[B]etween three and four of the clock in the morning there was a light [which] did shine in my chamber…and casting my eye aside, I saw a round ball of fire and from thence did stream forth great streams of light…and in the light there did speak a voice to me and said that I should have a message to declare to the sons of men

—Testimony of the heretic Thomas Lipeat, The Devil in Kent or His Strange Delusions at Sandwitch [sic] (1647)

In the course of ages, the great mystery of the American Continent will never be told. The Land protects its secrets. The motives of Smithsonian agents are mere rationalizations for a daemonic compulsion, a program written in geomagnetic vortices, commanding them to keep hidden the anomalous artifacts found strewn in countless mounds and caverns. The substrata of the Mississippi Valley and the great American plains is a black prism that eats the light, buries the moon-pale glow of that first UFO— the phantom horsemen, the prairie banshee, the portentous “ball of fire” that guided the hand of Jesse James.

Our folkloric terrain is a threefold hologram, every legend folds itself into hermetic ciphers, a hallucination broadcast in three phase patterns. The first is the superficial, materialist mythos. A series of amputated, half-truths brought together in a coherent system that appears convincing, solid and reliable, but amounts to a molded shell of slopformed mud, as is offered in scholarly literature and many documentaries—

Jesse Woodson James (1847–1882) was a notorious American outlaw whose legend has been authored by fleeting historical fact and enduring fictions. Born in Missouri to a Southern-sympathizing family, James fought as a Confederate with the Jayhawkers and Quantrill’s Guerrillas during the Civil War, an experience that inured him to violence and fueled his postwar criminal career. Alongside his brother Frank, he formed the James-Younger Gang, robbing banks, trains, and stagecoaches across the Midwest from 1866 to 1876.

Though often idealized as a modern-day Robin Hood, credible historical accounts reveal that Jesse James never shared his spoils with the downtrodden. Instead, his actions were driven by personal ambition and the lingering bitterness of Confederate resentment during the Reconstruction era. His public persona, shaped by feverish mythmakers and cunning purveyors of dime novels, elevated him to the status of legend. Betrayed and fatally shot by fellow bandit Robert Ford in 1882, James's death cemented his legacy as the first commodified rebel—a synthetic symbol of resistance to the encroachment of centralized authority.

The second level is the parafictional, the imaginal, the “fakeloric”, as related in older films, comics, penny dreadfuls and dime novels, performed live in stage shows at the 1893 World’s Fair—

Jesse James was a cunning pirate of the grassy sea, the immortal hero of the oppressed, a damned soul driven to desperation by a broken heart and the cruel betrayal of a wealthy bank president, a corrupt sheriff, or some other treacherous figure. With eyes like tempered steel, capable of striking fear into the stoutest heart, and a draw so blindingly quick it seemed supernatural, a living folk ballad, a “robber chief” who plundered banks, trains, and stagecoaches, instilling terror in the corrupt while earning the devotion of those who hailed him as a modern-day Robin Hood. With his steadfast brother Frank by his side, Jesse led a band of desperados across the rough-hewn expanses of the Midwest, outwitting sheriffs and Pinkerton agents, often leaving behind calling cards…etcetera.

The third level is the personal or authorial, the supernormal or liminal topology, the ambiguous and absurd Real, which is always excised from both “factual” and “folkloric” levels. There we find the story of a nineteenth century Odysseus haunted by a phantom horseman, or perhaps, something stranger—

Jesse James was a wolf of the American plains. Denied a pardon for his guerilla combat during the Civil War by a Democrat legislature, actuated by partisan motives, he became a man without a country. He was not a “bandit”, but an enemy of the state, an example made to break the spirit of a defeated people. The life of this publicly beloved public enemy was a kaleidoscopic tragi‐comedy, a keen and cunning fighter, tricky as he was bold, he managed to evade an unbroken and eternal hunt from 1866 to 1882. For sixteen impossible years, James was “followed, trailed, surrounded, shot at, wounded, ambushed, surprised, watched, proscribed, outlawed, driven from State to State, made the objective points of infallible detectives… and triumphed” until, finally, betrayed by the little coward Robert Ford (Edwards 1877). Inventor of the daylight train robbery, he was an artist of violence and spectacle, and he did, in fact, have the devil’s luck.

In 1882, while awaiting trial for the Rock Island Line train robbery in an Independence, Missouri jail, Frank James shared a cell with Orth Harper Stein, a former journalist and criminal whose exploits rivaled the James brothers’. One day, Frank reluctantly told Stein about a ghost that haunted his brother Jesse. Stein recorded and later published Frank’s tale:

"One night we were riding along a lonely road in Tennessee. It doesn't matter just when it was, or where. Jesse and I were riding along ahead, a little in advance of the remainder of the party. There were five or six in the party. Suddenly we came to a broad open space where two roads met and branched off in three opposite directions. We emerged from under a heavy cloud of overtopping foliage into a broad flood of moonlight. It had been very dark in the woods under the heavy trees and the bright moonlight, lying thick and golden, fairly dazzled us for a moment.

"There, standing directly in front of us, as if to dispute our passage, clearly defined in the bright moonlight, was the figure of a horseman on a white horse. We drew rein and stood for a moment stock still. The figure in the road did not move. The moonlight shone directly on his dark coat, with bright, shiny buttons of some kind, and glimmered on the silver trappings of the horse's bridle.” Jesse was the first to recover himself and, with lightning-like rapidity, he drew his gun with an oath, "'What do you want there?' he said. The figure did not move or speak. 'My God, don't shoot!' cried one of our party. 'It's a ghost.'"

Jesse's revolver went off at the same moment. The figure raised one of its hands, pointing the index finger at Jesse, while at the same time the horse turned and rider galloped off up the road. 'I have seen him before,' muttered Jesse, as he turned his horse in the other direction."

—The Kansas City Star, Kansas City, Missouri • Thu, Aug 16, 1888, Page 1

Apparently, the story of the phantom horseman was firmly believed by members of Jesse’s gang—directly witnessed by Frank, regarded as the least superstitious of the raiders. Multiple sources attest that several compatriots, including Bill Ryan and Dick Little, witnessed the phantom and confirmed these accounts. The apparition, often referred to as “Jesse’s ghost,” is said to have appeared to him shortly before his death. Although Jesse seemed to recognize the phantom as someone he had known in life, he remained strangely silent on the matter and never offered any explanation.

Frank and fellow gang member Bill Ryan, who also witnessed the event, said Jesse would grow furious when anyone questioned the ghost, which appeared multiple times and was seen as a bad omen. Jesse’s wife, Zerelda Mimms, who died in 1900, echoed this belief, often citing the phantom horseman as a harbinger of misfortune in her later years. Their son, Jesse James Jr., who later worked for Governor Crittenden and became a prominent Kansas City attorney, offered his own version:

"Dad first saw that horse in Kentucky, not Tennessee. One night the man on the phantom horse jumped up behind dad. The ghost left his horse and jumped up on dad's. Dad was with another man riding along in Kentucky. Dad rode as hard as he could and fired his pistol behind him, but he couldn't shake the ghost off until he had gone half a mile. The thing then dropped off. Another time, when we was all over at Kearney, dad saw the ghost come in the yard on horseback and shot at it seven or eight times, but could not hit it."

In the summer of 1888, six years after the death of Jesse James, these accounts of the phantom horseman were published in over twenty newspapers across the country. Printed much more scarcely is another vision of the “phantom horseman”, related in 1882 right after Jesse’s assassination and the Ford brother’s capture—

Charley Ford states that one evening before the tragedy, he and Jesse James were riding but a short distance out of the city. Suddenly a ball of fire sailed beneath their horses’ feet and disappeared at the roadside. Both of the men saw it, and Jesse remarked that it was a warning and he would soon have some trouble. Charley says he had since heard Jesse speak of a ball of fire coming to him and his visitations were always followed by serious trouble. He believed it to be a supernatural warning, and heretofore he had redoubled his vigilance as such uneasiness, but this time he was caught off his guard, and death was the penalty.

—The St. Joseph Herald, St. Joseph, Missouri • Fri, Apr 7, 1882 Page 4

The above is firsthand reporting on statements made a few days after Ford’s capture. Months later, the same version is repeated with a few additional details. Four years later, Charley Ford committed suicide in Richmond, Mo., by shooting himself.