Welcome to Brainstuff, the production of I Heart Radio. Hey brain Stuff, Lauren bobebam Here in the National Hockey League landed in New Jersey. A Denver based team, the hopless Colorado Rockies, had been purchased by new ownership and relocated to the Garden State at a cost of roughly thirty two million dollars, which is more than ninety six million in today's money. The Rockies were named after the Rocky Mountains Range, which lies more than one eight hundred miles
some three thousand kilometers west of New Jersey. Obviously, a rename was in order. A statewide named the team contest drew more than ten thousand votes. Some of the more popular names included the New Jersey Goals and the New Jersey meadow Landers, But in the end, fans chose a name that sounds way more sinister, at least to the uninitiated. The New Jersey Devil's Hockey Buffs didn't pick this at random. Unlike the Colorado Rockies, the new name had a distinctly
local flavor. It pays tribute to regional folklore. With more than one thousand, one nine residents per square mile, New Jersey is the most densely populated state in the United States, and yet of its total land area, representing a huge chunk of South Jersey, is covered by an expanse of sandy swampy forests known as the Pine Barrens. This place is an outdoorsman's paradise with winding trails, campgrounds of plenty,
rustic blueberry farms, and its own answer to Bigfoot. Legend says that there's a winged creature that stalks the Barons by night. The Hellish Beast is an all American cryptid, though, which is a word for an animal the existence of which remains unproven by science. I think sasquatch or the locknest monster. Believers call this one the Jersey Devil. Skeptics call it a snare campaign. More precisely, some scholars see the Jersey Devil as a folkloric offspring of an old
political feud, one that involved Benjamin Franklin of all people. Today, there's a friendly North South rivalry inside New Jersey's borders, see, for example, the Great Taylor Ham Park Roll debate. But during the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries things were different. The British held colony that became the modern state of New Jersey was split somewhat vertically into East Jersey and West Jersey. West Jersey was the adopted home of Daniel Leeds.
Born in England in sixteen fifty one. He was a Quaker and a pamphlet writer who emigrated to the town of Burlington in what's now southwestern New Jersey. In seven Leeds published the first edition of his very own Almanac, and this became a lightning rod for controversy. Many Quakers who read the text objected to its use of astrology Heathen, Greco Roman planet names. When Quaker leadership turned against Leeds,
he went on the offensive. The pamphleteer befriended Antiquaker politicians and wrote sixte manifesto denouncing Quaker theology, titled A Trumpet Sounded out of the Wilderness of America. Bridges were burned. One prominent Quaker took aim at Leads by writing a pamphlet that called him Satan's Harbinger. It wouldn't be the last time someone associated Leads or his family with the devil.
Daniel Leeds died in seventeen twenty, but despite all the notoriety, his almanac lived on later editions were overseen by his son, Titan Leads, and this is where Benjamin Franklin comes in. He owned a rival publication, Poor Richard's Almanac, which jokingly predicted, by way of astrology, that Titan Leads would die on October seventeenth of seventeen thirty three. He didn't. Leads punched back by calling Franklin a fool and a liar in print.
Then tongue planted firmly in cheek, Franklin suggested the Titan Leads must surely be dead, and that his ghost was writing nasty things about him from beyond the grave. The eighteenth century trolling at its finest. Details of the feud are explored in Brian Regal and Frank j Esposito's book Secret History of the Jersey Devil, How Quakers, Hucksters and
Benjamin Franklin created a Monster. In it, the authors wrote Franklin's clever statements about Leeds were in reality an attempt to discredit his almanac competitor by blinking him to Satan. In that age, it was not unusual to paint one's enemies as stargazing agents of the devil. The fact that Leads promoted a belief in astrology in his popular almanac, made perfect fodder for the clever Franklin. By clashing with Franklin Titan, Leeds, who died for real in sevent thirty eight,
hurt his family's public reputation. That Daniel Leeds had been a counselor of an unpopular governor of New York and New Jersey worsened the family's public relations troubles during the American Revolution. Over the years, insinuations the Leads were somehow linked with Satan morphed into an East Coast horror story. An eighteen fifty nine Atlantic Monthly article contains the first unambiguous written reference to the character that we now call
the Jersey Devil. It's author, W. F. Mayor, had been exploring the Pine barrens where he met a resident who told him that she had once seen the Leads Devil. Mayor's guide informed him that this was part of an old superstition. Supposedly, a woman known as Mother Leeds had long ago given birth to a deformed monster still at large in the barons. After Mayor's peace ran in Atlantic Monthly, more retellings were published, when some of them added gory
details in content. Emporary versions of the narrative. Mother Leads is usually cited as an eighteenth century which who gave birth to a dozen perfectly normal children, but her thirteenth pregnancy ended in disaster, writhing in agony. During the painful childbirth, poor Leads hollered, Oh, make it a devil or something like that. The rumor was that Mother Leads bore a hideous beast who stood upright like a man. But this
was no man. Her offspring had a goat's head or a horse's snakelike tail, hoofed legs, and the wings of a great bat. And there's a high body count. In some iterations of the tail. The newborn creature may or may not have killed Mother Leads, her midwife, and or its own siblings before flying up the chimney and escaping into the wilderness. Reported Jersey devil sightings made great headline
fodder in the first decade of the twentieth century. Several Philadelphia newspapers ran stories about curious hoofprints dotting snowy corners of the pine barrens. A few of these prints had supposedly turned up on rooftops. Other accounts sounded more harrowing. One taxi driver in Salem City, New Jersey, said the
Devil attacked his vehicle across state lines. Publicity hound Norman Jeffreys caused quite a stir in nineteen o nine when he announced that the Leads Devil had been captured alive after a terrific struggle and would be displayed at a Philadelphia museum. The Jeffreys monster turned out to be a live kangaroo wearing painted stripes and a set of artificial wings. When it comes to dramatizing the Jersey Devil, nobody can
talk the Garden States one and only Bruce Springsteen. As a tribute to the state's favorite cryptid, the rock star penned of bluesy ballad called a Night with the Jersey Devil back in two thousand seven. He wrote at the time, Dear friends and fans, if you grew up in Central or South Jersey, you grew up the Jersey Devil. Here's
a little musical Halloween treat. Have fun. Today's episode is based on the article how Bed and Franklin helped ignite the Jersey Devil Hysteria on how Stuff Works dot com, written by Mark Mancini and Brain Stuff is production by Heart Radio in partnership with how stuff Works. Dot Com is produced by Tyler Clang. The four more podcasts from my heart Radio visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.