Lux Esoterica (Nifiluz)

In the northern part of Tennessee, in Robertson County, there is a stretch of farmland and a limestone cave beside a river, and there is a story attached to that ground that Americans have been telling each other for two hundred years. It is not a story that behaves like the others. Most hauntings are private griefs — a family, a house, a shape on a landing. This one was a public event. Neighbors came for miles to sit in the parlor and listen. Preachers came to argue with it. It was written about while it was still happening. And when John Bell died in December of 1820, the community around Adams, Tennessee, did not say he had died of a stroke or a palsy or the will of God. They said the witch had killed him, and to this day it is repeated that his is the only death in American history officially attributed to a spirit. That last claim will not survive close inspection, and we will deal with it honestly. But the fact that a whole county believed it, and that the belief has outlived e...