An American Haunting plot summary
The movie opens in present times with a young girl having a dream about being chased by something unseen through the forest and into her house. Her mother comes to wake her up and finds an old binder of letters from the 1800's, as well as an old porcelain doll. The letter's are from a previous occupant of the house, warning the mother that if she is reading the letters, and noticing supernatural happenings, then the unthinkable has come to pass. The movie then switches to the 1800's, in a village that used to stand around the house, and we hear the story of the Bell Witch.
John Bell is taken to Church court for having stolen a woman's land. The church finds him guilty of charging her too much interest, but let him go because 'the loss of his good name is punishment enough'. The offended woman tells him to enjoy his good health and the health of his family (especially his daughers) while he can. The whole village thinks the woman's a witch, so John Bell is scared.
Soon after that, strange things start happening. John Bell sees a wolf that keeps dissappearing, and his oldest daughter, Betsy Bell, hears noises in her room, like someone's in it. Betsy starts hearing noises more and more often, and had terrible nightmares about a little girl in a red dress, and something evil that always comes into her bedroom after everyone else is asleep.
At first everyone thinks they're just nightmares, but then the whole family sees Betsy suspended above the bed by unseen hands, and they watch as something seems to slap her across the face. John Bell thinks that the woman whose land he took has cursed him. Betsy starts to look very sick in class, and her schoolteacher (who has an interest in her) notices. He learns of what the Bell's have been experiencing, and as an educated man, offers to stay the night at their house to dispell their fears. The haunting gets worse, and chairs, books, and people are blown and pulled around by some entity in the house. As they try to read from the bible to scare it off, the bible is thrown to the ground and the pages are ripped out and thrown into the air.
Soon the family finds blood on Betsy's dresses in the morning - it appears to be menstrual fluid. The hauntings become more violent, and betsy is dragged up the stairs and around the house. John Bell begins to get sick, and he starts seeing ghosts as well. The mother begs the schoolteacher to marry her daughter 'to protect her' and to take her away to live with him. He says that although he is smitten with Betsy, he cannot 'in all good conscience' marry her just to protect her.
John Bell begins to go insane, and goes to the woman whose land he took with his pistol and asks her to kill him. She holds the pistol to his head, cocks it, and hands it back to him, saying 'I didn't curse you, you cursed yourself'.
John Bell stumbles into the forest, falls to his knees, holds the gun to his head, and pulls the trigger. The hammer clicks, but the gun doesn't fire. He re-cocks the gun, and tries again. Teh gun still won't fire. He realises that the spirit haunting his house won't allow him to kill himself.
There is blood on Betsy's dress again, and John Bell has become even more ill. We see Betsy lying in bead, and her spirit seems to leave her body and smile at us. John Bell is coughing in bed, and we see a girl's hand pour cough medicine into a spoon and bring it to his mouth. He takes the medicine and begins to choke, and then dies. The girl who gave him the medicine is Betsy, her mother, Lucy, is sitting in a rocking chair watching as Betsy poisons her father. We see Betsy at her father's grave, and hear the narrator say that Betsy was never haunted from that point forward.
