Perhaps one of the most famous monsters in American history, the Jersey Devil has struck
fear in the residents of the New Jersey pine barrens for centuries.
Although stories of the devil have been retold in seemingly endless variations, the true
origins of the legend can be traced back to a real family who inhabited the pine barrens
during the 17th century and whose unorthodox beliefs led to rumors of supernatural occurrences.
But is the creature simply a product of religious feuds and superstition, or is there more to
the story?
Did the Jersey Devil really exist?
The story of the Jersey Devil starts, like many stories of its kind, on a dark and stormy
night.
It's 1735 and deep within the Pine Barrens, in an old cabin, a witch named Mother Leeds
is giving birth.
Having already given birth to 12 other children, the arrival of her 13th child is painful and
unwelcome.
In a fit of rage and agony, she cries out “Let this one be a devil!”
What emerges from inside of her isn't a child, but instead a strange demon-like chimera,
with a horse-like head, hooves, a forked tail and bat wings.
The creature wrecks the room and kills the midwife, before flying up the chimney and
escaping into the night.
In some variations of the story, Mother Leeds curses the child after finding out she's pregnant,
in other versions the child's father is the devil himself.
Had this been the extent of the story, it's likely that the Jersey Devil would be remembered
today as obvious folklore.
But as early as the 18th century , people began reporting sightings of the creature.
Tales of inhuman wails echoing through the trees, of children being carried away and
people being awakened to see the silhouette of the demon outside their window.
In 1820, Joseph Bonaparte, the eldest brother of Napoleon, wrote in his journal that he
saw and fired upon a creature matching the Jersey Devil's description.
In 1840, the devil was blamed for several livestock killings, which would reoccur in
1859.
The sightings reached a fever pitch in January of 1909, when strange tracks were being found
in the snow from places as faraway as Delaware and Maryland.
The hoofprints went over and under fences, through fields and across the rooftops of
houses.
They were believed to have been made by a bipedal creature, and the fact that they often
ended abruptly led people to believe that the creature could also fly.
The hoofprints are reminiscent of the famous Devil's Footprints, which were rumored to
have been discovered in England in February of 1855.
The descriptions of the tracks are identical, and they were also found in the snow.
One of the other interesting similarities I found in the two cases is that they both
feature accounts of the creature being able to fit through very small spaces.
It's also worth noting that similar stories have been found throughout history but not
at the scale of the 1855 and 1909 sightings.
But footprints in the snow weren't the only strange things happening in 1909.
In fact, from January 16th to the 23rd, there was a flurry of sightings in the Pine Barrens
and beyond.
There are reports of the creature attacking a trolley full of people, of firemen who attempted
to spray it with water only to be attacked themselves and of a woman who's dog was eaten
by the devil.
Some people described it as resembling a kangaroo, while others said it looked more like a kind
of ostrich.
The widespread newspaper coverage of these events created such hysteria that schools
were closed down and workers refused to head to the mills in fear that they'd be attacked
by what was then referred to as the Leeds Devil.
After these sightings died down, reports of the creature would still spring up sporadically,
all the way to the present day.
If you search online you'll find hundreds of stories of people claiming to have had
encounters with the Jersey Devil.
In the late 1980’s a couple of my friends and I took a camping trip to the Pine Barrens.
I was unaware that we were headed to the home of the Jersey Devil.
We headed out on our bikes, and did our share of partying that night.
The next day while everyone was asleep, three of us decided to hit the trails a bit earlier
than usual.
We were about 100 yards away in the woods, when my bike stalled out.
I looked and found that my friends had stalled also.
At first I thought it had something to do with the terrain or maybe something to do
with the nearby power plants.
Fifty feet away from each other we tried to start up our bikes, when suddenly from the
woods we heard the most horrible piercing scream.
It sounded inhuman, like something being tortured.
Once back at camp they asked us if we had heard screams earlier.
They had heard them too, four miles away.
That night we headed into the local town because we ran out of booze.
We went into a bar and I ordered a drink, still in shock from what I had heard that
morning.
The bartender asked, “Hey kid, whad’dya see a ghost or somethin’?”
After I told him the story he smiled and said, “It looks like you met our little friend.”
He then asked us to come out back.
He showed us a tin garbage can that was shredded to bits.
It looked like the shreds were made from something with three claws.
I have never returned to the Pine Barrens since, and I do not plan to go back.
So the legend of the Jersey Devil has persisted for hundreds of years, but what's the true
story behind the lore?
For starters, the Leeds family were a real family that lived in the Pine Barrens in the
17th century.
In fact, many of their descendants still live there today.
Daniel Leeds, the family's patriarch, had arrived in New Jersey from Leeds, England
as a councilor to the first royal governor of New Jersey, Edward Hyde.
Leeds was well-educated with a keen interest in religion as well as the latest scientific
discoveries.
In 1687, Daniel Leeds began publishing his own almanac with the help of a man named William
Bradford, who was one of colonial America's first printers.
Almanacs first started off as simple pamphlets that contained weather forecasts and planting
dates for farmers, but they eventually evolved to something akin to modern magazines, containing
essays, political commentary and entertainment.
Leeds Almanac became popular but was quickly met with harsh criticism.
You see, Leeds was also a devout Quaker.
The Quakers are a religious group that emerged in England as a new Christian denomination
during a period of religious turmoil in the mid-1600s.
The quakers reject elaborate religious ceremonies and don't have official clergy.
They value simplicity and what they describe as the “search for inner light.”
The Quakers at the time were shocked my Leed's Almanac because of it's depictions of astrology
and other things that they considered blasphemous, such as weather predictions.
They went as far as to buy up all the almanacs in circulation in order to destroy them.
While Leeds was initially apologetic to his Quaker brothers, he was secretly angered by
their actions, eventually breaking away from the group and continuing to publish his almanac.
In 1688, he wrote a book called The Temple of Wisdom which was largely plagiarized from
other works.
The book dealt heavily with occult themes which furthered stirred the pot between Leeds
and his former Quaker brothers.
Finally, by 1699, Leeds had had enough of the Quakers and published an anti-Quaker book
called The Trumpet Sounded Out of the Wilderness of America.
The book claimed that Quaker theology denied Christ's divinity and accused them of being
against the English monarchy.
The book, coupled with his allegiance with the controversial governor Hyde, caused the
Quakers to fire back with a series of pamphlets that went as far as to accuse Leeds of working
with the devil.
This is how the association between the devil and the Leeds family first emerged, but it
wouldn't be long before the family's name was further tarnished with such accusations.
In 1716, Daniel Leeds retired and turned the almanac over to his son, Titan.
Titan redesigned the almanac's masthead to include the family crest, which featured a
mythological creature known as a Wyvern.
Wyverns are suspiciously similar in appearance to descriptions of the Jersey Devil.
Some years later, in a bizarre twist of fate, Titan became the enemy of non-other than Benjamin
Franklin, who at the time was an up and coming printer from Philadelphia.
Franklin had began publishing Poor Richard's Almanac in 1732 and as it grew in popularity,
he saw the opportunity to boost sales by taking shots at Leed's Almanac, which at the time
was his main rival.
Franklin used his almanac to antagonize Titan Leeds, going as far as to claim that he had
used astrological techniques to predict the exact date of Titan's death, which he said
would occur on October 17th of that year.
When October 17th came and went without incident, Titan accused Franklin of being a liar and
a fool, and thought that the public would see right through Franklin's antics.
But Titan had greatly underestimated just how much of a troll Benjamin Franklin was.
Instead of admitting he had lied, Franklin took things a step further by claiming that
Titan Leeds had in fact died and come back as a ghost.
Franklin treated the feud as a joke and a ploy to try and sell copies of his almanac.
But Titan Leeds took it more seriously, and was never quite able to shake off the association
with ghosts and devils.
He died in 1738.
Poor Richard's Almanac went on to become the most famous almanac in American history, and
the Leeds Almanac has been all but forgotten by time.
It's worth mentioning that Titan Leed's death closely coincides with the supposed birth
of the Jersey Devil and historians believe that he association between the Leeds family
and tales of devils and monsters eventually gave rise to the Leeds Devil legend.
Until the early 20th century, the Jersey Devil was still being referred to as the Leeds Devil.
While some descriptions existed, it was mostly spoken of in vague terms, referred to as a
demon or an apparition.
The legend really took off during the flurry of sightings in 1909, and it was helped along
by hoaxers and showmen looking to make a quick buck out of the story.
Such was the case with Norman Jeffries, the publicity manager of T.F.
Hopkins' Ninth and Arch Street Museum in Philadelphia.
When he heard about the sightings of the creature, he concocted a plan with an animal trainer
named Jacob F. Hope to bring the Jersey Devil to life.
They began planting stories about an animal they referred to as an Australian vampire,
who, according to them, had recently escaped.
They claimed that this creature was responsible for the Jersey devil sightings.
They said they had managed to recapture the animal and that it would be put on display
by the museum to be seen by the public.
For a fee, of course.
In reality, the animal that people paid to see was simply a large male red kangaroo that
was painted with green stripes and that had a pair of wings glued to its back.
While it's hard to believe such a trick would fool anyone today, or even back then, the
exhibit was very successful and helped to further spread the word about the devil.
Many of the famous illustrations and descriptions we find of the Jersey devil come from shows
such as these.
Jeffries confessed to perpetrating the hoax in 1929, but by then it was too late.
The story of the Leeds Devil – which by then had been transformed into the Jersey
Devil – had already grown to become one of the most famous legends in American history.
So was the Jersey Devil simply a folklore creature born out of political feuds and propped
up by hoaxers and mass hysteria, or is it possible that a real unknown animal was stalking
the Pine Barrens?
While I don't buy the stories of a demon birth, I do think it's at least possible that some
kind of unknown large bird or bat was roaming the area during the 1909 sightings, but without
any tangible physical evidence, it's impossible to say for sure.
I do think that the demonization of the Leeds family is what caused the association between
this possible unknown animal and the devil.
It's worth noting that another person in the Leeds family, Deborah Leeds, also has an interesting
connection to the story.
She lived in the area now known as Leeds Point, a plot of land still owned by the family today.
In a will written by her husband Japhet in 1736, she is listed as having had 12 children.
Could this be the inspiration for the story of the 13th child?
Is it possible that she perhaps gave birth to a deformed child that at the time could
have been seen as demonic?
Records of any such child have never been found.
Whatever the explanation, The Jersey Devil is one of the most interesting examples of
American mythology and will likely continue to capture the imaginations of the people
of the Pine Barrens and beyond.
I want to give a special thanks to Dr. Udru who helped me out with the narration in this
video.
Check out his channel if you want to see high quality videos about horror history.
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