Mermaids in the Desert: Legends from Arizona’s Mogollon Rim

A faded childhood photo cracked open more than nostalgia—it pulled us straight to the Mogollon Rim and a legend that refuses to stay quiet. We start with Aunt Aggie, the ghost who visited when we were eight, and Uncle Hubert, a brilliant stonemason with a restless compass pointed west. From there, the path bends toward cold lakes in high country, where locals argue lovingly over how to say Mogollon and where the water allegedly sings with a voice you shouldn’t follow.

We dive into the Mogollon Mermaid—yes, a mermaid in Arizona—and the pattern that repeats across decades: a beautiful figure in the water, a hypnotic song at night, an urge to move closer no one can quite explain. You’ll hear how Boy Scouts in 1950 described a woman’s face and a scaled tail at Black Canyon Lake, how a late-’60s pontoon nearly met the rocks because passengers followed a swimmer who shouldn’t have been there, and how campers at Woods Canyon Lake in 2012 listened to a melody that felt more like a summons than a soundtrack. Along the way, we unpack shape-shifting lore, portals whispered about near the Superstition Mountains, and the way place names and pronunciation stake a claim to identity just as fiercely as any legend.

Skeptics will point to acoustics, moonlight, and memory’s tricks. Believers will point to patterns, elders’ warnings, and the chill that runs through a crowd all at once when the night goes strange. We hold both truths in hand. The desert is full of thresholds, and some stories simply ask you to respect the edge: admire the water, question your senses, and know when a song isn’t meant for you. If the Rim has ever called your name—or if you’ve heard something on a quiet shoreline you still can’t explain—this conversation is for you.

Subscribe for more folklore, cryptids, and first-person mysteries, share this episode with a friend who loves a good campfire story, and tell us your encounter in a voice memo or email. Your story might be the next note in this chorus.

Chapters

• 0:00 Finding an Old Photo
• 1:14 Aunt Aggie and Uncle Hubert
• 2:06 The Mogollon Rim Beckons
• 3:55 Pronunciation, Place Names, and Pet Peeves
• 6:21 Enter the Mogollon Mermaid
• 8:53 Sightings: 1950s to 2012
• 11:00 Skepticism, Portals, and The Unseen
• 13:10 Closing and Call for Stories

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:02

Good afternoon, everybody. Dr. G, Spirit Tales, and Magic. I hope you're enjoying the day. We're working on 230 in the studio in Phoenix. Believe it's about 98 degrees outside, so hey, anything less than 100, we'll take it. I have collected over the years a lot of stories, and even though I have had a shall we call it a drastically interesting life, everything I've been through in my life, I've lost a lot of things, but I've managed to hold on to some stories and some photos, very few, from my youth. Now, my youth, I'm talking about seven years old, eight years old, you know, little kid kind of youth. Came across the picture this morning about six o'clock. Uh Cassandra and I are packing up the office to move everything out of it so that it can be repainted. That's going to be fun. So I have this picture of myself and my Aunt Aggie, who, if you're a listener to the podcast, you'll know that Agnes Wagner is an episode of the podcast. When I find things like that, Cassandra and I usually start to talk about it. And so what kind of stories did Aunt Aggie tell you? Well, Aunt Aggy is the visiting ghost when I was eight years old. So I said, not a lot of stories with Aunt Aggie that I can remember because I was so young. Now her brother, my uncle Hubert, had some of the most interesting stories. Oh, really? What kind? She says. So you my Uncle Hubert was a brilliant stonemason. There are many things in Belmont County, Ohio, and actually all over the country that Hubert Scott either built or consulted on. Hubert, unfortunately, was also a raging alcoholic, so he would have months of time where he would be on a bender. And uh he was a kind and gentle soul, though, I will say that. Now I told you that story to tell you this one. One of the things that my Uncle Hubert used to talk about sometimes when he was, say, a little inebriated. I had just gotten my driver's license. I was 16. And can you drive me to Arizona? You want me to drive you to Arizona? Yeah, I'll wait till I get a little money saved out and I'll pay you for it. And uh I want you to uh take me to the Mugeon Rim. I said, and where is that? Well, it's lakes and and things, and just want you to let me out there. Well, Uncle Hubert, I don't think that that's uh something that we're gonna undertake in the near future. But he would occasionally talk about that place, and then I ran into a few other people later, 17, 18, 19-year-old Dr. G, who talked about the muggy on rim or the muggy on rim, depending on how you say it. I did an episode on that a couple of days ago. Got an email said you should put more effort in the correct pronunciation of things. So I'm gonna go ahead and respond to that, which normally I wouldn't. And I'm gonna do it this way. There's a town in Ohio where there's a large part of Ohio University. It's A-T-H-E-N-S, Ohio. Pronounced by everybody, Athens, Ohio. A few hours away, very close to where I grew up in Ohio, there's a town that's called New A-T-H-E-N-S, and they pronounce it New Athens, Ohio, not New Athens. Putting the word new in front of a word, they claim, changes it. So I don't know if I got a new car, did I get a new current? I don't know. But anyway, potato patato, both pronunciations of this word, and I did do you a solid and look it up. I talked to several Native Americans and some people who live in the rim. And either way is correct because depending on where you're from, that's how you talk about it. Uh back to your mom's basement and do something else with your life. So people talked about a monster that lived in the water. They never really went any further into that. So, all of that to tell you this, I'm going through my notes after the picture session was over today. And I had picked something that I was going to talk about on the podcast, and I happened to look down, and right under my hand almost, the Moogie and Monster Mermaid, Siren of the Lakes. Well, that's interesting. The Mugion Mermaid or Muggeon Mermaid. Siren of the Lakes. So we'll take a little dive into one of Arizona's more obscure cryptids. The Muggeon Mermaid. I know, mermaids in Arizona, but hear me out. This aquatic enigma has a story that just might make you think twice about taking a dip in the muggeon rims, lakes, and reservoirs. And we've talked about that place and what a beautiful area it is. The water is nice, it uh maintains a pretty good temperature. But according to legend, the mermaid is a half-human, half-fish creature that lurks in the depth of the region's waterways. Eyewitnesses describe it as having the upper body of a beautiful woman with long flowing hair and mesmerizing eyes. But below the waist, the creature is said to have a scaly serpentine tail. Some people say it's like something out of a nightmare. Now that is a typical description of any mermaid you've ever heard about. But the Muyon mermaid's not just a pretty face. This cryptid is said to have a hypnotic power. It can lure unsuspecting swimmers and boaters to their doom with its siren song. Some accounts even claim that the creature can shape shift, taking on the appearance of a lost loved one or a tempting stranger, all the better way to draw their prey down into the murky depths. You will recall if you're a frequent flyer of the podcast when we did an episode on the lost Dutchman, we talked about the superstition mountains, and the Native Americans claim there are portals there for shape shifters to come out at night. You get more than a couple feet into any old Arizona history about the rim or the mountains or any part of that. You're going to hear about portals and shape shifters and beings that allegedly exist in multiple realms. Now, one of the earliest sightings of this mermaid dates back to 1950, when a group of Boy Scouts came, say claimed to have seen a strange half-human creature lurking in the waters of Black Canyon Lake. The boys described the creature as having a woman's face in torso, but some long scaly tail where her legs should have been. Now, if you go back to about the late 60s, we're talking like 1969. And he didn't see her, but three or four of the people he was with saw this beautiful woman swimming. And they felt like they should follow her. And the driver of the pontoon almost crashed into some rocks that would have not only sunk the boat, but probably drowned everyone on board. And never paid much attention to those kind of stories, and yet here we are in 2025 telling the story of this cryptid. Let that sink in for a minute. More recently, in 2012, a couple camping near Woods Canyon Lake reported hearing eerie, siren-like vocalizations coming from the water at night. They claimed the sounds were unlike anything that they'd ever heard before. It was a haunting melody, the melody that just seemed to call out to them from the depths. There was a young man shortly after that, hearing the same thing. Felt like he had to follow it. Follow the sound. Now he claims that it was a night of a full moon on a pristine lake. And he could see in the middle of the water what he describes as the most beautiful and intoxicating woman was ever created. And she was motioning to him to come to her. He was up to his neck in the water by the time his the screaming of his friends brought him back to his senses, and as soon as that happened, this beautiful woman vanished. Now it all does sound a bit far-fetched, doesn't it? But you know, one thing about cryptids is they don't always play by the rules of conventional biology. Who's to say there isn't some ancient aquatic humanoid lurking in the depths of Arizona's lakes? There are plenty of skeptics out there that will tell you that the Mugion mermaid is nothing more than a campfire story. A bit of local folklore. Perhaps it's designed to keep kids from swimming too far from the shore. Maybe they're right. But you know what one thing I've learned over the years? Never discount the strange and unexplained. And from what I've told that applies deeply when you talk about the cryptids of Arizona. Then remember, there is indeed a world unseen. It's a world that exists all around us all the time. And every now and then, for whatever the reason, we catch a glimpse of it. And the dead get in. And sometimes they might bring a mermaid with them. Send us your stories. We appreciate you, and we'll talk soon. Good afternoon from Phoenix.