young man’s thighs. She also possessed enormous quantities of bright red hair and freckles.” Batts was a hardworking person that took on the many responsibilities of her family farm after her husband was involved in an accident which crushed his legs. It was believed by a small group in the
How accurate is the movie roots? The movie Roots is a great historical movie. The representation of slavery and abolition in the movie is not only a highly emotive and potentially divisive subject it also provides a means of accessing the past in a manner which is empowering and rewarding. Representations of historical contexts on film and television have often proven to be very important in the creation of public memory. Indeed, these cultural modes of expression are often critically considered to be amongst the main source of people's perceptions and memories of the historic past. The movie roots were very accurate. Some of the things that were accurate in the movies were; black men were being kidnapped and carried away to be sold, slaves were punished by being harmed, and slave owners fornicated with their slaves. Roots enhanced some incidents for dramatic effects but that the essentials were based on historical reality. The movie confirmed most of what we know of slavery in that era.
The Salem Witchcraft Trials of 1692 were the largest outbreak of witch hunting in colonial New England up to that time. Although it was the largest outbreak, it was not something that was new. Witch-hunting had been a part of colonial New England since the formation of the colonies. Between the years 1648 to 1663, approximately 15 witches were executed. During the winter of 1692 to February of 1693, approximately 150 citizens were accused of being witches and about 25 of those died, either by hanging or while in custody. There is no one clear-cut answer to explain why this plague of accusations happened but rather several that must be examined and tied together. First, at the same time the trials took place, King William's War was raging in present day Maine between the colonists and the Wabanaki Indians with the help of the French. Within this war, many brutal massacres took place on both sides, leaving orphaned children due to the war that had endured very traumatic experiences. Second, many of the witch accusations were based on spectral evidence, most of which were encounters of the accused appearing before the victim and "hurting" them. There were rampant "visions" among the colonies' citizens, which can only be explained as hallucinations due to psychological or medical conditions by virtue of disease, or poisoning.
The history of the trials began in the New England village of Salem, Massachusetts, late 1692.Two young girls, bored with their restrictive lifestyle and repressive routines, became interested in the folksy customs of Tituba, the family’s black slave. The malignant phenomenon began with Elizabeth Parris and Abigail Williams, the daughter and niece local Puritan minister Samuel Parris'. At first Tituba, the family's black slave, introduced the girls to simple spells and tricks (Starkey 30). As news spread to the village girls about the unfamiliar excitement, a major contrast to the boredom and humdrum of village life, Tituba’s audience numbers began to swell (31). Betty and Abigail decided to try an old fortune telling trick of breaking an egg in a glass of water to discover the occupation of their future husbands. Despite the seeming innocence of the trick, Abigail’s egg formed a coffin shape and both girls, frightened by the haunting results, began thrashing and having hysterical fits. More girls, including Ann Putnam (12) and Elizabeth Hubbard (17), began falling ill, having fits, hiding, and chanting. Suspicions of witchcraft and evil immediately arose. As m...
In the early years of America, people were mostly unaware of certain things. Sickness, for instance, was an important issue for people didn't know how to manage or cure such complex illnesses. The Puritans, during the colonial times, didn't have much information about certain things. They came to believe that certain unexplainable events were done by a powerful source of evil thus brought about superstitions. The infamous Witch Trials done at Salem, Massachusetts, which spread across the continent, was an example of people's injustice acts in response to superstitions. One of the major cause of the Salem Witchcraft trials was superstition, an "irrational belief or practice resulting from ignorance or fear of the unknown" (www.encyclopedia.com). A lack of scientific knowledge led many people to be convinced that, witches were responsible to the death of an animal or a livestock: John Rogger "testified that upon the threatening words " of Martha Carrier " his cattle would be strangely bewitched."(Mather, p55) John Roger believed on superstitions; thus he proposed that Martha was a witch who was killing his cows. It is easy to see how the people of Salem were so vulnerable to the notion of witches taking over their town. Furthermore Tituba, Reverend Parris's slave, practiced ritual dance and "black magic" in her early years in Africa. She influenced most of the girls in town through her stories. The girls believed on superstitions which overall started the Salem Witch Trials and made it possible for the witch trials to occur for a long duration.
The Salem Witch Trials occurred from 1692 to 1693. When two girls, aged 9 and 11, started having strange and peculiar fits, the Puritans believed that the cause of these actions was the work of the devil. The children accused three women of afflicting them: Tituba, Sarah Good, and Sarah Osborne. Tituba was a Caribbean slave owned by the Parris family. Sarah Good was a homeless woman. Sarah Osborne was a poor elderly woman. Sarah Osborne and Sarah Good pleaded innocent. Tituba admitted, “The Devil came to me and bid me serve him.” She described seeing red cats, yellow birds, black dogs, and a black man who asked her to sign his “book”. She confessed to signing the book. All three wo...
Another accuracy in this movie was the concentration camps in this movie, they were portrayed very well. Just like history, immediately after arriving at a concentration camp, they were split up and divided by gender and age. As soon as they arrived people who the Nazis did not see fit to work were killed. Along with this people
The Salem witch trials of 1692 were one of the bloodiest witch-hunts in America colonial history. The event started in the house of the new minister of Salem, Samuel Parris, when his daughter, Betty, suffered from mysterious symptoms, and later she accused her slave, Tibuta, for using witchcraft on her. Later, two other women, Sarah Goode and Sarah Osborne, were accused of using witchcraft on other girls; right after the accusations, they were arrested (Lecture 9/13/2016). As a result, the hunt of witches began which led to hundreds of arrests, and nineteen accused were hanged (Text 190). Although three hundred years have passed, the true cause of the episode remains a mystery. Many scholars have conducted numerous studies of the trails, however,
...is very historically accurate because the film incorporates, characters private lives, real film and speech, and great filming technuques that highlight the previous two examples.
While it made for a good opening scene during the movie overall it’s not very historically accurate. During my research of The Siege
...go is quite accurate in it’s portrayal of the facts. Everything from the ideas about the revolution to details on the buildings were historically correct. Names and locations might have been changed, but what they represented is factual. Even though the movie’s focus is on the love story and not the revolution, the details for the revolution seem to be accurate.
When I said, "it's real," I mean several things. First, and the most obvious is the film is based to some degree on “real” events. It tells the horrific tale of the Perron family, who moved into a somewhat haunted farmhouse in Rhode Island in the early 1970’s. The Perron’s got connected with well-known ghost hunters Ed and Lorrain Warren to help them rid their home of evil spirits (after which Ed began the long lasting journey through hell to bring the story to the big screen years later.)