William Gay: Little Sister Death

It was a long time until daylight.

What did I hear? I don’t know. Did I really hear it at all? I don’t know that, either, and I wouldn’t argue it either way. It doesn’t seem to matter. You hear what you believe you hear.

My uncle lives in West Tennessee near a town named after Joshua Gardner’s brother, and I called him the other night.

“Did you really hear all that stuff in that house, or were you just pulling my leg?” I asked him.

“We heard things right up until we sold the place and moved,” he said. “It sort of died down, but every now and then we’d hear something. You’ll notice nobody lives too long in that house. It’s changed hands several times since we sold it.”

I told him I had been back to Robertson County and that I was writing an article about the Bell Witch.

“It might be best to leave that stuff alone,” he said.

I don’t know if there’s any truth in all this business. Because almost two hundred years have passed since the original haunting supposedly occurred, I don’t suppose anyone else will know. But I do know that the world is a strange and wondrous place. There are mysteries on every side if you care to look. I also know that I don’t know nearly as much now as I thought I did at twenty-five. If I stacked the things I know next to the ones I don’t, I wouldn’t have a very tall stack.

Every question is multiple choice, and truth depends on your frame of reference. It sometimes seems an act of hubris to even form a conjecture.

I’d leave that stuff alone , I heard time after time from one source or another, and it might be worth remembering that the Bell Witch saved her strongest malice for scoffers and debunkers. It might be wise to keep one’s disbelief to oneself.

On the other hand, she was clairvoyant. So it might be best not to think about that stuff at all.

A Note from the Publisher

Steven Gillis, publisher of Dzanc Books, wishes to acknowledge the many people who have helped make this book possible. Little Sister Death was found among William Gay’s literary archive after his death. A team of William’s friends, including J. M. White, Shelia Kennedy, Susan McDonald, Lamont Ingalls, and Paul Nitsche, compiled and transcribed William’s remaining works from his handwritten notebooks and a typescript found among his papers. Little Sister Death , the first of several planned posthumous releases, was then passed to Guy Intoci and Michelle Dotter at Dzanc Books. The original papers can be found at the Sewanee University Library Special Collections.