Does Gunslinger Tom Horn Haunt the American West?

Some real-life legends haunt us even if literal ghosts do not. Learn how the tales about hired gun Tom Horn caught up with him in today's episode of BrainStuff, based on this article: https://history.howstuffworks.com/history-vs-myth/tom-horn.htm

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Brainstuff, a production of iHeartRadio, Hey Brainstuff. Lorn
Volban here. As with so many colorful characters who lived
during the heyday of the American wild West, there are
a lot of uncertainties about the life of Tom Horn.
What no one disputes is that Horn killed a lot

(00:23):
of people. The notoriety he earned through bloodshed made him
an icon of the frontier, so renowned and feared that
some people believe that Horn's spirit lingers to this day,
haunting the rocky mountains and desert plains where he once
stalked his human prey. Born in eighteen sixty in Missouri,

(00:44):
Horn was the fifth of twelve children and suffered an
abusive home life that he fled when he was just fourteen.
Two years later, he became a scout for the Army
out West, where he learned Spanish and some Apache and
became an interpreter. During the Apache Wars, he played a
small role in helping translate surrender terms between famed leader
Geronimo and US forces. After the war, Horn restlessly wandered

(01:10):
the West and sometimes working as a ranch hand, prospector,
Deputy sheriff Us Marshall and Rodeo competitor after a few drinks.
Horn had a propensity for bragging about his exploits, telling
anyone with an earshot about his adventures and his courage
in the face of gunfire. But he wasn't all talk.

(01:30):
His second to none tracking skills caught the attention of
the infamous Pinkerton National Detective Agency, which hired him to
locate and apprehend wanted men throughout the West, but his
reputation for extreme violence made him a suspect in the
killings of several fugitives. Horn's behavior was a public relations
risk for Pinkerton, so the company forced him to resign

(01:52):
from his position. By then, Horn's skill set dovetailed neatly
with a series of eighteen nineties frontier conflicts. As more
and more homesteaders established ranches, they clashed with cattle barons
who had previously had free run of the land. With
more people competing for grazing land and water, the bigger,

(02:13):
more established players took extreme measures to root out the
little guys. Some went so far as paying for hired
guns like Tom Horn, who intimidated and threatened homesteaders into
abandoning their land. One man he was hired to take
care of went by the name Kell's Nickel. Nichol was

(02:35):
a Wyoming sheep herder who'd already had a run in
with a cattle baron named John C. Cobble. For the
article this episode is based on, has Stuff Works, spoke
via email with Marshall Trimble, an author and official state
storian in Arizona. He said Kell's Nichol had a lot
of enemies. The irascable rascal had managed to offend most

(02:56):
of his neighbors. In a scuffle with John Cobble, Nicol
pulled a knife and inflict did a near fatal wound
on him. Cobble carried a grudge. A Cheyenne resident had
this to say, quote, Cobble hates Nichol like the devil
hates holy water. In short, Nicholl wasn't the sort of
man you could just run off. And that's where Tom

(03:17):
Horn came in. In July of nineteen oh one, Nichol's
fourteen year old son, Willie was shot from ambush at
long range. That morning, Willy had just happened to don
his father's coat and was riding his father's horse, making
his death one of mistaken identity. The public somewhat numb

(03:39):
to the violence of the cattle wars, found fresh outrage
and the killing of a child. A law enforcement might
otherwise have looked the other way, but was suddenly prodded
into finding a culprint. In early nineteen oh two, a
law man tracked down Horn and roped him into a
drunken conversation at his office. True to form, Horn boosted

(04:00):
about his past exploits and essentially bragged about being the
trigger man in the Nickel killing, calling it one of
the best shots he had ever made. Unbeknownst to Horn,
the law man had a deputy sheriff and courts detenographer
listening to the conversation in an adjacent room. Because concepts
like entrapment and leading questions weren't a thing in the

(04:21):
early twentieth century, a judge allowed the drunken confession as
evidence of a crime. Horn was promptly convicted by a
jury and sentenced to death. Even though some witnesses presented
stories that seemed to indicate that Horn was innocent. The
public largely saw Horn as a wrongly convicted man, figuring
he was used by the cattle barons, who then allowed

(04:43):
him to take the fall for their murderous methods. A
hostiff Works also spoke with Joe Nichol, an author and
paranormal investigator with The Skeptical Inquirer. He's also a very
distant relation of Kell's. Nichol he is convinced that Horne
was guilty. He said, and not everyone who had a
few drinks would confess to murder. I know I wouldn't,

(05:06):
would you. He made it pretty clear what he did.
It's my opinion that if Tom Horn had shot and
killed Kel's first off, he probably would have gotten away
with it. If Horn was innocent in the Nickel killing,
his life choices didn't help his cause. For starters, his
reputation as a cold hearted killer was a rather obvious

(05:27):
stumbling block. Then he took the stand during his trial
and offered up incriminating statements to the prosecution. Finally, he
escaped from jail, but was quickly recaptured. It's no wonder
that the governor refused to commute his death sentence. According
to a reporter who witnessed the hanging, Horn, who was

(05:47):
just one day shy of his forty third birthday, was
the calmest man on the scene. He refused to offer
a last confession. He even refused to rat out his
wealthy employers and reportedly had the presence of mind and
to kindly congratulate one witness on his recent marriage. But
the story of Tom Horn hardly ended with his execution.

(06:09):
In some ways, it was just getting started. Tall tales
claim that his ghost haunts the West even today. Joe
Nichol has documented some of those stories. After Horn's death,
locals claimed that spirits were making eerie noises in the
county jail. Inmates were frightened, sure that Horn's restless ghost

(06:29):
was causing the ruckus. Frustrated Frontier mothers silenced their mischievous
offspring using Horn's fearsome legend. Instead of I'll turn this
car right around, they'd say, Tom Horn will get you.
In Cheyenne, locals say that the Wrangler Building is haunted.
Some suspect that Horn's ghost haunts the hallways his aperation,

(06:50):
perhaps still awaiting a fair trial, though in reality he
was jailed in a different location and at Horn's gravesite
in Colorado, visitors sometimes say they've seen a ghost and
cowboy garb swinging from a noose in the trees. But
the legend of Tom Horn is plenty scary even without

(07:11):
the supernatural embellishment. A Trimble said Horn was a mythological
figure before he was hanged, and would have been an
even greater icon had he never gone to Wyoming. But
go to Wyoming he did, setting the stage for a
tragedy that would come to define his legacy, one that
casts a long and bloody shadow in the mines of

(07:32):
Frontier descendants to this day. Today's episode is based on
the article the ghost of wild West Gunslinger Tom Horn
Still Haunts Wyoming on HowStuffWorks dot Com, written by Nathan Chandler.
Brain Stuff is production of iHeartRadio in partnership with how
stuffworks dot Com, misproduced by Tyler Kwang. Four more podcasts

(07:54):
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