Legend of the Jersey Devil – IOTW Report

Legend of the Jersey Devil

jersey-devil

PrairieGhosts: The historic states along America’s Atlantic Seaboard have given birth to hundreds of ghostly tales and unusual stories over the years. One of the strangest is undoubtedly that of the Jersey Devil, a creature that is believed by some to be a mythical creature and by others, a real-life monster of flesh and blood. Its origins date back to when New Jersey was still a British colony.

According to the legend, Mrs. Jane Leeds came from a poor family who eked out an existence in the Pine Barrens of Jersey, a rugged place with vast forests, sandy soil and patches of swamp. In 1735, Mrs. Leeds discovered that she was pregnant with her 13th child. She complained to her friends and relatives that the “Devil can take the next one”, and he did. When the baby was born, he was monster! He immediately took on a grotesque appearance and grew to more than 20 feet long, with a reptilian body, a horse’s head, bat wings and a long, forked tail. He thrashed about the Leeds home for a bit and then vanished up the chimney. The creature, or the “Jersey Devil” as he was dubbed, began haunting the Pine Barrens.  MORE

16 Comments on Legend of the Jersey Devil

  1. Though not born in Jersey I live here and those Pine Barrens are real spooky, maybe because of tales of the Jersey Devil, or just because you would think that Jersey wouldn’t have areas that people still live like those in Deliverance.

  2. There’s one here in the Midwest too. It had “the head of a frog, the grinning face of a giant elephant, thick short legs set off by huge claws, the back of a dinosaur, and a long tail with spears at the end”. The reports were instigated by well-known land surveyor, timber cruiser and prankster Eugene Shepard, who rounded up a group of local people to capture the animal. The group reported that they needed to use dynamite to kill the beast.

  3. Yes. The Pine Barrens are spooky. Just driving through them at night and looking into them from the road will give you the chills.
    It really is the creepiest pine forest I’ve ever seen.

  4. Lately the theory of evolution has added some new viewpoints, mainly that change in the species came not from gradual, minor improvements, but rather from major ‘jumps and leaps’.
    These types of creatures may be the false starts, or nonviable leaps in species change.

  5. ejazzyjeff – yep, those folk are called “Pineys” and it is about as bad an insult in those parts as “inbred hillbilly” is down here in the South.

  6. Poor Mrs Leeds reluctantly bore her thirteenth child which became a monster that stalks the pine barrons to this day. In a similar way another unhappy mother produced a modern day monster when her constipation produced Barry Obama.

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