THE DEVIL IN THE DETAILS: Morgan Knudsen explores the story of the Jersey Devil

By Morgan Knudsen, Entityseeker Paranormal Research & Teachings

New Jersey: The state associated with urban sprawl and bustling highways is not what many associate with its nickname, the Garden State. The primeval swamps and unfriendly soils that lay deep in the woods of what is infamously known as the Pine Barrens; a seemingly endless stretch of trees, strange shadows, water-logged marshes, tea colored rivers and a landscape that transports any visitor back in time to years where humans had not yet touched the continent. The very environment that spawns images and dark dreams of devils… and dragons…

The Jersey Devil has become synonymous with legend. It has transfixed minds through books, pop culture, lore, and has even been recognized as the official state “demon”. It is harder to find a stranger pastiche of creatures than this bizarre gargoyle-looking beast, but as witnesses have said ‘If you imagine a dragon, you’re 75% of the way there’. It’s cloven hooves, long tail, spectacular leathery wings, horselike head, horns, and massive size has been stitched into the memories of all children that have heard the stories. The sound of hooves on the rooftops, the nearly silent flight of wings, and the graceful darkness it brings as its shadow swoops over cabins and trees brings nightmares to even the deepest sleepers.

But it is a nightmare. Or is it? As a paranormal researcher, the thing I’ve learned about legends is that there is often a kernel of truth somewhere in the middle. When you dig through the tales and lore, sometimes strange truths make an appearance if you keep your mind open. The factor that keeps them as lore is what the real world calls ‘insufficient evidence’. Whether it be tracks, hair, DNA, or even a body, a lack of satisfying the one thing we can quantify, our physical senses, leaves beasts like the Jersey Devil under the dark cover of myth.

In Man and Beast in American Comic Legend, folklorist Richard Dorson outlines a six-point criteria for establishing distinction among legendary creatures of American folklore. Dorson specifies that the qualifier must exist in oral tradition, inspire belief and conviction, become personalized and institutionalized, is fanciful or mythical and contain a “comical side,” which endears it to the American public. Accounts of the Jersey Devil predate printed works such as newspaper accounts, and belief in the creature persists today in culture and on shows such as In Search of Monsters. Skeptics believe the Jersey Devil to be nothing more than a creation of early English settlers, similar to boogeyman stories created and told by bored Pine Barren residents; the byproduct of the historical local disdain for the historic Leeds family; the misidentification of known animals; and rumors based on biased perceptions of the local rural population of the Pine Barren (known as Piney’s). But just how deep does this strange legend really go? Have people really seen the Jersey Devil? For witnesses, the answer is a disturbing yes.

One such reported account was given to the television show, “In Search of Monsters”. A man, fishing in the deep wilderness of the Pine Barrens, was watching a herd of deer relaxing and nibbling on the foliage. The day was still, calm. The odd bird barely made a noise in the whispers of the breeze. No other animals seemed near that day, but something was out of line with nature’s force. A crack of branches, a sudden stirring. The deer were alert. Ears perked as another presence made itself known. A new smell on the wind as it tickled the deer’s noses. Another snap of

a stick, a black shape shifting, moving in the woods beside them – watching. Another predator was breathing in the dense woods. And then… an explosion. A burst of speed and blur and wings blew out of the trees like a firecracker. As the fisherman watched the deer run for their lives, trampling the earth to get away from the incoming assault, the man saw what he described as a large black creature with a horse-like head. However, it was not lunging as a horse would gallop, with its shoulders and muscles undulating as it ran; instead, it flew. It glided forward with lightning speed as if it were an arrow hunting its mark. Its feet never seemed to touch the ground as it pursued its prey with focus and fervor, the herd of herbivores running, hearts pounding, through the woods and disappearing with their predator into the deep dark of the Pine Barrens.

Many trace the history back as far as 1736, when a tale began that gave the Jersey Devil another nickname still heard today: The Leeds Devil, birthed from a woman known now as Deborah Leeds or “Mother Leeds” in the old stories.

“Most of us know the legend well, a story re-told in the film Rosemary’s Baby.”

A woman gives birth to a cursed child, which becomes a demon or a devil. The tale of Mother Leeds tells of a woman who, upon birthing her 13th child cursed him upon his birth with the words “Let this child be a devil”, upon which it grew to its massive size almost immediately, sprouted wings, screamed, and took off into the Pine Barrens like a dragon unleashed. Historians, however, tell a different tale; Brian Regal, a historian of science at Kean University, contends that “colonial-era political intrigue” involving early New Jersey politicians, Benjamin Franklin, and Franklin’s rival publisher Daniel Leeds (1651–1720) resulted in the Leeds family being described as “monsters”, and it was Daniel Leeds’ negative description as the “Leeds Devil” that created the later legend of the Jersey Devil.

Ostracized by his Quaker congregation after his 1687 publication of almanacs containing astrological symbols, cosmology, demonology, occultism and natural magic, Leeds’ fellow Quakers deemed the astrology in these almanacs as too “pagan”, and the almanacs were censored and destroyed by the local Quaker community. Not giving in to the demands of the local community’s censorship, Leeds was labeled as a traitor for rejecting Quaker beliefs, and they subsequently dismissed Leeds as “evil”.

Titan, Daniel’s son, continued his father’s legacy in his own writings and their family crest began to be printed on the almanacs he was publishing. The crest depicted a wyvern; a dragon headed beast with bat-like wings and two clawed feet, eerily reminiscent of the depictions of the Jersey Devil. By the early 1800’s, witnesses were beginning to come forward with accounts of a creature in the woods of which they could not account for. The First Nations people of the area call the Pine Barrens “the place of the dragons” and lends those to wonder just what ‘dragon’ they might be referring to, as they were settled there long before any feuding writers. 1909 marked the height of the Jersey Devil sightings, with newspaper reports doing their best to document the terrified people’s frightening stories. Vigilante groups and hunters roamed the woods in search of the creature, some claiming to have fired upon it with no effect. Even the brother of Napoleon himself, Joseph, claimed to have fired a cannon at a winged beast he could not identify. The cannonball, he later stated, seemed to pass right through the creature leaving it unharmed as it flew on. To this day, affidavits have been presented from police officers, hunters, hikers, and residents all claiming, throughout the years to have been up close and personal with a bat-winged beast in the Pine Barrens of the Garden State, and yet, no photos exist, and no tracks have been cast.

Jeff Brunner of the Humane Society of New Jersey thinks the sandhill crane is the basis of the Jersey Devil stories, adding, “There are no photographs, no bones, no hard evidence whatsoever, and worst of all, no explanation of its origins that doesn’t require belief in the supernatural.”

obsolete? Perhaps, instead, we need to take a look at our definition of insufficiency itself. Is insufficiency the end of the story, or is it the beginning of the adventure? Is it the absence of joy, or is it the pinnacle for the beginning of new information? Is the joy in the legend itself, or are we rooted to the idea that we cannot take pleasure or curiosity in the idea until we have a body physically manifested in front of us? Regardless of the Jersey Devil’s place in American history, cryptozoology, and our pop culture, this state demon continues to make its presence known in the Pine Barrens and across the world, sparking terror, imagination, and a pursuit of the grandest curiosity.

Morgan X

Official Sites: www.entityseeker.ca www.supernaturalcircumstances.com

Want to get your claws into more info about the Jersey Devil? Just type into Google* and explore away. You will come across a PlayStation game and an ice hockey team but there are many more rabbit holes for you to explore.

*other search engines are available

However, perhaps both legend and belief are the point. While we tend to see non-physical as a pre-requisite for something being “fake”, this flawed belief often creates a mental pitfall; If something is not physical, then it must not be real. Scientifically, we know this is simply not true. Many things are not physical, and yet are still studied and accepted. Does insufficient evidence of the Jersey Devil make its existence