The Anza-Borrego Desert
Lantern Skeleton
By Cole Herrold
When it comes to expeditions in desert
environments, there are a lot of things to worry about. From having enough
resources to making sure one stays safe are all challenges that can be planned
for and worked on with some success. One thing that such pioneers do not
anticipate is a colossal skeleton that is seemingly lit up like a macabre living
decoration. Yet in the Anza-Borrego Desert of Arizona, that is one such
concern those in the area, particularly at night, need to be concerned with.
The story of the Anza-Borrego Desert Lantern
Skeleton actually begins with, surprisingly, the mad rush for gold. Throughout
the Anza-Borrego desert are several old, abandoned mines and dilapidated shafts
that, at one point in American history, people would spend countless hours
attempting to find riches beyond their wildest dreams. Now it would appear that
during this time, several individuals had managed to lose their lives in the
harsh environment of the Anza-Borrego Desert, and it wasn't until after the end
of the gold rush that the need and desire to go out into the wilderness and
mine practically died out. Searching for the gold, however, to this day is
still something some driven individuals choose to do, and it was around this
time of resurgence in the search that tales started popping of a bizarre entity
roaming the desert and allegedly chasing miners from the area. This phantom
seemed to be something entirely different than one would expect to see as an
apparition, as one would expect maybe the lost soul of some unfortunate miner
as opposed to this nightmarish figure that supposedly roams the mines and sandy
terrain.
The First person to witness the bizarre
entity was a man by the name of Charley Arizona; he was a desert hand who one
night had traveled to the Western edge of the Badlands. He was only four miles
from Borrego and had taken several of his donkeys with him as he proceeded in
setting up camp. Everything went well that night, and after getting comfortably
snug by the fire and making sure his animals were secure in the location, he
managed to fall asleep. He remained asleep until the early hours of the morning
when he was awoken by a strange sound coming from the distance. The donkeys
also woke up after hearing this sound, and they too began behaving antsy as if
they could sense that something was extremely wrong. Charley stood up and armed
himself, half expecting to find someone enter his camp. He peered around the
area, and there out in a certain spot of desert some distance away was a bright
glow that seemed to be moving. His initial thought seeing this is that perhaps
some man was lost in the mountains and seeing his campfire was working his way
over. The shadowy figure did seem to Charley to becoming closer towards his
site, and he waited, waving his arms to try to flag down the potentially lost
traveler.
As Charley looked, however, he could tell
that something didn't seem right; the figure seemed to be very tall, bigger
than him at least, and that the light seemed to be much higher up as well and
burned with an intensity that he thought could not have been a traditional
torch or lantern. The figure continued to move drunkenly around, and as he
listened, he could hear a sick metallic thud as the figure stepped and a
bizarre sound he could not place as if several pieces of wood were being
smacked together. He stopped waving and stared at his soon-to-be visitor, but
when the figure got within 200 yards, it was close enough for him to get a good
look at the stranger; his blood ran cold. There walking towards him, was a
creature that could only be described as a colossal skeleton, its form being
over 8ft tall. It was from this skeletal frame that the sound came from the
wood sound was really the sound of bones connecting reacting to its
environment. This would have been terrifying enough, but as he stared, he
realized that the creature did not have a torch or lantern in its hand but
there hanging in the creature's chest swinging back and forth was a kind of
lantern that appeared to be connected by some manner to the ribcage. The glow
of the light illuminated the entire form, including the creature's eyes which
shined so brightly they looked like they were on fire. This living Halloween
decoration proceeded in walking towards Charley's camp, and all Charley could
do was stare in pure terror, unable to move or ready himself for defense. As
the creature was only a couple feet from the campsite, it seemed to not notice
the man standing watching it. The creature's colossal footsteps continued past
the man and past his site, and Charley regaining his mobility, turned his head
to watch the creature meander its way beyond the site and eventually completely
disappear from behind a row of rocks some distance away.
About two years later, two other would-be
prospectors had decided to go out and search for gold in the desert. It was
getting late in the day after the two had been traversing the dusty terrain the
entire day, and they, much like Charley, had decided to set up camp in a rocky
outcropping in the desert. It was getting late, and the two had been enjoying
their dinner by the campfire when they noticed a glowing light with a shadowy
skeletal shape shimmering in the darkness. One of the witnesses, having heard
the rumors of the giant skeleton, had begun getting up, proclaiming to the
other that they had to get out of here or the entity might harm them. The other
prospector, more levelheaded, simply told his friend to sit down and that all
that the light was, was the reflective glow of the fire on nearby rocks. The
friend, however, felt that the glow was too high off the ground and that the
skeletal frame did not seem to match what his partner proposed but unable to
stir him to leave, he settled back down and stayed up the entire night waiting
for the entity to return.
A year later, another man out in around
the same location and in almost an identical set of circumstances also would
claim to of seen the entity traveling back into town; the witness told of the
illuminated ghost at Vallecito Station, and their encounter and the legend of
the lantern ghost spread like wildfire. Countless would-be monster hunters and
curious sightseers traveled to the desert in search of the eerie glow and the
phantom that appears with it. On the third night of one such hunt, on one
occasion, a group of monster hunters had happened upon seeing a bizarre glowing
object seemingly walking in the same awkwardly stumbling manner that the
apparition allegedly had been known for. They followed this skeletal figure for
about three miles, one man even attempting to take a shot at the entity until
they eventually lost sight of the creature once it ended up in a particularly
deep valley.
Modern Sightings of this particular
phantom are nonexistent, and this could be because of the lack of prospectors
and gold miners as opposed to in the past. Without this scourge of would be
fortune seekers, the entity has no reason to scare or warn people away from the
location anymore. Yet even before the dawn of the 21st-century,
sightings of this anatomical apparition seemed to dwindle; maybe it was the
effect of such encounters or perhaps it was some mandatory reaction to some
natural event we may never know the answer but tales of the colossal skeleton while
sightings are no longer reported still exist in a variety of books and media,
but it is from this varying sources that may be a bit of either confusion or
evidence of the truth behind the case might have been revealed.
When this case hit the books chronicling
Fortean studies, two things became very clear, the first being that there was
either some confusion when transcribing these accounts or two that these
accounts were pure folklore created to keep people out of the desert. One of
the elements of confusion or mis-recording is that most sources claim that the
entity is from Anza Borrego, Arizona and that the entity frequently haunts the
area from the Superstition Mountains to the Seventeen Palms. This version of
the legend states that the entity was once a prospector who worked the Phantom
Mine and apparently died protecting the site. This version of the tale appears
in Reader’s Digest’s American Folklore and Legend, Barton M. Nunnelly’s The
Inhumanoids, and Neil Arnold’s Monster! The A-Z of Zooform Phenomena.
However, in another area of the West in California, the legend has been
reported there as well with the same accounts being used the area that the
spirit is said to roam in the Borrego Badlands and that it frequents an area
known as Supernatural Hill; this account shows up in Mysterious California
By Mike Marinacci. In Mysterious California, the account and identity of
the apparition are often interconnected with another local legend known as the
lost Pegleg Smith's gold mine. This gold mine was allegedly located somewhere
in the Borrego Badlands, and that this entity was one of the prospectors who
went searching for it after dying in the desert his body was completely picked
clean by the wildlife, and so his spirit took the form of a colossal skeleton
as he continues his search for the gold and also to scare away any in the area.
Realistically I think that there was just some misinterpretation when it came
to chronicling the source; it happens surprisingly frequently, but there's also
a more folkloric explanation for this as well.
A less fun take on this is that both areas
have the same stories to fit their alternative lost gold mines legends. I say
that this is less fun because this spawns off down the trail of folklore and
not into a potentially real encounter. There is an Anthropological phenomenon
where cultures that are essentially non-connected create stories and archetypes
that are almost identical now; this phenomenon grows and changes, especially
with the use of technology, so there is the chance that that is what we see
here.
With that said, this apparition is very
different than typical entities reported, even those of a skeletal nature. The
sheer size of the entity alone is far different than one would expect since
ghosts, typically at least from what is reported, tend to maintain the size
they were when alive another thing is typically ghosts do not have objects
inside them unless that was part of the item that killed them. This entity
almost seems like it made either the practical or fashionable choice to put the
lantern inside itself, something that if this is the case means we would really
need to reassess the can and cants of what spirits are able to do.
My final thoughts on this case are much
like most paranormal entities. I want it to be a true creature that stalks the
deserts scaring people that come too close, yet I wonder why we don't have more
constant reports from the area. A search for Spook Lights in the area almost
always turns up more UFO-style events over the area and not something like a
glowing humanoid form or even an amorphous ball some 4 to 6 feet off the
ground. While some could argue that without the drive, there would be no need
for the entity to manifest, or perhaps it found the treasure it so longed for
putting the apparition at rest, there's no guarantee for this and its mere
speculation. Ghost entities are perhaps the most frustrating bunch of
paranormal entities out there for most of the time, they're very human in their
motives and behaviors, whereas other times they seem to be doing things that
are kind of pointless it makes investigations of the phenomenon more accessible
as opposed to bigfooting or UFO hunting where you need to be in the right place
at the right time. Ghosts are everywhere, and some are supposedly trapped in
locations, so the same should be said for this entity; we should have modern
reports of something unless this entity is not a ghost but some other bizarre
Fortean phenomenon that we don't even have a name for yet. Perhaps there are
reports of this entity, and people are unaware of the legend giving them no
reason to report or even a frame of reference, or perhaps there are witnesses,
but because of the stigma of such sightings, they do not report on them, all of
which if true is understandable. Yet, I have a feeling there won't be a
follow-up anytime soon for this case even though it is truly fascinating even
though it has a lantern; an answer or further details to this mystery will have
to for now remain in the dark.
Quick Facts:
Species/Potential Species: Apparition
Location: the Superstition Mountains to
the Seventeen Palms, Anza-Borrego Desert, Borrego, Arizona or Borrego Badlands,
Borrego Springs, California
Sighted: Unspecified
Works Cited:
American Folklore and Legend By Readers
Digest
The Inhumanoids By Barton M. Nunnelly
Monster! The A-Z of Zooform Phenomena By
Neil Arnold
Mysterious California: Strange Places and
Eerie Phenomena in the Golden State By Mike Marinacci
Pegleg Smith's Gold. Desert USA. https://www.desertusa.com/treasure/lost/pegleg-gold.html.
Accessed September 18, 2021.
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