Lore - REMASTERED – Episode 9: A Devil on the Roof

Episode Date: July 26, 2021

It’s time to return to one of the classic American monster stories, the Jersey Devil. In this remastered edition you’ll get the same story you’ve known and loved, but with brand new narration and production, all layered over the hauntingly beautiful music of Chad Lawson. The Devil would be proud. ———————— Lore Resources:  Episode Music: lorepodcast.com/music  Episode Sources: lorepodcast.com/sources  All the shows from Grim & Mild: www.grimandmild.com Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com Access premium content!: https://www.lorepodcast.com/support See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In March of 2014, a hiker in Lithuania stumbled upon a warm spring that was melting the ice on a frozen pond. It's not unusual to find things like this, but he was curious. I would be too. The pond was frozen over, but there was a nice window into the still waters beneath. I have to think any one of us would have leaned in for a closer look. When he did, though, he witnessed something that his mind had trouble processing. It appeared to be a living creature, but it was unlike anything he had ever seen.

Thankfully, we live in a very connected, very digital age, and he used his phone to take a short video. I have no idea what the creature was or if it was even a living thing, and I'm not going to discuss it today or tell you more stories about similar sightings because there aren't any. It was a one-off, a random occurrence that had never happened before and would probably never happen again. Some stories are like that.

Sometimes we bump into something new with no history or record of events to lend at pedigree or validity. Those stories frustrate me. Other stories, though, go deep. Some legends haven't told for centuries. Some creatures have been sighted by hundreds of people over the years, and each new sighting lends credence to the story. Even if it's all made up or just one big misunderstanding, these layers upon layers

of story seem to somehow give life to the creatures they describe. When we find these deep wells of folklore, our minds are presented with a challenge. Do the centuries of first-hand accounts serve as proof, or do they highlight our incredible, cross-cultural, nearly genetic predisposition toward gullibility? Few places challenge us to such a degree as the Pine Barrens of Southern New Jersey. Inside that wooded expanse, mystery runs far and wide. And some say, the devil. I'm Aaron Mankey, and this is Lore.

When we think of the East Coast of the United States, we think of urban sprawl, of endless strings of bedroom communities looping around massive metropolitan centers. New York City, Boston, Philadelphia, Washington, D.C. All of these places are symbols of humanity's inability to leave an undeveloped area untouched. What most people don't know, however, is that there is a huge expanse of forested land cutting through the southern part of New Jersey that simply boggles the mind. It's called the Pine Barrens, and it's the largest undeveloped area of land in the Mid-Atlantic Seaboard.

Seriously, this place is massive. There are 1.1 million acres of forest, and beneath it all are underground aquifers that are estimated to contain over 17 trillion gallons of the purest drinking water in the country. As you might imagine, such a massive area of untouched land comes with its own treasure chest of mythical creatures and frightening folklore. The local Lenape tribe of Native Americans tell stories about the Manitututek, the wood dwarves who live in the forest, a local version of the global Little People legend. There are other creatures rumored to exist in the Pines as well, including Big Red Eye,

the Hoboken Monkey Man, undocumented species of large cats, the Cape May Sea Serpent, and the Lizard Man of Great Meadows. New Jersey, you see, is full of monsters. But hovering over them all like a patriarch perched at the top of an ornate family tree is something that has haunted the Pines for nearly 300 years. The original story goes something like this. In 1735, one Mrs. Shroud of Leeds Point, New Jersey became pregnant with her 13th child. According to the legend, Mrs. Shroud secretly wished that this child would be a devil or

demon child. Sure enough, when the child was born, it was misshapen and malformed. Mrs. Shroud kept the deformed child in her home, sheltered from the curious eyes of the community, but on a dark and stormy night, because all bad things only ever happen on dark and stormy nights, of course, the child's arms turned to wings and it escaped, flying up and out through the chimney, and Mrs. Shroud never saw her devil child again. Now that's one story, or one version of it at least. A more prominent legend identifies the mother as Mrs. Leeds, not a Mrs. Shroud from Leeds,

who was from the Burlington area of New Jersey. Mrs. Leeds, according to the legend, had dabbled in witchcraft despite her Quaker beliefs, and this hobby of hers made the old women attending her birth more than a little uneasy. To their relief, though, a handsome baby boy was born that stormy night, and he was quickly delivered to Mrs. Leeds' arms, and that was when he transformed. His human features vanished, his body elongated, and even his skin changed. The baby's head became horse-like and hooves replaced his feet, bat-like wings sprouted from his shoulders, and he grew to the size of a man.

Other stories have persisted through the centuries. One claimed that the monster was the result of a treasonous relationship between a colonial Leeds-Point girl and a British soldier, while another story tells of a Romani curse. There seems to have been no town or county in the Pines area without its own version of the story, and though many of them vary wildly, one thing unites them all. The Descriptions of the Creature In all the stories, it was some sort of hybrid or mutation of a normal animal. Most of the stories describe it in the same terms, head like a horse, wings like a bat,

flawed hands, long serpent tail, and legs like a deer. In some accounts, the creature is almost dragon-like. Coincidentally, the Lenape tribes refer to the Pines area as Papuaessing, a word that means the place of the dragon. Swedish explorers even named the area Drakekill, kill being the Dutch word for river, and drake meaning dragon. Whatever the truth is behind the origins of this legend, and whatever its core features really are, the people of the Pines were united in what they call it, the Jersey Devil.

And this devil was more than just a story that was passed from person to person. Over the centuries that followed, countless eyewitness reports surfaced that pointed toward one overwhelming conclusion. The Jersey Devil was Real What makes the Jersey Devil so special is the quality of many of the sightings. Individuals with no need to make up stories, whether for political or professional reasons, all seem to have found the courage to report incidents that would normally be laughable. Stephen Decatur was a United States naval officer who was known for his many naval victories

in the early 1800s. Decatur was, and still is, a very well respected figure in American history. There have been five warships named after him. He's had his own stamp through the US Postal Service, and in the late 1800s it was his face that graced the $20 bill, rather than Andrew Jackson's. According to the legend, Decatur visited the Hanover Iron Works in Burlington, New Jersey in the early 1800s. The facility there manufactured cannonballs, something Decatur was very familiar with, and

he had arrived to test some of the product. On this occasion, Decatur was said to have been on the firing range, operating a cannon. While there, he witnessed a strange creature flying overhead. It was unlike anything he had ever seen before, and like a true American, he aimed a cannon at it. He fired, and the shot was said to be true, striking the creature in mid-air. Mysteriously though, nothing happened. The creature continued on uninterrupted.

Another early famous resident of New Jersey was Joseph Bonaparte, the brother of none other than Napoleon Bonaparte. Napoleon had appointed his brother King of Spain in 1808, but Joseph abdicated just five years later before moving to the United States. He took up residence in a large estate called Breeze Point near the Pine Barrens, and lived there for nearly two decades. One of his favorite pastimes was to go hunting in the pines. On one of those hunting trips, the former King of Spain was in the woods near his home

when he discovered some strange tracks in the snow. They looked like the tracks of a donkey, but there were only two feet present, not four. Bonaparte commented that one of the feet appeared slightly larger than the other, as if deformed in some way. He followed the tracks into a clearing, but stopped when the prince vanished. It was as if the animal had simply taken flight. As he was turning to leave, Bonaparte heard a strange hissing sound. He glanced back, only to find himself standing face to face with a large creature.

He described it as having bat-like wings, the head of a horse, and it stood on thin, hind legs. Before he could remember to use his rifle, the creature hissed one last time, flapped its wings, and flew off into the sky. He later described the events to a local friend, who simply smiled and congratulated the man. You've just seen the famous Jersey Devil, he told him. The following decades were filled with more and more sightings and reports.

In the early 1840s, a handful of farmers began to report the death of livestock on their land. In most cases, tracks were found, but they could not be identified. Others claimed to have heard high-pitched screams in the pines, a sound that would forever after be connected with the Jersey Devil. By 1900, belief in the Jersey Devil was widespread and stronger than ever. Nearly everyone in the area believed that something otherworldly lived inside the pines, and any time disaster or death entered their lives, they cast blame at this creature.

But some had also begun to do the math. If this monster really was the child of Mrs. Shroud and was born in 1735, then it was very, very old. Folkloreist Charles B. Skinner commented on this in 1903 in a publication. It is said that its life has nearly run its course, he wrote, and with the advent of the new century, many worshipful commoners of Jersey have dismissed, for good and all, the fear of the monster from their mind. Skinner, you see, thought that it was gone, that the Jersey Devil was too old to carry

on terrorizing the people of the pines. But when the events of 1909 unfolded just six years later, one thing became very clear. Skinner couldn't have been more wrong. January of 1909 was a busy month for the Jersey Devil. In the early morning hours of January 16th, a man named Thack Kozens was out for a walk under the stars in Woodbury, New Jersey. A sound caught his attention, and he glanced up, only to see a large, dark shape fly past. Kozens recalled noticing that the creature's eyes glowed bright red.

26 miles away that same early morning in the town of Bristol, Pennsylvania, a number of people reported seeing a similar creature. One witness, a police officer named James Sackville, actually fired his handgun at it without effect. E.W. Minster, the town postmaster, also saw the flying thing, and according to him, it also unleashed a high-pitched scream. When the sun rose that morning, several people reported finding strange hoof prints in the snow.

No one, though, could identify the kind of creature who would leave such tracks. Just one day later, on the 17th, unusual hoof prints were found in the snow outside the home of the Loudons in Burlington, New Jersey. The tracks surrounded their trash can, which had been knocked over and rummaged through. Other people found tracks on their rooftops. Trails were followed into streets where the tracks would simply vanish. The Burlington police tried tracking the creature with the help of hunting dogs, but the dogs refused to follow the trails.

At 2.30 in the morning on Tuesday the 19th, a Mr. and Mrs. Evans were asleep in bed in Gloucester, New Jersey, when a scream awoke them. They both climbed out of bed and approached their window and then stopped, paralyzed by fear. There, on the roof of their shed, stood a creature unlike anything they had ever laid eyes on. According to Mr. Evans, it was roughly three feet tall and had the head of a horse. It walked on two legs and held smaller claw-like hands against its chest. The leathery wings were still present, as was the long serpentine tail.

A couple managed to frighten the creature away after watching it for nearly 10 minutes. Later that day, professional hunters were called in to attempt to track the creature, but they had no success. The following day brought more of the same. A Burlington police officer was the first to see the creature, followed by a local minister. A hunting party was formed to track the beast and claimed they watched it fly toward Moorstown. In Moorstown, it was seen at the Mount Carmel Cemetery. From there, it was seen to fly toward Riverside, and there hoof prints were found in a cluster

around a dead puppy. A day later, an entire trolley full of passengers in Clementon watched a winged creature circle above them. The Blackhawk Social Club reported their own sighting, and when a Collingswood fireman saw one up close, he turned his hose on the creature, chasing it off. Later that night, a woman named Mrs. Sorbinsky in Camden heard a noise outside in the dark. She grabbed her broom and stepped outside, only to find the mysterious beast trying to catch her dog. Mrs. Sorbinsky beat at the creature with her broom until it released the dog and flew away.

When a crowd gathered as a result of her screaming, they all claimed to see the creature off in the distance. A mob charged toward the thing, and a police officer even fired shots, but whatever it was managed to escape into the sky. A creature made a few more random appearances across Northern New Jersey during late January of that year, but it was one final sighting in February that leaves many questions to be answered. An employee of a local electric railroad was out working on the tracks when he saw what he described later as the Jersey Devil flying overhead. He claimed to have watched the creature fly into one of the overhead electrical wires,

generating an explosion large enough to melt the metal tracks directly underneath. A search was made, but no body was found. Music Maybe the stories of the Jersey Devil are really about fear. Fear of the unknown, fear of the dark, fear of what might be lurking out there in the trees. Humanity has feared those things for millennia, but perhaps the people of the pines feared something more basic, more fundamental than whatever might be waiting for them in the darkness. Perhaps they simply feared being alone.

There is nothing worse than experiencing a loss you can't explain, or noises you can't identify, especially if you are in a new and strange place. The sources might very well be real and normal, but in the setting and culture of their day, the unexplainable only serve to highlight the loneliness of those early settlers of New Jersey. The barons had a way of giving permission to fear the unknown. They still do to this day. When settlers discovered rare or unusual plants and animals inside those woods, it became easy to take it one step further.

Demon children, creatures dancing on rooftops, livestock and pets being attacked. We explain our existence with fantasy because sometimes that's the only thing that can help us cope. In 1957, some employees for the New Jersey Department of Conservation found a partial animal corpse in the pines. It was a mangled collection of feathers, mammal bones, and long hind legs that appeared to have been burned or scorched. It might be logical to assume that the creature that flew into the electrical wires in 1909 had literally crashed and burned, only to be discovered decades later. It might, in fact, sound like the creature was gone for good. But in 1987, an unidentified woman in Vineland, New Jersey reported that her German shepherd had been killed during the night.

The dog had been torn to pieces and dragged over 25 feet from the end of its chain. The only evidence the authorities could find around the body were hoof prints. The Jersey Devil is one of those iconic American monster stories, partly because of the details. I mean, who doesn't love a creature that seems like a mash-up of a few different common animals, right? But I also think there's one more thing that helped bring it to life. Location New Jersey's vast pine barrens and its early history seem like the perfect breeding ground for a legend of this power. But it's not the only story to come out of the garden state, and if you love the bizarre and unusual, I have one more tale to tell.

Stick around through this brief sponsor break to hear all about it. They had a guest in their new home, and they weren't quite sure what to do about it. Frank Graceberry and his family had moved into the house in 1972. It was in a beautifully wooded area of northwestern New Jersey, just east of Philadelphia, known as Rancocas Woods. We don't know much about the house itself, but the events of 1972 have left more than enough memories for any family. After moving in, the family immediately noticed that the lights flickered and noises filled the space without any visible explanation. Objects would be found in new locations, moved by someone, but who? Well, that was the question.

None of the children confessed to it, and it was certainly not Frank or his wife, Mary. Things were just moving. And that wasn't all. Early on in their time there in the house, everyone noticed just how cold the dining room got when they sat down to eat. It was almost as if there was a cold wind blowing through the room, which might not be unusual if all the doors and windows weren't closed. What happened next is a bit mysterious, and I don't have a good explanation for it, but hey, we're all along for the ride, so let's just roll with it, shall we? At some point during one of those chilly dinner gatherings, someone managed to figure out that they could stop the cold wind if they set an extra place at the table. It was almost as if there was someone else in the house, someone they couldn't see but who really wanted to be noticed, and they had simply been begging to be included.

Which, of course, caught the curiosity of Frank and Mary, who wanted to learn more, so they hired a team of mediums to come to their home and do an investigation. The Graysberries probably went into it with low expectations. They might have expected to have their suspicions confirmed that, yes, there was a ghost in the house. Maybe they even expected a few details that gave this ghostly visitor some depth, such as a name or a time period. But what the investigation uncovered was so much more rich and detailed, and it was probably more than a little difficult to believe. The spirit in the house, according to the mediums, was that of a young Revolutionary War soldier. His name was John Dobson, and he'd come from a wealthy plantation family in Virginia. Dobson's role in the war, it seems, was serving as a courier for the American military, and that's what led to his death.

The story, at least as it was related to the family by their hired mediums, was that Dobson had been given a message for General George Washington in November of 1776. It was an unusually cold and harsh winter, and that made for dangerous travel. Sometime during his journey toward Valley Forge, he camped for the night and died from exposure. The place where his body lay undiscovered, eventually becoming buried under the ever-changing life of the forest, was right on the land now owned by Frank and his family. In fact, according to the medium, the house itself had been built on top of it, and that, they were told, was the source of Dobson's unrest. The family was skeptical, of course, but curiosity is a lot like the scent of freshly baked apple pie. Once you catch it, it's hard to let go, so they reached out to historians in the area to see if they could track down more details. After all, they had a name, a rough date, and military occupation.

Surely, that was enough to uncover more information. And it was. It turns out that there were not one but four John Dobson's serving in the Revolutionary War from the region of the Virginia Colony, and the military did indeed run a courier service in New Jersey. It wasn't definitive, but it certainly looked as if they might be on the right track. Or, of course, it could all be fantasy. So life eventually went on. Sure, they kept setting an extra place at the table, and yes, things in the house weren't ever really normal.

Items would move to new locations. Those lights kept flickering. If it was a ghost, and that ghost did have a message, it didn't seem to have given up. Then, one day, long after they had moved on, the youngest child, Polly, was overheard humming an unusual song while she was playing with her toys. When Mary stopped and asked Polly what song it was, the little girl told her it was called The World Turned Upside Down. The song, it turns out, was old. Way too old for Polly to have picked it up from a friend, or television, or even a babysitter. It was from the 60s, the 1760s, and it spoke of, well, the symptoms of a world turned upside down.

And it was a significant song, too. It seems that when British General Cornwallis surrendered to General George Washington on October 19th of 1781, his troops played that song on their last march. Names and dates and personal details were all intriguing pieces of information. But this, a song no child should know, one from the very same time and place as the story of John Dobson, was a lot harder to deny. Frank and his wife took it as proof, however bizarre and unconventional it might have been, that their ghostly roommate was more than just a story. Things didn't go so well for the ghost after that. His plan had been to get the house moved off his gravesite, but it turns out he was just too benign of a roommate, too gentle and easily avoided. Even that long-forgotten song was perceived as something enjoyable by the family.

In the end, his other worldly plan failed. The family didn't change a thing about the house or its location, and neither did any of the owners who came after them. And John Dobson, a young man who died lost and cold in Rancocas Woods in the winter of 1777, has remained just as lost and just as cold as ever. His world, it seems, will always be upside down. This episode of Lore was researched, written, and produced by me, Aaron Mankey, with music by Chad Lawson. Lore is much more than just a podcast. There is a book series available in bookstores and online, and two seasons of the television show on Amazon Prime Video. Check them both out if you want more Lore in your life.

I also make and executive produce a whole bunch of other podcasts, all of which I think you'd enjoy. My production company, Grim and Mild, specializes in shows that sit at the intersection of the dark and the historical. You can learn more about all of our shows and everything else going on over in one central place, grimandmild.com. And you can also follow this show on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. Just search for Lore Podcast, all one word, and then click that follow button. And when you do, say hi. I like it when people say hi. And as always, thanks for listening.