The Anza-Borrego Giant Wandering Skeleton was a skeleton-like glowing tend to be very inhospitable and dangerous places, but sometimes it seems they can be downright scary. Part of the Anza-Borrego Desert, which today is a state park mostly in California, became a feared place during the gold rush era, and not only because of the risks that treasure hunting entailed. At that time, strange stories began to spread among gold diggers about a skeleton that sneaks through the wasteland at night. It seems to resemble the Japanese Yokai Gashadokuro.
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Deserts tend to be very inhospitable and dangerous places, but sometimes it seems they can be downright scary. Part of the Anza-Borrego desert, which today is a state park mostly in California, became a feared place during the gold rush era, and not only because of the risks that treasure hunting entailed. At that time, strange stories began to spread among gold diggers about a skeleton that sneaks through the wasteland at night.
To this day, many abandoned mines and shafts can be seen in this desert, which extends into Arizona, the remnants of the race to find the most gold. People there once tried to get rich quickly, even at the cost of many dangers, and many also lost their lives in the process. Of course, these tragic events often provided the basis for various stories about the restless spirits of gold diggers or other travelers, but the mentioned legend is somewhat more complex. In this story, the scarecrow is not an "ordinary" ghost of some unfortunate person who left this world prematurely, but a terrifying phantom in the form of a glowing skeleton. The first witness who allegedly spotted the ghost was Charley Arizona. He was an experienced man who had spent more time in the desert than many others, and who one evening found himself on the western edge of the desert. About 4 miles from Borrego he finally made camp, where he and his donkeys settled down and bedded down for the night by the fire. However, in the early hours of the morning, he was woken up by strange sounds coming from afar. His animals were also beginning to act restless, so Charley stood up and grabbed his gun straight in anticipation of an intruder.
As he looked around, he suddenly noticed a faint light moving in the distance. His first thought was that it must be some lost traveler who had noticed his camp and was probably intending to join him. For the light seemed to be slowly approaching Charley, so after a while he waved in an attempt to navigate the lost person. Before long, however, the witness became nervous, for he noticed that the figure was very tall, and shone with a very strong brightness, which no torch or lantern could produce. The figure staggered quite close, and Charley heard what sounded like knocking on wood and tinkling metal sounds.
So he stopped waving, and when the figure approached within a distance of only a few tens of meters, Charley's blood froze in his veins. According to the stories, the man spotted a huge skeleton that must have measured more than 180 centimeters. The mentioned sounds were the knocking of bones, and instead of a torch in his hand, the ghost had a bright lantern somehow fixed directly in his chest. This also caused the effect that the entire skeleton was brightly lit from within and even the eye sockets seemed to glow as if they were on fire. The witness was completely unable to move at that moment, but the skeleton seemed to ignore him at all. The ghost walked around the camp with slow clumsy steps and finally disappeared behind the nearby rocks.
About two years later, a similar encounter happened to two promising gold miners. After a hard day full of searching for precious metal, they both camped for the night directly in the desert. They made dinner by the fire and were in good spirits until one of them saw a moving light in the darkness. One of the men had already heard about this legend, so he suggested leaving immediately, but his friend calmed him down, saying that it was probably just a reflection of the light from their fire. Although it seemed to the first man that the light was too high above the ground and that he could see the vague outline of a bony figure, but as he could not speak to his mate, they both remained where they were. The worried witness stayed up all night watching for the light to return, but it never did.
The following year, another witness traveled through the area and told an almost identical story to several people. His news about the "ghost with the lantern" spread very quickly, and suddenly many groups of curious people and ghost hunters started flocking to the desert to catch a glimpse of the phantom. One group managed to see a moving light in the dark after spending three nights in the desert. So they followed him for about three miles, and one of the men even wanted to get close enough to shoot the apparition. However, the shining spirit was lost to them the moment it went into a very steep valley, where the hunters could no longer reach.
Today, this bizarre phantom is no longer heard of, mainly because the gold rush has long since ended and no casual traveler will risk a night in the inhospitable desert just like that. Although the story appeared in several books and magazines, they took it from a folklore point of view. So, logically, it could be more just a misinterpretation of these encounters with the "skeleton", and based on the exceedingly strange appearance of the creature, it could first be only a kind of metaphorical warning for greedy gold diggers and daredevils who would like to dare to do more than they are able to handle. It is not common for a ghost to appear in the form of a Halloween decoration, and even hang a trap directly in his chest. However, as a horror story, this story works perfectly.