Enchanted Ground: The Spirit Room of Jonathon Koons

July 15, 2025
12:00pm - 1:00pm

Enchanted Ground addresses spiritualism as a 19th-century religious movement and explains the place of Jonathan Koons and his family within it. The movement began in western New York in 1848 and extended into the cities and rural communities of the Midwest. Curious visitors travelled from as far as New Orleans to Athens County, Ohio, to a remote country cabin whose marvels would rival any of P. T. Barnum’s attractions. People dressed in homespun crowded in with those in city attire to experience what spiritualist Jonathan Koons and his son Nahum would demonstrate in the pitch dark of the log cabin night after night.

Jonathan Koons was considered one of the most impressive physical mediums of the 1850s. His Athens County “spirit room,” built specifically for theatrical-style séances, was known for a musical “angel band” that allegedly played along as Jonathan fiddled. On some evenings the audience was also treated to the appearance of spectral hands that scribbled messages on sheets of paper. Today Koons is considered by historians of religion to be the innovator of the trumpet used for voice communication in séances. Replicas of his famed spirit room were built in Ohio, Indiana, Massachusetts and beyond. Hatfield’s Enchanted Ground is not only a portrait of a charismatic medium, but the story of a countercultural force that shook American religion in the 19th-century.

Sharon Hatfield grew up loving Nancy Drew mysteries and listening to her grandmother read Grimm’s Fairy Tales aloud. Years later, she’s still interested in mysteries of various kinds, which has influenced her choice of book topics. Her nonfiction book, Enchanted Ground: The Spirit Room of Jonathan Koons, was published in paperback by Swallow Press in 2022.

A native of Ewing, Virginia, she began writing poems and stories at an early age. As a teenager, Sharon made her first airplane trip to compete in the National Spelling Bee in Washington, DC. After graduating from Lincoln Memorial University in Tennessee, she became a newspaper reporter in Norton, Virginia. Sharon later earned a master’s degree in journalism from Ohio University and an MFA in creative nonfiction from Goucher College in Maryland. She has worked as an editor, English professor and manuscript consultant.

Sharon has twice received an Individual Excellence Award from the Ohio Arts Council, most recently in 2018 for her work on Enchanted Ground. Her previous book, Never Seen the Moon: The Trials of Edith Maxwell, won the Weatherford and Chaffin awards for nonfiction.

She has served as a panelist for the Kentucky Arts Council and the Illinois Arts Council Agency in addition to teaching creative nonfiction at writing workshops. In her adopted hometown of Athens, Ohio, she is a member of the Southeast Ohio History Center. She also volunteers as an adviser to the Jenco Fund of the Foundation for Appalachian Ohio, an endowment that supports visionary leadership in the region.

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"Lunch With Books" is the library’s flagship program for adult patrons. These lunchtime programs feature authors, poets, musicians, historians, and more every Tuesday at noon. Bring lunch (to the Library Auditorium or your computer), feed your brain!