The Red Ghost of the Arizona Desert

In the 1880s, ranchers across the Arizona Territory started reporting sightings of a monster. It was a massive red beast that trampled through camps and gardens, with a human skeleton riding on its back.

The First Attack

The story of the Red Ghost began in the spring of 1883, near Eagle Creek in southeastern Arizona. Two men rode out one morning to check on their livestock, leaving the women and children at the ranch.

One of the women went out to fetch water and didn’t come back. The other, watching from the house, later described a huge reddish animal with something horrible lashed to its back. Searchers found the first woman trampled to death, with clumps of red hair left on her body and on a nearby bush, along with enormous hoofprints that matched no animal they knew.

The Legend Grows

For 10 years, the sightings continued, with ever-evolving stories about this terrifying creature. Miners along the Verde River fired at the beast, and as it fled, a human skull tumbled from its back and landed in the dirt. Some tellings had the Red Ghost standing 30 feet tall, killing a grizzly bear, or vanishing into thin air when men gave chase. Every version kept the same horrible detail of a demonic rider on its back.

What the Red Ghost Actually Was

A Salt River rancher named Cyrus Hamblin was the first to find out what the creature really was. He got close enough to see that the “monster” was a camel, with the remains of a man tied onto its back. And in 1893, farmer Mizoo Hastings woke to find the camel grazing in his garden, and he killed it with a single shot from his rifle.

Upon examining the body, he found leather straps wound so tightly around the poor animal that they had scarred its hide. The rider was gone by then, shaken loose somewhere in the desert over the years, and no one ever learned who the man had been or why he ended up bound to a camel’s back.

This camel was no monster – just a scared animal. It was part of the U.S. Army Camel Corps, a pre-Civil War experiment that imported camels to haul supplies across the Southwest. Food and water were in short supply, so camels were able to work longer, carry more, and consume resources less frequently than mules or horses could. The program collapsed once the Civil War started, and so those camels were auctioned off, sent to zoos and circuses, or just turned loose in the desert, where they survived on their own for a while.

About the Author

As the editor in chief of Frayed Passport, my goal is to help you build a lifestyle that lets you travel the world whenever you want and however long you want, and not worry about where your next paycheck will come from. I've been to 20+ countries and five continents, lived for years as a full-time digital nomad, and have worked completely remotely since 2015. If you would like to share your story with our community, or partner with Frayed Passport, get in touch with me using the form on our About page.

Featured image by Lina White on Unsplash