Can Ghosts Harm Humans?

John Bell moved his family to Red River, Tennessee (later named Adams) in the early 1800’s. After an incident where John Bell shot at an unidentified animal-- strange activity started to plague the Bell family that lasted for over four years.

The female entity involved was heard on a regular basis reciting everything from bible verses to making threats. It is said that there were over 100 witnesses to this entities activity, including Andrew Jackson a future president of the United States.

This female entity tormented the whole family but focused more on John Bell and his youngest daughter Betsy. This entity often hit, scratched, and slapped Betsy repeatedly. A neighbor that stayed with the Bells also experienced this physical abuse. This female entity literally drove John Bell to drink a poisoned liquid, the entity later told the family she gave him. At John's funeral all heard her laughter as they lowered his coffin into the grave.

The "Bell Witch" case above is an outlier. Most often when people are physically hurt because of a paranormal encounter it is because they are running away. They end up with injuries because of their reaction not because of physical contact with the entity.

There have been instances where investigators and others have been scratched by entities but like I stated in a former post these instances are rare. Note: I am not saying that entities do not make physical contact with the living, they do, myself and several of my investigators have been touched by ghosts, poked, patted, hair brushed etc. But this contact has not harmed us.




Unfortunately, ghosts can hurt people on an emotional level. This subject I will leave for another post. People who have never experienced a haunting often react with fear—I blame our pop culture for this—people often assume an entity is evil or harmful. With education many people revise their initial views and actually learn to communicate and live peacefully with ghosts.