Hath had elsewhere its setting
And cometh from afar;
Not in entire forgetfulness,
And not in utter nakedness,
But trailing clouds of glory do we come
From God, who is our home:
Heaven lies about us in our infancy!
That sense of glory predictably faded over time, but from reading the works of Carl Jung and his disciple Joseph Campbell as an adult, I have experienced a feeling of connectedness with water, rocks, trees, and animals—both human and not. Jung demonstrated how many cultures throughout the world share the same archetypes, although they have different expressions—perhaps an indication of a great mind or consciousness that unites not only humans but other forms of life. Jonathan Koons and his fellow believers were attempting to tap into this vast reservoir—although other religions could claim other, equally valid, pathways. Koons was the product of a time and place, just as I am. And though this book was not intended as a “veiled autobiography,” I will be the first to acknowledge that by learning his story I have been able to trace some philosophical dilemmas of my own. I hope the reader will find illumination as well, and, if not, will simply be entertained by Jonathan Koons’s tale.
* * *
FEW visible structures remain from the world that Jonathan Koons and his extended family created when they settled on a high ridge in Dover Township in the 1830s. Both Koons’s 1852 Spirit Room and another built about 20 years later have succumbed to the ravages of time. One artifact that survives is a small hilltop cemetery where his daughter and brother lie buried. As the Koons family stood around the fresh graves of their kin in the mid-nineteenth century, they grappled with the perennial questions that the death of a loved one brings. What can we know in this life about the next, if there is one? It is a search, as one Victorian letter writer put it, for evidence of “the continued life.” But the path they took to seek that truth, that is what makes this story.
1
The Frenchman’s Visit
IT WAS an age that loved its wonders—the bizarre, the spectacular, and the arcane. In the 1850s sightseers could tour Barnum’s American Museum in New York City to gawk at wax figures of Siamese twins and of a giant and giantess in Quaker dress. The visitors could pause to admire the miniature costume of mulberry-colored velvet worn by General Tom Thumb to his audience with Queen Victoria—or on a lucky day meet the diminutive Tom himself. But in the backwoods of Ohio, hundreds of miles from that center of commerce, the curious were flocking to a remote country cabin whose marvels would rival any of P. T. Barnum’s attractions. The farmer-turned-medium Jonathan Koons had built a special house where it was said that the dead spoke to the living, where the ancient spirits of the place deigned not only to reveal the wisdom of the ages to visitors but to serenade them with celestial music.
Like hundreds before him, Joseph Barthet had heard of the mysterious goings-on at Koons’s hillside farm, only 7 miles distant but far removed from the county seat and university town of Athens. So renowned was the rustic cabin called the Spirit Room that Dr. Barthet, a mesmerist and devotee of spiritualism, had traveled more than 1,000 miles from New Orleans to see it for himself. He joined a restive crowd, some dressed in homespun and others in city attire, that had already gathered outside, awaiting admittance to the evening’s demonstrations.
Barthet was ushered into a log structure that he estimated to be 15 feet long, 10 feet wide, and 7 feet high. He found himself in a one-room building with a most peculiar contraption at one end: a wooden table the size of a coffin affixed with a bewildering profusion of wires, metal bars, tin plates, pieces of glass, and small bells. Some wires ran to two drums, about 5 feet apart, that were fixed to a frame hoisted above the table. Barthet had heard that the device had been constructed under the guidance of the spirits to energize the room and help focus their essence. On the table itself sat a tin trumpet about 18 inches long with a small mouthpiece. A hand bell, tambourine, accordion, and harmonica also adorned this unlikely altar. Writing paper, a pencil, a book, and two sheets of sandpaper coated with phosphorus completed the eerie tableau.
No stranger to a séance, Barthet scanned his surroundings with a discerning eye. A decade or so earlier the French émigré had organized mesmerists in New Orleans as the Magnetic Society, men who thought that a fluid with electrical properties permeated the universe and, with the aid of hypnosis, could be harnessed for its healing powers. From there it was just a short step to believe that entranced individuals also could be in touch with the healing spirits of the dead. As the spiritualist craze spread to New Orleans from the North in the 1850s, Barthet had become a leading voice of the new religion of spiritualism, initiating some of the first circles in the city. Although he had come to this gathering in Ohio as part true believer, Barthet would not disavow the habits of mind that had made him a dispassionate observer. He watched curiously as the 20 or so guests filed into the spirit room and his host prepared for the evening’s performance.
Jonathan Koons’s hair was the color of hickory nuts, and he wore it long and parted in the middle. With his full beard and heavy brows over deep-set dark eyes, Koons wore a mantle of grave intellect about his person. But even in middle age he carried the livelier traits of the performing artist as well, for it was said that he could hear a tune whistled just once and effortlessly reproduce it on his fiddle. Tonight, with violin in hand, Koons took his place at a second, smaller table that had been pushed up in front of the rectangular one that supported the two drums and the other musical instruments. His son Nahum, a tall, fair-haired teenager known as Nim, took a seat on the opposite side of the smaller table, which was reserved for the mediums and special guests. Although most visitors sat in two pews facing the tables, Barthet was given a place of honor at Jonathan Koons’s right. On Barthet’s right was his traveling companion, M. L. Their host’s custom was to give special accommodations to visitors from far away, especially those learned men who could best appreciate the phenomena. Sizing up the arrangements, Barthet noticed how crowded the room had become and how difficult it would be for anyone to get up and move around. To make matters worse, a little stove straddled the space between the smaller mediums’ table and the first bench.
Koons put out the candle, plunging the room into total darkness. Something immediately struck the mediums’ table with two violent licks. Barthet guessed that it had been the mallet for the large drum. The fiddle began to play a jig at a rising tempo as the two drums kicked in behind it, sometimes drumming together and sometimes separately. Some little bells rang too, perhaps from the vibrations of the whole assemblage. Barthet found the noise unpleasantly loud, but he thought the timing of the drums and violin impeccable. He imagined some invisible conductor leading the band through a medley of tunes. When it was time to switch to another melody, the conductor would change the rhythm, delivering a few offbeat licks. The fiddle would then commence another hornpipe or quickstep, and the drum would resume keeping time. Barthet assumed that Jonathan Koons was playing the fiddle with both hands. He wondered how anyone else could have moved to the drums so quickly without detection—or even whether one person could have managed to play both drums at once.
The drums fell silent, and a tambourine flew across the room, keeping time with the violin. Barthet got the impression that two hands were working the tambourine, one shaking it and the other hitting it. He could also hear a handbell that seemed to be aloft. The New Orleans mesmerist strained to pick up any evidence of human motion but could not. With no light at all, he was depending on his ears alone to make sense of what was unfolding.
Now it was time to test the capabilities of the acrobatic tambourine. On its first pass around the room, the instrument had lightly tapped Barthet’s knee before continuing on to touch others in the audience. Now he silently placed his hands on either side of his body at knee level, one hand next to his knee and the other 8 inches from his body. Barthet wanted the tambourine to touch his hands without groping around or brushing against his knees—a feat that he thought would be difficult for a person to do in pitch darkness. As if by magic,