Episodic Memory (EM), or ‘autobiographical memory’, is a prelinguistic neurocognitive system that allows our ‘mind’s eye’ to sequentially elicit a what-where-when binding of images, intentions, and actions (Tulving 2005). Much is known about its neurobiological underpinnings, but its temporal phenomenology is still being debated. This has led to incompatible accounts of EM’s ‘content’, either as being a ‘simulation’, or the causal result of a ‘real’ experience.This presentation will examine examples of EM under the logic of Peirce’s late definition of semiosis, in which there is a temporal influence involving six correlates. This approach may solve ontological dilemmas about the modal reality of episodic experience, or how (1) the formal qualities of a lived present may stand for (2) the actual existents of an enacted past and (3) the virtual possibilities of a future.It will be explained how mental imagery (Kiverstein & Rietveld 2018) works as a cognizable medium communicating three modalities of being: the universes of “Possibles” (e.g. ideas), “Existents” (e.g. things and facts), and “Necessitants” (e.g. habits and laws) (EP2: 478-479).Differently from the 1903’s account of Phaneroscopy, as the study of lived experience “quite regardless of whether it corresponds to any real thing or not” (CP 1.284), the hexadic system of 1908 affords the possibility to test semiosis in relation with reality (Jappy 2020: 116-121). This move not only outclasses the materialistic dichotomy between ‘reality’ and ‘fiction’, but it connects EM studies with the more nuanced notion of virtuality (Esposito 2003) and virtual cognition (CP 6.372).