It was 1883, and two ranchers were checking their cattle near Eagle Creek in eastern Arizona.
Back at the ranch, one of their wives suddenly heard the dogs barking—followed by a terrified scream from outside.
She looked through the window and saw something she couldn’t explain: an enormous reddish creature charging across the property. On its back appeared to be a strange, humanlike figure.
When the ranchers returned, they reportedly found one of the women trampled to death. The next morning, they followed unusually large hoofprints and discovered clumps of reddish hair caught in the bushes.
A few days later, prospectors reported that a huge animal had torn through their campsite during the night. More red hair was found nearby.
Then a rancher named Cyrus Hamblin encountered it.
Hamblin said the creature was a camel—but that wasn’t the strangest part. Strapped across its back was what appeared to be the body of a man.
Not surprisingly, many people didn’t believe him.
But weeks later, miners near the Verde River spotted the creature and fired their rifles at it. As it ran away, something fell from its back. When the men approached, they reportedly found a human head with pieces of hair and dried skin still attached.
A later cowboy claimed to have gotten close enough to see that the camel was carrying a headless body.
By then, the creature had earned a name:
The Red Ghost.
Stories spread across the Arizona Territory. Some claimed it stood 30 feet tall, knocked over wagons, vanished when chased and even killed a grizzly bear. Like most legends, it apparently became bigger and more dangerous with every retelling.
But the camel part of the story was entirely possible.
Before the Civil War, the U.S. Army imported camels to see if they could transport supplies across the hot, dry Southwest. The experiment worked surprisingly well, but due to the Civil War the Army’s Camel Corps was abandoned. Some camels were sold, while others escaped and roamed the desert for years.
In 1893, rancher Mizoo Hastings reportedly found the Red Ghost eating turnips in his garden and shot it.
There was no skeleton on its back by then—but the camel was still covered in a web of knotted rawhide straps. Some had reportedly cut deeply into its skin and left permanent scars, suggesting that something really may have been tied to it years earlier.
Was this actually the legendary Red Ghost?
We may never know who was strapped to the camel—or whether all the eyewitness stories were true.
What we do know is that Arizona once had wild camels roaming the desert, and at least one was found covered in old rawhide straps.
Honestly, that’s strange enough without exaggerating anything.
So the next time someone tells you Arizona is just cactus, sunshine and rattlesnakes, remind them that we also had a possibly haunted camel carrying a headless rider.
Have a great afternoon,
Joy, Jen, Kim, Kathy, Coloradas, Maxfield, Dr Shriner and Dr Ring
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