B Is for Belle, Who Fell Down the Well
(Title in honor of Edward Gorey's The Gashlycrumb Tinies, 1963.) Cumberland's 1894 courthouse . On their enjoyable 21st-century ghost tours of Cumberland, Keith and Annie Potts stand on the Washington Street sidewalk, in the shadow of the 1894 courthouse, and tell a poignant story with roots almost 200 years old. According to the notes I jotted in the darkness one Saturday night, it goes something like this: Many years ago, a 5-year-old girl, Belle, while playing with her doll, fell down the well here -- but survived, only to die a year later in a carriage accident. The well long ago was filled in by construction, but could her doll still be down there? Some have reported seeing a phantom little girl sitting on the curb outside the courthouse, crying for her doll ... The child's fall was recalled 54 years later in Will Lowdermilk's classic History of Cumberland *: A remarkable accident occurred in the summer of 1824, the result of which was little less than miracul...