INTRO:
Hello and welcome to Myth Monsters, my name is Erin and I’ll be your host for these little snack bite size podcasts on folklore and mythological monsters from around the world.
These podcasts focus on the actual cryptids, folklore and mythic monsters from global mythology, rather than focusing on full stories of heroes and big adventures.
I’ll also be dropping in some references that they have to recent culture and where you can see these represented in modern day content so you can learn more, and get as obsessed as I am about these leviathans of the mythological world.
Before we start, I got a brand new spanking microphone - how fancy of me! So you should be able to understand me, but I doubt it with my horrific east english accent.
DESCRIPTION
Today we’re looking at the Jersey Devil, an American folklore legend that has haunted the states of New Jersey and Pennsylvania, scaring people in woodland and eating their livestock since the early 1800’s.
The Jersey Devil is generally described as a kangaroo or wyvern-like creature with a horse- or goat-like head, bat wings, horns, small little clawy hands, hooved feet, and a forked tail. It moves extremely quickly and is often described as emitting a high-pitched "blood-curdling scream". It’s quite a disturbing looking creature, I’ll put a picture of it on the twitter page and you can see for yourselves.
Another version I’ve seen is more of a deer appearance, with a skeletal head of a deer - with flesh almost dripping off of it. It has the same bat like wings and hooved feet - but very much a horrific version of the original description with decayed flesh. Honestly a garish sight.
Speaking of sightings, there have been many claims of sightings and occurrences involving the Jersey Devil.
It’s been sighted mostly in the Pine Barrens area of New Jersey, a wide space of forestry that spans 7 counties of the state. However, it’s also been seen in the neighbouring state of Pennsylvania, and even as far up the States as Delaware and Maryland, which if you have no idea of American geography - talk to someone else because I also have no idea.
Numerous people back in the 1800’s claimed to have shot or fired cannonballs at the creature with even Joseph Bonaparte, brother of Napoleon, seeing the Jersey Devil while hunting on his estate about 1820 - didn’t seem like he did anything with this information though. In 1840, it was blamed for numerous farm massacres, and similar attacks were reported during 1841, some hoof prints being discovered too during this one.
In December 1925, a farmer shot an animal as it attempted to eat his chickens, he then took a picture of it (which cannot be found). Afterwards, he claimed that not one of the 100 people he showed it to could identify it - This one is my favourite because it just sounds like he’s just got really dumb neighbours.
On July 27, 1937, an unknown animal "with red eyes" was seen by the people of Downingtown in Pennsylvania and was compared to the Jersey Devil. In 1951, a bunch of kids claimed to have seen a 'monster' matching the Jersey Devil's description, and there was a similar looking corpse found in 1957.
There are a few sightings that maybe are a little more unspecific, but these people have all said that they thought it might have been the Jersey Devil that attacked them and their livestock.
Now for the funny part, I know this is what you’ve been waiting for.
In 1909, they had literally hundreds of reports of sightings. Philadelphia Zoo posted a $10,000 reward for the creature - but it turns out that this was a way of trying to get people to come to the failing Museum, and they had actually falsely published a lot of the sightings that year. They ended up getting a kangaroo equipped with artificial claws and bat wings. I love the idea of that so much, and honestly where did people in Philly get a kangaroo from is the more important question here. And even funnier is that this was actually believed by the people, and kept in captivity for 20 years before being admitted that it was a hoax.
They didn’t even learn their lesson because in 1960, in Camden, New Jersey, a group of merchants offered a $10,000 reward for the capture of the Jersey Devil, and they even offered to build a private zoo if it was ever captured. It has not been captured, ever - obviously.
ORIGIN:
So where did this idea even come from Erin, I hear you ask.
Well, according to popular folklore, the Jersey Devil originated in the Pine Barrens in New Jersey. It’s related to a woman named Jane Leeds, also known as "Mother Leeds". The legend states that she had 12 children and, after finding she was pregnant for the 13th time, was really annoyed at that and went about crying that the child would be the devil. One stormy night in 1735, she went into labour with all her family and friends around her. The child was born totally normal, but literally changed in front of their eyes to what we now know as the Jersey Devil with hooves, a goat's head, bat wings, and a forked tail. Then it basically beat them all up and flew out of the chimney in some intense mother-son argument of the century. ‘Why can’t I have hooves, Mom, you don’t understand me’
In other versions, Mother Leeds was supposedly a witch and the child's father was the devil - which nicely gives us an amalgamation of something pretty terrifying emerging from that womb.
The Jersey Devil has also been known as the Leeds Devil based on his supposed heritage from the Leeds family and also potentially a southern New Jersey town, Leeds Point.
Also the actual real life Mother Leeds was called Deborah Leeds, we know this because her husband, Japhet Leeds had 12 kids named in his will, which works alongside the origin of the story, they also lived in Leeds Point, which is really coincidental too.
There’s another theory that the Jersey Devil was based on a family, rather than an actual born creature.
In 1687, there was a politician/writer named Daniel Leeds, who was a Quaker, and became ostracized by his congregation after he published some almanacs containing astrological symbols. The Quakers thought this was nuts, and the almanacs were censored and destroyed. He was so annoyed at the destruction of his work, that he continued to write even more, with the documents even more blasphemous to the Quakers, and they eventually saw him and his family as ‘evil’ and ‘monsters’. He eventually converted to Anglicanism, and started writing even worse things about the Quakers, which got the attention of the Royal Governors (due to America still being under British rule at this time), and he became a lot more pro-monarchy - which the Quakers also hated.
To add to this, much like the Mother Leeds of the Jersey Devil myth, Daniel Leeds' wife had given birth to nine children, a huge number of children even for the time. They also owned the land now known as Leeds Point, which is one of the most regular places the Jersey Devil has been sighted in the Pine Barrens.
Daniel Leeds died, and once Leeds’ son Titan (I know, I know - I had a hamster called Titan once, it’s definitely not something I’d call a child) inherited the business and started to use the same content, a political rival, being the one and only Ben Franklin, decided he also really didn’t like the Leeds family. He declared that he had used the same methods of astrology to predict Titan Leeds’ death in October the same year.
Now here’s the kicker - once that date had passed, Franklin published a paper to say that Titan had died when he had predicted and anything he said afterwards, came from a ghost. Titan didn’t actually die until 16 years later, and it seems the Leeds family’s reputation never recovered.
In addition to all of this, Titan Leeds began to include the Leeds family crest on all of his almanacs. This depicted a wyvern, a bat-winged dragon-like legendary creature that stands upright on two clawed feet which we’ll cover in another episode. This probably didn’t help the family’s reputation within their community. Considering as well that having a crest in the first place was super aristocratic, and that it was a scary mythological beast? Not the best combo to tackle rumours that you’re a big deer creature.
So it seems that Daniel Leeds' occultist reputation for stargazing, but mostly his pro-monarchy stance in the largely anti-monarchist colonial south of New Jersey, combined with Benjamin Franklin's later continuous and I think, hysterical image 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.
After that in the 19th century, the Leeds Devil became a popular ghost story around New Jersey - and it’s name eventually changed over time to the spookier Jersey Devil. However, references to the 'Jersey Devil' do not appear in newspapers or other printed material until the twentieth century - so it was widely unknown until then outside of New Jersey. It’s still a bit of an enigma today.
CULTURAL SIGNIFICANCE:
As a Brit, I’ve not grown up with any folk tales about the Jersey Devil - not even from the English island of Jersey. So looking into this was my first real deep dive into the subject, however, in my younger years,I’d not heard of the Jersey Devil til I was about 17 when I played The Wolf Among Us, a Telltale series game that had the Jersey Devil running a pawn shop - he was terrifying, but as I said earlier, this was the version with the boney head with the flesh dripping off, so I’m not surprised I was scared to be honest.
He’s appeared in a couple of bits culturally - he’s actually the representative of the Jersey Devils ice hockey team, who are, at least from my research, bearing in mind I know NOTHING about sport of any kind - actually quite popular. They even made a toy of him for one of their kids lines, which I think is great - getting kids into folktales is v wholesome.
It’s been in a few investigative programs such as Mother Leeds' 13th Child, In Search of Monsters and Monsters and Mysteries in America, alongside a couple of TV shows and movies such as The Barrens or Devil in the Woods in the UK which had Stephen Moyer of True Blood fame, 13th Child which was voted one of the worst movies of 2002 and even the 2007 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles film (not the one with Megan Fox). It's also been in an episode of X-Files, mentioned in Supernatural and the classic 80’s cartoon The Real Adventures of Jonny Quest.
Video games wise, back in the 90’s there was a whole game dedicated to the Jersey Devil - but he more resembled a Bat than anything within the mythology. And as I said before, he’s a nasty character in the Wolf Among Us, which is one of my favourite games of all time.
My book recommendation for this one is The Secret History of the Jersey Devil by Brian Regal and Frank J Esposito - if you want more detail on the Leeds’ family and how the founding father himself could have had a hand in this nightmare of a monster. It’s a great read for anyone remotely interested in this weird folklore tale. Another is the Fables graphic novel series, this is about fairytale creatures that live in the grit of New York City - it’s what Wolf Among Us is based on and is really beautifully written and drawn - it ran for 150 covers, it’s finished now, but I still highly recommend it. That is actually a pretty solid recommendation for all my monsters to be fair, a lot of them are probably in that series.
DO I THINK?
Now, do I think the Jersey Devil exists? I’m honestly, not convinced with this one - only because it seems like it all came from a really bitter feud between two communities, resulting in an almost smear campaign of the Leeds family for just posting some papers about astrology.
There are a large group of people who refer to themselves as Devil Hunters who are determined to prove that the creature exists, and there are reports of other cryptids and monsters in the same Pine Barren woods - apparently it’s super secluded and creepy up there.
I think however, it’s probably become more of an urban legend that an actual piece of folklore - I imagine the Jersey Devil is just another mythological beast that we all think might exist, but is really just exactly as described - a myth. Although, don’t take my word for it, I’ve only been to Jersey once and it was nowhere near woodland - I drove through it on the way to Pennsylvania, where we got a warning late at night about an actual black bear - which is considerably more terrifying I would say.
There is a supposed picture of the Jersey Devil which I’ll post on the Twitter page, and you can judge for yourselves, but I really do imagine this one is probably just sightings of a malformed deer, or woodland animal. BUT WHO KNOWS?!
OUTRO:
I’ve really enjoyed this one, and I actually learned some things myself whilst researching for this podcast. I hope I’ve done the same for you and you’re now heading out to the Pine Barrens to go hunt him down. But let me know on Twitter, do you think he exists? Do you live nearby or know anyone who has some sightings or experiences?
Next week we will looking much closer to my home and learning about my absolute favourite myth monster, the Kelpie from Scottish mythology. Do you know anything about these demon horses who drag children to their watery graves? No?? WHY??? Tune in next week and I’ll tell you all about them.
For now thank you so much for listening, it’s been a pleasure. If you enjoyed this podcast, please give it a rating on the service you’re listening on - I’ve got the twitter for any questions, or suggestions on what monsters to cover next and I’d love to hear from you @mythmonsterspod or the instagram is @mythmonsterspodcast. Or you can email me on mythmonsterspodcast@gmail.com And share this with your pals, they might love me as much as you do, who knows.
Stay spooky and I’ll see you later babes.