Jesse James Home

The house where infamous outlaw Jesse James was shot and killed on April 3, 1882 by Robert Ford, a member of his own gang. Originally located elsewhere in St. Joseph, the small frame house was moved in 1977 to its current location behind the Patee House Museum.

On the morning of April 3, 1882, in a small rented house at 1318 Lafayette Street in St. Joseph, Missouri, the most famous outlaw in American history was killed by a bullet to the back of the head. Jesse Woodson James had been living in St. Joseph under the alias "Thomas Howard," trying to maintain an ordinary domestic life with his wife Zerelda and their two children while still planning robberies with his diminishing gang. Among his remaining associates were brothers Robert and Charles Ford, and it was Bob Ford who would end Jesse James's life in one of the most infamous acts of betrayal in the American West.

That morning, Jesse removed his pistol belt -- a rare act for a man who was almost always armed -- and stepped up on a chair to dust a picture on the wall. Bob Ford, who had been secretly negotiating with Missouri Governor Thomas Crittenden for the ten-thousand-dollar reward on Jesse's head, saw his opportunity. He drew his revolver and fired a single shot into the back of Jesse's skull, killing him instantly. Within hours, the Ford brothers were indicted, pleaded guilty, and were sentenced to death by hanging. Within two more hours, Governor Crittenden granted them a full pardon.

The house where Jesse died was moved from its original location and is now a museum dedicated to the life and death of the outlaw. Artifacts on display include the coffin handles from his original burial, a small tie pin he was wearing when he was shot, a bullet removed from his right lung during an earlier injury, and a cast of his skull showing the bullet hole behind his right ear. These relics of violence create an atmosphere that many visitors describe as oppressive and charged with unresolved energy.

The paranormal activity reported at the Jesse James Home is unusual in its nature. Rather than seeing apparitions of the outlaw himself, visitors have described something more like time slips -- moments when the modern surroundings give way to glimpses of the house as it appeared in 1882. Some have looked through the front door and seen not the paved street outside but a dirt road and an open field, the landscape of nineteenth-century St. Joseph superimposed on the present day. Others have encountered doorways that lead to rooms that no longer exist, kitchens from a different era that vanish when the viewer blinks.

Paranormal investigators who have studied the house report that there is an undeniable presence within its walls -- a residual energy that seems connected not to Jesse James the legend but to the mundane domestic life he was trying to lead when it was ended by a friend's betrayal. The Jesse James Home remains one of the most visited historic sites in Missouri, and the question of whether the outlaw's spirit lingers in the house where he died continues to draw both believers and skeptics to this modest frame house in St. Joseph.