jersey

Mrs. Leeds, her husband, and their children in the early 1700s lived in

the Pine Barrens of New Jersey. In 1735 when Mother Leeds found she

was pregnant with their 13th child, the news wasn't so much a blessing

as it was a curse. Exasperated by the thought of yet another mouth to

feed, Mother Leeds was heard to say, "I don't want any more children!

Let it be the devil!"

Jane Leeds was strongely suspected of witchcraft, which became a

certainty when her 13th child was born. Jane Leeds' pregnancy neared

an end, and one stormy night a midwife was summoned to the house to

deliver the family's child. The birth appeared to be normal, and Mother Leeds had a new baby boy. But then strange things started to happen as
soon as it was born. The child was horribly deformed, and it crawled from her womb and began to change before their eyes. He grew a serpent's
tail and horns on his head. His pudgy round face changed into a grotesque horse's head and his eyes turned red like hot coals. Bat wings
sprouted from his back and he grew thick black fur. The beast drew back one of his razor-sharp claws and cut open the throat of the midwife. As
the woman bled to death, the beast let out a blood-curdling screech and flew up the chimney. The creature disappeared into the Pine Barrens.

That night several children disappeared, and of course the creature was blamed for eating them because they were never found. For several years
thereafter it was glimpsed in the woods at nightfall, and it would fly from farm to farm. It could sour cows milk by breathing on it. If it breathed in the
cedar swamps, the fish would die and their bodies would be found whitened and decayed by the poison. It occasionally would appear on the coast,
a wreck would happen soon, and would commonly be seen with other spectres that haunt the shores like the golden-haired woman in white, the
black-muzzled pirate, and the robber, whose head was cut off by Captain Kidd.

Others say the Jersey Devil was born in Pleasantville, Evesham or another South Jersey town. That story says the Jersey Devil was born after
Mother Leeds was raped by a pirate, or after she had a brief alliance with the devil himself. Descendants of the Leeds family will tell you that the
Jersey Devil was conceived by the Shourds family of Leeds Point. The Shourds will tell you the Leeds did the deed. In the 260-plus years since his
birth, people as far west as Philadelphia and as far north as New York have spotted the Jersey Devil, but the Pine Barrons is the Devil's true lair.
The wooded part of the state roughly south from Freehold to Millville, and east of the Turnpike to old Route 9 have yielded the most frequent and
frightening encounters with the Jersey Devil. He's been blamed for everything from dead cattle, spooked horses, to soured milk and failed crops.
Some say the Jersey Devil has even feasted on sleeping children.

Those who say they've seen the devil will tell you they "saw a serpentine figure flying across the sky" or "heard a piercing shriek that made their
blood run cold." During a week in January 1909, the Jersey Devil was spotted in at least 20 different towns. Some of its eyewitnesses tried to
convince themselves at first that is must have been some form of hideous giant bird, but they finally admitted that many of its features were far
stranger than any observed in a bird, and the creature soon became known as the Jersey devil. The non-believers say Jane Leeds likely gave birth
to a deformed child, and in those days mothers of deformed children were thought to be witches. The Leeds probably locked the child in the attic
to keep him from view, but one day he escaped and was seen by some neighbors before slipping into the Pine Barrens and likely died. The gangly,
winged creature people mistake for the Jersey Devil is the sand hill crane, which also has a shrill call. Case closed skeptics say. Fearing ridicule
from outsiders, old-timers from the Pinelands keep their tales of the Jersey Devil to themselves.

E.W. Minster, a postmaster from Bristol in Pennsylvania gave it particularly detailed first land description of this mysterious monster. He had
caught sight of it on the morning of January 17, 1909, after hearing an eerie sound coming from the direction of the Delaware River. According to
Minster, the Jersey devil was flying diagonally across the river and looked like a large crane at first, but has glowing brightly like an immense
firefly. It had a long slender neck that it held outstretched in flight, two pairs of legs (the front pair was shorter than the hind pair) and two long thin
wings. Strangest of all, however, was its head, which resembled a ram's because it bore a pair of curled horns. And as it flew, it uttered a
bloodcurdling cry, which Minster described as a combined squawk and whistle, beginning very high and piercing but ending very low and hoarse.

At the same time that sightings of this incredible creature were being reported, strange marks resembling hoofprints were being discovered in the
area too, and not just on the ground. Some were even spotted on the roofs of houses. The real Jersey devil has still not been captured or
conclusively identified.

In 1740 the creature is supposedly exorcised from the area, but it only was banished for 100 years, so it returned in 1840, but there remains to be
numerous sightings, and it's horrible screams are heard often in the New Jersey/Pennsylvania area. The screams are ten times louder than any
possible human scream. The scream itself sounds like a combination of a woman's blood curdling scream, machinery, and a screech.

Sightings in the Pine Barrens reached a peak in 1975 to 76. According to writer Henry Charlton Beck: "Where stunted pines of burned-over forest
are revealed in darksome pools, the Jersey Devil lurks."

(Howell Township is on the east central coast of New Jersey. Follow highway 33, south of Asbury Park at Ocean Grove, west to Howell Township.
The Jersey Devil was raised at Leeds Point, which is Whites bog, near Smithville. The Devil has been reported in the cemeteries, coastal
pinelands, and marshes throughout Howell Township.

Bibliographies:

Clark, Jerome. (1993). Unexplained!. Washington, D.C.: Visible Ink Press.

Coleman, Loren & Clark, Jerome. (1999). Cryptozoology A to Z.

New York: Fireside.

http://www.nj.com/jerseydevil/index.ssf?/jerseydevil/believers.html