Between January and February 1909, W. Usborne Moore attended sittings with Mr and Mrs Jonson at their home in Toledo, Ohio. He described hands appearing over a cabinet, voices using a speaking trumpet and figures identified as deceased relatives or historical personalities. His published account became an extended defence of their mediumship. A later investigator, J. Hewat McKenzie, reported both what he considered genuine manifestations and what he said were crude tricks involving the couple and their daughter.
The case therefore concerns a documented series of Spiritualist claims and a disagreement among sympathetic investigators. It is not a verified record of the dead returning. The 1909 sittings and McKenzie’s reported 1917 visit belong to the same household case; their different dates and conditions matter when assessing what either witness could establish.
A room arranged around a cabinet
Moore’s Glimpses of the Next State (1911), chapter VI, pages 195–223, supplies the principal detailed account. He describes Ben Jonson, also called J. B. Jonson, as a painter and paperhanger. The sittings took place upstairs in a private house, with a curtained cabinet in a corner and an open staircase connecting the room to the lower floor. This was a domestic setting, not a controlled research laboratory.
According to Moore, visitors could examine the cabinet, séance room and rooms beneath it. He argued that a confederate using the stairs would have to pass the sitters. He also repeatedly stressed that Jonson was visible outside the cabinet during parts of the proceedings and that Mrs Jonson could be seen elsewhere in the room. These are his descriptions of precautions and sightlines, not an independently measured plan proving that every route or action was continuously observed.
The lighting was adjustable from inside the cabinet. Moore sometimes judged it sufficient to read a white-faced watch; on other occasions the room was darkened further. Musical boxes played during the sittings. Neither the watch comparison nor the fact that a session took place in the afternoon tells us how clearly every face, hand or part of the room could be watched throughout.
The first sittings: hands, voices and uncertain identities
On 4 January 1909, Moore joined a small private circle whose other visitors he partly anonymised. After examining the cabinet, he watched an arrangement of seated participants, joined hands, cloth and a sheet. He reported hands appearing above the sitters, touches, messages thrown from the cabinet, a graphophone being operated and knots tied in handkerchiefs. He thought the visible positions of the couple excluded their ordinary involvement.
The arrangement then changed. The group moved into a circle with a trumpet in the middle, and voices were attributed to spirits. Hand contact was not maintained throughout this later part. That distinction prevents the precautions described for one phase from being assumed to govern the whole afternoon. The same report contains the observations and Moore’s interpretation of their impossibility; they should not be merged into a single established fact.
At the 6 January sitting, figures were identified as personal contacts and as famous people, including Cleopatra and Josephine. Moore also described unsuccessful attempts to recognise a figure called Iola. He reported occasions when Jonson and more than one supposed spirit could be seen together. The claim of simultaneous visibility was central to his confidence, but named identities still depended on appearance, questions, gestures and the sitters’ expectations.
Failures and recognition
The record is more informative when its disappointments are retained. Moore describes the 14 January sitting as unsuccessful in producing the expected forms, with Mrs Jonson unwell. No fee was accepted for that failure. Other communications still occurred, but the account does not justify turning every sitting into an uninterrupted sequence of successes.
For 16 January, he estimated roughly forty appearances including repetitions. He also acknowledged that he clearly recognised only two faces. Recognition of other figures could depend on clothing, movements or posture. A recurring character might be persuasive to regular sitters without being independently identifiable to a newcomer. A count of appearances is therefore neither a count of different people nor a count of securely established identities.
Moore consulted Homer Taylor Yaryan before and during his enquiries and relied strongly on his endorsement. In the book, Yaryan argued that organising enough impersonators and costumes would be impractical and uneconomic. That was an argument about plausibility, not a demonstration that no assistant or ordinary method could have been used. Moore’s agreement with a trusted investigator also does not create a separate instrumental record of the phenomena.
Later January and the farewell
The 25 and 29 January accounts describe further voices and appearances, including figures Moore associated with his own family. He noted apparent fulfilment of earlier promises and linked some communications with portraits obtained during his separate Chicago visits. Those portrait episodes have their own setting and evidential problems; references to them in Toledo do not independently authenticate the Jonsons’ performances.
The 30 January sitting included an allegedly illuminated robe or shawl rising while participants held hands, alongside conversations assigned to familiar spirit characters. At the farewell on 1 February, Moore estimated more than forty appearances but counted nineteen separate spirits, again showing why repetitions matter. He described some forms disappearing smoothly and others collapsing, doubling over or falling sideways. His explanation was varying spirit power, rather than a demonstrated physical account of what he saw.
Moore wrote as a convinced participant. His stated recording practice elsewhere in the book involved short notes followed by fuller accounts expanded from memory, rather than a continuous audio or visual record. His narrative also uses stereotyped portrayals of Indigenous spirit controls. These belong to the sitters’ Spiritualist performance and interpretation; they are not evidence of authentic Indigenous identities or beliefs.
McKenzie’s account of a 1917 visit
A materially different assessment appears in Psychic Science, volume VI, number 1, April 1927, pages 70–71. In a signed letter headed “The Mediumship of Ben Jonson”, J. Hewat McKenzie says he investigated at the Toledo home in 1917. Although writing years afterwards, he claimed direct personal experience, rather than merely repeating an anonymous exposure story.
McKenzie reported seeing tricks performed by the couple in cooperation with their daughter. He specifically alleged that she appeared from a back room in luminous clothing, with magnesium wire used in an adjoining room to illuminate phosphorescent material. He cited visible smoke and a recognisable smell as observations supporting his interpretation. This is a concrete published allegation of an ordinary method, not simply a general assertion that mediumship must be fraudulent.
His position was nevertheless mixed. In the same letter he maintained that other forms at the sitting were genuine, defended Moore’s earlier observations and thought the mediumship still deserved study. Treating his letter as a blanket retraction of every claim would misrepresent it. Conversely, quoting only his continuing belief would conceal the specific misconduct he said he had observed.
The adjacent correspondence includes a defence by Arthur Conan Doyle, dated 16 March 1927. He acknowledged limited control at his own sitting because a supposedly sealed door opened into the cabinet area, while remaining impressed by what he had seen. His visit was separate and is not additional evidence that the Toledo room was secure in 1909. The correspondence documents disagreement among believers as well as criticism of the household’s practices.
Assessment and location
UKPX classifies the household case as Disputed. Moore’s extensive testimony supports the historical fact that the claims were made and that he found them convincing. McKenzie’s specific later allegation challenges the household’s reliability, while his simultaneous defence of other phenomena leaves a substantial interpretive disagreement. Neither source establishes survival after death, and the later accusation cannot by itself reconstruct the method of every earlier sitting.
The pin is an approximate Toledo city reference from the US Census Bureau’s Ohio place gazetteer, rounded from its published internal point. It does not locate the private séance house. No visitor access, present-day attraction or permission to approach a residence is asserted. The waterfront photograph supplies historical city context only.
The source trail for this assessment is Moore’s original 1911 narrative and the original April 1927 correspondence, with the latter’s dates, authorship and qualifications checked against the scanned pages. The period shown concerns the 1909 sittings and the reported 1917 investigation, not the later publication date. Source and outcome assessment: 13 November 2026.