Students from the communication studies department will perform “The Bell Witch,” a play about abuse, Oct. 25-30 at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
An act of abuse creates ghosts that continue to haunt a person, even after the abuse has stopped.
So says Ariel Gratch, who will interweave stories of the effects of abuse with a 200-year-old Southern ghost story in “The Bell Witch,” on stage Oct. 25-30 at UNC. The ghost-story part of the play concerns a spirit said to have haunted the Bell family of Adams, Tenn., from 1817-1821.
Gratch, a master’s degree candidate in communication studies at UNC, will direct five students from the department in performances at 8 p.m. each night in Swain Hall on Cameron Avenue, near South Columbia Street.
The students will alternate portraying members of the Bell family and telling stories directly to the audience. The play is sponsored by the department – part of the College of Arts and Sciences – and Wordshed Productions, a nonprofit theater group made up mostly of UNC students.
Legend holds that the Bell Witch tormented the Bell family and eventually murdered John Bell Sr. Stories of the spirit became so well known that future U.S. president Andrew Jackson decided to try to witness the disturbances firsthand in 1819.
Gratch, who grew up in Huntington Beach, Calif., went to what is now Adams Station, Tenn. to research the Bell Witch legend. Connecting acts of abuse to the ghost stories led him to question ways in which individuals feel they can and cannot talk about abuse.
“Audience members will experience a journey through the stories of people who, like the Bell family, are haunted by their own history of love and abuse,” Gratch said. “In working with the story of the Bell Witch in tandem with personal narratives of abuse, the ensemble of communication studies students explores what it means to be haunted and the ways in which we can be in a relationship where feelings of love and hate are not mutually exclusive, but often exist at the same time.”
Tickets are $5 for students and seniors, $8 for others. For tickets and information, call the Memorial Hall box office at (919) 843-3333 or e-mail wordshed@unc.edu.
Gratch can be reached at gariel@email.unc.edu.
For more Bell Witch tales, visit http://paranormal.about.com/od/trueghoststories/a/aa041706.htm