Mt. Nebo in Athens, Ohio

Ohio is well known for its ghost towns. Most of them were situated around the railroad or mining industry. After the company built the houses for its employees, they suddenly let the mines run dry and the railroad was not necessary anymore. Sometimes the company left the little towns with nothing behind. This is the reason some little towns from Ohio turned into ghost towns. Some of them have a special history, such as Mt. Nebo.

The town of Mt. Nebo was mainly known for the Spiritualists who used to live in the area. The area that surrounded Ohio was full of wild animals and lightly populated by humans. Even if in the early 1800s the region was not highly inhabited, some people interested in mysticism lived there. Spiritualism was a mainstream and raising in popularity during this period of the American History.

The most known man in Mt. Nebo was Jonathon Koons, a devout atheist. He moved in the district in order to draw attention to the fake spiritualists that were living in the area but he soon found out that he believed in the words of a young girl that claimed to be connected to the other world. She pretended that she would ask questions and that she received some answers by tapping on the table. History has demonstrated since then that all these claims of numerous persons were definitely works of charlatans.

Jonathon Koons remained a believer and soon he began to claim that spirits were appearing in his home as well and he ordered the members of his family to strictly follow his actions. The alleged spirits asked him and his family to build a table in order to use it in communication with them through ghostly writing. Koons soon discovered that his oldest son and wife poses the same powers he had. The man pretended that he was holding a pen in his hand and the spirits would work through his hand to write their own words.

The spirits also convinced the family to build the Spirit Room, a cabin for their own private use. Koons had said that all the details of the room were inspired by the words dictated by the spirits. They would remain there after the family went to sleep and continued their ghostly work through the night.

Soon enough, the Koons family was famous all over the country. People were coming in pilgrimage and the locals become upset by the flocks of persons that were wandering into the town. The Koons family farm was burnt down and their children were attacked eventually by others in the are tired of the supernatural occurneces. After a period of prosecution, they decided to leave Mt. Nebo and went away to spread the word about the spirits in other places.

The legend of this family is still remember these days. when the cabin was still standing visitors would come from all over the world in order to experience their talents. When in Mt. Nebo, many people claimed that they felt ghostly hands on their skin, whispers in their ears and some instruments floating over their heads that were being played by the spirits. Some of them reported translucent hands that were writing messages at an extreme fast speed as well.

See pictures and other haunted locations from the Athens, Ohio at Haunted Athens Ohio