Case file · Cryptid
The Red Ghost
In 1883 a woman was trampled to death at a ranch near Eagle Creek, Arizona; red hair on the brush and huge tracks pointed to a feral camel, and riders soon swore it carried a dead man strapped to its back.
1883 CE · 33.25, -109.45 · status: legend
The account
The camels came from the US Army's 1850s Camel Corps, whose most famous driver was the Ottoman-born Muslim cameleer Hadji Ali ('Hi Jolly'), buried at Quartzsite in 1902. In 1893 a farmer named Mizoo Hastings shot the 'Red Ghost' in his garden; it still bore rawhide straps.
The sceptical view
The animal was real; the skeleton rider may be embroidery, though a cruel punishment by tying a man to a camel is one theory.