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Throughout the early 19th century various
proposals were made to use camels imported from the Middle East to transport
supplies in the deserts of the southwest.
A proposal by then Secretary of War Jefferson Davis was finally approved
in 1855 which led to the establishment of the U.S. Camel Corps.
While the camels were found useful, their big
drawback was that they spooked the horses and mules, creating chaos in the
camp. After a twenty year experiment the
Camel Corps was disbanded, and the camels auctioned off. Well, most of them were auctioned off, but
some were let go in the wild. Producing
one of Arizona’s strangest legends, that of the Red Ghost.
The story began in 1883 when two ranchers
went to check on their cattle, leaving their wives at home, alone. One of the women was outside fetching water
when the dog started barking furiously.
Then there was a loud scream. The
woman in the house barricaded the door and looked out the window to see a huge
red beast being ridden by the devil. When
the two ranchers returned, they found one woman trampled to death and the other
in shock.
A few days later a group of prospectors
reported the apparition riding through their camp. Red hair was found at the site. The next sighting reported that the creature
was thirty feet tall and had overturned two wagons. The legend grew. The monster was said to disappear into thin
air when chased. The monster killed and
ate grizzly bears. A cowboy lassoed the beast, but he and his horse were dragged by the creature before losing it. The cowboy reported that the mysterious rider
was a skeleton. A few months later five
men shot at the beast, missing the camel but shooting the head off the
skeleton. The skull still had traces of
skin and hair attached.
Fact and fantasy swirled around the strange phantom until
1893 when a local rancher named Hastings found the giant creature
eating grass in his yard. He killed it with one shot from his Winchester rifle.
The
beast from Hell was discovered to be a feral red-haired camel left over from
the days of the U.S. Camel Corps. Leather straps had bound the skeleton so
tightly, and for so long, to the camel that the animal’s back and sides were
scarred. No one knows why the animal had a dead man strapped to it, but some
speculated that this was the last attempt of a dying prospector to escape the
killing desert sun.
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