Jersey Devil Sightings

Every year, people come to visit the Pennsylvania Wilds. Thousands of people travel from out of state to visit the various landscapes and come see all that this area of Pennsylvania has to offer. And in 1909, the Jersey Devil did it, too.Some of you may have heard of the Jersey Devil. In a way, it’s sort of the official state monster of New Jersey.

According to legend, this creature was born in the New Jersey Pine Barrens about three hundred years ago, to a woman named Mother Leeds. Giving birth to her thirteenth child, Mother Leeds spoke up and involuntarily placed a curse on the child, leading it to become the Jersey Devil: A kangaroo-like creature with bat wings and hooves.The Jersey Devil is still seen in remote areas of New Jersey to this day. Occasionally there is an upswing in sightings that leads to a panic.

Every year, people come to visit the Pennsylvania Wilds. Thousands of people travel from out of state to visit. And in 1909, the Jersey Devil did. Jersey Devil sightings go back to the 1700s. From most descriptions, however, its features are anatomically impossible.

In 1909, this happened. The Jersey Devil was seen repeatedly; people actually began calling in sick to work out of fear of a Jersey Devil attack, and the fear spread.It spread as far as central Pennsylvania, in fact, reaching what is today the. The Clinton Democrat broke the story on January 28, 1909, when the Jersey Devil was spotted in Williamsport. “THE LEEDS DEVIL: Mysterious Tracks Seen In Snow In Jersey Found In Williamsport” read the headline. Some creature had left footprints in the snow in the backyard of a Fourth Street home, hopping back and forth over a tennis net. Tracks were also found on a golf course north of the city, looking like either pony or canary tracks, depending on exactly where you stopped to check.(Image of newspaper headline at right provided by the Ross Library.).

Two days later, the Jersey Devil had moved west, toward Lock Haven. It was spotted at what today would be the conjunction of the I-80 Frontier, and Landscapes of the Pennsylvania Wilds.

Night watchman E.W. Rogers saw the thing flying overhead just after midnight during his shift at the paper mill.“He describes it as having a long neck, large head with fiery eyes, has two legs about three feet in length and a forked tail about five feet long,” the newspaper reported. “It appears to be about ten feet long from its head to the tip of its tail and is an unsightly creature that would frighten almost any person.”. A couple of days later, the Jersey Devil had moved downtown. Charles Poorman of 316 N. Woke up to hear something on his roof. Going outside, he found tracks in the snow up there, resembling hooves.

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As the sun rose, he propped a ladder up and let his neighbors go and look.(Image of Grove Street residence pictured at right, courtesy of Lou Bernard.)The same night, Henry Stricker was working a shift at the Clinton Fire Brick Works in Mill Hall when he spotted the creature, too. He said it was flying over the main building of the place, “having the appearance of a huge bird, with legs like that of an ostrich, and hooves resembling those of a pony.”.

The final sighting was February 10 th, when railroad conductor William Callahan saw the Jersey Devil flying again over the paper mill. While leaving the power house at the station, he spotted it flying a “considerable height” above.

The description matched, with a long neck, large head, and big wings. The creature flew off to the east, headed evidently back toward New Jersey, where it had come from in the first place.Nobody ever did figure out what the creature was exactly, or what was spotted back then over the I-80 Frontier. To this day, Jersey Devil sightings still happen in New Jersey, where the creature is commonly thought to reside. But one thing is certain: The Pennsylvania Wilds are such an impressive tourism area, even the Jersey Devil has been known to drop by for a visit.

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Benjamin Botkin Lecture Series: Texts from the Event Flyers

Tales of the Jersey Devil

by Stephen Winick, American Folklife Center

Tuesday, August 23, 2005 at Noon
West Dining Room
6th Floor, James Madison Building
Library of Congress
101 Independence Ave., SE
Washington, DC
Thea Austen contact (202-707-1743)
Closest metro station is Capitol South on the Orange/Blue lines.

In October, 1790, a woodsman named Vance Larner saw a horrible apparition in the New Jersey Pine Barrens. Describing it in his diary, he wrote:

It was neither beast nor man nor spirit, but a hellish brew of all three. It was beside a pond when I came upon it. I stopped and did not move. Nay, I could not move. It was dashing its tail to and fro in the pond and rubbing its horns against a tree trunk. It was as large as a moose with leather wings. It had cloven hooves as big around as an oak’s trunk. After it was through with the tree, it yielded an awful scream as if it were a pained man, and then flew across the pond until I could see it no more.

Two hundred and fifteen years later, this is recognized as the first sighting of what has come to be known as The Jersey Devil. It is far from the last. In November 2004, a young man in the region reported:

We saw this huge shadow go over us and then we saw it land in front of our path. Now it was only a few feet away from us. The creature looked like it was going to start walking towards us when out of the corner of my eye I saw something else move. I turned in fear thinking it was another one but it was deer running past. The creature also turned to look at them. I then felt my brother tug on my arm and yelled run. We ran. The creature was about six feet tall, with a wingspan of about 8 feet. It was a grayish brownish color with hooved feet and had horns like a ram. The head looked horse or dog like and it had arms like a gorilla.

Stories about the Jersey Devil, also known as the Leeds Devil, are a typical feature of south Jersey folklore. The meaning of these stories differs according to different hearers. To some, the Jersey Devil is an unknown beast, a cryptozoological specimen living in a remote area. To others, he is a supernatural monster, the product of a curse by a mother on an unwanted baby, or of a priest on a wicked family. Some think he is a pure hoax, and others think he is the product of overwrought imaginations. To still others, he is a campfire tale, a spooky feature of camping trips to the New Jersey Pines.

Tales of the Jersey Devil was a traveling exhibit curated and toured by Stephen D. Winick as the regional folklorist for the Delaware Valley area of southern New Jersey. Winick will present a lecture and slide show covering many facets of this remarkable regional legend. We’ll discuss the unexplained sightings that have occurred for more than two hundred years, as well as the well-known hoaxes. We’ll examine the “Phenomenal Week” of January 1909, when hundreds of people claimed to have seen the beast, and the 1929 coda—when a huckster claimed it was all a hoax. We’ll look at the story of the Jersey Devil’s birth, and find its roots in medieval European morality tales. We’ll see how stories originally independent of the monster have come to be associated with this famous legend.

We’ll also take a look at the Jersey Devil in South Jersey’s popular culture. Jersey Devil imagery is everywhere in the region, from a fighter group in the US Air Force to a bar and grill in Smithville, and from a tattoo parlor in Blackwood to the State’s NHL hockey team. T-shirts, paperweights, Boy Scout patches, posters, prints, comics, postcards, books, and even Hollywood movies have been made to celebrate this regional tale.
A significant feature of this talk will be brand-new oral versions of Jersey Devil stories, many never before published. As the former curator of the Camden Folklore Archives in New Jersey, and as a current employee of the Library of Congress, Winick has had access to unpublished oral accounts of the Jersey Devil taken down by both student researchers and professional folklorists.

Stephen D. Winick received his PhD. in Folklore in 1998 from the University of Pennsylvania. He founded and for five years directed the Delaware Valley Folklife Center in Camden, NJ. Currently he works as the writer and editor in the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress.