The New Jersey Devil: Bigger than the Beatles. More devilish than Ozzy

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The New Jersey Devil: Bigger than the Beatles. More devilish than Ozzy
1/14/09
by Tracy Morris
Firefox News

At one point or another, every mother looks at their screaming toddler and wonders if it may secretly be a little monster
. But what if he or she really was?

If you lived back in 1735, you could have asked Mrs. Leeds what that was like. After all, she's supposedly the mother of New Jersey's most famous cryptid – the New Jersey Devil.

Most readers have probably heard of the Jersey Devil. The creature ranks up there with Nessie and Bigfoot as one of the rock stars of the monster world.

It has been the subject of horror movies, television shows, video games and popular novels. The creature has so captured our imagination that a local New Jersey group, The Devil Hunters, has had their search for the Jersey Devil chronicled by almost every paranormal documentary television show out there.

But long before Bruce Springsteen sang tributes to the creature, there were only the pine barrens and the fear of what was in them.

The New Jersey pine barrens is an unusual place itself. The area could be described as romantic in the Byronic sense. Dense forest covers over a million acres of land. Cedar trees both line the riverbanks and stain them blood red. Exotic plants flourish there. Many of them require the ever-present forest fires to reproduce. When Henry Hudson's Dutch explorers came to the Jersey shores, they took one look at the sugary sand soil – and knew that it would never be suitable for farming. Thereafter they named the place The Barrens.

Under these conditions all that is missing – is a dragon.

Locals must have thought so, too. Prior to European colonization, the Lenape people called the pine barrens “the place of the dragon.” Later, when Swedish explorers passed through the area, they named it Drake Kill (literally dragon channel).

Into this climate, the Jersey Devil legend, and perhaps the devil himself, was born.

There are several versions of the Jersey Devil legend. The most popular and widely accepted version is that in the early 1700's, a woman named Deborah Smith emigrated from England to marry Japhet Leeds.

Whatever Deborah was expecting when she left England, she couldn't possibly imagine what was in store for her. Pioneer life in the thirteen colonies was already harsh and unforgiving. Life in the pine barrens - where settlers eked out a living in the search for Bog Ore - was even harder. (Searching for Bog Ore was once featured on the television show The Worst Jobs in History)

By 1735, Deborah had already given her husband twelve children. When she found out that she was once again pregnant, she was no-doubt suffering from postpartum depression after child number 12. In a fit of despair, Deborah was thought to have cursed the child by saying “Let it be a devil.”

At this point, the story starts to shape up into a morality play with a stern lesson. Mrs. Leeds still had to go through with nine months of pregnancy and a hard labor. But in the end, her reward was a harsh one: Because of one moment when she didn't guard her careless tongue, Mrs. Leeds's thirteenth baby transformed into a demon. It grew wings and breathed fire.

Then it killed its siblings and feasted on their flesh before Deborah's horrified eyes. At last, when its hunger was satiated, it turned and flew up the chimney and into the night.

In other versions of the story, Mrs. Leeds wasn't the one to curse the child. Depending on the time period, the story takes a different shape. In some versions, the child is cursed when the mother offends a local clergyman or denies food to a starving Gypsy. In others, the child is cursed because the mother was a witch. In some, the baby is the result of the union between the mother and a British soldier – and was cursed as a result of the treasonous affair. Some versions even claim that the baby is the son of the devil himself.

Even the names of the parties involved is in dispute. In some versions, the Jersey Devil's mother is Mother Leeds. In others, it's Mother Shrouds. Either name could be correct. Legal documents including family bibles, wills, and land titles dating back to the eighteenth century list both Leeds and Shrouds families living in the pine barrens.

Other variations on the story say that the devil was born deformed to begin with, or that it never attacked anyone in the home. Instead, it returned to roost on Mrs. Leeds's fence for years until she finally drew up the courage to shoo it away. The setting itself is also revolving. Some tellers of the tale place it as late as 1880. However, 1735 is the most widely accepted date of the events.

The Jersey Devil's birthplace has also been pinpointed in several locations, including Estellville, Pleasantville, Burlington and Leeds Point. Leeds Point is the most popular location, not only because of the history of Leeds living there, but also because of the presence of a physical house place.

Regardless of the origin story, all tales agree on what comes next. The Jersey Devil immediately began carrying off livestock. Residents were so terrified that in 1740 a clergyman took it on himself to banish the Jersey Devil. In a sort of an ecclesiastical version of time-out, the story goes that the creature was sent away for 100 years.

During that period, there are only two reported sightings of the Jersey Devil.
In both encounters, the humans reportedly stumbled onto the creature while it was in the woods – possibly sulking like a grounded teenager.

What is notable about these two sightings isn't that the devil was seen at all, it's who did the seeing. The first encounter was reported by Commodore Stephen Decatur, a naval hero who was testing cannonballs at the Hanover ironworks. The second, by Joseph Bonaparte, brother to Emperor Napoleon and former King of Spain. Bonaparte claimed to have seen the Jersey Devil while hunting.

This time of peace ended in 1840, when the Jersey Devil's sentence lifted and the creature returned with a vengeance. Throughout the rest of the nineteenth century, the creature made periodic raids on livestock and terrorized residents of the pine barrens. Visitors to the area noted that residents seemed nervous, as if constantly afraid that the creature was listening at all times.

At the turn of the twentieth century, the Jersey Devil was at his busiest. The most sightings on record occurred during a one-week period from January 16 through January 23, 1909. During this time, thousands of people claimed to have seen the creature. Their eyewitness reports were covered in newspapers across the country. This week of events has come to be known as Phenomenal Week.

● On Saturday, January 16th, the creature was sighted flying over Woodbury.
● The next day (January 17th) citizens of Bristol, Pennsylvania claimed to have seen it. Strange tracks were found nearby.
● On Monday, January 18th, Burlington was covered in strange tracks that seemed to defy logic.
● One couple saw the Jersey Devil outside their window in Gloucester on Tuesday the 19th. Nearby, a group of hunters followed a set of strange tracks for twenty miles.
● By Wednesday, possies formed up for the purpose of hunting the Jersey Devil. One such group of men reported seeing the creature flying toward Moorestown. Later the same day, two people in Moorestown reported seeing the Jersey Devil.
● On Thursday, the Jersey Devil was getting a little bit bolder. It reportedly attacked a group of people on a trolley in Haddon Heights. Trolley cars in other cities began maintaining armed guards. It was also sighted colliding with an electric rail in Clayton. A telegraph worker in Atlantic City said that he shot at it. Encounters were also reported in Philadelphia Pennsylvania and West Collingswood, New Jersey.
● By Friday, many schools and businesses closed due to the widespread panic.

During this time, the Philadelphia Zoo posted a $1,000,000 reward for capture of the Jersey Devil. This reward remains in effect to this day.

And while sightings have diminished since Phenomenal Week, they've never really stopped (on average, there are about ten a year). The New Jersey Devil Hunters keeps a list of reported sightings on their website.

As with any unknown or fantastic creature, when you strip away the hype and boil down the lore, at the core is one question: what is it?

Theories on the Jersey Devil are as different as Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny. Here are a few of the popular and the plausible:

● It's a sandhill crane. The sandhill crane is native to the pine barrens. It shares a few traits with the Jersey Devil, including a seven foot wingspan and a loud, demonic screech. However, unlike the Jersey Devil, the sandhill crane is not known for stealing livestock.
● It's an unknown beast/dragon/dinosaur. This falls under the 'wouldn't it be cool' category. The discovery of Lazarus creatures, such as the coelacanth and the ivory-billed woodpecker often fuels the idea that a long-extinct creature may have survived in the pine barrens.
● We're dealing with a chupacabra. The fact that chupacabras are not known for flight should disprove this one.
● There were core facts that grew in the telling. It's possible that Mother Leeds was a real person, whose thirteenth child was born deformed. Rumors could have spread that the child was a devil based on its appearance or that it was born that way because it's mother was a witch. As the story spread, it grew to legendary proportions.
● There is a supernatural explanation. In other words, the story is verbatim true. There really is a devil.

Recent sightings aren't limited to the pine barrens either. Reports come from as far flung places as northern Georgia and southern Pennsylvania. So next time you are in the Atlantic region, keep your eyes open. You just might spot something phenomenal. Or it might just be a sandhill crane.