So Supernatural - THE UNKNOWN: Jersey Devil

Episode Date: October 28, 2020

Hooves, wings and high-pitched screams… The Jersey Devil has reportedly been seen thousands of times, lurking in and around a forest called the Pine Barrens. How much of its existence is rumor, and how much is reality? 

If you live in New Jersey, and even if you don't, chances are that you've heard of the Jersey Devil. To most, it's a made-up monster that became an unexpected symbol of state pride. It's got wings and red beady eyes and a high-pitched scream. To put it simply, it's ridiculous. But if you travel down to the woods of South New Jersey, there are a lot of people who will tell you that the Jersey Devil is real. People have been talking about it since before the first colonists even settled in New Jersey. There have been thousands of sightings over hundreds of years. To those who have seen it, the devil is more than a folktale.

It's something to be very afraid of. This is Supernatural, and I'm your host, Ashley Flowers. This week, we're looking at the Jersey Devil. The Jersey Devil started as a story, a folktale told through generations. But somehow it became real, and it remains real, at least to a surprising amount of people, even today. So, exactly what is happening in New Jersey? It all started with the Pine Barrens. These woods take up about a million acres in New Jersey between the Delaware River and the Atlantic Ocean. They're incredibly dense. In some places, the trees are so thick that sunlight barely filters in. When you walk through

the Pine Barrens, something just doesn't feel right. There's a sense of dread hanging over the place. The first people who lived there, the Lenape tribe, believed a powerful spirit lived in the woods. They called it mesing. It was said by some to be a deer-like creature with long, dragon-like wings. It wasn't evil, but it was something to be respected.

When the English colonists arrived in the 1600s, they thought the Lenape were just superstitious. They moved right into the Pine Barrens and set up iron forges and paper mills and glass factories. The Lenape were eventually pushed out entirely, and by the mid-18th century, the colonial industry in the Pine Barrens collapsed as well. People were leaving the Pine Barrens in droves. The ones who stayed became

known as the Pineys. And pretty soon, they started seeing the same spirit as the Lenape had told them about. A creature with the head of a horse, hooves and claws, and the long body of a serpent. The Pineys called it the Leeds Devil. The earliest sightings of the Leeds Devil are hard to confirm. It seems that the Pineys believed in this thing very strongly and even occasionally saw it, but nobody had documented it. One person who is supposed to have seen it is Joseph Bonaparte, the brother of Napoleon. He moved to New Jersey after he was exiled from Europe, and he's said to have seen the devil while hunting in the 1830s. But as far as anyone in the cities was concerned, the devil was a piece of superstitious hokum, and only the backwards country-dwelling pioneers believed in it, so most of the reports went ignored.

In the 1890s, a couple of sightings made actual papers. A train engineer claimed to have seen the devil attack his train in 1893. Six years later, a Philadelphia businessman claimed he was awakened by screams and then saw the devil fly past his window. Then, in 1909, during one insane week in January, the devil was seen every single day by hundreds of people all over the Delaware Valley. It starts on Saturday, January 16th. That night, three different people in Bristol, Pennsylvania, just across the Delaware River from New Jersey, see a strange animal they've never seen before. It has wings, and it stands on its hind legs. It has this high-pitched scream. The next morning, the people

of Bristol find strange hoof prints all over the snow in their backyard. The tracks trail off, disappear for hundreds of feet or so, and then appear again. By Monday, in Burlington, New Jersey, on the other side of the river, people are seeing the same thing. Their backyards are covered in hoof prints that seem to come from a two-legged animal, and it does the same thing. It like trails off and starts up again. Then on Tuesday, a man in Gloucester City looks out his window in the middle of the night and sees a winged animal standing on the roof of his shed. By Wednesday, search parties start to form. In just one day, the devil appears to a policeman, a reverend, and a station agent. One man goes after it, but the devil jumps into a gravel pit

and vanishes. As the week goes on, fear and panic build, until by the end of the week, schools are closed and people refuse to go to work. Interestingly, people's descriptions of this thing vary. Some say that it looks like it has antlers. Some say that it has three toes. Some say that its back legs look like those of a crane. And some say that it just looks like a jabberwock, which I don't know if you know what that is, but I had to look it up. And it's actually like a fictional creature from the guy who created the Alice in Wonderland series. But one thing is clear. Whatever this thing is, they've never laid eyes on it before. Two police

even winded up trying to corner it, and when it takes off into the sky, they open fire. One woman chases it away before it can eat her dog, though she was a little late because it had already taken a bite. When it's all over, upwards of a thousand people in four different states, including Delaware and Maryland, either saw the devil or its hoofprints. All in one week. And then, just like that, it's gone. Since Phenomenal Week, as it's known, the devil has never been cited on such a large scale, but it does keep getting seen. Accounts differ a little bit, but they all more or less fit the same description. In 1979, a woman driving

through the Pine Barren sees what looks like a miniature horse run out in front of her car, but it has these glowing yellow eyes. In the mid-80s, two teenage boys see a tall, hairy animal that screams at them. In December 1995, a driver sees a tall animal with horns, a tail, and wings cross the parkway in front of her car. The last reported sighting was in 2015, when a man driving by a golf course saw what looked like a llama under the trees. As it took flight into the sky, he snapped a photo with his cell phone. The resulting photo, I mean, is almost a little hard to believe, but it still passed around as the first solid evidence of the devil's existence. Clearly, something strange is going on,

something we can't entirely discount. Either the people of southern New Jersey are all in the throes of a multi-generational mass delusion, or there really is something strange living in those woods. Let's dig into the theories when we return let's get back to the story we may not live in an age when monsters and fantastical creatures seem plausible but in this case we can't discount the sightings something is going on and on this show i consider it our job to look at the possibilities. Is there something living in the woods that we've never discovered before? To answer this, we need to turn to a branch of science known as cryptozoology.

The study of animals who haven't yet been proven to exist. In recent years, there's been a flood of interest in these animals, which are called cryptids, like Bigfoot, Yeti, the Abominable Snowman. What makes them fascinating is that we have some evidence to prove that they're real. For example, a photograph of a footprint, a home video of a blurry figure, eyewitness accounts. But there's not enough to make a scientific claim. Every once in a while, a cryptid actually does get discovered. For years, a giant squid was said to live in the depths of the ocean. Then finally, in 2006, one was captured on video.

Other animals that we now know to exist started out as cryptids, like the giant panda, the okapi, and the komodo dragon. But sometimes, the fearsome animal we've heard about turns out to be a bit of a letdown. Case in point, the giant man-beasts that were said to be roaming around Africa. They turned out to be mountain gorillas. Some scientists say that we've only discovered about 14% of all species on Earth. So it's not ridiculous to think that cryptids might be real. But it can't be proven

until scientists actually get their hands on a specimen. That's the only thing that can prove once and for all that a cryptid is real. But most of the time with a cryptid, we don't get that. We only have like an eyewitness account. And unfortunately, those don't count for much. According to paleontologist Donald Prothero, author of Abominable Science, eyewitness sightings mean next to nothing. We're easily fooled by tricky lighting or our own emotions or even our subconscious.

In the case of the Jersey Devil, eyewitness accounts are almost all we have. Besides one blurry photo taken in low light at a golf course, there are no photographs of the Jersey Devil. And most of the time, it's seen late at night by drivers on dark roads who may or may not have had a couple of drinks. Here's the other problem. When you're tracking a monster, you also have to take biology into account. Could something that stands at least four feet, if not six feet tall, be able to fly? Benjamin Radford, who spent years investigating the chupacabra, says no. Its wings, for one, would need to be much, much larger than the sighting suggests for it to actually become airborne. It's just not biologically

possible otherwise. Some believe that what people are seeing in New Jersey is actually a sandhill crane. It walks on two legs, is tall, has a high-pitched scream, and has an impressive wingspan. So it's possible that on a moonless night its height and wings can look like a monster's, especially to people who, again, may have had a few drinks. But there's one problem with this theory. While the Sandhill Crane does eat small animals like snakes and rodents, it's not known for going after dogs. The Jersey Devil, though, has shown a definite taste for pets, at least if we're able to believe the episode from 1909 when it took a bite of someone's dog. The other theory is that the reason the Jersey Devil is so unique is that it's actually a prehistoric animal, something that shouldn't still be alive, but is. It's not unheard of.

A prehistoric fish called the coelacanth, long considered extinct, was discovered to be alive and well in 1938. Now, this hasn't been proven, but some people claim to see pterodactyls flying over parts of the U.S. every single year. There have even been sightings of them over Griffith Park in Los Angeles. If you're curious about this, just go to YouTube.

You'll find videos. And from a distance, I mean, some are kind of convincing. Interestingly, Brian Regal, author of The Secret History of the Jersey Devil, claims that the creature called Tarsus pterodactyl may have lived in New Jersey 11,000 years ago. But this doesn't quite explain the devil's horns or their faces. Pterodactyls had long, sharp beaks, which doesn't fit the description of the devil. And there have been no remains of Tarsus pterodactyl actually found in New Jersey. Yet, anyway. The other obvious issue with the devil being a real animal is the

age. How could the same creature live for 200, 300 years? Now, there are some animals like the bowhead whale and the red sea urchin that live to be 200. There's even a mollusk named the ocean quahog that can live for 400 years. But something this size with wings and hooves, I mean, it seems totally unlikely. Now, I guess it's always possible that there's more than one Jersey Devil and people are seeing maybe offspring of the same species. But if the devils were reproducing, I would imagine that there would be more sightings of them as time went on and not less. But in the spirit of leaving no stone unturned, let's look at where the story of the Jersey Devil comes from. The basic legend goes something like this. In 1735, deep in the Pine Barrens, a woman named Mother Leeds found out that she was having

a 13th child. She wasn't happy. And so she said out loud, let this one be the devil. But when Mother Leeds gave birth, it's a beautiful baby boy. Her curse seemed to have not taken shape. Then the baby starts to change. His feet turn into hooves. He sprouts a tail and grows wings and his face takes on the shape of a horse. It goes after its own mother, and then its brothers and sisters, and then it attacks the midwives until it finally flies up the chimney and disappears into the woods. Now, there's no record of someone named Mother Leeds living in the area at the time the legend started. But there was a man named Daniel Leeds, and Daniel Leeds was not very popular, to put it nicely. Daniel was a Quaker who settled in Burlington.

In 1687, he published New Jersey's first almanac called the Leeds Almanac. Now, the Quakers did not approve. They thought there was way too much astrology in his forecasting, and they put out a call for the Leeds Almanac to be destroyed. So, Daniel published another almanac, and then a book that explained the theory of religion and the origin of the universe. Again, there's like a lot of astrology in this, and again, the Quakers are pissed. So, in response, Leeds begins to publish anti-Quaker pamphlets. He also sides with the British monarchy. Now the Quakers really take offense, and soon one of them accuses Daniel Leeds of working with the devil. When Daniel dies, his son Titan takes over the almanac. He begins putting the Leeds family crest on the cover, which happens to be that of a dragon-like

figure. Finally, Titan gets into a war of words with a young publisher named Benjamin Franklin. Working out of Philadelphia, Franklin begins publishing a rival almanac in 1733. He can't resist making little digs at the Leeds almanac. He even predicts the death of Titan Leeds down to the day and minute using astrology. Now it was meant to be funny, but Titan Leeds didn't find it amusing at all. The mudslinging went on from there and it continued for the rest of their lives. Later, a legend sprang up in the very area Daniel Leeds lived. It was about an actual monster called the Leeds Devil. Sounds like some of the Quakers' feelings about Daniel Leeds may have seeped into the cultural consciousness.

But, as we mentioned at the beginning, the devil is also similar to the Lenape beliefs about the spirit in the woods. Was the devil legend really created out of thin air just to make fun of the Leeds family? Or was this the Quakers' own version of an origin story for the shadowy, fearful thing that lived in the woods? We'll consider the possibilities when we come back. Let's get back to the story. If the Jersey Devil is just a folktale inspired by a real feud, that might make sense. Except it doesn't explain why people are still seeing this thing in 1995. There has to be something else at work here. And one possibility is mass hysteria.

Hysteria is a condition in which someone suffers physical symptoms despite there being no real illness or biological cause. Mass motor hysteria is a subset that affects a whole community of people all at once. It usually builds up in response to an ongoing stressful situation like a strict school or a repressive form of government. Suddenly, people start to show strange symptoms. Crying, tics, even fainting. One of the most famous examples is the dancing plague of 1518. During a couple of months in the city of Strasbourg, France, more than 400 people began dancing uncontrollably, unable to stop, until they died from heart attacks or exhaustion. Even though the dancing plague still baffles historians,

some attribute it to a collective anxiety about religion. There was a strong belief in Strasbourg at the time that if anyone offended one of the saints, the saint would inflict a plague of dancing upon them. The fact that the people started dancing on their own and couldn't stop was possibly their way of dealing with that fear. According to Robert Bartholomew, who wrote a book on mass hysteria, the condition usually strikes a small insular group that is considered to have little social power. Bartholomew considered the Jersey Devil sightings to be a specific type of hysteria called collective delusion. This happens when there's a community-wide threat that's not actually real, but plausible enough to believe. People get excited and concerned. Things that wouldn't

have attracted attention before are suddenly seen as dangerous. It's possible that what people were really seeing in 1909 were just ordinary birds or animals, but because of rumors and fear and, I mean, straight up old legend that was just unique to that community, everything looked more menacing than it really was. Also, the community that experienced the mass sightings in 1909 was exactly the type that's most prone to hysteria. The area was undergoing rapid change, and we have an insular society that was the object of ridicule, the Pineys.

It seems like the rumors about the Jersey Devil being at large reached some kind of saturation point in 1909, and then suddenly exploded into a collective delusion. A mass delusion also can reoccur in multiple episodes over time, which would explain why a hundred years later, people are still claiming to see it. Let's face it, sometimes New Jersey can be a state that gets picked on, but this could be the key to the entire Jersey Devil phenomenon. Living in a state that sometimes gets made fun of could make people living there subconsciously more susceptible to a made-up threat. I mean, or it could make that threat a point of cultural pride. Something

like a monster can give a community a sense of shared purpose and novelty that sets it apart from, say, Connecticut. And in the age of the internet, rumors can spread quickly and go viral. Mass delusions can take place even across large distances. Take the chupacabra, for instance. This is a small, hairless creature said to kill livestock by sucking their blood. It was first spotted in Puerto Rico in 1995, and sightings of the creature quickly spread through Mexico and Latin America and into the American Southwest. It was what some people considered the first

viral monster. When people began finding the dead bodies of scary-looking, hairless animals in Texas and New Mexico, an author named Benjamin Radford decided to investigate. He spent five years looking into the story, but while he was working, DNA testing on these dead animals revealed that they were actually just dogs and coyotes with a type of skin disorder called mange. Still, Radford pressed on. He looked at the bodies of the animals that were said to be victims of the chupacabra, but again, they were found to be the victims of dogs, coyotes, even raccoons. Finally, Radford tracked down the woman who spotted the very first chupacabra in Puerto Rico. It turned out that shortly before this, she'd seen

the 1995 horror movie Species. The monster in Species just happened to look extremely similar to a chupacabra. Coincidence? Radford didn't think so. Neither do I. He thought it was very likely that the memory of the monster lodged itself into this woman's subconscious and that she saw it when she looked out the window. The folk tales about the Leeds Devil could have taken root in people's imaginations in the same way, and it's worth noting that in recent years there have been at least two movies about the Jersey Devil and an episode of The X-Files. However it got there, it seems that the Jersey Devil is embedded in the cultural imagination for good. So is the Jersey Devil real? Maybe that's not the right question to ask. Maybe what matters is that the devil is real enough to the people who've seen it, and that

fear shouldn't be discounted completely. We're all hardwired to be on the lookout for potential threats all the time. Fear is there to protect us, even when we don't consciously realize there's danger on the horizon, even when it doesn't seem rational. So if everyone who goes near the Pine Barrens feels that same gut fear, maybe there's a reason. Something is in those woods. Is it a red-eyed winged monster? It's hard to say. But talk to people in South New Jersey and they'll tell you. Trust your instincts. The devil is alive and well and it's always watching. Thanks for listening. I'll be back next week with another episode.

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