Last Podcast On The Left - Episode 314: The Jersey Devil

Episode Date: April 28, 2018

​Join us on a return to cryptids as we unfurl the history of the Jersey Devil, including all of the occult rivalries, dime museum kangaroo hoaxes, and monstrous births involved therein! Disconcerned Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ Epic Unease Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ Galway Kevi

There's no place to escape to. This is the last time on the left So Natalie's out of town and I slept with the puppy last night The puppy was all curled up like like you know cuz she finds any crevice that she can crawl into I don't want to hear this story, but then I woke up with my standard You know I mean with my balls and gorged because of the standard and then welcome to the show Everyone this is the last podcast on the left. I am Ben Kessel with Marcus Parks I don't know if I want you to finish. I just want Wendy to believe she's in a safe place and she is Okay, well, that's the most disturbing intro we've had ever

And we've had a lot of disturbing interest from the one Henry Zabrowski. It's not bad You never been called up with a dog and got a boner for a sex completely unrelated breeze. There it is I wasn't even having a dream about sex. I was dreaming about I mean, I think I was at a convention I woke up just full David de Covney. Oh my goodness. What are frogs? I love David de Covney great great clip We played in the last stream. Okay. Well speaking of great, you know what this episode is gonna be this pretty good pretty good episode I'll tell you that much We are finally getting into some really heavy topics here. Super heavy. We are gonna talk about the New Jersey devil Yeah, oh he sounds kind of fun. Yeah

So the story goes that in 1735 a woman known only as mother leads of Leeds point in the New Jersey pine barons had just become pregnant with their 13th child Weary after a lifetime of childbirth leads exclaimed upon learning of another on the way quote Let this one be a devil Know when the child was born in the bedroom of the leads household it appeared to be normal But within minutes the wailing baby suddenly grew to the size of a full grown man It's a head morphed into that of a horse and sprouted horns feathers grew in sporadic chunks from its body

Claws slowly work their way up from the tips of its fingers It's feet turned into pigs hoods and finally great bat-like wings unburrowed from its back and its eyes turn a deep evil You know puberty is rough It's Jared Kushner It's set upon mother leads first And tearing her to pieces for the curse she'd laid upon him Man with blood dripping from his claws the Jersey devil turned next to the midwives for bringing him into the world Mother leads his husband and other children remain locked in the next room

But the door was no match for the newly born beast The monster tore through the door like paper and slaughtered as many of his siblings as he could Thank you. Thank you for killing us. It sucks to be born in New Jersey Especially 1800s the 1700s the father survived But it was one of the midwives who watched as what came to be known as New Jersey's very own devil Whist himself up the chimney to emerge into the pine barons where it is said he lives to this day He's got to be filthy all the shit there, but the devil himself tells a different story He does tell a story here now the plaintive call of the Jersey devil as was sung in this first person folk song

Written for the 1974 local New Jersey TV documentary mother leads his 13th child Wow, oh wow This is somebody's vice principal Palm to palm Roses are thrown as the Jersey devil dances with this child bride Somewhere there was a janitor slowly tying a noose and hanging himself because that's the eighth production that weekend of whatever the hell That is the poor New Jersey father of leads who sat and watched the Jersey devil who he thought first He'd come out all fucking masculine. It's like, okay, this guy's gonna play for the Giants

He's got the reach you can use the leathery wings to jump over the events of line But then he's singing and dancing like and he's a renfair and Everyone well I gotta say for community theater, especially Jersey community theater fairly good not bad Now the Jersey devil itself is not exactly what you'd call a cryptid in the sense that we would call say Bigfoot or Chupacabra Cryptids why not? Why not? Why not? That's what I'm called Well besides a pile of burned feathers and bones found in a forest fire in 1957 there's no Arguable evidence for the Jersey devil while there is arguable evidence for a Bigfoot and Chupacabra You got some Chupacabra bodies. You got some Bigfoot footprints. You got a lot of stuff and somewhere. There's a naked peacock

What is a peacock without its feathers? That's the saddest chicken. It's chicken as you cook. Yeah, it's called fancy chicken in my town when you go down to Beverly Hills And you steal some fancy chickens when you got for you dinner for the night peacocks are horrifying by the way Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well technically the Jersey devil falls under the classification of a Chimera Huh a Chimera is a type of animal that's cobbled together from the parts of other animals like for example like a unicorn a Gryphon or pretty much any monster found in the book of Revelation Centaur. Mmm. Yes. Thank you. Yes, that is a good Thank you very much. No, I mean it's not even but a Chimera is like four or five animals It's always got like the foot of a cock and the head of a cock and the cock of an alligator

Again, I feel like you're just going back to your dream of last night Yes A Chimera's are beings that defy the laws of nature completely from the laws of biology to the laws of physics They are never photographed and are usually seen for only moments at a time. Cool. It is cool. Yeah, they're like a sting Celebrities they're the opposite of Keanu Reeves who takes the subway and you know what? I don't want to see any pictures of them taking the subway leave them alone leave Malone I let him take the subway, but sting is out there looking for attention. He goes to fresh markets Just going I mean like oh looks like some of these peppers are wilted someone should send an SOS

Perhaps they could send it in a message in a bottle to the farms outside of this town Wow, you know they come for the they come for the horror stories and they stay for the puns Well really Chimera's they're the classification of cryptids that are least likely to exist So they are classified as cryptids. Well, I was correct Before the show I am kept in the dark by the way, and I want to explain this to the audience You guys never share any information with me I barely get the outline 15 minutes before we record and you know, I'm not the fastest reader not the slowest reader But not the fastest reader

Unbelievable The same level of research no matter what time you get the outline I like you surprise and so what we mean though It's the truth is that like a big foot could possibly be either a very hairy man or some like there's a weird scientific Maybe gobbledygook explanation for what a big foot is and like a chupacabra is the fucking dog Right, so it's like we know that for a fact. So these are the cryptids You mean we need to type of dog or it's a sick dog or it's like it's an animal that you could go You can go rass let you go kiss you can go kiss a chupacabra. You could sleep in a bed with a chupacabra

And wake up next to it all engorged Here are the chupacabra's horror tales of waking up next to the hairiest Polish man in Los Angeles I am neighbor of a man who's got the hair on the bike and the hair on the front, but no hair on the top It was old headshot trendy on Instagram my goodness He used to have a nice head of hair and just what a difference a couple of years make so fast But the Jersey Devil is more of a cobbling of the American Imagination which is a part of the reason why we're even coming back to cryptids because normally we don't do this is like a big Jump for us. We haven't done cryptids a long time

But this one is interesting because it's connections to US history. Oh Yeah, I mean the thing is about the Jersey Devils that like you could see a big foot or like a goat sucker Maybe being real, but like a horse pig bat dragon is a little more difficult. Yeah, you can't you can't fly with a horse head But that doesn't stop hundreds if not thousands of people over the centuries from claiming that they've seen something that they Believed to be the Jersey Devil and many of them claim to have heard the Jersey Devils famous scream as well. Really? Here's a man from the documentary mother leads his 13th child Describing the sound he heard in the New Jersey pine barons one night The noise that would make it sound like real high pitch

It's similar to a woman screeching a real high high pitch like Someone strangling a woman or something like such. It's a real high pitch Follow-up question sir. How the hell do you know what that sounds like? Sometimes you just sit and you just think about how they never come just when you ask you got to go take them

That's what the Jersey Devil does. That's why I look up to him. I know you know what we're gonna call the place Why don't you just stay right there? You got it. You know what that sounds comfortable. I would actually be more comfortable with me behind bars This is another clip of a different guy talking about the call of the Jersey Devil and this one is complete with the Documentary's recreation of what the Jersey Devil might sound like. Okay. This is what I want to hear. Yeah. All right We're all just about settled down to start to fall asleep Like high-pitched and in here it was like at first everybody thought somebody's fussing around and then we realized no, it's too much It sounds like a mouse proposing a toast

To his mouse family because he just got a great mouse job. That's so cute What is that? It's not like a door creaking and but it's like There's to be opening. Well, they say it sounds like a screaming woman and a lot of times They also said it sounds like metal on metal. I did not sound like a screaming woman That did not because they had a hard time She just had like the guy that was doing Foley for this New Jersey local network television show His wife normally does the Foley and he brought her in there like baby, baby You gotta come make a screamy the Jersey Devil. She's like

Yes, baby, I said you were made to be in movies Sounds like the Duck Dynasty guys created a duck call for ducks that might have a special need Now remember the Jersey Devil is a flying horse It screams like a woman and it's very very important to New Jersey and its history as we discovered a lot about these Documentaries. Yes, Southern New Jersey Is very proud of their devil and they will beat the shit out of you and your family to defend it I will hey, I'm not gonna malign the great New Jersey Devil one bit But as goofy as it seems to be the story of the Jersey Devil is actually surprisingly rich

Far beyond the usual. I saw something weird story that we usually get with creatures like this We discovered this while reading our main source today the secret history of the Jersey Devil by Frank J. Esposito and Brian Regal again, it's not a secret It's pretty dry and academic but as books about little known chapters of American history go it's pretty great How do you make this book dry and academic? It is about the New Jersey Devil It's gonna horse because they have to make it sound smart. They're like and then the township of Brunswick was formed in 1874 the first hoof print to ever be found maybe of a Jersey Devil was soon to be found of an enlarged Antelope that had been released from a zoo that was brought by Joseph Bonaparte Napoleon's brother

Which is true. There's the Napoleon's brother does make a cameo in this history. Well, that story is apocryphal at best, sir And Napoleon you know what? Napoleon was actually kind of tall. He was average height. He wasn't kind of the same height Yeah, it's in the same height but back then that's and that was you're a good Not by today. Yeah, you would have been murdered for being a fucking stretched man The ones that are only found in certain types of bogs. Yeah, probably No, the story we're gonna tell today is one of how this modern monster myth was created through a combination of occult beliefs gone wrong Pre-revolutionary war American politics and cruel old-fashioned

Huxerism, oh my goodness more than anything We will show how the Jersey Devil comes from the general belief that we Americans share as a country that anything is possible That's right a belief that is both one of our greatest strengths and one of our most Devastating weaknesses. Yeah, and one of our bigger lies He's not American he's South African he benefited greatly from certain policies in South Africa The Jersey Devil is not the only name that this creature has had over the 250 some odd years that it's been around It's gone from everything from the wasle bug to the hoodle-doodle bird. Oh my god. It sounds like you go into a fun Doctor, I'm sure you've been diagnosed with the wasle bug

I don't want a fucking cute doctor. That's terrifying Little fantasy doctor. No, I want the news What give it to me like give it to me fluffy patch Adams It's even had its names as simple as the Gwink The Gwink is now often used as a term of a young handsome homosexual man who can lick his own ass But originally the Jersey Devil was known simply as the Leeds devil Okay That story we told up top is only the most gruesome variation of the tale in most variations the baby just turns into the creature and flies away

Okay, others no chimney involves sometimes it flies into the chimney and then away. Why not just go at the door Well, it's just saying I chimney is if you had a set deck Doing it like chimney is for a last like a Hollywood version of this story I don't think I think it was like a hut. It's in the middle of these pine barrens Oh, the barrens are difficult to dig in and it's like in the 1600s, right? It was 1735. So that's difficult, right? built the pyramids Many many years before that Well others say the deformed baby lived with the family until it was four years old when it unexpectedly killed its parents and flew away

Cool up the chimney. That's so sad because it was like a little dragon boy There's there there is one version of the story is that the Jersey Devil would come back and visit the Leeds family as a devil And would be fed by them and he'd be going like They have to like all right give you get a little bit oatmeal But you got to stop flapping your leathery wings all over this house. Okay, because we're study hour everyone's trying to study And sometimes the form is different to more like a kangaroo cross with a dragon. Oh, okay Some say the origin of the curse was not the mother, but rather the community They put the birth of the devil half a century later during the Revolutionary War the product of an unholy union

between an American girl and a British soldier Yuck, I want to see that with Nick Cage and Kira Knightley with Nick Cage as an older British Soldier and Kira Knightley is the American girl and they have sex and then the fucking that big horse demon rips open Emerges from her like she's a torn up circus tent. Oh, yeah, I can see it It's like a combination of the Patriot Captain Corelli's mandolin and Rosemary's baby You know, hopefully she lives and they can have a nice relationship And I think Nicholas Cage would be a great you would be a great father of a devil type They just stitched Kira Knightley back up and then whenever she sits anywhere. It's not so much. She's shit sitting

She's being draped I don't think that's how it works Another variation on the story is that the devil was punishing the town of Leeds Point where all this took place Because they had mistreated a minister in some form or fashion Although it's never said what the mistreatment was. I watched a more recent documentary because we watched this 13th child documentary from 1974 and I watched another one that was handmade by amateur investigators otherwise known as the devil hunters in 2015 that has a lot of people all saying the same thing where it's just a guy from South Jersey

Which is the weirdest accent in the face of the planet because it's that weird It's technically like Western Pennsylvania. So they all talk like this and they have a we're down like this and it's like this whole It's very very hard to place But they all say the same thing was like clergyman got treated bad and no one he got treated bad He gave all them the demon and no one knows what he did, but we know that a clergyman was treated bad for some reason I want to pretzel now and Well, there's also the standard mother Leeds was a witch and gave birth to the devil version of the story But that version could pretty much be copy-and-pasted into any location in the Northeast during that point in American history, okay?

Amazingly though the actual origin of this story has its roots in an old-timey flame war between a family named Leeds The Quakers and none other than founding father Benjamin Franklin. No kid The turkey should have been the national bird. You almost forgot about me old Benjamin Franklin I went to the optometrist and I said make me glasses that only cover my pupils Is directly in a tube in front of me he revolutionized I wear didn't he? Think about that Daniel Leeds was an astrologer and Quaker who lived in the late 17th and early 18th century in Leeds Point Which is a town off the Delaware River and happen did mostly by sea captains

It's 100 they sell extra timbers for when your timbers are too are shimmy Is it? Everyone's a sea captain who's doing any of the work? Oh, no, this is where the sea captains live Yeah, but everyone's a sea captain a lot of people were sea captains because it was at the mouth of the Delaware River So they were able to get to the sea real fast. Yeah, so it's a whole town of supervisors, which means nothing happens Right, that's the supervisors don't do anything. Well, yeah, but that's where just where they all lived They must have been drunk. I'll tell you that maybe the drunkest town in US history Aren't sea captains usually drunk because you got to match the waves

That's like you saying you got to be drunk to drive because it makes you more relaxed and then you can be Eased up on your reaction time. I would say you have to be drunk to drive if the roads were all wavy So yes, so if a man with drunk goggles of a civil engineer who wore those drunk goggles like they do with the dare programs Invented a city. Yes drinking then would be would help. Yeah Yeah, no, that is that is a good way to avoid seasickness get drunk be drunk. Yeah, it's not proven But I do not agree. Well Daniel Leeds. He wasn't a sea captain. He was a writer specializing in pamphlets and almanacs As was the style at the time. Wow, but his almanacs were somewhat different from the rest as Leeds was a staunch believer in the occult particularly astrology

Now back then like the occult held a different meaning occult just meant secret knowledge He was just it was pretty much they said used a cult to say to name things like it's science that we don't understand yet But the thing about people that were purveyors of the occult is that if you were not you were viewed as Essentially a version of me like you think you're better than me Think you're better than me because you know all this hidden shit. I can know it too. You know, I know it I could beat the shit out of you Little do they know their great great great grandchildren are gonna be microwaving every dinner Because of that great scientist

The Quakers however, which Daniel was of the faith They did not take kindly to Daniel's work and publicly spoke out against Leeds's use of astrology Even though they were all into this kind of shit in private. Hmm. They just couldn't public publicly They said that the witchcraft and the astrology is nothing but foolishness But when they were in their fucking parlors who was pulling out the tarot cards, but the Quakers Oh, yeah, they shouldn't be like, oh, you're dating a Capricorn with that doesn't work because you're Scorpio It's something about I believe a Capricorn is a water sign and a fire sign together mix up You know what it makes up some people say steam. I say just a wet mildly warm puddle

Quakers, I think they like things mildly warm. Yeah, well the Quakers were actually fairly groovy They weren't bad. They were better than the Puritans. They had a lot of buckles. They did have a lot of buckles I like a good buckle everybody had buckles Well, no, no less the Quaker really had they really redefined the buckle. I think you're thinking of the pilgrims. Yeah No That is what you're thinking about you're thinking about the oatmeal man can't you think it is not the same It's a Quaker. It's the Quaker out you think a Quaker out you think he's got the big buckle on his hat He's got the buckle on his hat, but the pilgrims are more buckle people. What about Lucky Charms? You must have been so

Frustrating to teach in high school like the idea of looking at you as a teacher in high school You just bigger than just yeah, I'm being this cold. I don't know. Can I wrestle it? I'm just saying something like can I grab it with my hands? I'll tell you one thing I'm happy I went to high school during a time when teachers didn't carry firearms. Yes, because I was the loudest rowdy in class clown That's what I was voted and one of them would have shot me Well Leeds genuinely hurt that his fellow Quakers hadn't embraced his work because he thought they would he was releasing all the sudden He was like my fellow Quakers shall look upon me as a genius But when the Quakers did not embrace him in fact publicly spoke out against him Leeds put his former religion on notice and

He started releasing anti Quaker pamphlets and books Why do these guys do that's him and Iliadore did the same shit where they're just immediately like fuck this Now you guys gonna go fuck yourselves. Yeah, so I'm out there. I guess it's a lie in the sand, huh? I guess I'm on this side of the same. I see when you decide to come to this side of the same That really does suck when you work so hard on something and you're like here it is And then everyone's like I don't think so it must it must be like how John Travolta felt after battlefield or Where he was so proud of it. It was like so much energy 20 years in the making It felt like producing sketch comedy. Yeah, that's how I must have felt

So in 1701 Leeds put out a book called news of a strumpet cohabitating in the wilderness Sexy like a porno. Yeah, and in this he wrote about the Quakers quote spiritual and carnal hordes and adulteries Trumpet remember that was so what was the name of that thing that tried to take the the pop tart out of business? Toaster strudel. Yeah Didn't know now it's a now they a lot. They peacefully exist alongside each other

Yeah, there was a competition for a while well news of a strumpet cohabitating in the wilderness caught the attention of a prominent Quaker named Caleb Pussy now It's spelled who say I guess I Don't know it's just P. You se why the problem is that if your name is if your name is Caleb Pussy And then your whole life isn't spelt me like no, it's puse You're a sketch like you're you're a naked gun character constantly Yeah, I'm to clarify there so pussy punched back with a book called Daniel Leeds Justly rebuked

It sounds like something a pussy would write Yeah, this is we got ourselves a real nerd fighter. I love a good feud and that caused Leeds to respond with his own book The rebuke rebuke This all devolved into public name-calling and since this was the 18th century pussy had no problem Convincing convincing people that Leeds was quote evil a murderer and Satan's harbinger And I would dare say I would not copulate with Leeds mother with the phallus of be Arthur Wow, this was what was commonly known at the time as a pamphlet fight And it was common that they had a name for it really yeah, yeah pamphlet feuds

And they went on all the time or these dudes and like Boston or Philadelphia or New York They would just said because the printing press was you know, they were able to finally use it in a like a mass In a mass media way So these guys would just turn out these pamphlets talking shit about each other and they got really nasty Like kind of the equivalent of us like photo shopping like a dick and Ted Cruz's mouth today stuff like that The secret history of the Jersey devil recalled one instance in which a pamphlet illustration Showed a winged laughing devil with sagging breasts shitting in the mouth of a rival pamphlet here as he laid Content in a ferry boat

You said you do like some drawing Draw yeah, I mostly I like to do ladies in a parlor collection of rare flowers Scientific drawing you know that Leeds jerk. Oh, yeah, I got a great idea What if I do a thing where he's laying in a fucking raft and I get a little fucking big saggy milk breast Like creature just shitting in his mouth same minds Leeds yeah, he had the problems with the Quakers and you know He was into the occult and all that but it also didn't help that Leeds worked as counsel for a much-hated

New Jersey royalist governor a stooge of King George the set us Oh We're not taking this fucking almanac. We're not taking your royalist fucking almanac dude Yeah, Benjamin Franklin was right. He pulled his dick out of whatever the hell he was having sex with at the time He invented electricity and then he scooped your ass on the almanac America did it again Well, the middle part was right now This was three quarters of a century before we kicked out the Brits and even though there were plenty of colonists who supported the crown Get out of here openly working for the most ruthless of them made enemies in the colonies naturally

Now this first feud wasn't the only thing that led the Leeds family into getting New Jersey's greatest monster named after him But this was the first step Leeds retired in 1714, but his sons Particularly his son Titan Continued writing cool name so far. I have to say I like the names of the time Titan Leeds is a cool fucking name It's a very good name. Yeah, it's better. He had one. His other brother was named Felix Yeah, and the other one was I think was named Japhat

Mean thing to say about it, but maybe it was Jeff is my one second. It is my one son. You're skinny and this is my other fun Time to be alive. Well, unfortunately for Titan though There was a chubby very clever very horny little upstart named Benjamin Franklin waiting in the wings Ready to make his stamp on history and Titan Leeds happened to be in the way I think that Benjamin Franklin must have been fun to watch watch walk Like you just oh, yeah, dude. I I feel like if I was physically closest to of a of a person in history It would be a Benjamin Franklin. You can get I will eventually I will look like him Oh, yeah, and then you see I shave my beard I grow up my back hairs like my back

Head hairs I grow out them long. Yeah, I look like Benjamin Franklin because he's got like a short hard penis He knows the side-to-side motion. He's got he's got a fast brain and tiny hands made for writing Yeah, that's me. Yes, never saw a day of work in his life No, Benjamin Franklin was a hard worker. He like it down the print and pressure that print pressure. It's hard That's a good point. Yeah, it's big work. I'll take it back So by the 1730s the astrology angle seemed to be working and the Leeds Almanac was among if not the most popular Almanac around Wow, that was until Benjamin Franklin started publishing poor Richard's Almanac printing useful information

alongside awesome quotes like three men can keep a secret if two are dead I just reprint that one A lot of fun a lot of fun little stories there So Franklin thought astrology Superstition and for that matter most religious beliefs were all pretty goddamn stupid So he figured he'd use Leeds as closely held belief in astrology as a way of attacking his rival in the very first Issue of his new Almanac, which was what was it called poor Richard's Almanac? Oh, yeah Yeah, that one, you know, that's the same one that you just mentioned. Yes. They want to just get it one

That's very famous and it's been around for a long time and it's about Potatoes and it's also about like when it's gonna rain somehow a lot in there Yeah, it's like an annual spy versus spy in there Maybe the first spy versus spy and Almanac was like an annual publication That did you know, it had star charts and you know things like when to plant the stuff Yeah, and then it has some puzzles in there, too Yeah, and some quotes. Yeah, it was a catch-all man and but he understood like I'll say like we did Instinctually back in the day that if you put all of it under one umbrella, you got your farming news

I got your farming tips. You got your farming quips all in one little area Farmers are gonna buy that off and then especially if they found out that if you crumple it just enough to them together You could stick your dick in between it instead of wrestling a sheep down Because that's got to be exhausting after a while. Yeah, you did wake up on these sort of the hornier side Natalie's out of town So Franklin wrote a satirical piece in which he used astrology to predict Titan Leeds's death on the next October 17th telling the reader that they had to buy the next issue if they wanted to see if the prediction came true Leeds didn't die, but Franklin published an obituary anyway

And when Leeds angrily responded in the Leeds Almanac saying I am not dead Because it seemed to be pretty easy to get a rise out of the whole Leeds family Franklin insisted No Leeds is absolutely dead and that response came from his ghost Franklin kept this shit up for years cuz like Leeds is like his biggest rival But Benjamin Franklin like refused to actually respond to him He would only respond to Titan Leeds is ghost That's I am doing this with every person Because Leeds kept getting more and more angry and Benjamin Franklin would say

He would say there's no way that such an Ungentlemanly reply would come from Titan Leeds. So therefore his ghost must still be in control of his publication And then Titan Leeds like I'm not a ghost Yeah, bro, would a ghost be able to do this? Look I'm lifting a hammer Looks like some ghost is trying to get into construction Franklin was funny. He was. That's what Mr. Wonderful says on Shark Tank. No, yeah, you're dead to me And the whole time Benjamin Franklin is also calling all of his rivals devils and everyone's calling Titan Leeds a devil Because that's what they would do at the time. That was like that was the kind of stock insult

You would have for your opponent is like, oh, but he is a saucy devil. Okay, but it's that sounds like more of a compliment No devil was not enough because you're not that far from the Salem witch trials here, right? Yeah. Oh, yeah I forget about that. I forget that people used to take things really seriously and they still do The difference is that people got killed back in the day when you would point at somebody and say that they were devil the whole community would would revolve against them and Leeds became really unpopular and that was like a part of what happened, right? That's why then they got being known as the the progenators of a horse demon The only fun thing during the state during the Salem witch trials the only thing that would be fun to be is a child

Because you can just you can just eradicate every adult So did you see you ever see white ribbon? I never saw that it's a movie about set in the rise of the nazi party It's I mean, it's it's not very funny But it's about little kids where the the fascism is getting to the little kids and then becoming like little like Like snitches to the Nazis and it's very frightening. It's little kids being like You are a jude and aren't you and they're like no no Bartholomew And it's like it's very very scary that that's got to be fun for a kid though kids Whoever came up with that myth out of the the truth of babes out of the mouths of babes all kids do is lie

It's the bible. Oh, well There's a mistake So Benjamin Franklin he kept hitting on Leeds kept hitting on Leeds Benjamin Franklin didn't even let up after Titan Leeds actually died in 1738 In Franklin's next almanac he congratulated the ghost claiming to be Titan Leeds all this time for finally ending the charade That's incredible Benjamin Franklin Everybody high fives

It's just so weird to think of Benjamin Franklin as a bully. Yeah, because he looks like everyone who is bully Him in front of the Titan Leeds grave just been like Now he's really dead now he's really fucking dead. What do you do? I'm just like rubbing his butt all over with like the grave However, what's interesting is that the death of Titan Leeds more or less lines up with the birth of the Leeds devil Oh, and for further connection one needs to look no further than the Leeds family crest The crest features three figures with wings clawed feet in pointy tails and above the shield Rest the mythical cockatrice, which is a kind of rooster dragon In other words the crest was filled with monsters. Okay, cockatrice is also a seldom used name for a girl

Which I think would actually be really very nice This is my daughter cockatrice Cockatrice Yeah, it could be a beautiful name in a totally different world And so the creature that would become the jersey devil was born of a media war between a family A religion in one of the founding fathers of the united states cool and stuck in the middle Was the poor devil himself? Oh Right here, but those who are

So many harlequins Oh I just want to see the actor going back into the makeup room taking off his wig and just looking in the mirror and being like I did it again And when when will I reap the rewards of my talent? I'm too good for jersey. I just like the idea of a thing a thing looking like the creature from basket case with the It's just like singing this song like in a swamp like while his fucking family is out there feeding him porridge every day Now in order to really understand why it was so easy for people to believe that the leads devil and eventually the jersey devil

Existed in the pine barons. You got to understand the pine barons themselves The pine barons are a vast expanse of over a million acres covered in a dense wilderness of pine trees and swamps Now why why'd they live there? They don't really don't yeah Yeah, it is not a good place to live the people that do live there are called pine rats Oh Yeah, and they were for years said to be backwards thieves and brigands pretty much the hillbillies of the northeast moon shiners They're baron billies There are certain types of people that live in places called barons because you live in a place where it's very very difficult to live

And it's also It's out in the middle of nowhere and a lot of people went out there to to find a place to live They were rugged individualists and then they all died And now their biggest thing that they told about the pine barons is that you can almost see atlantic city From one edge of the swamp But also it's a very I have to want to ask more people I know from new jersey about the pine barons because they all say the same thing the people I texted several people about the jersey devil because everybody has a jersey devil story

That if you've lived in southern new jersey and they all just kind of say the same thing about the pine barons are very spooky Yeah, I'm sure they are. Yeah. Yeah. They're super spooky out there Now it's very possible that the leads devil existed as a sort of cautionary tale for travelers to at the very least Have their wits about them around pine rats But nonetheless the story survived in an oral tradition for the next 150 years During that time though discoveries have been made in america that allowed the existence of things like the jersey devil to seem Not only possible but probable and I think this is very interesting As is pointed out in the secret history of the jersey devil america had for centuries been a land filled with biological monsters

This land was filled with bizarre animals that europeans had never seen before like moose and possums and skunks and rattlesnakes Possums are weird-looking. They're really they give them huge teeth and they scream at you Because it seemed the further you went into the interior the weirder scarier and more deadly animals in america got And it's always those the ones with the long tongues that like to hang around the pine cones They can get the seeds from inside Yeah, they get the little bugs and stuff Yeah, then I like to see a moose and a possum and a skunk and a rattlesnake all like playing a game with each other Or living in an apartment complex

I like to see that and then it's about how they're all struggling to be actors And you make it like a sequel to the to the horse show Yeah, you make it a sequel to that and you call it rattlesnake house You didn't even say rattlesnakes were involved. No, he said rattlesnakes Okay, and then there were the stories from the american indians It's like these guys that these colonialists they'd hear indians tell stories of like gigantic creatures with horns Who roamed the plains by millions which sounded impossible? But when explorers went further west bam, there's bison by the millions

Hmm, so if the bison and all the other weird animals that the american indians were talking about were real What stopped the forest dragon that the original people of the pines talked about from being real as well makes sense And then in the 1800s we started finding fossils We found woolly mammoths the size of a house dinosaurs that might as well have been dragons and plesiosaur skeletons Which bore more than a slight resemblance to the sea surface that sailors had been reporting near the americas Since christopher columbus sailed the ocean blue and i do want to clarify we found planted fossils by scientists to disprove god But think about how cool it must have been to come to america at that time when you come over here Everybody in europe is wearing like five shirts and there's gunpowder soot everywhere and people are duel in each other

And they're and they're they're they're learning about they're creating slavery and then when they come to america It's just half nude Like native american debutsum women and tall strong men and dinosaurs everywhere. It's like a it's like a cartoon That's must have been awesome. Are you claiming that uh the process of so-called manifest destiny was somehow peaceful? Because there's a lot of history that might sort of contradict that like that narrative No, i'm saying they came to america and they're like, oh man, this place is cool. Let's like Fuck it up What the first thing to do is like let's drop off a bunch of horses and see what they do with them

And there's a horse that's clomping and clomping around to the native americans. They're like, oh Wow cool I don't think the horse the the horses weren't native to america. Were they no they absolutely were not dogfoot I'd like for you to meet uh, this is rainbow's end champion runner Um, that I this is I'd like you to meet. Oh, thank you for introducing the horses toss Very good Well besides the unknown and the dinosaurs and all the fossils and all that stuff There was that whole strength weakness thing that we talked about earlier

We here in america. We love to believe anything is possible And that's one of the things that helped take us to the top But it also makes us very gullible people at times Oh This particular foible was put on display fully in the great jersey devil panic of 1909 However, like a lot of things like this It was a slow burn It all started in the late 1880s in cleveland with the hopes called the devil kid

Supposedly the devil kid was born to a polish family with all the standard devil characteristics red skin horns hooves and a pointy tail Oh, um, excuse me mother am I allowed to walk to the library? Okay, I will eat as many, uh, buttered macaroni as I can possibly stand. Thank you, mother I don't need any specs in my food pepper as specs That was me as a child So obnoxious It wasn't necessarily national news this whole devil kid thing

But it definitely made the rounds and papers across america Then in 1885 A 12 foot tall creature with glowing eyes and horns showed up in elizabeth new jersey Capable of jumping over tall fences and running up the sides of buildings Wow, the creature who also had a penchant for giving unwanted kisses to the ladies of new jersey Had apparently made its way all the way from england He was the forerunner of the modern jersey devil and his name Was spring heel jack

There he goes, spring heel jack kiss it kiss up your neck. You don't want it. I'm sorry Up you go Have a pork roll traditional dish served in new jersey It's spring heel jack. He hasn't made an appearance in a long time. We haven't had reason to mention him No ken. Yeah, you can't just mention him for no reason No Wow Now so with all of these devil sightings popping up all around america

It was only a matter of time before the original the leads devil made a comeback And the man to do it was a guy named norman jeffreys Now a lot of stories say that this guy only took advantage of the great jersey devil panic of 1909 But it seems like he may have actually created the mass hysteria that spanned three states for a full week Really? What are we talking here? What are we talking when we say panic everyone just running around in circles? I'll tell you Like for a full week like it's like it's wood stock or something People were having mass group sightings of the jersey devil. They were saying they were seeing around there

It was stealing chickens. It was climbing on the roof It was it was snatching at their kids It was running across their their hiking trails all this shit because eventually Do you have one person say like I saw the jersey devil on thursday and everyone's like, oh anabelle? That's incredible and then someone else. We're like, uh, meet it I also saw a jersey devil. I need attention Right, so in late 1908 a philadelphia newspaper ran a story about the leads devil legend Well, you're better. Yeah, but that was just a curiosity type of thing. Yeah, they didn't say it was real

No, they didn't say it was real. It was just like, hey, this is a curious old folktale from the pine barons Norman jeffreys happened to read the story which gave him an idea Which he took to his boss at the ninth and arch dime museum in philadelphia Now in the late 19th early 20th century dime museums were among the most popular forms of entertainment in urban areas They were pretty much a menagerie of different distractions But by far the most popular feature in any dime museum was the freak show Oh, I see. I thought it was a museum that had dimes And I was like, how many dimes were even in the currency at that point? We're on first dime. We're on round one dime

Now you might be able to have a dime museum. Thank you so much for coming to the new jersey dime museum Here we have a dime from 1915 And over here we have another dime You could see it's got some rust on it on the side if it must have gotten wet at some point It's from 1915 as well And I have this other dime here

1914 I'm happy we came it cost five dollars for you to come in here That's more money than this entire museum is worth because all we have are these seven dimes making money entrepreneurship So jeffreys ran to his boss with the story and together the two formulated a plan to create their very own leads devil First jeffreys started planting stories in local newspapers about a mysterious creature seen lurking in the woods leaving behind strange footprints Kissell this one day will be our biopic

This will be literally you and I together talking about how we're gonna make our own cryptid and we're gonna we're gonna get a We're gonna get a devil fever going and then is it you dress as the jersey? Yeah, we're gonna be involved in the in the worst possible part of the process. I'm the supervisor Yes, you're the supervisor Then with a good amount of rumor and fear circulating jeffreys visited a friend of his named professor edwards and rented his kangaroo My name is legally professor edwards. It's just professor. I'm not a teacher. I have never went to college But my name is professor. Yes, so you can call me professor You got a real kangaroo here real kangaroo in Cleveland. Uh, no, he actually went to upstate new york to rent the kangaroo and then he brought it down to philadelphia

Okay, I have to binghamton. Oh, all right He then painted green stripes on the animal which the kangaroo licked off and almost died Dad dammit Stop making it like this. Why you gotta make let me try some of this paint. See how bad. Oh, it is kind of sweet. Oh, it's kind of nice Oh Oh, damn kangaroo with your flirtin with me with the paint Then jeffreys tried another kind of paint which the kangaroo accepted Okay, then jeffreys made a set of wings for the animal which the kangaroo destroyed

Very unpredictable animal Yes, so then jeffreys made a softer set of wings out of rabbit fur which the kangaroo accepted Okay, he topped the whole thing off with a set of antlers and so the attraction was born Oh, nice. I wish you this was around during america's funniest home videos way back in the day the the old school Well, remember the jackalope. Oh, this isn't even close to being done. Oh, yeah, the jackalope He was very funny Well, this was the age of the showman and if jeffreys wanted to get people in to see his creation He had to put on a show

jeffreys went over to the wrinkling brother circus and hired a clown He knew named george and he and george got to hire a bunch of carnies to act as a posse of monster hunters My name is george the clown and i am my uh moniker is the most commonly named clown Uh, it's george the clown. I don't do a lot talking to my flower. Oh, yeah, I got you with the water Anyway, I want my money back Here's a dime No, no, no, that's half of my museum Don't just give these dimes away

their history So jeffreys gave the fake posse a bunch of torches pitchforks and nets and made a big show in town That the mob was going out to capture the creature at all costs and then jeffreys sent him out into the woods Okay, so before we do the mob reenactment what I was thinking is is we get everybody together and we first stop jersey devil jersey devil I have to I have to tell you one more time craig that this is not this is not your production. Okay, this is my production So once the mob was out of sight They made as much noise as they could to make it seem like they were locked in a fierce struggle

Ouch, it's a devil everywhere. There's a devil everywhere Wow Then they brought out a cart carrying a cage covered in a blanket The cage was rattling and then they took the cage to the dime museum Come on. Come on to the museum and see the sights. Yes. I know everyone's excited about the monster But we recently got a new dime. I have this time. It's from it's from cleveland, ohio and it's from 1915 Please pay attention to me. I love dime museum

What a guy so the next day the local newspaper reported that the creature had been caught And was on display at the ninth and arch street dime museum under a new name The jersey devil So when people went to see the creature and hundreds if not thousands did They were led to a dimly lit room in the basement of the museum where they were presented with a cage covered by a curtain The curtain would raise and there before them was the painted kangaroo aka the jersey devil What the fuck's this shit I mean honestly, dude, it's only a dime. I still think it's worth it. Well, the room was very dimly lit. Sure. Yeah

The only thing was the kangaroo wasn't always in the mood to perform So to get the devil going Jeffries hired a boy to sit behind the cage and prick the kangaroo with a nail that had been attached to the end of a stick Yes, wow, and that boy grew up to be joseph mccarthy Yes It just seems like a very it's like how they used to treat kids at your business. It's a very corey feldman thing to do Poor kangaroo But rest assured the poor creature was eventually returned to professor edwards. Oh good relatively unharmed

Oh, thank you so much for bringing my kangaroo back. Uh, the you guys the rents will go well Yeah, it was great performer great. Yeah, I did did what I needed to do. Yep Well, I'm just glad it's safe. I mean you only kind of poked it with the nail like a couple times Yes, a couple hundred times. Okay, cool. All right. Well, I'm just gonna have to kill it for its meat Those are the best days of the kangaroo's life And this kind of thing was actually fairly common during that time period Like the infamous fiji the mermaid and pt barnum's die museum in new york That wasn't even alive. That was just the top half of a dead monkey sewn to the bottom half of a fish

I would love to do pt barnum at some point I love flim flam men flim flam men from this time period. It's some of my favorite It's my favorite type of history Well, I mean talk about someone who saw a market that no one thought was a market He's like, I guarantee you they're gonna love if I take this half of a monkey combine it with this half of a big tuna It's gonna be called a mermaid or something like that. It was like, what the hell are you talking about? And then people go and they're like, we didn't know we needed this but I need this Yeah, even the so-called

Even the body of the so-called devil kid was carted around the countryside for a time Although the secret history of the jersey devil did not say what was actually displayed in this exhibit That's why I wish star would have gotten charles man. It's his body. I know Yes, that's a big loss. Come on, man. Just yeah, just put him on display. That would have been the coolest thing in the world I'm gonna say it again. You didn't want when I die. I hope that my body is used on as a traveling side show You know, we'll take the second half We'll use the legs. Yeah, it'll be somebody look how small a podcasters legs can become After years and years of sitting in a swivel chair. It's like, uh, yeah, like chris farley's in the uh

The bodybuilder sketch on snl where they all But the thing was in most of these cases when people left the exhibit the creatures they saw stayed there Because they were dead right in the case of the jersey devil though Jeffrey's had created something much more than just a side show attraction Pretty soon people were claiming that they were seeing the same sort of creature out in the wild Particularly around the pine barons and they'd added in a few details of their own Okay, the body of the kangaroo was still there But now the creature had a dog's head a horse's face

A forked tail and long claws in addition to the wings which had been changed from painted rabbit fur to bat leather Imagination is important. Yeah. All right. Just remember that is that a book Can take you anywhere Yeah, that's true So by late january of 1909 the southern part of new jersey as well as parts of pennsylvania and new york Were in a full blown panic that would last a full seven days known at the time as phenomenal week In that week alone people made well over 100 reports that they'd seen something resembling the jersey devil The whole thing started with a man named fac cosens

Who saw it flying down the street in woodbury new jersey that sunday Then when a cop in bristol pennsylvania reported that he'd seen the creature and it even took a shot The thing became a little bit more real because a cop had seen it of course and he tried to shoot it immediately I mean he had to at the time. He thought it was holding a weapon Over the next few days strange tracks started appearing in dozens of towns across southern new jersey and pennsylvania And on january 19th a mister and mrs. Nelson evans were woken up by a strange creature outside their house in the middle of the night This is the account as told by mr. Evans It was about three feet and a half high with a head like a collie dog and a face like a horse

That a long neck wings about two feet long and its back legs were like those of a crane And it had horses hooves. I believe it was married to matthew broderick It walked on its back legs and held up two short front legs with paws on them It didn't use the front legs at all while we were watching my wife and I was scared. I tell you But I managed to open the window and say shoot And it turned around barked at me and flew away I believe it said its name was sarah jessica parker That is a classic classic bit jessica parker wow relevant and classic

That's the thing another woman chased the devil down with the broom as it was trying to eat her dog And that encounter was followed by the entirety of the black hawk social club Seeing the devil whiz past their windows during a meeting wow and that black hawk social club must have been a pile of bitches And you know when they came into that to whatever quilt social that they went to afterwards been like We all saw the josey devil last night and they're all like oh, yeah Yeah, we did too. Uh, uh, it sounds like someone's ghost is talking slammed Slammed him again. Nice. Is it social clubs? Were they women or men? I thought the men were mostly in the social clubs

Yeah, that was a social club. They had the black hawk social club. That was a bunch of dudes Hanging out. I thought it was like a cool group of goth chicks and I got I was happy with the idea of it No, it's a bunch of dudes from Trenton, New Jersey. I think everyone was kind of goth back then Yeah, it was somewhat it was more everybody looked like John C. Riley back then. Yeah. Yeah, everyone the men and the women But it wasn't until a city councilman in Trenton claimed he'd seen the devil Which made the whole damn thing official that the jersey devil panic really got out of hand You can always trust public officials in Trenton Always so by friday schools were closed and factories were shut down because the men refused to leave their families to go to work

This is after just five days Wow, and other men formed posseys and searched for the devil throughout the night. Oh, this is so fun Yes, it's awesome Even a local fire department got in on the game when they freaked out and sprayed what they assumed to be the jersey devil with A fire hose until whatever it was ran away screaming Probably just the town drunk Just a guy just a guy with like elephantitis who's just been like there's just no reason for this treatment I'm the only one in this town who knows how to do taxes

Everything's settled down by the end of january and the sightings of the jersey devil have been sporadic at best ever since Okay, with one of the most gruesome happening in 1966 Says you though Marcus because every single person I know that I texted the two people I know from jersey and both of them said Oh, yeah, I got a jersey devil story. And then when you watch other docs and like the monster quest episode about jersey devil Everybody's got a story which involves being like we were out and you I mean we weren't completely straight But we had only a couple of beers or only smoking a little bit And next thing you know, I'm looking at a dog horse Usually we all say the same

Yeah, it's all it's the exact same story over and over again except for this one in 1966 This is another clip from mother leads his 13th child from a cop who responded to a call about the jersey devil attacking a farm The time I was called here mr. Silcoge advised the station that he was missing numerous ducks And some other type of animals Arrived at the scene here at this time. He advised me that he was missing 31 ducks Four cats two dogs and a few geese apparently some type of animal come in and Gotten these foul and his animals and taken them off somewhere

Neither just killed them for the sake of killing or had eaten some of them. No other animal could have done that But they fly Was it by any chance Coming up on winter. I love cop talk so much. I love that and upon the scene of the crime All 30 plus one that is 10 plus 10 plus 10 plus 1 31 Trent uno in Italian Ducks the foul the water foul with marble texture to their wings to their feathers the ocula I don't know what the scientific word for feathers of john. Do you know?

They would disappear Eantian from the scene They do let you know everything they know everything they know. Yes Now some true believers of the jersey devil say that the reason Why sightings have slowed down so much over the last 100 years at least from the great panic of 1909 Is because of the advent of highways and street lights. They scare the devil away. I could see that. Yeah makes sense He's a soft boy. You heard his song The jersey devil is literally just a sweet boy who doesn't understand these modern times and he's just

He's because I'll find someone nice like what's her name from twilight Others say even the so-called legit sightings are nothing more than a sandhill crane a big screaming bird Which does actually exist Okay, but whenever the jersey devil is or was doesn't really matter as the people of new jersey have taken the legend as a point of pride Even going so far as to name it the official state demon in 1939 Wow back when americans had a sense of humor about such things. Oh, okay. That's good But in 2015 they all do say this everyone who was like a new jersey person that spoke on the behalf of jersey me like And I will have you know, we are the only state

To have a state demon And that's the jersey devil now. I feel it's much maligned and they go very very serious Okay And so we'll end this tale with a poem Written and recited by a new jersey resident and possibly the best cryptid documentary ever made mrs. Leeds 13th child Deep in the marshes Leeds devil is lurking

In the mist and the darkness he always is working Folks know his habits Pawns and devices best guard yourself to the devil entices down near the point where the reeds are the highest That's where the devil conjures the slides Nights after dark when the winds off the ocean best guard yourself Must he get an ocean and pounce upon you with pitchfork and saber the rest of your life You'll be vexed with hard labor Now you've been warned look out for black magic to laugh and to scuff could prove very tragic

The jersey is the land the devil is roamed. Leeds point is the place. He sits on his throne You know, I'm just so happy david burkowitz is still writing poetry That sounds just like a burkowitz poem. That is that's great community theater. I'm go. I want to watch that show live Oh, man. Hey, it's a great documentary man. You gotta just hit on youtube. It's called mrs. Leeds 13th child It's about 24 minutes long. It's fantastic. All right. Wow. Well That's what I always say stop having children at 12 at 12 children I'll say this I

Cryptids are cryptids are fun, right? It's fun to hear the these stories. I think they're it's Having it be around like the jersey devil being around in southern jersey. I wish that it was real I'd love to see it. I love to hear your calls Like or in your stories if you have a jersey devil stories, I will hear them because I never get sick of them No, it's a I'm much happier to live in a world with the new jersey devil. Yeah, right? And I would like to think it exists. I'd like to think so too bone apart You didn't want to include napoleon's brother hunting for the jersey devil. He wasn't hunting for the jersey devil It was napoleon's brother who was also the king of spain at one point came to new jersey. He was hunting

He heard a weird noise You heard a weird noise and said and supposedly it was the jersey devil, you know napoleon actually average height Not as short as Make him seem however, I don't know shrek, but they make him it's kind of a prince. You know However, as brian regal points out in the secret history of the jersey devil This is merely an apocryphal tale that is not supported by any sort of personal journals or actual written historical evidence Well, there you go. So even when we're talking about Something as truthful as the new jersey devil mark is make sure to keep it accurate. Yes

Yes, as always we always do our homework. Awesome. All right everyone. Well, thank you so much for listening Well, that was an exciting. It was a good that was like uh heaven out when you're eating the sushi and you take a big Bite of a wasabi. I feel like our uh, Rasputin was the wasabi and now we had a little ginger A little a little palate cleanser here I had so much fun with Rasputin. I had a hard time letting it go. I loved Rasputin I like him being around in my life. I know he's a terrible person. He did bad things Which will always remind everyone that he was a toucher Um, but I did actually get a fun listener a bit of information. I'm sorry to bring it back to Rasputin

But apparently boney m died on december 10th, 2010. I got this information from a uh listener, which is the same day that Rasputin died Wow, interesting new jersey devil very exciting episode. Thank you. I think so and we're gonna be um, also the uh I mean the will will be eventually addressing talking about how the uh, east aero rapist the original night stalker was Seems to be caught. There's a lot of shit that's gonna be played out in the next couple of days He's definitely caught. We will yeah, and we will be talking about it on side stories I imagine along with the in the rise of the incel community, which we which will be very interesting You've got anything to say about that or any information

Uh, send us information at the last podcast network at gmail.com and marcus and I go through uh in-depth there on abling It's top hat a little bit of the incel community as well very much. So all right. Well, uh, just be careful Don't get too obsessed with this stuff online People really get their opinions hardened and then it manifests itself in a lot of horrible things in reality very much Um, so go outside and I say have a happy meal All right, everyone get a get a get a salad. I've actually get a salad There's a taco bell in the east village that just opened up and I think I'm gonna do that one of these days Cool if I lose five pounds just go to one union square

Stop punishing yourself. You can't with withholding things that you like is not going to help you lose weight Okay, um, all right. I think it would All right, so let's see. Yes. Thanks everyone for giving to the patreon Yeah, Henry and I are going to continue doing our little interview series there So that's really exciting if you want to give Uh, where can people give mark patreon.com slash last podcast on the left you if for only five dollars or more You can get a ton of bonus material ben and henry doing a some fantastic interviews. Yeah, they've been really fun So thank you all so much for that. Uh, I like meeting new people. It's exciting. Yeah, you know social media

You can find us on there Yeah, uh, find us on twitter at henry loves you at marcus parks have been kissill find us on instagram at dr Fantasty at marcus parks have been kissill the number one and find us on all Of the horseshit at lp on the left. All right, everyone. Hail yourselves. Hail satan again Hmm. Hail me maghustalations. Thank you