Angels and Demons

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Story 1: Our Lady of Fatima.

In the autumn of 1917, as the brutality and savagery of the First World War threatened to finally overwhelm Portugal's borders, 70,000 people gathered near a rural township to witness an appearance by the Virgin Mary.

What exactly happened during the Fatima event?

The small town of Uarim is located approximately seven miles to the northeast of Fatima.

The location was originally the site of a medieval watchtower, positioned to guard against Muslim invasion during the Crusades.

But as the years passed, the number of residences around the fortification steadily expanded to create a significantly larger settlement.

On the 13th of May 1917, 10-year-old Lucia dos Santos was playing out in the midday sunshine with her two younger cousins, in some fields on the outskirts of town.

As the children laughed and chased each other around, there wasn't a cloud to be seen in the sky, until a sudden flash of lightning sent them running for the shelter of some nearby oak trees.

As Lucia held nine-year-old Francisco and seven-year-old Jacinta close to her, She saw the dazzling and radiant figure of a beautiful lady dressed all in white, standing where the lightning had just struck.

Despite her fears, the young girl felt drawn towards the figure and told her younger cousins to stay where they were, as she rose and tentatively walked to meet the newcomer.

As Lucia approached, the lady bore a kind smile and introduced herself as Mary, the Virgin Mother of Jesus Christ.

She motioned for the other children to approach, but Francisco would not be moved, insistent that he could not see the vision the girls were experiencing.

When the apparition advised him to say the Rosary, he immediately gained the ability to see her and cautiously stepped forwards to join his sister and cousin.

The figure explained that she would reappear to the children on the same date over the next few months, and that together they would end the horrific war that threatened to consume their country.

She then asked Lucia to offer up a daily prayer for peace until their next meeting, before rising and vanishing into thin air.

The excited children immediately ran straight to their homes to tell their bewildered parents what had just taken place.

Word spread quickly throughout the small town, and when the children returned to the spot four weeks later, they were accompanied by a crowd of approximately 50 curious onlookers.

After a short time, The vision descended from the skies and asked the children to pray with her before again vanishing before their very eyes.

None of the adults who were present witnessed the shining figure appear, but they saw the three children apparently speaking and interacting with something, and several claimed to see the branches and foliage around the children disturbed by an invisible force that entered and then subsequently left the location.

The following month, a crowd of several hundred gathered to watch, as Lucia and her cousins again apparently spoke to the Virgin Mary, with witnesses this time reporting a mysterious haze that seemed to envelop the children, before rising up again into the heavens.

By now the rumours of the visions had spread to the local authorities, who took a dim view of the situation, and elected to detain and question the children on August 13th, in order to prevent the assembly from again taking place.

After speaking with the apparition for a fourth time on September 13th, Young Lucia turned to the assembled crowds and informed them that Mary would visit for one final time the following month, and this time would reveal herself to everyone who attended.

Three weeks later, people were travelling to Fatima from across the length and breadth of the land, desperate to catch a glimpse of the Lady of the Rosary.

The events that subsequently took place at Urim on the morning of October the 13th, 1917, are today known within the Catholic Church as the Miracle of the Sun.

It had been raining heavily for most of the previous evening, and the attending crowds had been forced to negotiate freshly sodden and muddy footpaths in order to reach the site.

Now, as midday approached, the rains had finally eased off, but the skies remained angry and sullenly overcast.

An improvised wooden shrine had been thrown together, and now in front of it stood a crowd of 70,000 people.

They were a diverse mixture of faithful worshippers, sceptics and idle curiosity seekers, all waiting for some kind of sign that the Virgin Mary truly had come down from heaven to walk amongst their number.

As the crowds watched on impatiently, three small figures dressed in flowing white robes were gently lifted onto a hastily erected platform that stood before them.

With the people waiting expectantly, Lucia had stepped forward to announce that the Virgin Mary was now present, and had chosen to entrust her and her cousins with a series of holy secrets and truths.

Once again, it appears that nobody other than the children themselves had been able to see the astral visitor, but there would be plenty of witnesses to what was to take place next.

Lucia announced that Mary, the mother of our Lord Jesus Christ, was going to be the one to finally end the great war that had been raging for the last three years.

Here and now, she would demonstrate her mighty powers to the assembled crowd.

as proof that she was capable of making good on this promise to them.

The young girl then turned and raised her hands towards towards the skies, before this movement was also mirrored by her younger cousins, Francisco and Jacinta.

Descriptions of what exactly took place after this do vary somewhat, but pretty much all of those present agree on some level that the clouds above them slowly parted and the sun began to shine down on the upturned faces of the watching masses.

Many claim that the light that was generated by this development was in fact strong enough to dry their rain-sodden clothes and once again again bake the damp ground beneath their feet so that it was solid enough for them to stand upon.

A significant number of witnesses would go on to describe how the sun started to move around in the skies above them, in an extraordinary and sometimes frightening manner.

Some people describe this movement as a slow rotation or cartwheeling motion.

To others, it started to gyrate around its axis with some speed, much the same way as a child's spinning top would move.

Many of those who were present make reference in their accounts to the Sun's colour changing back and forth.

In some testimonies, the Sun morphed from a bright orange into a deep dark purple, and then back again.

Others stated that it changed into a silvery metallic colour, still clearly visible but almost intangible to behold.

In a minority of cases, Witnesses reported seeing streamers and flashes of light, issuing forth from the heavenly body, descending to the ground below.

But it is the descriptions of the Sun's sudden and rapid movements back and forth across the sky that are most disturbing.

Countless reports describe seeing the sun violently zigzagging from side to side, whilst others state that the sun suddenly accelerated towards the ground, burning with a fiery intensity before again returning to normal.

This amazing turn of events would continue for another ten minutes, evoking screams of both joy and terror from those watching below.

Lucia then slowly lowered her arms back down to her sides and turned to face the masses.

The clouds rolled back in overhead to once again obscure the sun and its activities from the terrified crowds.

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In the immediate aftermath of the incident, the church dispatched a number of local priests in order to conduct an official investigation into what had happened.

Their orders were to evaluate if what was reported was both compatible and acceptable with the church's traditional teachings, and then present their findings to the local bishop.

As part of their investigations, the priests conducted hundreds of interviews with some of the people who had been present, and were reportedly struck by two things.

Firstly, there was a wild degree of variance in what individual people had reported having seen that day, and secondly, the number of witnesses was spread widely across the different demographics and groups who had attended, regardless of their own personal beliefs or levels of faith.

There was little doubt that something truly awe-inspiring had taken place in that damp little country field, and that those who had been present largely believed it to have been an act of God.

The huge volume and compelling nature of the testimonies of those who were involved was certainly enough to convince the Catholic Church that the incident was indeed a genuine visitation by the Virgin Mary.

Successive church leaders would go on to spend many years investigating the event, right up until the present day.

As recently as 2017, Pope Francis Francis officially classified the event as a holy miracle, and opened proceedings that paved the way for all three children to be canonised.

Of course, not all commentators and observers place so much faith in such religious explanations, which has given rise to an altogether different slant on what took place, and this is that the incident was actually an extraterrestrial visitation, rather than a holy one.

The basis for this argument is the fact that the solar effects described by the witnesses were not reported anywhere else in the world that day, other than at the Fatima site itself, meaning that it can only have been a localised occurrence.

Given this fact, is it possible that the entity viewed by the children might instead have been a visitor from another planet, and that the bright light in the sky seen moving around was some form of craft, as opposed to the sun itself?

Whether a true miracle or an extraterrestrial visitation, the fact remains that many people witnessed the event, some in wildly different ways to others, and many saw nothing at all.

So it appears the occurrence was either deeply personal or some form of optical illusion, which not everyone was in a position to have experienced or experienced in the same way.

A third, much more grounded possibility is that the witnesses were seeing an optical phenomenon known as a sundog or mock sun.

The technical name for such an event is Parhelion and consists of either one or two intensely bright halos of light appearing to form alongside the sun.

Parhelia are caused when the sun's rays are reflected back by patches of ice crystals which have formed in the upper atmosphere.

To observers on the ground, it appears as if the sun's mass is gradually increasing or decreasing in size, dependent on how large the patch of crystals is which the light is passing over.

Parhelia are not restricted to any one geographical area or type of weather system, and are something that has been historically historically witnessed all over the globe.

They are at their strongest when the Sun is either rising or setting.

As logical and compelling an argument as this is, it does not fully account for the multiple reports of the Sun changing its colour or zigzagging violently from side to side in the sky.

Again, those seeking to discredit the more fantastic explanations for the incident turn to meteorological effects.

The sun's colour has been proven to alter subtly when incoming light is reflected off droplets of moisture in the atmosphere, and the reports of the sun resembling a silvery spinning disk may have been the result of thin, almost indiscernible clouds passing across and impairing the field of vision of those watching from below.

Staring directly at the sun for any sustained period of time can cause significant damage to the retina.

Even spending a limited amount of time trying to focus on a powerful light source, such as a light bulb, can cause minor damage to the eye, and the illusion of movement as the eye muscles start to tire and become overly relaxed.

Having laid the groundwork to suggest that it could have been a combination of optical illusion and meteorological effects that the people at Fatima were witnessing, the more sceptical observers then turned to the psychological aspects and mentality of viewing an incident as part of a crowd.

In this case, the vast majority of those who attended had an expectation or burning desire to see something happen, which was enough to persuade not only themselves, but also those around them that a miracle was taking place.

The scientific term for this is pareidolia, and is something that critics of religious sightings have often fallen back on in order to undermine what has been reported.

As witnesses testify to having seen humbling and fantastic images, what they describe naturally goes on to influence and taint the mental image for others who are watching.

There have been many alleged appearances by the Virgin Mary throughout the years, and the argument against the majority of them is that when the the idea or image of Mary is placed into the minds of the public by media after one sighting has been reported, a certain percentage of people will then suddenly start to see the face of Mary everywhere they look, from smoke rings and shadows to foodstuffs and coffee stains.

Perhaps the element of the story that most regularly comes under scrutiny and criticism is young Lucia herself.

Cynics are quick to point out that she was the youngest of seven sisters, with a five-year gap between her and her next oldest sibling.

From an early age, she played her sisters and parents off against each other, striving to be the centre of attention by spinning tall tales and fantastic stories.

Tragically, both Francisco and Jacinta would be claimed by the Spanish flu that ravaged Europe in the aftermath of the war, and so the only real source of information about what the children saw would be Lucia.

Over the years, her account has been altered and revised to no small degree, and many of her predictions have only arrived years after the events she describes took place.

World War I would not end for another year after the incident, and it would not be until 1927 that she claimed Mary had foretold that her cousins would die at a young age.

She also said that the spirit had shown her visions of soldiers executing a bishop in the ruins of a great city.

Some have tried to tie this to the attempted assassination of Pope John Paul II, but even Lucia's own mother mother disowned her testimony, giving interviews to state the girl was a fantasist and trickster.

It is rare indeed for the Papal authorities to so readily accept an incident as miraculous in nature, but the witness accounts of several thousand people make for a compelling case.

Even taking into account the undermining factors of mass hysteria and suggestion, The possibility that something extraordinary did take place in front of the assembled crowd is very real.

The actions of Lucia in in the years after the incident have done little to improve her credibility, but none of these issues can explain what it was that people saw or how it made them feel.

Nor can they explain the sheer coincidence that something truly significant occurred in the skies overhead at exactly the time it was predicted by the children.

Maybe this is the real nature of the supernatural.

Some people see it, some people don't.

Both groups accuse each other of being uninformed or crazy, and this is, of course, why we divide ourselves into skeptics and believers.

What makes the Fatima event so interesting is that many sceptics who are present testified to witnessing the spectacle.

Many believers who were also there that day, on the other hand, saw absolutely nothing.

Whether you genuinely believe that for one day only, the mysteries of heaven revealed themselves to mankind, or that some other inexplicable force visited Earth under the guise of a miraculous event, it is difficult to deny that something truly humbling and extraordinary did take place in a quiet corner of Portugal roughly 100 years ago.

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Story 2.

The Legend of the Bell Witch

Whether tales of cryptids or ghostly apparitions, every community has its own folklore.

This week, we pay a visit to a small town in Tennessee, which was plagued by a spirit so vengeful that it was the first in US history to receive blame for an actual recorded death.

The legendary Bell Witch.

Nestled on the outskirts of metropolitan Nashville lies the small town of Adams, Tennessee.

Like thousands of other small towns in the United States, it is quiet, peaceful, and easily overlooked by travellers.

If you look beyond its humble exterior however, you will find a dark past.

Stories of a haunting which began little over 200 years ago and which reportedly continues to this day.

In 1804, John Bell, along with his wife Lucy Williams Bell and approximately 10 10 other families, began an arduous trek from Edgecombe County, North Carolina to Red River, Tennessee.

Over the next several years, the Bells would become successful farmers and prosper in their new home.

Although widely respected and well-liked by the wider community, a scandal would arise in the mid-1810s that would call the character of John Bell into question.

One of the other groups that had also made the move from North Carolina was the Batts family, and they would come to hate the Bells after a traumatic accident in 1816.

Frederick Batts, the head of his household, was seriously injured whilst working on his farm and would spend the rest of his life physically impaired as a result.

As Frederick was no longer able to work, the family's situation became desperate.

He would be forced to sell parts of his property in order to make ends meet.

Some of this land was purchased by John Bell, a transaction which would begin a never-ending conflict between the two families.

Frederick's wife Kate accused Belle of exploiting their unfortunate situation, as he had bought the land for much less than it was worth.

She swore to Belle that she would make him and his family pay for this supposed misdeed.

Further escalating the tension between the two clans, Belle had also purchased a young slave girl from Frederick's brother, Benjamin.

Belle felt that the girl was too young to take with him at the time of purchase however, and decided to leave the youngster with her mother for a while longer.

When he eventually came to collect her, Benjamin reneged on the agreement, feeling that she was worth more than had already been paid.

After much bickering, Belle sold the girl back to Benjamin for more than the purchase price, thus extorting even more money from the bats family.

At this point, Belle believed the issue to be concluded and hoped that his dealings with the bats were well and truly over.

Unfortunately, nothing could have been further from the truth.

Shortly after the deal with the slave girl was settled and unbeknownst to John Bell, Benjamin Bats filed a lawsuit against him for extortion.

Bell had no idea the lawsuit even existed and so failed to attend the hearing.

Without Bell being present to contest the claims, the court sided with Benjamin.

The judgment soon found its way back to Red River and was heard by the local church.

Although Bell protested the ruling, it would nonetheless lead to his eventual excommunication, which some say would open the door for evil to invade his home.

Due to her husband's immobility, Kate Batts became the prominent member of her family.

Boisterous, harsh, loud and spiteful, She was widely disliked by others in the community, and because of some questionable behaviour behavior in church, they also believed that Kate was practising witchcraft.

They suspected that the tragedy which befell her husband was punishment from God for practicing such evil, although none of them dared to confront her directly with these accusations.

Most people chose instead to avoid her as much as possible.

Kate, it seems, was far too intimidating.

In 1817, not long after his excommunication, Bell was hunting on his land when he encountered a creature that he had never seen before.

He described it as having the body of a large dog, the head of a rabbit, and being covered in black fur.

Startled at seeing such an abomination, he fired his musket at the animal, but when he looked to see if he'd killed or injured the creature, it was nowhere to be seen.

No trace of the animal was ever found.

Not wishing to alarm his family, Bell kept the matter to himself.

Shortly after the incident, however, strange activity started to occur at the family home.

During the evenings, the Bells began hearing what sounded like stones being thrown against the exterior of the house.

Despite constantly checking for trespasses, there were none to be found.

After a while, Belle suspected this to be the work of the bats family.

That was until the sounds began occurring inside the household.

Loud thuds, scrapings on the floors and walls, and the sounds of rats gnawing at the legs of beds were heard throughout the home at all hours of the night, but they were never able to track down the source of these disturbances and suffered as it began to affect their sleep.

Although it was a frustration, the family simply tried to ignore it.

Nevertheless, the activity soon escalated to physical attacks.

One night, their 14-year-old daughter, Elizabeth Betsy Bell, was awoken by the now familiar sounds.

When she tried to investigate, she found that her hair had been tied in knots around the bedpost.

Unable to get up, she was then slapped repeatedly by an unseen force.

Responding to her screams, the family rushed in to find Betsy with red, hand-shaped welts all over her face.

Terrified, she described what had happened, and it wasn't long before the youngest sons would also show the same hand-shaped welts on their legs and faces.

Not wishing to make this a public affair and possibly tarnish the reputation of the family any further, Belle advised everyone to keep quiet about the activity.

They began praying, begging to be released from the evil that was tormenting them, all to no avail.

Over the next few weeks, visual apparitions began to appear.

The slaves reported seeing strange birds and animals, some of which they claimed could talk.

While walking in a field, Betsy saw the apparition of a girl in a green dress, hanging by her hands from a tree limb, before she disappeared without trace.

The spectres, sounds and physical abuse escalated daily, and the terror and lack of sleep became too much for the family to handle on their own.

Bell confided in his friend and neighbour, James Johnston, asking him for help.

Johnston agreed.

He and his wife arrived at the Belle home shortly afterwards and prayed with them to rid the house of the evil presence.

One evening, Johnston demanded to know the name of the entity, and a disembodied voice was heard to say,

After several nights of trying unsuccessfully to cleanse the home, Johnston advised his neighbor to reach out to the wider community, and reluctantly, Belle agreed.

News of the haunting spread spread quickly and far wider than anyone anticipated.

Many people from surrounding areas and some from quite far away came to the Bell family home to witness the poltergeist's activity.

The entity who was initially quiet would later have no qualms about making its presence known.

It especially made its feelings towards John Bell apparent.

Eventually, News reached Army General and future United States President Andrew Jackson.

Jackson decided to take a small group of his troops to the Bell home and make camp there for a few days.

One of Jackson's men claimed to have brought along silver bullets and bragged to his fellow soldiers that he planned to use them on the witch and kill her.

As the group neared the Bell property, the wheels of their wagon seized and would not move, despite the repeated efforts of the troops and horses.

Almost at the point of abandoning the wagon and returning to Nashville, Jackson supposedly apologised for the behavior behaviour of his soldier.

Immediately after this, the wagon began to move freely, as if nothing had happened, and Jackson's troops arrived without further incident.

Despite planning to stay several nights, the group returned to Nashville after only one, and although it is not written in any official document, Jackson is reported to have said, I would rather face the whole of the British Army than spend another night at the Bell House.

Not all of the Bell family received such harassment from the so-called Bell Witch, however.

Lucy Bell, John's wife, was treated in the opposite manner.

In 1820, she was diagnosed with a severe case of pleurisy, an inflammation of the lining of the lungs, and there was some question as to whether or not she would survive the illness.

Whilst Lucy was bedridden, Kate would often sing comforting gospel hymns, and would also leave hazelnuts and grapes on her bed, apparently materialising from thin air.

Gradually, Lucy's condition improved and she would make a complete recovery.

At the same time that Lucy's health was improving, her husband's was declining rapidly.

On the morning of December the 20th, John Bell was found deceased in his bed.

A strange pungent scent was coming from Belle's mouth, and a vial with an unknown cloudy liquid was discovered nearby, giving off the same odour.

Speculation as to who poisoned Belle was rife, and when it was suggested that Lucy may have been responsible, Kate's disembodied voice apparently spoke up, replying, I fixed his medicine last night and gave him a big dose of it.

He'll never get out of that bed again.

For the first time in US history, an actual documented death was blamed on a supernatural entity.

Not content with simply killing John, Kate was said to have made an appearance at his memorial.

During the burial service, she further tormented friends and family by mocking Belle, laughing and singing drinking songs.

After the funeral, the activity began to diminish.

Kate had apparently achieved her goal of tormenting and killing her nemesis, and the family believed her to be gone for good.

That was until the spring of 1821, when Betsy Bell received a proposal of marriage from a well-respected well-respected young man by the name of Joshua Gardiner.

Betsy once again saw the apparition of the little girl in the tree, who warned her not to marry this man, then vanished as she had done previously.

Not daring to take a chance on the poltergeist's return, Betsy broke off the engagement and Gardiner moved away from the area.

So what are we to make of this story?

Due to the scant record keeping of the day, we'll never know the full truth of the matter regarding the incidents.

One has to remember that most people of this era were unable to read or write, so many of the stories were passed on verbally for many years after the supposed events took place.

It is impossible to determine how many of the stories were embellished upon or even completely fabricated before they were finally written down.

The Bell Witch haunting went on for many years, and there were far more tales and other occurrences than we have time to recount here, but it is entirely possible that many of the supposed incidents were concocted to cover up the murder of John Bell.

It should be noted that Lucy Bell, John's wife, was the younger sister of John Williams Jr., who was the father of none other than Kate Williams Batts.

Could Bell's death have been the result of a conspiracy between Kate and Lucy?

It would certainly explain why Lucy was excluded from the witch's wrath.

But then what would Lucy gain by torturing her own children?

Kate Batts was reported as alive in the 1830 census, so it certainly was not her spirit that was responsible for the hauntings.

It is also worth noting that Richard Powell, Betsy's eventual husband, was very highly educated, and could have created some of the strange happenings that would not have been well understood by the people of the time.

This may in turn have led to mass hysteria.

Powell had a documented fondness for Betsy, even when he was still married to his wife Esther, who died in 1821, the same year that Gardner proposed to the youngster.

Could he have been responsible for these incidents as a way of getting close to her?

It's unlikely, but not beyond all possibility.

On the other hand, there are those who believe the whole saga was completely genuine, and that Kate Bats had conjured up a spirit or demon in order to avenge the perceived wrongdoings against her family.

Even today, there are still incidents that occur in the area.

The local townsfolk, including the modern Day Bell family, have experienced many strange events that are not so easily explained.

As a young boy, Bob Bell, who is still alive today, recalls an incident involving his grandmother.

In a state of terror, she made a phone call to Bob's father, asking him to come and investigate a disturbance and check for intruders.

When they arrived, they found nothing out of place until they went into the kitchen.

The cabinet in which the family's china was locked away was now open and the dishes were thrown about all over the floor.

Oddly, not a single dish had been broken or damaged in the least.

Another recent incident involved Tim Henson, a local historian and curator at the town's museum.

According to him, People who visit the Bell property are advised not to take anything home with them.

Henson spoke of a man who took a rock from the cave that is located there and who then apparently lost his wife, his job and his home within three days of his visit.

It is entirely possible that these events would have happened anyway and that his taking of the rock was mere coincidence but then again, who knows?

Still, if you ever happen to visit Red River, or the town of Adams as it is known today, and talk to the people who live there, you may not walk away a believer, but hopefully, he'll be wise enough to give the old Bell property the respect it deserves.

Bedtimes for us.