Arizona Red Ghost Was Camel

The Red Ghost legend began in 1883 after a demonic-looking creature allegedly roamed the Arizona frontier and trampled a rancher's wife to death near Eagle Creek. Witnesses described a huge reddish beast carrying a decaying human skeleton strapped to its back. In 1893, a farmer named Mizoo Hastings shot the animal in his yard and discovered a camel scarred by tightly fastened leather straps, although no one learned why the corpse had been attached. The creature was likely connected to the U.S. Army's Camel Corps experiment, approved in 1855 after Secretary of War Jefferson Davis proposed using camels for transportation in the arid West.

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