Hey everybody.
Welcome back to another episode of Cryptic Cocktail Party, a show where we have a few
jokes, share a few laughs, take a dive into the unknown.
I'm your host Dave Jones, as always, but my wonderful cohost Sarge.
How's it going, Sarge?
Whoa, what's up?
I went to church this morning.
God damn it.
We'll get to that in a second.
Today we are also joined by a very special guest.
We have the representative for Latinos against spooky shit and cohost of the spooky boys
podcast Jonathan Perez.
What's going on, man?
Hola, buenas tardes.
Just vibing on this wonderful Sunday post Thanksgiving and election bullshit.
Just surviving, thriving, trying to keep my head above water.
Yeah, so you're not only just the Latinos against spooky shit guy, but you did just
start a new podcast.
How's the reception of that been going?
It's been fantastic.
I'm super excited about it.
Yeah, we just hit our first thousand downloads, which we just launched like three weeks ago,
so we're super hyped on it.
And yeah, merch coming, Patreon stuff, behind the scenes stuff.
In the future, we're going to be doing recordings on site of like haunted locations and stuff
to see if we pick up anything.
So yeah, I know a lot of fun stuff on the way.
You know, if you guys ever come in to do like a like a recording on site at a haunted site
in New England, I am there.
Let's run it, dude.
I'm down.
We want to travel all over the place.
We could go I know based on your on your video on Instagram that you're not a big fan of
camping.
No, and that's for a couple of different reasons.
It's not just because of the spooky shit, but it's like, oh, you want me to sleep on
the floor like a poor.
I believe it's called the ground when you're outside.
See, I don't even know these things.
That's how unused to that I am.
I was like, oh, I mean, here's the deal, man.
I'm 43 years old.
I am not sleeping on the ground.
I am long past over the ground.
I have a cot that I sleep on.
But the only reason I mentioned it is we have a spot up here called the Hussick tunnel that
is supposed to be extremely haunted.
Who's sick?
Interesting.
Yeah, it's it's a no longer used railroad tunnel.
And it's it's apparently a hotbed of paranormal activity.
I've always wanted to check it out.
Well, you do that, you know what that's like.
All right, fine.
I'll catch you guys when you crash out at Bridgewater State Mental Hospital instead.
You know what?
No.
I mean, you're going to hang out at a haunted spot.
You're going to sleep there.
I'm never going to be happy with any choice that we make regarding haunted spots.
And just to clear the air, when I say Latinos against spooky shit, a lot of people are like,
oh, like you think spooky things shouldn't exist?
No, no, no.
Latinos against spooky shit is less that they shouldn't be around and more that we shouldn't
fuck with them.
You know, it's it's the principle of like these people go out there and like a stupid
spirit like, hello, you dumb bitch.
I'm like, first of all, hold up like that.
You don't just come into my you come into my house and you start talking like that.
I'm punching you in the throat.
Right.
I've seen I've seen like so many of these like the shows where they go to like a haunted
place and they start demanding shit of the ghosts.
Oh, bro, you don't know what they've got hidden around this house.
This could be like.
Yeah, it could be like a paranormal version of Home Alone everywhere we go.
There could be like a rake that's going to smash us in the fucking face.
Come on, man.
Zach Baggins is hands down the peak of paranormal investigation.
Zach Baggins is the peak of paranormal investigations the same way that Donald Trump is the peak
of humanity.
I know.
I've ever seen.
It's so good.
He's such a fucking douchebag with this tap out.
The tiny big pants.
Yeah, really got me out.
But you Baggins is alternate Chris Angel, if Chris Angel didn't actually do magic.
Yeah, yeah, he is.
He is.
He should be called douchebag.
It's exactly.
If you listen to this, let me on your show.
Yeah.
Let's not burn that bridge before we get across it.
Well, he went to this town in South America that was destroyed by this like horrible landslide
that killed like twenty two thousand people, fucking insane amount of people killed in
this horrible tragedy.
And this piece of shit is walking around trying to find ghosts while walking on where people
are still definitely buried under the landslide.
And I'm like, bro, what like have just the tiniest amount of respect.
Oh, so this dude went and spawn camped.
Jesus.
Yeah, dude, he's the fucking worst.
He's a real piece of shit.
He is the worst.
I love him.
He's the worst.
Anyways, I hate watching.
I hate watch him.
I mean, that's really all it is.
It really is a hate watch.
But for the most part, I hate watching.
I hate watching.
You know, Zach Baggins, if you are listening, I do want to tour your museum one time.
I want to hold one time.
Zach Baggins, I will give you ten dollars if you let me kick you directly in the penis.
Dude's a billionaire.
I don't think he needs your money.
Yeah, listen.
He probably has seen a show.
That man will do anything for money.
That's fair.
All right.
Are you going to need to get this guy?
Let's go.
So I think I got a fun one for you guys.
Sarge kind of knows.
Sarge kind of knows what's going on just because I had him research just a tiny part of it.
But we're going to be headed to the just OK state of Arizona to cover what I can only
describe as absolutely fucking bonkers.
But first, I have to set the scene for you guys.
So you ready?
Take me there, baby.
We're ready.
The Arizona desert is a land of extremes, endless arid stretches of sand and scrub,
jagged mountains that scrape the sky and a silence so profound it can make you question
your sanity.
But in the 1880s, that silence was shattered by something terrifying.
It began quietly at first.
Hoof beats echoing through the stillness of the night, growing louder and closer until
a monstrous figure emerged from the shadows.
The settlers who it is about Kerry Lake.
I knew it there.
You shut the fuck up for five minutes.
God damn it.
Let me get through this.
I worked hard on this.
I'm sorry.
Yeah, Chad.
You've been to work really fucking hard on this.
I worked really hard on this.
It sounds really good.
It sounds like a D&D campaign.
It began quietly at first.
Hoof beats echoing through the stillness of the night, growing louder and closer until
a monstrous figure emerged from the shadows.
The settlers who encountered it could hardly believe their eyes.
This wasn't a horse.
It wasn't a mule or any other beast of burden you'd expect to see in the Old West.
It was a camel, a massive ghostly camel with reddish fur that glowed faintly in the moonlight.
And then there was its rider.
Perched atop the beast was a figure so grotesque it seemed as though it was ripped straight
from a nightmare.
It wasn't alive nor dead.
Its body was decayed, skeletal, strapped to the creature's back by strips of rotting leather.
A phantom of the desert that trampled the unwary, left behind enormous hoof prints and
terrified anyone who crossed this path.
But what is it?
A demon conjured by the barren wasteland itself?
The restless spirit of a vengeful rider?
Or something stranger?
A ghostly remnant of the most bizarre military experiment in American history.
Today gentlemen, we are covering a story that blends history, folklore, and the uncanny.
This week's topic is the Red Ghost.
Now are I as familiar with the Red Ghost?
I have heard of it, but I have no idea what it is.
Jonathan, anything?
I've never heard of this.
I'm 90% sure you're making it up.
This was a nickname we had for a redheaded girl in my high school.
That was it.
She was very pale.
Okay.
Sorry.
I'm sorry, Jonathan.
I cut you off.
No, you're fine.
I've never heard of this and I'm pretty sure he's making it up.
I wish I was making it up.
So before we dive into the story of the Red Ghost, we should probably talk about how a
camel could even be in the Arizona desert.
Well, it all started in the 1850s when the U.S. government decided to experiment with
an unusual idea.
And for this segment, I'm going to throw it over to Sarge to explain just what that experiment
was.
Yes.
Resident military historian and current ghost of Carey Lake.
Here we go.
In 1836, Lieutenant George Crossman of the U.S. Army and a veteran of many, it said wars,
but I don't think it's really a war when the Native Americans are just like hanging out
and then the cavalry showed up to kill them.
So I'm going to say fights against Native American people.
And he thought, hey, you know, would make this war better.
Lumpy horses.
So Crossman told the War Department about his idea and they were basically like, maybe
you should like stay out of the sun for a while, George.
And they buried it.
However, in 1847, Crossman, now a major, met with a fellow major who was also a quartermaster.
For those of you who are unfamiliar with the term quartermaster is like the modern version
of the supply guys in the military.
They just give you the shit you need.
They keep track of the title.
The supply guy.
Supply.
That's what we call them in the army.
Literally, they were the supply sergeant or supply guy.
He was just a cashier, just a glorified cashier.
Interestingly enough, most supply sergeants have more gear than they will ever need and
they never leave the wire.
Don't know.
So so they never go out, go out into actual combat.
They have all the equipment now.
So Crossman met Major Henry Wayne and with their powers combined, they conducted a study
that would convince one very special piece of shit that camels had a future in the U.S.
Army.
Who is a piece of shit?
You might be asking yourselves.
None other than statesmen, future secretary of the War Department and even more future
traitor Jefferson Davis.
You might know him as the leader of the second dumbest insurrection in American history.
Westboro Baptist.
When Davis was a senator of Mississippi, he caught wind of Henry and Crossman's study
and was all about it.
So when President Franklin Pierce appointed Davis as the secretary of war, Davis eagerly
brought the first camel toes to American soil.
I'm sorry.
We're not going to glance by that.
Absolutely not.
I needed to say it.
You can't just sneak that in there like that.
I had to say it.
God, that's good.
God bless America.
God, I think he didn't think of moose.
Camel toes arguably better than moose knuckles, just to be clear.
Facts.
So in his 1854 annual report to Congress, Davis wrote, I again invite attention to the
advantages to be anticipated from the use of camels and dromedaries for military and
other purposes and for reasons set forth in my last annual report, recommend that appropriation
be made to introduce a small number of several varieties of this animal to test their adaptation
to our country.
Now, and you might be touching on this later, but what advantages?
Oh, I'm going to get to it, man.
It's so cool.
I'm fucking ready for it.
So after a lot of false starts and consultation with British officers who are familiar with
camel based warfare from their conflicts in the Middle East in Crimea, America purchased
33 of these animals.
It took a pretty long time.
So from 1854 to 1856, they didn't have Amazon Prime on those bitches.
No, no, not at all.
And they had to go with the fuck some assembly required.
Excuse me.
Yeah, it was a lot of education required to because camels, you know, obviously a very
different animal that we don't have here in the United States.
So they had to do they had to learn very quickly.
So I need to make a quick distinction here.
There are two kinds of camel.
Oh, you're really good at this.
God damn.
Yeah.
You're fucking.
Well, there's a reason.
I thought there was just a camel singular.
There's variants.
Is this a shiny?
Is it a shiny?
So there's the.
Yeah, of course.
So there's a Bactrian camel.
That is the one with two humps.
And then there's the dromedary.
That's the one with one hump.
So back in the day, the camel was just the camel that had two humps.
And then dromedary was the camel that only had the one hump.
So that's why they say camels and dromedaries in Jefferson Davis's report.
The reason this difference is important is is besides where do you put the saddle is that
two hump camels are slow, but they carry a lot of weight while the single hump camels
are faster, but they can carry.
They can carry less.
OK.
Anyway, so in 1856, 38 camels.
Oh, wait.
So yeah, I was talking about.
So America purchased 33 of the animals.
But in 1856, 38 camels arrived in Texas.
Now I know I said 33 camels were acquired, but during the voyage, them camels got to
fucking.
They were anchor camels.
Yeah.
They.
I had to do.
That's good.
No, that's good.
So then then one of them died, but six calves were born.
So now the camels.
So anyway, the camels proved to be pretty effective animals in the American Southwest.
They ate whatever you gave them and they didn't really need a lot of water.
Yeah.
When tested on the Southwest is like like dry rocky.
It's hard.
Yeah, just arid and she's in mules.
They'll fucking die almost immediately if you try to ride them for more than like two
years.
I don't know, man.
The Mexicans fucking thrived there for a couple of centuries before you all fucking showed
up.
So valid.
That's a fact.
Oh, God, it's so hard.
We get heatstroke.
Give it back.
So now I lost my place.
They ate whatever you gave them and really didn't need a lot of water.
There were a couple of instances where they were going long journeys and the horses would
literally get frenzied because they found some grass and water, whereas the camels would
just kind of mill about and watch them eat.
They tested the camels versus horses.
Yeah.
Well, look at the poor is getting excited over grass.
You fucking peasants.
Fucking animals.
So when they were tested on a journey from Camp Baird in Arizona to San Antonio, this
was a hundred and twenty mile trip or one hundred and thirty nine kilometers.
If you talk funny, a team of mules pulled one wagon weighing eight, weighing 1800 pounds
or a little more than 800 kilograms.
Well, a team of the rest of the world.
All right.
When they when they put their flag in the moon, they can have whatever weights they want.
Well, a team of camels pulled another wing twice that more than 3600 or 1600 kilograms.
So 3600 pounds or 1600 kilograms.
The mules pulling half the weight took five days to get where they were going.
Well, the camels only took two.
Take that biscuit, you lazy fuck.
Fuck yourself, Toby McGuire.
Stupid horses.
Now camels weren't completely without problems.
They for instance, they smelled not good.
And they were dickheads.
Yeah.
And horses were actually scared of camels because they smelled so bad.
No shit.
Yeah.
If I saw a mutated horse show up with no warning, I'd also be a little fucking scared.
Yeah.
Like basically a horse with backwards breast implants.
So and also if if the camels were annoyed with you, they would spit a foul smelling
jelly at you.
Yeah.
This jelly is similar to the substance that cows chew on known as cut.
The other problem is that while camels were great at moving quickly over long distances,
they sucked at running.
However, they were surprisingly good swimmers.
There was they were fording the Colorado River at one point in 10 mules drowned and zero
camels drowned.
The camels just get shit on made it across.
No problem.
Really good swimmers.
America's herd of camels had reached over 100 by 1861.
But once the Civil War broke out, the experiment took a back seat.
30 of the camels were brought to California, specifically L.A., where the rest remained
in Arizona, unfortunately under Confederate control.
In keeping with the Confederate mentality of disliking foreign stuff, the hayseeds of
the Confederacy mishandled and abused the animals and even deliberately killed a few
of them.
Damn.
In the end, the Union Army was unsure of how to maintain their herd.
There wasn't much guidance on what to do with it because of the war.
So in 1864, they sold off their camels to zoos, circuses and private citizens in California
for the private owners.
Once the novelty kind of wore off, they sold them to mines, butcher shops, which is fucking
gross.
Or they just release their camels into the wild.
Meanwhile, the last zoo owned army camel known as Topsy died in 1934.
You're really proud of yourself.
That was good.
You are.
I know.
I was way more than I was expecting.
I could see I could see the autism kick in.
Oh, yeah.
Which is weird because I don't even have it.
I just got really severe ADHD.
All right.
So now that we know the backstory behind camels and why they would.
Oh, that's not the whole story.
I forgot about the rest of it.
Fuck.
We were just telling you about camels.
We thought you might be interested.
So now that we know why camels would be in Arizona in the first place, because they're
not native to America, obviously.
Right.
We can continue on with our story.
So the first or at least first reported encounter with the red ghost occurred in the spring
of 1883 at a ranch house near Eagle Creek, Arizona.
Now early that morning, the husbands of two of the families that lived there had set out
to go check on their sheep as there had been reports in the area that Geronimo and his
band of Apaches were ransacking farms for livestock, leaving the wives and children
alone until they returned that evening.
One of the women ventured outside to collect some water from a nearby stream.
Shortly after that, a blood curdling scream echoed back to the house.
The other woman present said she saw a huge reddish beast ridden by, quote, the devil
himself walk past the window.
Too afraid to do anything, she locked the doors and hid with the children until nightfall
when the men finally returned.
When the men heard this story, they immediately set out to the stream, only to discover the
first woman dead.
Her body had been trampled to the point where she was unrecognizable.
On the scene, they noticed massive footprints much larger than those left by any horse.
They also discovered clumps of coarse reddish hair caught in some nearby bushes.
This discovery led to the widespread speculation and fear as the locals struggled to comprehend
just what exactly could commit such a heinous act.
And it's with this that the red ghost legend started to take shape.
Now cracking open a cold one right into the mic.
I didn't mean to do that on purpose.
It was just very close to the microphone.
I had not realized how close it was.
That's not me peeing.
I'm pouring beer right now.
The next that's me peeing.
The next witness to the red ghost was a rancher by the name Cyrus Hamlin, who while tending
to his cattle near his property line, initially he thought he was looking at like a large,
oddly proportioned horse.
Like if a child's drawing of a horse like came to life or something like that.
But as the creature got closer, he noticed his hump back in reddish.
You would think that seeing an alien horse would be scary enough.
I don't know how many people back then like knew, like in the old west knew what a camel
looked like.
They probably heard the term.
So like that would be terrifying enough.
But he said what truly terrified him wasn't the camel strapped to his back, a decayed
skeletal figure clinging to the enormous beast tied in place with old leather straps.
Now Cyrus and all of his pant shitting horror, I can only assume got right the fuck out of
there and refused to return to the area ever again without armed companions, which honestly
perfectly reasonable response.
No, no, 10 out of 10.
Very smart.
Nothing says America like getting guns.
Yeah.
Well, I mean, if you saw this fucking, if you've never seen a camel before, let alone the concept
of a camel and you saw it coming at you with a skeleton on its back, like that's a, that's
a great response.
I would shoot the fuck out of that thing too.
You know, that's see that's, oh, sorry.
Go ahead, Jonathan.
No, no, no.
I would say reddish fur.
I'm trying to, I'm trying to imagine what level of like Clifford, the big red dog reddish
or like, you know, an African, I would think like orangutan, like an orangutan kind of
fur.
That's what I think.
Or like, so we have no visual representation of what this fur looks like.
No, but also I learned that reddish fur isn't common among camel camp, camel camels, cameli
cameli I don't know what the plural for camel is, so we're just going to say camels camels.
It's like a, just like a genetic thing.
Like, it's almost like al albino is on my nose.
Like every once in a while you get one with red because mostly they'll what tan.
They say the same thing happens with white people.
Every once in a while, you get one with red fur.
You can call them brown, Dave.
It's fine.
I wouldn't call them a mousses brown, a camel's tan, right?
Right.
A moose.
Moose are like dark brown.
Yeah, camels like its own color, actually, because like
that's why you have camel colored coats.
That's like a it's like a popular style of coat.
I don't know who you're talking about.
I worked in retail for a long time.
I wasted a lot of my life.
You fucking fashionista over here.
No.
Yeah, don't ever use that word again.
Now, another sighting took place near a trading post
where a wagoner claimed to have seen the red ghost
charging toward him across an open plane.
The man's horses bolted.
They were like, fuck this.
This is all you, buddy.
Like we're out of here.
And in the chaos, he said that he watched as the camel reared up
and silhouetted against the sun.
He swears that he saw the skeletal rider move its bony arms
lurching forward as if it was attempting to steer the beast.
It was then he followed the horse's lead and got out of there.
He abandoned his wagon and fled to the nearest settlement
to report to the locals what he had just witnessed, where I'm sure they were like,
All right, buddy.
Now, you might want to get out of the sun for a little while, George.
I'm pretty sure you're moonshining it a little too hard right now.
Now, my favorite sighting that was reported took place
not too far from where the initial trampling,
I guess you'd want to call it, took place
about 60 miles west of Eagle Creek.
A group of prospectors camped in the valley of the Verde River
noticed the large red creature gazing grazing nearby.
The men cautiously approached the red ghost.
And when they got close enough, they did what any red blooded American would do
when they don't know what they're looking at and open fired on this motherfucker.
Oh, I was going to say they fucked it.
No, that's.
Oh, no. But the beast took off into the desert and I'm sure.
I promise you, though, when they were having the conversation of what to do,
that was a close second on the list of what they were going to do.
I mean, they're lonely prospectors.
They're out in the desert of Arizona.
All right. Right.
He's like, hey, if you push that thing over to the cliff and then you start going,
it'll probably start pushing back.
Motherfucker.
I swear, every time Sarge tries to kill me at least once for something, he says,
I almost choke. That was good.
That's good, which is probably what would have happened to one of the prospectors.
Before we go on the young woman who who died due to trampling,
would you would you attribute that as the first reported case of death by camel toe?
God damn it, sir.
Honestly, the setup, flawless execution on point.
I want to be upset at you, but that was that was proper.
That was good.
Oh, sorry.
I've been sitting on that for like five minutes.
You've been sitting on camel toe for five minutes.
No, no, I have a moose knuckle.
I'm hanging all over the place.
That's an elephant foot, my guy.
Fuck yeah. All right.
Oh, man.
You know what? You know what it is.
I went to church this morning and I'm just all fired up.
You know what it is? Yeah.
I had the spirit decide of them.
But he was she had a red camel.
Jesus didn't even lube up. It was weird.
All right. So talk about a second coming, Amir.
No, I'm sure if they had hit it or not, they decided to go after it and track it.
Now, after tracking it for some time, they made a grisly discovery.
They didn't find the red ghost or even any any indications that they had hit it.
But instead, they found a human skull with remnants of hair and flesh
still clinging to it.
This like this find not only confirmed the presence of a human rider,
but fueled the belief that the creature was something cursed or otherworldly.
Now, before I go any further, how are you guys feeling about the red ghost?
Now that we know that there were actual camels and like, what do you think?
Like, give me some theories.
What are your thoughts, feelings, emotions?
I just feel like this poor ginger camel
is being judged.
It's just a daywalker, man.
It's not anything nefarious.
It just, you know, it's it's got poor, poor genetics.
Got a fucking skeleton on it.
You know, maybe the rider just got stuck.
You know, everybody's like freaking out that it's lunging at you.
Maybe the camel reared back and like, you know, the riders just flopping around
because he's been dead for a couple of years.
I don't know. I was going to say it sounds like
they whoever the rider was, they strapped into the camel's punishment
to like go through the desert and. Yeah.
Shout there.
And maybe maybe they got to them.
Maybe they did something and the camel's red in blood and it's just dry.
I didn't.
I mean, it's not.
I mean, blood when it dries out, it oxidizes because of the iron content
and it turns into that.
It's a good red color.
Yeah. Right.
All right. Oh, shit.
Also, I find it impossible to be scared of a camel.
Like when you started out, you had like such a great creepy opening
and then you're like, isn't that they saw red cam?
Oh, yeah. But that's because that's because we have known like we have seen cam.
I've fed a camel with like my palm flattened with the carrot and a
like a what is it called circus one time.
Like we know what camels are in 18 fucking whatever they
the concept of a camel must have been so fucking mind blowing
that if you saw one, you would have shit yourself.
Yeah, but it still looks like a slow horse.
No, it doesn't.
But think about think about like the first person who unearthed
the triceratops skull, they must have been fucking terrified.
OK, that's the fact that we have.
Yeah, the fact that we now have a camel and we haven't seen a camel
and that most people hate brown things in this time.
Then and now it's like, oh, it's foreign and brown.
I don't like it.
You know, I I'm more with the triceratops thing.
I'm more, you know, to your earlier point, anything's a dildo
if you're brave enough.
They were like three of them.
Hey, Steve, Jerry, come here.
Come here real quick.
Let's hold hands over to the cliff.
Maybe it'll push back.
That's all right. So.
All right. So Sarge is saying he's not afraid of camels.
Jonathan, but you're you're you're understanding where we're coming from,
where it's like, you don't understand the concept of the camel. Yeah.
Yeah, no, I get that. I get that.
No, you make a good point, Jonathan. It'd be terrifying.
Yeah. The Red Ghost terrorized the Arizona territory for nearly a decade.
Then in the 1890s, it's sort its story came to kind of like a.
I don't know. I'm going to say I don't want to say an end,
but a rancher woke up one morning.
So a rancher woke up one morning to find the massive
camel grazing in his vegetable garden.
Fed up with losing his crops to wild animals,
he grabbed his rifle and shot it dead, which is a rather unceremonious death.
I think they kind of sat in the way.
But it did, you know, absolutely fuck that one lady up.
So maybe not either way. So it's true. Yeah. Yeah.
Whether it's KD ratio is pretty good at this point.
When the fuck has been sitting on a UAV for a while,
when the when the rancher inspected the body, he found scars on the camel's back,
evidence of where the skeleton had been strapped.
By this point, the bones had likely fallen off or been removed.
Still, the scars confirmed what many unsuspected.
This was the Red Ghost, the camel that had been haunting the desert for years.
Now, with its death, the Red Ghost passed from reality into legend.
While the physical creature was gone, its story remained a favorite among settlers,
cowboys, natives and anyone drawn to like the mysteries of the old west.
So now let's get into some theories, guys.
We got a couple of them.
So as Sarge said, when the Civil War broke out, the army just kind of said, fuck it
and abandoned the idea of a camel corps.
So they just decided, like he said, sell the camels or release
the camels into the wilds of Arizona.
So stray camels were sighted in the area for a while with the last one
ever reported dying in 1934.
The last known American camel was named Topsy.
She had been seen crossing the desert into California.
She ended up in L.A.
after being taken in by zoo employees before her passing.
All that to say that camels were out and just loose in the deserts of Arizona.
And the settlers and Native Americans that lived there had what I could only
describe as like a lack of familiarity with camels.
Like we mentioned several times.
And this fed into the supernatural interpretations of the Red Ghost.
Many of them had never seen such a large, strange creature before.
And it's otherworldly appearance, especially at night.
Like if you see it at night and it's like lit up by either the moon or a fire,
it's going to be fucking terrifying.
And it led them to believe that you've never seen one of these fucking things.
And there's a hulking mass on the horizon.
Fuck that.
This led them to believe that it was some sort of demon or like an avenging spirit.
Some settlers and natives believe that the Red Ghost was a manifestation of the
desert's hostility, a supernatural guardian punishing those who dared to encroach
on its harsh, untamed lands.
The skeletal figure on its back was interpreted by some as the ghost of a
vengeful rider eternally bound to the camel.
Now this explanation framed the Red Ghost as a cursed entity, blending both Native
American beliefs about spirits with frontier superstitions.
But being unfamiliar with camels and seeing them at night or whatever doesn't
really explain the sightings of like the skeleton on its back.
So a more probable explanation is that the Red Ghost legend grew from real camel
sightings exaggerated through retellings.
The sightings were often brief, occurring at night or in stressful situations,
making it easy for details to blur or for witnesses to misinterpret what they saw.
And as the story spread through like most folklore Native American tales or even
like superstitions, it's all very oral tradition.
So over time, like it.
Got to.
So as the story spread, you know, through like mining camps or frontier towns, each
retelling would add a new layer to the horror of it, such as the skeletal rider or
the animals like suppose malice.
But camels are pretty malice on their own.
They're fucking dickheads.
So yeah, they are.
Dickheads.
They are total assholes.
But there are other darker theories that I think are more likely the cause for these
sightings, and these are the ones that I'm going to stand behind.
And Jonathan, you actually kind of nailed it earlier.
So the first is that the rider was actually a prospect or a settler who in desperation
tied himself to the camel, hoping it will lead him to water.
Instead, it was like motherfucker.
What do you think you're sitting on?
Yeah, instead, he died of dehydration or exposure and his body just decomposed while
remaining secured to the camel.
That just sounds like a problem solving itself.
Like if you're that stupid that you think a camel is going to lead you to water, you
deserve whatever is going to happen to you.
That's fair.
Another possibility is that the body was tied to the camel post mortem as a form of
disposal or even like an act of cruelty, resulting in the bizarre and terrifying sightings
reported by settlers, prospectors, prospectors and natives.
Another theory suggests that it was some form of punishment or hazing ritual during the
time of the camel corps.
During that time, harsh punishment as well as just brutal hazing was not uncommon in
military ranks.
So it's possible that as a punishment or prank, they tied a soldier to one of the camels and
set it free into the desert, resulting in the soldier's death and its skeletal remains
clinging to it for almost a decade.
But I mean, I don't mean to shit in your ice cream, man, but the hazing didn't stop.
But it was still a thing.
Is it murder bad or is it like?
I mean, I know a guy who put a cigarette butt in somebody's magazine, his rifle magazine,
and he racked a cigarette into the barrel of his rifle.
They had to fucking sneak it out as they were going outside the wire.
So yeah, it could be.
It could be.
I don't know what any of those words mean, but.
Magazine is the is the bullet that is cigarette butt is the end of a cigarette.
Did I know?
What would that do?
What does that mean?
He knows what those words mean individual.
Put them all together and you're telling us a story that we don't understand the consequences
of the cigarette, but we get stuck in in the rifle barrel.
So if you were to shoot a bullet, it could potentially cause a buildup of the gases and
cost the rifle to to to explode.
See, or cause your rifle to misfire in a firefight and then you.
So they constipated the rifle.
Why didn't you just fucking say that?
Yeah.
Well, it could also it could also just cause your rifle not to fire.
Jesus, we didn't have the the I don't want to say anyway.
We didn't need the college money, so we didn't sign up for this shit.
OK, I mean, I didn't go to college, so.
Yeah, jokes on you.
But I mean, the good news is I did need the college money and I used it for two degrees.
So yeah, this motherfucker is going to master, so I can't really shut on him for that.
But OK, so so that theory is pretty much plausible.
But I'm very plausible.
Yes, I would not be surprised at all if there was some dead kid right now tied to a Humvee
that's like erratically doing donuts in the middle of the fucking desert right now.
That's true.
But you were sorry.
Sorry to derail this any further than it already has.
But you're you're in the Middle East for a while. Do you have experience with camels?
Like, did you ever like I actually have a very funny story about this.
How hard do they push back?
You see the more of a bottom or power?
I actually have to tell you a very funny story about this.
So you prefer the one or two?
I spent I spent 11 months in Iraq.
Oh, well, in the Middle East, sometime in Kuwait and then mostly in Iraq.
Yeah.
Not once did I see a fucking camel the entire time I was there.
Everyone else happened to see one.
I did not.
OK, I was home in the United States for about a week.
And I saw a camel like it was like a state fair.
And I'm just walking around and then there's this like shitty fence.
And there's this one lonely dromedary, the one hum kind, just standing there.
And I walked over to Lady and I was like, Can I can I touch that?
Because I didn't I was in Iraq.
I was in Iraq for a year and I didn't see any of them.
Can I just pet it?
Rock hard.
Very nice lady.
This very nice lady was like, That's exactly what I said.
I was so like, If I slide you a 20, can you leave me alone for 20 minutes?
I got to go take it over to this clip.
We'll be right back.
So like I yeah, I like pet it.
And I was like blown away that the old first place in the world I see a camel is in Springfield,
Massachusetts, that tracks a week after I come home from Iraq.
You think you didn't see any camels because they heard of you and they're like, Hey, man,
they knew I was coming.
I was about to give them the best the best two and a half inches of their life.
OK, we're moving on.
I'll give you one hump, pal.
All right.
But whatever it is, you know, that was actually out there.
The Red Ghost is one of those stories that it perfectly blends like the history and folklore.
Like it's a rare cryptid that has roots in like documented history.
The camel for experience, the release of wild camels and the human skeleton tied to it.
But it's also a reminder of how like the unknown can spark our wildest fears.
It's a product of both truth and of the imagination shaped by the fears and superstitions of frontier
life.
So whether it was a tragic accident or a supernatural omen,
the Red Ghost remains one of the strangest tales of the Old West.
And that gentleman is a story of the Red Ghost.
How are we feeling so far?
Jonathan, let's start with you.
Have they because again, you know, a lot of these things go from reality to legend to mythos.
Have there been any additional sightings since then of like a spectral Red Ghost or was that it?
No, once the once the farmer who found it eating its I'm assuming zucchinis or whatever.
Veggies.
Yeah, he after he blew it away unceremoniously, which is very sad.
It just kind of ended.
So everybody loves a sequel.
Let's go get a camel.
Okay.
And paint this fucker red and let's get a skeleton.
It's actually cheaper to get an actual skeleton than to get a.
And that's a whole nother conversation.
But we could also.
What if we get the 90s?
It's weird that you look that up.
What if we get the 90 foot Home Depot skeleton?
First of all, the poor camel.
Come on.
We're not monsters.
Jesus.
We'll just get the 12 foot one.
We'll just get the 12 foot.
Yeah, exactly.
Yeah.
And we just strap them and we, you know, we just we just bring this legend back to life and we
just let them go in Arizona.
I love this idea.
I am in 100%.
Honestly, a legend come to life.
Come on.
I mean, I don't hate the idea.
Yeah, we'll keep Sarge away from it for the first couple of days.
Yeah, for a year for the allegedly.
You're for the allegedly.
It's for the best.
I do have two addendums to this, actually.
Two interesting points of interest.
This this the red the red ghost that was shot in 1880, you said?
No, it was like 1890.
I don't remember.
I was going to say 1885, famed General Douglas MacArthur, who led the invasion of who led the
war in Korea.
He actually saw one of these camels in 1885.
Oh, OK.
Yeah.
And he made like a big deal out of it.
It was shot dead after that.
It was OK.
It was the 1890s.
This was like a legit sighting that a bunch of people in a town in Nevada saw.
And he actually went to go see it because he wanted to see it, too.
And then the other interesting thing is the United States wasn't the only place to
introduce camels onto foreign territory where they originally were not from.
The British, when they owned Australia, they introduced camels in Australia.
And currently, the feral population of camels in Australia as of 2008 had reached one
million.
That's too many camels.
Now, I have to ask Sarge, was this information that you knew offhand or you just looked up?
I found it during my research.
OK, because if that's just knowledge that that, you know, it gives too much credibility
to the camel fucking.
And I don't know.
Well, a full disclosure, I did know that Australia had a feral camel population.
I just wasn't aware of how many potential new girlfriends I could have.
Your dating pool options just expanded immensely.
Oh, well, I mean, the Humps, if they didn't want me to do it, why would they be so voluptuous?
So where were we?
I asked what you guys thought about it.
John, did you even give an answer before Sarge?
Yeah, he did.
He had a great answer.
Why?
You even remember Dave?
Yeah, he wanted to release more one more camel.
I wanted to redo it.
We talked about the 12 foot skeleton.
Yeah, but that wasn't what are your thoughts about the actual story?
Not what you want to do.
Oh, my bad.
You got it.
Sorry.
No, it's interesting how, again, you made the point of
real life rooted into legend.
And we don't realize how much of these stories that get told and convoluted get passed down.
They got to stem from somewhere.
They got to stem from some form of truth.
There is a modicum of truth in everything.
And it's always interesting to see where it started to where it ends.
And this, like you said, this was kind of unceremoniously ended.
Yeah, I wish it would have been, I don't know, a little cooler, like more like an epic battle
or something like that.
Like he just fought it to death or something.
Yeah, yeah, he fucked it to death.
I honestly I wish that there were there were like still feral camels in the United States.
I feel like it would be so cool.
I'm telling you, we can make it happen.
It'd be so funny.
Like imagine going to Vegas and there's just a camel drinking out of a fountain.
Like, how awesome would that be?
What's a camel cost?
Can we?
You know what?
I'm actually Googling it right now.
Let's let's find out how much a camel cost.
Two camels, male and a female.
Maybe we should get four, because I feel like we need at least four for a breeding population.
And then we'll crowdfund it.
Yeah.
Well, like the out of the original camels that came to the US, only five died of disease.
Like they're a hardy breed.
They can survive here.
You're looking at ten thousand.
OK, or ten thousand bucks is or seventeen thousand for a pregnant one, which listen,
new Patreon goal.
Yeah.
Camel breeding, right?
Oh, you guys are going to be camel breeding to you.
Oh, you guys are going to get some camels and breed them.
Yeah.
Sure.
Yeah, that's what's going to happen.
I mean, if they got to fucking on a boat, I can only imagine what they'll do in the wild.
Good for them.
Honestly, what a vibe.
The rabbits of Arabia.
All right.
So that's our episode.
Jonathan, I know you're you got some stuff going on.
You got some stuff coming up.
You're actually going to be in my neck of the woods pretty soon.
You got anything you want to plug before we get this going?
Yeah.
Once again, everybody, my name is Jonathan Latinos
against spooky shit everywhere.
You can find my stuff as Latinos against spooky shit.
But you can also find me as one half of the spooky guys,
which is a phenomenal podcast where we get to talk about very similar things.
Cryptid serial killers, spooky things, anything and everything that's paranormal
and or paranormal adjacent.
I've got a AP game, an actual play game being released through
Tapered Up Tempest, Tapered Up Tempest, of course, being the other channel that I'm a part of,
which is founded by immigrants or the children of immigrant parents
where we get to roll dice and we get to tell stories and we get to
just create these really cool narratives.
So Breaking Prometheus is a story of familial trauma, generational breaking of chains,
and it should be releasing January of 25.
So keep an eye out for that.
Very cool.
And I don't know when this episode will release.
If it's releasing tomorrow, I will be at PAX Unplugged in Philly,
where I will have a panel on December 6th.
It's at the Crab Got Theater.
It starts at 5 p.m. and it's Charisma Check, where we will talk to you guys about networking
and branding and being able to negotiate and talk deals and everything with with networks and whatnot.
So check that out if you're in the area, if you're coming to PAXU.
But yeah, that's kind of all I got on my hands.
At this point in time.
Oh, that's it.
That's just that.
Jesus Christ, man.
And Sarge, you got to think you want to plug in.
I know you got your coloring book.
The coloring book is still it's still available due to the unforeseen circumstances of America
electing a felon to be president.
So you could still purchase that.
It's called it's called Saaj's Super Normal Coloring Book.
And you can find that at Saaj's Super Normal dot com.
There's word searches and coloring to kind of ease your mind.
Or you can just roll it up and shut up your ass if you don't like it.
Jesus Christ.
Sorry, a little punchy today.
You can find me pretty much anywhere.
I just type in Saaj the Destroyer in Google.
I'm the only person dumb enough to use that name.
So you'll find me.
Yeah, that's all I got.
All right.
Well, if yeah, I'll make sure to link Jonathan stuff in the episode description as well as,
you know, tag him and all the posts and you can find Saaj's links and all that stuff in
the Instagram bio, which is at Cryptic Cocktail.
You can also find us on TikTok Cryptic Cocktail Party.
Also, huge shout out to Cryptic Camp.
They got their Kickstarter fully funded.
They was.
Yeah.
Twenty five.
They needed twenty five thousand ended at eighty thousand, which is awesome.
So the wow new cryptid TCG coming your way.
And I'm stoked that me and Saaj could be a part of that.
So and shout out to our other sponsor, Narragansett beer.
Yeah.
Drink Narragansett.
It's definitely better than what you're drinking now.
Hi, neighbor is the sign behind me.
And you might even be able to see the other one.
But Narragansett is pretty good stuff.
So it's better.
It's certainly one of the best domestic beers in the United States right now.
I'm willing to say that I'll die on that cross.
OK.
And with that out of the way.
Boy Hill, depending.
Usually Saaj says goodbye and I love you to the audience.
But Jonathan, would you like to do the honors of saying goodbye
and I love you to the audience?
Absolutely.
Go fuck yourselves.
Goodbye and I love you.