Grounded

While researching her book about 19th-century farmer-medium Jonathan Koons—whose seances on the outskirts of Athens drew multitudes of spiritual seekers and gawkers from across the country—Sharon Hatfield was struck by Koons’ belief that the ground of his farm itself enabled his communications with the dead.

“He thought that there was something different about the landscape here—the minerals or magnetic properties of the ground,” Hatfield said. She was so drawn to Koons’ ideas about the land itself that she titled her book Enchanted Ground.

A young Koons moved to remote southeast Ohio—then considered the West—in 1835, from Pennsylvania. In 1852, he converted to spiritualism, the alternative religious movement that by then was sweeping the nation. After he built his “spirit room,” which used musical instruments and other apparatuses intended to communicate with the dead, he and his entire family became known as mediums, and their following surged.

In Koons, Hatfield, MS ’91, found a subject that allowed her to illuminate a counterculture that flourished throughout the United States, Britain, and elsewhere in the 19th century. Hatfield, who describes them as “Victorian hippies,” says spiritualists were social reformers. “They wanted a less punitive vision of Christianity. They advocated for women’s rights and the abolition of slavery, among other things. They did not believe in hell, preferring to think that everyone had a chance to progress spiritually even after death.”

Hatfield relished recovering the story of an influential but largely forgotten local. “We pride ourselves here in Athens on being a progressive community, as were the spiritualists. But beyond that, Jonathan Koons had a personal message that extends far beyond our region: Believe in yourself, learn to appreciate your divine nature, and find your own voice. That is what he tried to do.”