Neigh? Nay!

In August of 1828, the frontier settlement along the banks of Leatherwood Creek in Guernsey County, Ohio, was making good progress toward civilizing the wilderness when suddenly life was disrupted by the intrusion of a mysterious stranger named Joseph Dylks, a black-eyed man who appeared in the middle of the congregation at a church service and interrupted the sermon by snorting and neighing like a horse.

Well, what would you do?

According to R.H. Taneyhill, "Some of the men jumped to their feet, others bounced in their seats, women shrieked aloud, and every cheek blanched." Dylks repeated this performance at other religious meetings in the area, and an eyewitness insisted that the stranger's peculiar noises "carried with them, right through you, a thrill like that felt when greatly scared in the dark, and a dread similar to that experienced when we think of dying instantly."

In fact, Dylks's performances filled listeners with such "awe and fear" that within three weeks he had convinced a great number of settlers that he was God.

Of course there's more to the story. A mysterious light hovers over Dylks's head. Satan makes a brief appearance. Miracles are promised. The essence of the story, though, is that an entire community was swept into religious mania on the basis of a stranger's remarkable ability to neigh like a horse.

Taneyhill wrote his history some years after the event, drawing on eyewitness accounts, and decades later William Dean Howells wrote a fictionalized version (The Leatherwood God, 1916). Taneyhill's account is more credulous than Howells's, but both attempt to examine how a stranger could convince an entire community that he was God.

Now if a man appeared in my church and started snorting like a horse, I might think he was congested or crazy, but God? I'd sooner believe he was a horse. I've never heard a man neigh like a horse in a way that made me bounce in my seat or jump over chairs or think about death.

And in fact the settlers along Leatherwood Creek couldn't maintain their credulity for long. Dylks arrived, swept the community into a religious fervor, promised certain specific miracles, and was eventually run out of town when he was unable to deliver. The community was disrupted and some followers went to their graves believing Dylks was God, but over time, the Leatherwood God became just another of those peculiar stories hiding in dusty tomes down in Special Collections.

Until someone comes along and digs them up. But now that I've got the story, what am I going to do with it?