The Jersey Devil

In the southern half of New Jersey, between the suburbs of Philadelphia and the casinos of Atlantic City, there is a forest most Americans have never heard of.

It covers more than a million acres. It is a vast, flat wilderness of pitch pines and scrub oaks, cedar swamps and tea-colored rivers stained dark by tannins, sandy roads that wind for miles without passing a house. Ghost towns are scattered through it — old iron furnaces, glassworks and paper mills abandoned in the nineteenth century. Locals call the people who have lived deep in the woods for generations Pineys. Outsiders call the place the Pine Barrens.

For nearly three hundred years, something has been said to live there.

Mother Leeds

The story goes back to 1735, to a place called Leeds Point, near the edge of the salt marshes along the Jersey coast.

A woman known as Mother Leeds was pregnant with her thirteenth child. She was poor, exhausted and tired of having children. When she learned she was pregnant again, she cried out — so the legend says — “Let this one be the devil!”

On a stormy night, she gave birth. At first, the baby seemed normal. Then, as the midwives watched in horror, it began to change. It grew rapidly. Its body stretched. It sprouted hooves, a forked tail, the head of a horse or a goat, and leathery wings like a bat’s. It let out a terrible scream, attacked the people in the room, and flew up the chimney and out into the night, toward the pines.

It has been there ever since.

The Real Leeds Family

Like many legends, this one may have roots in real history — just not the history the legend tells.

There really was a Leeds family in southern New Jersey in the early 1700s. Daniel Leeds was an almanac publisher and surveyor who came into bitter conflict with his Quaker community after publishing material they considered heretical and occult — astrology, mysticism. His son Titan Leeds continued publishing almanacs and became embroiled in a famous rivalry with a young Philadelphia printer named Benjamin Franklin, who mocked Titan in his own almanac, Poor Richard’s, by predicting his death and then insisting he had died even after Titan protested that he was alive.

Some historians believe that the Leeds family’s reputation for dabbling in astrology and the occult, their public feuds, and the fact that their family crest featured wyverns — winged, dragon-like creatures — helped give rise to the idea of a “Leeds Devil.” Over time, the name became the Jersey Devil.

Two Centuries of Sightings

Over the following centuries, the Jersey Devil became a fixture of South Jersey folklore. Farmers blamed it for missing livestock. Parents told children to come home before dark, or the Leeds Devil would get them.

The legends grew more colorful with time. One story claims that Commodore Stephen Decatur, a naval hero of the early 1800s, was testing cannons at an iron foundry in the Pine Barrens when he saw the creature fly overhead, and fired a cannonball straight through it — with no effect. Another says that Joseph Bonaparte, the older brother of Napoleon, who lived in exile on an estate in Bordentown, New Jersey, saw the Devil while hunting. There is no evidence for either story, but they’re told with great affection.

Phenomenal Week

Then, in January 1909, the Jersey Devil went from local folklore to national sensation.

It began on the night of January 16. Over the following week, hundreds of people in more than thirty towns across South Jersey and into Pennsylvania and Delaware reported encounters with a strange winged creature.

In Bristol, Pennsylvania, a postmaster said he saw a creature with a head like a ram, short wings and a terrible cry flying along the Delaware River. In Gloucester City, a couple said they watched a creature on their shed roof for ten minutes. In Camden, a social club was said to have been attacked. Police officers fired at the creature. Trolley lines put on armed guards. Strange hoofprints appeared in the snow, leading across fields and roofs and over fences, as if something had walked or hopped across them — and then stopped suddenly, as if it had taken flight.

Schools closed. Factories shut down. Some people refused to leave their homes. The Philadelphia Zoo reportedly offered a large reward for the capture of the creature, and newspapers across the country covered the panic.

That week, a pair of Philadelphia showmen announced that they had captured the Jersey Devil and put it on display. It was later revealed to be a kangaroo, painted with green stripes, with fake wings glued to its back. The crowds came anyway.

By the end of January, the sightings faded as quickly as they had started.

What Was It?

To this day, no one knows exactly what caused the panic of 1909. Some suggest it was mass hysteria, fed by sensational newspaper coverage. Some think pranksters made the hoofprints. Some suggest people saw unusual animals — a sandhill crane, a large owl, even a horse loose in the snow — and that fear and rumor did the rest.

But sightings never entirely stopped. Over the decades, people have continued to report seeing something in the Pine Barrens: a tall, winged shape crossing a road, a scream in the night, strange tracks in the sand. In the 1950s and 1960s, there were waves of reports. There are still reports today.

The Devil We Love

Something interesting has happened to the Jersey Devil over the past century. It’s become a kind of mascot.

New Jersey’s professional hockey team, which moved to the state in 1982, was named the New Jersey Devils after a public vote. There are Jersey Devil beers, T-shirts, festivals and souvenir shops. There have been films, books and TV episodes. The Pine Barrens attract hikers, kayakers and campers, many of whom spend at least part of the night listening for a scream in the woods.

But I think the reason the legend has endured so long is the Pine Barrens themselves. Drive into that forest on a winter evening, when the sun is low and the sandy roads disappear into the pines, and you’ll understand. It’s one of the most isolated places on the East Coast — a wilderness in the most crowded state in America, where it’s still possible to get lost, and where the dark comes down fast.

Something could live in a place like that. Something could hide.