Hello everyone, welcome to another Morbogulment! Yay! Woo! This is the podcast for people that wish it was Halloween every day.
Because you are our people. My name is Katie Nieborg, but everyone on the internet knows me as stick. Joining me, once again, is Red the questionably uncredited. Along with an astral projection of Toki the Sound Guy.
Just about as good as him being here in person. Every couple of weeks we bring a spooky piece of history, Monster Lore, or Paranormal Legend to the table, and then we talk about it. Yeah! However, you may be wondering where we've been for the past year.
If you've noticed the long time stamp between last episode and this episode, it's been a hot minute. It's been almost exactly a year. Absolutely. So, Red, would you like to tell our friends listening in?
The spooky tale of what happened? One year ago, almost to the day, we came home from a Halloween outing to find that the massive rainstorm outside had all come into our apartment because of the clogged drain on the roof. Oh no! We lost all of our furniture in half of the room, and then our apartment managers decided not to do anything about the mold that then began to grow in our ceilings at walls, so we couldn't live there anymore.
We moved in with Styx's parents for about eight months. Thanks, Mom. Thanks, Mom. And now, finally, we're here in our own place again!
Yay! We even had a couch for the first time in a year. It's fantastic. I love sitting.
I guess that was kind of a weird statement. We're in a wonderful apartment. I'm very excited. It's so nice to have all our stuff in our own space in a place to record.
However, there is a train that runs directly in front of our windows. So, if you hear an annoying ding-ing in the background every 20 minutes, we'll do our best to cut that out, but we're working with it. It goes by every 10, let's be honest. But we have no idea how audible it is.
We're gonna do what we can. But yes, so welcome friends to our new apartment. Yes, we are so excited that you guys can join us again and that we can do this podcast again. For the first few episodes, Red is going to be hosting while I figure out how to, write, record, put out these podcast episodes in between my new promotion at my job, which has me extremely busy all of the time.
Yeah, a lot has happened in the past year. It's been wild. She's now a assistant facilities manager, so it's taking way more of her time and energy. I got four hours of sleep last night.
Y'all, that's not hyperbole. I was running an outage. I'm fucking tired. But I'm hyped to be here.
So, Red, Red, Red, Red, Red, Red, Red. Red, yes. Will you tell me the story? Would you like a spooky story?
You have a story, buddy. I have a story. Fantastic. I'd love to hear it.
All right. I am extremely excited to be telling a story in front of all these people. I think I'm a little nervous there. Yeah.
I'm trying to figure out how to, I'm looking at notes. Yes. This is weird because even the mini episodes where I told stories, I was just kind of making shit up. I'm like, I'm in the host seat and it's comfy, but it's a little weird.
I understand. Today's tale is the story of the Red Ghost, which I thought very fitting. Oh, my name's Red. His name's Red.
Yeah. So, Red, is this your ghost? Yeah. Red, have you read?
You know, hold on. I said that I was going to have you guess what had like the truth of the story, but you need to wait until we get farther in the story before you guess. Before the M9 Shyamalan twist comes out. Yes.
All right. I'm so ready. So, this story, the idea for the story was actually sent in by a listener. Oh, did you know that?
No. Okay. I had no idea. This is delightful.
Yeah. This was sent in, hang on. I'm going to get their name wrong. Um, this was sent in by Dad.
Oh, Dad. Thanks, Dad. They said. Yeah, no, my Dad.
My Dad. Absolutely. Well, I mean, he is a listener. Yeah.
He, my Dad absolutely, uh, sent this idea to me. And it was so, so right up my alley that I realized that this had to be the first episode that I hosted. Oh, I'm so tickled. I'm so excited for this.
Let's dive into it. All right. Our tale begins in 1883. Ooh, a fine year.
This is the tale of Arizona's Red Ghost, and I'm going to take you to the first sighting of it. Okay. And then I'm going to walk you through a couple of the other stories and sightings. And then before we get to the end, I'm actually going to have you guess as to what's going on here.
Oh boy. I feel like the shoe is on the other foot. Is that the right saying? No.
I mean, that's not saying. Mm. The tables have turned. But since I like science, I have picked you a story that has some science in it.
Oh boy. All right. Okay. Or at least has some sort of, you know, logic to it.
It's my time. Well, it's your time. Okay. The first sighting.
Imagine if you will, a remote ranch out near Eagle Creek in Southeastern Arizona out in the desert. I'm imagining. I'm imagining. I'm imagining.
Yep. Two women had been left to take care of things at home while the men were out checking on their livestock. They're out in the middle of the desert, so it's dangerous. They try to stay home, you know, as much as possible.
But eventually one of the women had to go out and fetch some water. But she never returned. The woman who stayed back at the house heard the dog start to bark. That's not a good sound.
Like a lot. Uh oh. Like they were going fucking crazy. Okay.
This was quickly followed by horrible screaming. No. The woman was too terrified to leave the house because like I said, they're out in the middle of nowhere. They were instructed to just stay home.
She was too terrified to leave. And so she listened to the chaos and hid in her house for the men to come back. Yeah. Fair.
Mm hmm. She had kids to watch. So when the men finally came home, they went out to go see what happened to the woman that didn't come back from the spring. And what they found was her body that had been kind of trampled to death.
Oh. Various accounts describe just how trampled to death. Oh. She was and they're all bad.
On a scale of like, oh, that's not good to like actual pancake. Yeah. Yeah. Like this was not a bludgeoning.
This was a trampling. Okay. Flattened. Yeah.
Oh here. There are newspaper reported later quote unquote trampled and crushed as though a troop of cavalry had run over her. That's that level of trampling. That's harsh.
Um surrounding the body were enormous cloven hoofprints. Well, that brings one thing to mind very quickly. And clumps of reddish hair. And okay.
And to wrap this incident up, some reports say that the woman inside the house had gotten a glimpse out the window before she hid. And all she could describe was some kind of giant red creature being ridden by a devil. Okay. So this is sighting number one.
Okay. So I have my first theory for what it is. I'm going to keep that. Good.
Good. Let's move on to sighting number two. A few days later, some prospectors were panning along a river when the red ghost beast attacked in the middle of the night. As they described it, they heard a wild scream and pounding of hooves.
And then their tents were trampled down around their heads basically. Just trampled while they were sleeping. No one died. Oh, okay.
But you know, they scrambled out of their tents and the ones who managed to catch sight of the creature described it as a impossibly giant monstrous horse. Okay. Some also mentioned bat wings, but there was probably they also mentioned that there was some big barrels of whiskey nearby. So they're probably that's just cherry.
You know how he gets to take it with some take it with the pile. I mean, I see my sea giant bat wings on my dog when I have to. In the morning when they returned it because they all ran off when they returned to the area in the morning, they found the area covered in giant cloven hoof prints and bits of red hair. Okay.
This is how they knew it was the same thing. Okay. All right. We have a common sort of thing.
Yes. Tying it all together. And so of course from there further sighting spread. Oh, absolutely.
As you would imagine, most people chalked up the sighting of a huge red beast ridden by a demon to mere tall tales. And at least some of them probably were. One person swore that they'd seen the thing kill and eat a grizzly bear. Whoa.
That's fucking metal. I mean, and one man claimed to have chased it for some time after until it vanished into thin air. Okay. Well, I mean, everyone's uncle.
Yes. So that. So then there's this third sighting. Is this our throws a wrench into things sighting?
This is our all right with these three sightings combined. What is it? Okay. So this is this is the trifecta.
Yes. This is the what's the Zelda thing? The triforce. The triforce.
I wasn't going to help you. The triforce of evidence. Okay. So evidence number three, sighting number, solid sighting number three.
The one that seemed like it had the most credibility. It comes a couple months after the first attack. A group of miners managed to come upon the creature while it was grazing. And so of course they started shooting at it.
Because that's what you do. Arizona? Arizona in 1883. Shoot it.
Shoot it. So they started firing at it. They either clipped it and it didn't matter. Or.
I just didn't. They missed it. Yeah. Or they missed.
Okay. Because it just ran off into the distance. Got it. However, as it loped off into the sunset, something fell off of it.
Okay. When the miners went to pick it up, they found as the Mojave County minor newspaper described it. Oh, hang on. Mojave.
County. Minor. Like ding ding. Minor.
Not like my small children. Right. Okay. Newspaper.
Got it. Described it. A human skull with a few shreds of flesh and hair still clinging to it. Um.
What's that doing on a, a, okay. So the red ghost grew to local legend. And for 10 years, these sort of sightings continued in southern Arizona. And then in 1893, basically 10 years later, the beast was finally brought down.
What? Tell me your thoughts. What? They actually caught it?
Wait, they actually caught something? This has an ending. Oh. Oh, I thought this would just disappear into obscurity.
Like most of them. No. Okay. This is why I liked this story.
Oh, Dix. I was not ready for this. Okay. So at first, I'm like, all right.
Lady trampled. Probably Satan riding a giant cow. This sort of the angle I'm going for. Uh huh.
Like a literal cowboy Satan. A literal cowboy Satan. Yee-haw. And then after the second story, I'm thinking, okay, maybe it's like a majestic sort of horse.
Like, like maybe a horseman of the apocalypse sort of horse. Uh huh. Or like a really fuzzy horse that like Satan is shaving. Because all of this hair keeps being left.
I'm really actually, I think that only a little bit of hair has been left. But in my brain, it's just like big clumps of like a ginger's hair being left all over the place. Um, and I assume that the hair on the skull was also red. No.
No, it was just it could have been any hair. Yeah. Okay. So after the third one, it's a big, it's a big thing.
And it ran off and like a skull rolled off of it. Fell right off of it. Fell right off of it. My theory is it's me stalling.
Because I don't have an idea of what it could be. I'm laughing too loud for this poor microphone. Was it like, okay, I'm gonna go hog wild. I, and like, uh, no, that doesn't make any sense.
What does it? It doesn't lose in my mind. I was gonna say like a grittously bear. They just went hog wild and like spat somebody up as it was running away.
It was freezing. And it was freezing. Any of the stuff. Was it like a really red buffalo?
I mean, that's not a terrible guess. That's, that's, that's the most sensible thing that has crossed my brain so far. So I think I'm gonna stick with buffalo. Like some weird prehistoric, um, sort of big, just a beefy red haired buffalo.
All right. With horns or something or an escaped animal from the zoo. I'm back in with a plan. Like what?
Like a, like a what? Like a fucking tiger. I don't know. Cloven hooves.
Crazy. I know. I'm really, I just want it to be a big like predator animal. Well, it's, can you think of any predators with cloven hooves?
No. It's a tiger in a cow outfit. Wow, you did it. You got it.
I solved the mystery. You solved my red ghost puzzle. Please, red end mine and probably the audience is suffering. Tell me what it was.
A farmer. A farmer. Saw, no. Okay.
A farmer spotted the beast in his garden. Leveled his trusty, probably winchester rifle out the window. As you do. Shot and killed the thing.
Okay. It was a huge red camel. The pause you just heard was my jaw dropping. A camel?
A camel. So, so. Was it escaped from a zoo? Huge reddish camel.
They went and inspected it and its back was scarred from where leather rawhide straps had been attached to it, biting into its flesh in several areas over the course of many years. Oh, no. At least some version of the story includes a saddle as well. Oh, no.
But what's important is the leather straps. Oh, no. Where a human body had been tied to it. I saw it going there and I was helpless to stop it.
No. Well, that'll do. So, not sure if there actually was a saddle or not. Not sure if the guy was alive before he was tied on or not.
But all versions seem to agree that a human had been lashed to the back of this camel for a long time. That's gnarly, man. So what about this camel, right? Yeah.
Are you ready to hear? There's more. Okay. Have you ever heard of the US camel core?
Um, I regret to say that I'm not. Please tell me what this is. So there's maybe not a long, but it is an extremely colorful history full of some pretty wild characters about the attempted camel era in the US. Oh, that I cannot completely cover here.
Okay. And I honestly hope that some other podcast will describe it in detail. I'm looking at you the dollop. If you haven't done this already.
Because really, this is the part of the episode that I had the hardest time putting together and guessing how long it would take. Because every time I thought I'd gotten all of the highlights, I'd read another article and there would be completely new crazy stuff. Oh, it's wild. I'm this.
I thought my mind's already been blown. I have some highlights. Okay. All right.
I'm going to bask in it. Give it to me. This is the history that leads up to this red ghost occurring. Okay.
There were several rounds of camel importation that followed around this time, but the first and biggest was on behalf of the US army. All right. Nearly three decades earlier than the red ghost story, the United States government approved $30,000 to bring camels into the country as an experiment. I feel like we wasted money on weirder things.
I mean, you're not wrong. But sure, sure. Yes. And this followed many years of various people having tried to get something like this started.
So are they like trying to train combat camels? Well, okay. The idea of an animal who could theoretically hold much more than a horse or a mule, travel farther on little rest or water, and already was suited for desert terrain, was very appealing to this whole, you know, go west thing that was happening. Strategy camels.
Yeah. Well, travel. Yeah. Travel camels.
Yeah. Travel camels. I mean, is what camels are primarily? Okay.
Exactly. So these, there were camel fans and they were hoping that the camels could be used in the military, could be used to haul cargo, scout future roads and territories, carry the mail to remote outposts, etc. Yeah. That actually sounds, now I think about it.
That doesn't sound like a terrible idea aside from, I don't think camels do a good job of living here. There were a couple problems. Okay. First though, I need to tell you about one of these camel fans.
Okay. Just quickly because he's one of those guys that I think needs an entire podcast episode about him sometime. All right. One of those unique people from history.
I mean, you've already said he's a camel fan. Well, this is already after he's had a weird and storied history with the American West. All right. By this point, his name is Lieutenant Edward F.
Beale. All right. As described by American History.com, Beale's original commission was oddly for a man chiefly identified with the Western deserts in the US Navy, in which he had enlisted in 1836 at the age of 14. In 1846, he and Kit Carson had rescued the US troops besieged near San Diego by crawling through the Mexican lines to bring help.
Another of his exploits had been carrying the first gold from Suttler's Mill in California over land to Washington, DC. Dang. It's a long walk. Yeah.
So this is this guy. So he resigned in the Navy in 1851 to devote himself to Western exploration, accepting an army of leutendency and was assigned to the US's first and last camel corps. That's that's gotta be weird when you're interviewing for a new job. You know, you have that metal job that you just sort of did because you were trying stuff out and he was into this though.
Oh, okay. He was into this camel corps. He's going he's going straight. This was like this was like right up his alley.
All right. Sorry to camel fan. He's applying for the camel job. Yeah, he was tasked to survey a route from Fort Defiance, New Mexico across the deserts of New Mexico and Arizona to the frontier of California.
I read something about it's like half the length of Route 66, which means nothing to you. Yep. Okay. Jell to be hard.
Okay. For the expedition, he chose roughly 70 of the best US camels and he basically falls in love with camels along the way. Suddenly, this is not a horror story and more of the romance story between a man and his camels. He wrote, my admiration for camels increases daily with my experience of them in his official report.
No, I was joking. He even had a favorite giant white camel named Said and he cared for it more than most frontiers men's cared for their horses. Please. He ran many tests comparing camels to horses and mules against the various loads and terrains and all of this, this journey that he did and all of these tests and an incident where one of his friends used camels to sort of impromptu charge a band of attacking Native Americans to scare them away, the first and only camel charge and only camel charge.
But how surprised were they? Very. They were extremely surprised. But all of this finally convinced the War Department and in December of 1858, the Secretary of War formally declared the experiment to success and recommended to Congress the importation of a thousand more camels.
Why did they not teach us about this in history class? Well, I mean the importation didn't happen because the Civil War happened instead. Oh, oh that, oh that Civil War. And they were like, this is kind of more important.
Okay, yeah that's fair. The fact that they didn't import a thousand more camels is probably actually very good for the camels. Oh good. Because outside of their few enthusiastic fans, cow hands and soldiers basically hated them.
Oh. They didn't know how to treat them. Camels fight back much more than mules do. That's true.
Okay. And so between being passed from one hand to the next, set free, sold to zoos and whatever other things their handlers wanted to do with them. When the project was formally abandoned in 1863, there were only 30 some left to be auctioned off in California by the Army. They were all kind of scattered around by that point.
Aw. The camel core was officially over. Oh that's kind of sad now. I was getting really excited for this camel project.
Yeah, well I mean there's actually a lot to read about it. I might go read about it after this. Wow. Yeah, everybody should.
I'm like, okay, this is either the spooky things podcast or the camel podcast. I got to have one. Yeah. But so that's where all these camels appeared in Arizona from being set free during or after the camel core debacle.
Wow. And so 30 years later, this one camel is still just kicking around. Yeah, either. Maybe literally.
Very literally. Either a leftover from the camel core or one of its descendants. Jeez. Yeah.
And so like with the fact that there was a saddle and a rider, you know, who knows what the exact truth behind the red ghost is, it's generally agreed that it is something that actually happened in some capacity involving one of these old camels. But the story of why a human had been strapped to it is a mystery. It could have been a punishment. Yeah.
A warning, a really cruel prank. One speculated story and I see why people kind of stick stick to this one is like, yeah, this is probably what happened is that a young soldier was afraid of learning how to ride a camel because these soldiers had to deal with these camels. And so his fellow soldiers strapped him on to one to help him get over his fear. And when they slapped it, you know, to get it running, they couldn't catch it again.
Oh, well, beans. And they ran off into the distance ever to be seen again. Whoops. Well, yep.
So that's the that's the usual story that you will hear along with the legend. Sightings of wild camels continued through the turn of the century with what was said to be the last one named Topsie. She has her own amazing story. Dying in a zoo in April of 1933, some still claimed that there might even still be camels still rolling roaming out in the most remote parts of the US and legends apparently continue to abound about the ghost of a giant red camel with a headless rider wandering the deserts of Arizona.
Oh my god. I don't know whether this is silly or genuinely frightening. Yeah, it's like it's like the headless horseman, but on a camel. It's so much weirder.
So much weirder. Maybe not as fast, but it sure kicks hard. Spits at you. So I have one more tiny ghost camel story if you would like to hear it.
I mean, what better time to hear a ghost camel when it's never going to come up again. Give me that ghost camel. I wrote it down for if we had a couple minutes to spare at the end of the episode. It really did fit.
I really did just want to excuse the tell a ghost animal story. I kind of want to do a whole episode about ghost animals. Oh, please, I love that. Okay.
Okay. The story goes that a prospector named Jake. Jake. Lot three camels from that army auction in California.
He loved those camels, even though they were just as ill-tempered and difficult to handle as he had feared. Did he love them enough to write letters about his favorite one because that was that's hard to talk. I do think he actually had a favorite camel. Oh, it doesn't say what his name was though.
But after he'd hit upon some gold, him being a prospector, he loaded up his camels and trucked to the ore into town to sell. And while he was talking about his success at the local saloon, a man named Paul Adams heard his story and got greedy. When Jake headed back out to the mine, Paul followed him. And after he'd settled down to camp for the night, Paul attacked and killed him.
Paul knows thinking that this must have been the location of the mine. It wasn't. And in addition to this, one of the camels attacked in defense of its owner. Paul managed to shoot it dead, but it did give him one good bite before it went.
And then he turned into a wicked camel. He turned into a wicked camel, right? No. No, but they say that they found a piece of cloth in the dead camel's mouth when they found it.
Oh goodness. So after this, Paul began a desperate search of the mine since Jake had been smart enough to not go directly back to the mine's relocation. So Paul started searching all over for this mine. He knew it had to be there until finally one night, the ghost of Jake on the back of his ghost camel appeared out of the darkness and chased the terrified Paul Adams all the way back to town, where he ran straight to the sheriff's office to turn himself in.
Oh my God. Yeah, ghost camel. Ghost camel. Ghost camel's revenge.
Ghost camel to revenge. Ghost camel. Revenge of Jake's camel. One version of the story I read goes on to say that Jake appeared one final time to give one of his friends the location of the mine and his two remaining camels.
Oh, that's sweet. What a nice ghost. Yeah. And possibly ghost camel.
Yeah. Aw. So there you go. Those are my ghost camel.
Sorry. What a roller coaster. We've had ops. We've had downs.
We've had a lot of camels. We've had a surprising amount of murder. Just a little murder. And I guess just death.
Yeah. Well, okay. Just a little bit of death. Definitely lots of camels in the Spooky Deserts of Arizona.
Well, that was wonderful. Dude, did you like being in the listening seat? This was fun. Yeah.
It's very relaxing actually. I see why you do this. Yeah. No, there's no notes to juggle.
Wow. Just got to make sure you laugh and pretend that you're listening. I love it. Yeah, like that.
Aw. Well, thank you very, very much for taking the time to write this and sharing a story with everyone. I had a lot of fun. I'm so glad.
You did so great. Aw, thank you. And thank you audience for joining us, whether you were with us a year ago or whether this is your first time tuning in to listen. Yeah, gosh, we've missed this.
We've missed you. And as always, if you like this episode and want to support us doing more episodes like it, one chat over to iTunes and give us a rating and a review. We probably desperately need it after being gone for a year. Imagine our number of subscribers has gone down a little bit.
I can't imagine the algorithms are very happy with our race. It's just bots left. Let's be honest, bots and then like our parents and... I love robots though, so it's fine.
Yeah. I don't mind talking to an audience of robots. If you have a suggestion for a topic that you'd like us... Be like my dad.
If someone other than our dad has a topic... Anyway, if you've got a topic you want us to talk about, feel free to send it over to Morbid Moment Podcast at gmail.com. You can also find us on Facebook if you just search for Morbid Moment Podcast. There you can find updates about what we're doing with the show, smokey places we visited, notifications of when our apartment floods and we have to take a break.
Yeah, just generally a great place to find updates. We'll be back soon with another episode and in the meantime, have a very happy Halloween and remember to stay Morbid. Yay! It's so much time to sleep now.
I'm so tired. Four hours. Good night, everybody.