The Red Ghost, the Camel Corps and Hi Jolly

With thanks to Marshall Trimble, Martha Deeringer, and Larry D. Moore, fine western writers

The old Southwest desert land was nothing to be trifled with, yet there were many who tested their mettle out on that unforgiving desert. Some succeeded ― many did not. Their bones turn up now and again these days ― and sometimes the bones of other creatures turn up, likely fossils from the prehistoric creatures that once wandered these lands. They sometimes spark an interesting old west tale.

Take for instance… dragons.

On April 26th, 1890, The Tombstone Epitaph ran an article about two cowboys out in the desert between the Huachuca and Whetstone Mountains who came upon what they described as a “winged monster resembling a huge alligator with an extremely elongated tail and an immense pair of wings.” The men described the creature as able to fly for short distances, after which it would walk on two legs, dragging its long tail behind.

The cowboys chased it for several miles until they finally got within rifle range. One took a shot but didn’t manage to inflict much damage. The wounded dragon then turned on them, but was too exhausted to make a fight, so they finished it off.

Nobody had ever heard of such a creature, so when the cowboys told their story, a crowd would gather and pay rapt attention. One version of their story (it changed from telling to telling) said the creature’s body was about four foot wide, appeared snake-like, and that it was 92 feet long with a wingspan of 160 feet. Its head was 8 feet long and was said to resemble an alligator. The eyes were large as dinner plates. The beak was about eight feet long, it had sharp teeth and the feet had huge claws. That is the version that made it into the paper.

To prove their claim, they cut off a wing tip to prove they weren’t spoofing. The newspaper reported the creature’s corpse was to be sent to a museum. But there never was a follow-up to this bizarre story.

That’s just one dragon tale. There were scores of them. This one claimed that the body had been photographed, but no photo was ever produced.

Tales about flying dragons were common in the Old West. The earliest recorded such tale originated in California in the 1830s. It took 60 years before one of the tales was given enough weight to be published in a newspaper. Knowing the publisher of The Epitaph, I suspect that even this tale was printed as satire.

Dissecting the stories, they appear to combine western European folk tales and Native American lore. They make claims of everything from flying crocodiles to dog-headed monsters, with many describing dinosaur-like flying amphibious monsters. None have ever been proven true.

I suppose it was boredom that spawned many of the tales ― not just those about dragons, but all sorts of whimsical critters. A group of cowhands or prospectors sitting around a nighttime fire can get restless. Maybe someone had a mouth harp or a squeezebox they could pull out to ease the boredom. They’d take old Irish ballads and change the words to fit current circumstances, then sing along with the music. With no instrument, someone might start spinning a tale.

Lying became a respected avocation. Cowboys would vie with each other to see who could spin the most entertaining tall tale. Some of them were good enough that they got remembered a retold at other gatherings.

Take for instance, the Red Ghost.

The Red Ghose: Courtesy Cryptid Wiki, Artist unknown

As the story goes, it was just before the outbreak of Civil War violence back east, when the Army Corps of Topographical Engineers were surveying the Arizona desert for a future wagon road from Albuquerque to Los Angeles, the desert was killing their horses and mules. I’ll get into the origin of what happened next in a follow-up story, but the engineers came up with the idea that camels used as beasts of burden would have a better likelihood of surviving the lack of water or grazing, and that intense heat. It was a brilliant idea, and it worked, but following the survey the government had no more use for the homely critters. They sold some at auction. Those that did not sell were turned loose to roam the deserts of western Arizona.

The Civil War came and went, and desert life continued as usual. Then in 1883, something happened that caused a bit of a stir.

The legend of the Red Ghost began at a lonely ranch at Eagle Creek near the Arizona-New Mexico border. As the tale goes, a woman was outside working when a devilish creature with a skeleton on its back appeared out of nowhere, the killed a woman by stomping her to death. Nobody much believed the report.

But then on a night just a few days later, a party of sleeping prospectors reported being awakened to thundering hoofs and terrifying screams stampeding through their camp. They saw nothing, but red hairs were found clinging to the brush.

The Red Ghost attacked again a few days later. A monster, described as being 30-tall knocked over two freight wagons. Again, red hairs were found in the wreckage. Suddenly, the Red Ghost was real.

These acts of terror spurred a litany of embellished campfire tales. One cowboy said he saw it kill a grizzly and eat it. Another said he chased the Red Ghost only to have it disappear in a puff of smoke. Everyone claiming to have seen it agreed ― the critter had a human skeleton riding on its back.

One cowboy came riding bareback into Phoenix, telling the tale of him just encountering the Red Ghost. Sayid he was out searching for mavericks claimed to have come upon the creature. He quickly built a loop, tossed it, and saw that he had his rope around the creature’s neck. He dallied up expecting to have the critter try to run. but this creature was no cow. Instead of running it turned, looked at the man with eyes looking like hot coals, and charged. Its broad red chest hit the horse broadside, sending the cowboy ass over teakettle across the rocks and sand. When he recovered, he looked up to see the beast and its demonic rider galloping off in a cloud of dust ― his rope and saddle dragging along behind.

These stories grew to legendary proportions, with some taking on new and horrible descriptions, Some may have been a little further from the truth than others. One told of a huge animal with blood dripping from its teeth ― another said he saw it standing 30-foot tall and snorting fire. None were taken seriously.

Then, maybe a decade after the first sighting, a rancher awoke one morning and was on his way to the outhouse when he heard a snort. He looked over his shoulder and spied the Red Ghost grazing in his tomato patch. Startled but not unprepared, he quickly grabbed his Winchester that he kept in the outhouse “just in case”, drew a bead, and dropped the monster with a single shot to the heart.

The rancher looked at what he had, poked it with the rifle barrel to be sure it was dead, scratched his head, then called the sheriff.

The sheriff got there, nudged it with the toe of his boot, scratched his head, then called in a team of “experts.”

Expert at what I couldn’t tell you, but they set about their work, acting at least like they knew what they were doing. The examination of the corpse convinced all three experts that this was indeed the fabled Red Ghost.

It was also just a very ugly specimen of a quite normal-sized camel ― not some 30-foot, blood dripping, fiery eyed, smoke snorting monster. The animal’s back was badly scarred where the strands of rawhide that had been used to hold the body of a man, now reduced to its skeletal remains and tattered clothing, had bitten into its hide.

So, the mystery of the Red Ghost was solved, except for how a human body came to be attached to the back of a camel. That part remains to this day, a cruel mystery.

This is a true story. I swear it is.

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Tomorrow I’ll continue with the second part of this short series, explaining the presence of Middle-Eastern pachyderms in the desert Southwest of the 19^th century United States.  I sure hope you get the same joy reading these tales as I do by writing them.