Arizona's Phantom Terror

Arizona's Phantom Terror From Musty Files of Kingman Newspaper Comes Early Tale of Phantom that Terrorized All Arizona for a Time

From the yellowing files of the Mohave County Miner of February 25, 1893, comes this fantastic tale of early Arizona. Again the principal is the camel and again the mysterious hand of death reaches out. The author is unknown. Ed.

ANOTHER ghost is laid; another of the tribe of gaunt hobgoblins that keep the romance of the mysterious southern deserts is gone. Another of the unearthly dangers that the timid Mexican women used to pray against has departed.

Mizoo Hastings of Ore was the priest that exorcised this phantom. He has tanned the hide of the Red Ghost and proposes to make cowboy's boots out of it. There ought to be some compensation for the cowboys in this, for scores of them have been scared almost to death by the Red Ghost.

He first appeared ten years ago, shortly after Geronimo's disastrous raid through Southern Arizona. A couple of Mexicans washing for gold on one of the creeks that run into the San Francisco river had their tent thrown down over them and awoke in time to hear the tread of galloping hoofs and a terrific shriek. They got clear of the wreck in time to see something taller than two horses tear into the brush. They told their story at Ore the next day, and people went out to investigate. They found strange tracks in the creek mud and saw where the brush had been broken down by the passage of some great beast. But the mysterious trail was soon lost among the rocky hills, and that was the last of the Red Ghost for some days.

His next appearance was many miles away at a sheep ranch on Eagle Creek. The herders were out with the flocks, and two women with the children were alone in the ranch house. One of them had just gone to the spring for water. The other heard the baying of the ranch dogs and got to the door in time to see something awful tear through the fence and down by the spring. She heard her sister cry out, but did not dare to go to her assistance. Instead she kept her children indoors and barricaded the cabin until the men returned at night. When she told them they took their guns and went to the spring. They found the woman dead, trampled and crushed as though a troop of cavalry had run over her.

When the Coroner came up from Solomonville the only witness to the apparition testified and tried to describe it. It was red, she said, very tall and ridden by a devil. She could give no clearer description than this. She had only seen it for an instant and then covered up her face and prayed.

The Coroner's inquest resulted in the usual verdict of "death in some manner unknown to the jury," and the Coroner's jury went home with half an idea that one of the women had been murdered by the other, who had invented the story of the apparition, doubtless hav-ing heard of the experience of the min ers on Chase's creek.

After that innumerable stories were brought in about the mysterious phan-tom. One man declared that he had pursued it to the edge of one of the precipices in that country and that the phantom never stopped, but galloped straight across the valley of Black river from one cliff to the other, half a mile, as easily as if the ground had been under his hoofs instead of 400 feet below him. This fellow was posi-tive that the Red Ghost had not flown, but had simply galloped over the air. It happened that the narrator of this adventure was the same man who had told of a flying bear that he once en-countered in the Mogollons. He had also discovered a mountain of solid gold, but had been driven away from it by the Apaches and had never been able to find his way back.

It was probably a month before any reliable information about the mystery was received. It came from the Salt River country. Si Hamlin, a hunter, coming suddenly to the top of a ridge, saw across the next ravine a large ani-mal moving through the chaparral. It was half a mile way from him, but presently it came to a burnt patch, where he could see it plainly and he recognized it as a camel. There are camels in Arizona, descendents of a bunch turned loose by the Government after an unsuccessful attempt to use them for carrying soldiers' supplies across the desert. But this particular camel was more than a simple ship of the desert. The hunter could see plainly upon its back a burden. He did not have long to study the phenomenon, for the camel soon reached the edge of the clearing and disappeared in the timber. Si said that the burden on the camel's back looked to him like a man, but he wasn't sure; and there was a general idea that Si was lying, until a report came from the valley of the Verde that the camel had been seen there. By this time everybody in the Territory had heard of it, of course. Fantasia Colorado, the Mexicans called it, and the translated name hung to it. It was a splendid name to scare ten-derfeet with. The prospectors of the Verde got a shot at it. They saw it in the early morning feeding on a mesa, and crept up to within shooting distance. They fired together, but though both were good marksmen they failed to bring the camel down. It(Continued on Page 24)