THE JERSEY DEVIL
The Jersey devil is a cryptid that has haunted the Pine Barrens for hundreds of years now.
Legends of the creature possibly pre date colonial settlements..
The local Lenape tribes called the area "Popuessing" meaning "place of the dragon".
Later Swedish explorers named it "Drake Kill" ("drake" meaning dragon, and "kill" meaning channel or arm of the sea (river, stream, etc. in Dutch).
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Joseph Bonaparte, elder brother of Napoleon, is also claimed to have witnessed the Jersey Devil while hunting on his Borden town estate around 1820.
Joseph Bonaprte's sighting:
"One snowy afternoon, [Joseph Bonaparte] was hunting alone in the woods near his house when he spotted some strange tracks on the ground. they looked like the tracks of a two-footed donkey. Bonaparte noticed that one foot was slightly larger than the other.
The tracks ended abruptly as if the creature had flown away. He stared at the tracks for a long moment, trying to figure out what the strange animal might be."
At that moment, Bonaparte heard a strange hissing noise.
Turning, he found himself face to face with a large winged creature with a horse-like head and bird-like legs.
Astonished and frightened, he froze and stared at the beast, forgetting that he was carrying a rifle. For a moment, neither of them moved. Then the creature hissed at him, beat its wings, and flew away."
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1909 Mass Sightings....
During the week of January 16 through 23, 1909, newspapers of the time published hundreds of claimed encounters with the Jersey Devil from all over the state. Among alleged encounters publicized that week were claims the creature "attacked" a trolley car in Haddon Heights and a social club in Camden. Police in Camden and Bristol, Pennsylvania supposedly fired on the creature to no effect. Other reports initially concerned unidentified footprints in the snow, but soon sightings of creatures resembling the Jersey Devil were being reported throughout South Jersey and as far away as Delaware and Western Maryland.
The widespread newspaper coverage led to a panic throughout the Delaware Valley prompting a number of schools to close and workers to stay home. During this period, it is rumored that the Philadelphia Zoo posted a $10,000 reward for the creature's dung.
The offer prompted a variety of hoaxes, including a kangaroo with artificial wings.
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Possible Origins......
As a result of the poor farming prospects new wealthy settlers coming into the region would avoided the area as much as possible leaving it to those of leaser means to settle in the pine barrens and later becoming known as "Pineys".
Made up of the outcasts and less reputable members of colonial society, this reputation gave those outside the Barrens even more of a reason to stay far from the Pine Barrens.
It is possible that the jersey devils origins story and the Leed's family were a form of social discrimination taking the form of folklore. The creature's fearsome reputation, combined with the possibly bad reputation of the family it came from, would only encourage locals to avoid the region for fear of being caught by the Jersey Devil.
The Jersey devil is also known as the Leeds Devil.
Prior to the early 1900s, and before the mass series of sightings in 1909, the Jersey Devil was called the Leeds Devil or the Devil of Leeds, either because of it's connection with the local Leeds family or the southern New Jersey town, Leeds Point.
Modern day Leeds Point is now Atlantic County, New Jersey, the area most commonly associated with the Jersey Devil story.
By at least the late 1700s and early 1800s at the latest, the "Leeds Devil" had become a well known legendary in the southern New Jersey area.
Into the early to mid-19th century, stories continued to circulate in southern New Jersey of the Leeds Devil, a "monster wandering the Pine Barrens".
An oral tradition of the "Leeds Devil" eventually became a prominent myth in the Pine Barrens area
Although the "Leeds Devil" legend has existed since the 1700's, the more modern description of the Jersey Devil, wasn't truly standardized in current form until the early 1900's
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Origins of the the Jersey Devil very s slightly depending on who's telling it..
Some claim "Mother Leeds" was a woman named Jane Leeds, in other versions her name is Deborah Leeds.
In ether case, Mother Leeds is said to have had twelve children upon learning she was pregnant for the thirteenth time, she cursed the child in frustration, crying out that the child would be the "devil".
In 1735, Mother Leeds was in labor on a stormy night while her friends gathered around her.
She soon gave birth, the child was born normal, but then started too change into a grotesque creature with hooves, a goat's head, bat wings, and a forked tail.
Growling and screaming, the child then attacked and beat everyone in the room before flying up the chimney and heading into the woods where it is said to haunt to this day..
However it is entirely possible that the story of the Leeds devil is based on personal issues locals had with the Leeds family as opposed to a supernatural event resulting in a demon baby..
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In some versions of the tale, Mother Leeds was supposedly a witch and the child's father was the devil, himself. legend also state that there was eventually an attempt by local clergymen to exorcise the beast from the Pine Barrens.
The real "Mother Leeds" was most likely Deborah Leeds.
Deborah Leeds and her husband Japhet Leeds really had twelve children that where named in Japhet's will that he wrote during 1736, which is compatible with the legend.
Deborah and Japhet Leeds also lived in the Leeds Point during that time period.
Japhet Leeds house was still standing up to 1937 on Moss Mill Road, Leeds Point, Atlantic County, New Jersey.
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Others believe that a colonial-era feud/disagreement involving early New Jersey politician, Benjamin Franklin, and Franklin's rival almanac publisher Daniel Leeds (1651–1720) resulted in the Leeds family being labled "monsters", and it was that negative description of Daniel Leeds' that later resulted the name "Leeds Devil", rather than an actual creature, that lead to the later legend of the Jersey Devil.
Much like the Mother Leeds of the Jersey Devil myth, Daniel Leeds' third wife had given birth to nine children, a very large number of children for the time.
Leeds' second wife and first daughter had both died during childbirth.
As a royal surveyor with strong allegiance to the British crown, Leeds had also surveyed and acquired land in the Egg Harbor area, located within the Pine Barrens. The land was inherited by Leeds' sons and family and is now known as Leeds Point in the Pine Barrens the region currently most associated with the Jersey Devil legend and alleged Jersey Devil sightings.
Also in the 17th century, English Quakers established settlements in southern New Jersey Pine Barrens. Daniel Leeds, a Quaker and a prominent person of pre-Revolution colonial southern New Jersey, became ostracized by his Quaker congregation after his 1687 publication of almanacs containing astrological symbols and writings.
Leeds' fellow Quakers deemed the astrology in these almanacs as too "pagan" or blasphemous, and the almanacs were censored and destroyed by the local Quaker community.
In response to and in spite of this blatant censorship, Leeds continued to publish even more esoteric astrological Christian writing and became increasingly fascinated with Christian occultism, Christian mysticism, cosmology, demonology and angelology, and natural magic.
In the 1690s, after his almanacs and writings were further censored and labeled as blasphemous or heretical by the Philadelphia Quaker Meeting, Leeds continued to dispute with the Quaker community, converting to Anglicanism and publishing anti-Quaker tracts criticizing Quaker theology and accusing Quakers of being anti-monarchists.
In the escalating dispute between Leeds and the southern New Jersey Quakers over Leeds' accusations, Leeds was endorsed by the much-maligned British royal governor of New Jersey, Lord Cornbury, despised among the Quaker communities.
Leeds also worked as a councilor to Lord Cornbury about this time.
Considering Leeds as a traitor for aiding the Crown and rejecting Quaker beliefs, the Quaker Burlington Meeting of southern New Jersey subsequently dismissed Leeds as "evil".
During 1716, Daniel Leeds' son, Titan Leeds, inherited his father's almanac business, which continued to use astrological content and eventually competed with Benjamin Franklin's popular Poor Richard's Almanac.
The competition between the two men intensified during 1733, Franklin satirically used astrology in his almanac to predict Titan Leeds' death on October of that same year.
Though Franklin's prediction was intended as a joke at his competitor's expense and a means to boost almanac sales, Titan Leeds was apparently offended at the death prediction, publishing a public admonition of Franklin as a "fool" and a "liar".
In a published response, Franklin mocked Titan Leeds' outrage and humorously suggested that, in fact, Titan Leeds had died in accordance with the earlier prediction and was thus writing his almanacs as a ghost, resurrected from the grave to haunt and torment Franklin.
Franklin continued to jokingly refer to Titan Leeds as a "ghost" even after Titan Leeds' actual death during 1738. Daniel Leeds' blasphemous and occultist reputation and his pro-monarchy stance in the largely anti-monarchist colonial south of New Jersey, combined with Benjamin Franklin's later continuous depiction of Titan Leeds as a ghost, may have originated or contributed to the local folk legend of a so-called "Leeds Devil" lurking in the Pine Barrens.
During 1728, Titan Leeds began to include the Leeds family crest on the masthead of his almanacs.
The Leeds family crest depicted a wyvern, a bat-winged dragon-like legendary creature that stands upright on two clawed feet.
The wyvern on the Leeds family crest is reminiscent of the popular descriptions of the Jersey Devil.
The inclusion of this family crest on Leeds' almanacs may have further contributed to the Leeds family's poor reputation among locals and possibly influenced the popular descriptions of the Leeds Devil or Jersey Devil.
The fearsome appearance of the crest's wyvern and the increasing animosity among local South Jersey residents towards royalty, aristocracy, and nobility (with whom family crests were associated) may have helped facilitate the legend of the Leeds Devi and the association of the Leeds family with "devils" and "monsters".
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OTHER SIGHTINGS
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During 1859, the Atlantic Monthly published an article detailing the Leeds Devil folk tales popular among Pine Barren residents (or "pine rats".)
A newspaper from 1887 describes sightings of a winged creature, referred to as "the Devil of Leeds",
allegedly spotted near the Pine Barrens and well known among the local populace of Burlington County, New Jersey:
Whenever he went near it, it would give a most unearthly yell that frightened the dogs. It whipped at every dog on the place.
"That thing," said the colonel, "is not a bird nor an animal, but it is the Leeds devil, according to the description, and it was born over in Evasham, Burlington county, a hundred years ago. There is no mistake about it. I never saw the horrible critter myself, but I can remember well when it was roaming around in Evasham woods fifty years ago, and when it was hunted by men and dogs and shot at by the best marksmen there were in all South Jersey, but could not be killed. There isn't a family in Burlington or any of the adjoining counties that does not know of the Leeds devil, and it was the bugaboo to frighten children with when I was a boy.
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In 1934 near South Pittsburg, Tennessee a Phantom Kangaroo or "kangaroolike beast" was reported by several witnesses over a five-day period, and to have killed and partially devoured several animals, including ducks, geese, a German Shepherd police dog and other dogs. Kangaroos are typically unaggressive and vegetarian. A witness described the animal as looking "like a large kangaroo, running and leaping across a field." A search party followed the animal's tracks to a mountainside cave where they stopped.
On July 27, 1937, an unknown animal "with red eyes" seen by residents of Downingtown, Pennsylvania was compared to the Jersey Devil by a reporter for the Pennsylvania Bulletin of July 28, 1937.
In 1951, a group of Gibbstown, New Jersey boys claimed to have seen a 'monster' matching the Devil's description and claims of a corpse matching the Jersey Devil's description arose in 1957.
In 1960, tracks and noises heard near Mays Landing were claimed to be from the Jersey Devil.
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It was also the main focus on an episode of the X-Files titled "The Jersey Devil".
However the Jersey Devil in the episode is shown to be a feral humanoid or possible subspecies of humans. the lack of special effects and lower budgeting in the early episodes of the X-Files forced the producers to make a more cost-effective version of the creature.
The jersey devil was also a featured cryptid on an episode of "Monster Quest".
Legends of the Jersey Devil predates printed newspaper accounts and belief in its existence still ongoing.
The latter is made evident not only by commentators who elaborate on this possibility but even by investigative programs such as Mother Leeds' 13th Child, In Search of Monsters, Lore and Monsters and Mysteries in America.
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ππThats all for October, hope you all have a safe and fun Halloweenππ
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