How Did Red Ghost Come to Have A Skeleton On His Back?

[Bob Boze Bell]

July 14, 2012

Working today on a very ambitious scene illustrating how the legendary Red Ghost came to have a skeleton on it's back.

 

Allegedly, at a remote Arizona camp, a raw recruit was having trouble staying on his camel and an officer lashed him to the beast then quirted the camel and sent the two on their way. Of course, the story is full of holes (the recruit couldn't untie himself?) Very hard to believe, but this is how myths and legends begin. I picture this as being Fort Mojave, Camp Beale or Camp Hualapai, but the distant mountains kind of look like Four Peaks, so maybe Fort McDowell. Need to finish it tomorrow. Off to a dinner party.

 

"If all the girls who attended the Yale prom were laid end to end, I wouldn't be a bit surprised."

—Dorothy Parker

[Wolfgang]

Bob . . . this needs investigation . . . get a camel . . . tie someone on . . . let the camel loose for a few years . . . track it down via the GPS chip that you've installed . . . then paint  a picture of the result, . . . . .      ;)

[Bob Boze Bell]

i have someone in mind who I'd like to tie on that camel.

[Murray A. Gewirtz]

Bob, how come your skeleton is missing the top half of his skull? Maybe it came of riding the camel out in the desert without a hat! Probably cracked open his head like an egg, and fried whatever he had of brains!

[Sue Cauhape]

According to the story on this website:

http://arizonaoddities.com/2010/03/the-legend-of-red-ghost/

a group of prospectors saw the legendary beast and shot at it. The skeleton's skull fell to the ground and still had flesh and hair attached to it. This is an amazing story and a great mystery. I'll vote for something akin to Josie Wales sending his newly-dead companion through an enemy camp to by time for his own escape through enemy territory. But that's just one of thousands of possibilities. The mystery IS tantalizing, isn't it?

[Bob Boze Bell]

The Outlaw Josie Wales, the Clint Eastwood movie. Sue is describing a plot point where Josie sent a dead man on horseback into a Redleg camp to throw the attention off so he could escape.

[anthony martin]

  Its possible that some drunken cowboys could have done this as a morbid prank.

[Nicholas Narog]

The story of the Red Ghost is a perfect example of how myths have their origins in fact. I can just imagine a group of guys sitting around a fire telling tales of the 30 foot tall beast that attacked their camp... when in reality it was a camel. 

For a corpse to be tied on the camels back I assume he must have been tied down on his chest. I wouldn't be surprised to find out this was a murder victim. Either he died on the camel or was killed before being tied down. Either way- the camel must have been pretty unhappy with a decaying corpse on his back and ropes severely cutting into his sides and back.

[Nicholas Narog]

Reading more about the Legend of the Red Ghost- it seems that the caretaker for the camels in the US Cavalry was a Syrian man named Hadji Ali. After many of the camels were auctioned off, Ali (known to Americans as "Hi Jolly") kept a small herd of his own. Some years later some of his camels went missing in a sandstorm. Ali went searching for them and the tale is that his dead body was found strapped to a camels back. 

This may or may not be the same camel that terrorized many camps and homesteads- but it may be how the two legends became connected and thus the "Skeleton on the Red Ghost's back."

[Bob Boze Bell]

I love all these variations and this is one of those damned-if-that-don't-beat-all tales we will never solve. I do think there are the seeds of the first cowboy camel comic strip character: Hi Jolly, 1,001 Arizonian Nights.

[Kent Fevurly]

I like the1001 Arizonian Nights idea, Bob.  Who do you have in mind for Sheherazade?