Some version of this story was formed in the years after installation of the courthouse windows, and repeated in oral histories. In the later 20th century, the mythic account was included in compilations of ghost stories and folk tales published by whites. In this period of more than 80 years after events, separate events had repeatedly been combined into one myth: Henry Wells' story was included in Kathryn Tucker Windham's book of Alabama ghost stories, "13 Alabama Ghosts and Jeffrey" (1969); "Ghost Stories from the American South" (1985), edited by W.K. McNeil; and "Phantom Army of the Civil War and Other Southern Ghost Stories" (1997), edited by Frank Spaeth and selected from "FATE" magazine.