April 30, 2021 • 60 mins
According to the legend, the Jersey Devil was born to a Quaker named Mother Leeds in 1735 -- a hideous, deformed thing with wings, hooves and horns, it let out a blood-curdling scream after being born, and flew out the chimney and into the woods. For centuries since then, people in the area have reported sightings of the Devil, making it one of North America's most popular cryptids. But what is it, exactly? Could there be a grain of truth to all the wild campfire stories?
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to know. A
production of I Heart Brady. Hello, welcome back to the show.
(00:25):
My name is Matt, my name is Noel. They called
me Ben. We're joined as always with our super producer
Paul Mission Controlled deconds. Most importantly, you are you, You
are here, and that makes this stuff they don't want
you to know. Shout out to all our fellow conspiracy
realists in the northeast uh and in New Jersey, in
(00:47):
the southern part of New Jersey in particular. It is
time finally once again for a cryptic episode and full disclosure.
I am biased. This is for a long time, but
one of my favorite cryptid stories, and in fact we'll
see in this episode. This story is somewhat unique in
(01:08):
the world of crypto zoology for a number of reasons.
I think for a lot of people in the audience today,
you may have first heard of this cryptid in an
episode of The X Files, the fifth episode of season
one called Simply the Jersey Devil. Do you all remember
(01:29):
this one? I do, and I am not going to
spoil it for anyone who has not seen it. It's
first season. I think it's it's really early, right. Yes, Um,
it's a version of the Jersey Devil that's very different
than what we'll be talking about here. It turns out
with Joe Piscopo the whole time kind of we're talking
about the yes, the the real uh Jersey Devil. And
(01:53):
you know, we get a lot of correspondence with people
asking us to do more cryptid episodes, to do more
paranormal episodes, things like that. Thanks to everybody, by the way,
who wrote in about haunted objects. Uh, there were some.
There was some pretty bracing uh stories we received that
I may show up in a listener mail in a
(02:14):
few weeks, but for today, we wanted to dive into
some old school stuff. They don't want you to know.
We're going to look at the purported origin of this
cryptod and some of the sightings, and then we're going
to ask some questions and see whether we can separate
fact from fiction. So what better way to start. Here
(02:36):
are the facts, And the first fact is if you
go to YouTube dot com slash conspiracy stuff, you can
watch our video called does a devil live in Jersey.
That's the first facts. Still a great title. It's still
a great title, and clearly the answer to that is yes,
I think many devils probably occupy the area known as
(02:57):
New Jersey. For the for the thumb ail of that
that episode, I literally put an extreme close up of
a horse's eye. As I remember that, I always assumed
it was a fox's eye. Mad. This is some real
behind the curtains info here. It's that had for a
long time a well, I I could say we, but
(03:18):
it was mainly you. Matt had this collection of just
hundreds and hundreds of close ups of different creatures eyes, um,
which was an idea. Oh my god, an I know
for another story we're gonna do. But and also you
never know when they all come in handy for like,
if you're trying to do a cryptic episode, just a
close up of an eye, like a Christmas card, perhaps
(03:41):
you know, a birthday or just you know, just a
business card, just hands and what afflects you give someone
your business card. There's nothing written on it, it's just
the close up of like a goat's eye. Yeah. Well,
but there's a reason that I use a horse's eye
and we're going to tell you about it in just
the yes. Yeah, And if you are someone who lives
(04:03):
in southern New Jersey, or if you spent much time
in that area, then you already know why we're talking
about a horse's eye at the top here. You are
doubtlessly familiar with something called the Jersey Devil. True believers
who are around even today will tell you this creature
has been haunting the area and hunting in the area
(04:25):
for around three hundred years now, that is far beyond
the natural lifespan of most large animals. Since at least
the eighteen hundreds, all sorts of people, including Napoleon's elder
brother Joseph Bonaparte, have claimed to have seen this mysterious
creature in this area through some set of circumstances. Yeah,
(04:48):
Joseph was like the check of the Bonaparte family that
we don't really hear much from him, you know, like
the Billy was it? Billy Carter. Didn't Jimmy Carter have
a brother, No one knows, and I'm sure he did.
I'm sure he did. Everyone's got one, unless you're an
only child like me, which you know could be a
good thing. Billy Carter, Yes, famous as a brewer of
(05:11):
alcoholic beverages. But here's the thing. When we talk about
the Jersey devil, first we have to talk about the
biggest badger in the bag, the elephant in the room.
It does not look especially intimidating if you look at
the most famous sketch of it, which comes from a
rash of sightings in nineteen o nine, which is part
(05:32):
of the big mystery here. Um, what you're seeing looks
as much like a political cartoon of the era as
it would a naturalist drawing, uh, drawing a creature that
actually exists. I mean this, Maybe we can take some
time before we go into the written descriptions. Maybe we
can just take some time and describe. Why don't you,
(05:54):
guys tell us what you're seeing or what you think
when you look at that nineteen o nine sketch, It's
I got pokemon of some sort. It's got hooves, it's
like a camel's neck and face, bat wings and little weird,
weedy kind of horse hoofs, and it's rearing up on
back skinny legs that kind of resemble a crane, but
(06:15):
it has hooves, and then it has sort of a
forkid tail like like like you might see a demon.
You know, it's sort of a cliche demon image in
a lot of ways. This it's not a political cartoon,
but it is a cartoon put out in a newspaper,
the Philadelphia Bulletin. And just for my take, I see
(06:36):
an emaciated horse, like that's too thin um with yeah,
wings and a tail. That's really what I'm seeing and
that's why I use that horse. Yeah, and the and
the four limbs. The two front limbs are t rex style,
so like this clearly would not walk well as a
(06:58):
quadruped and the Jersey Devils often described as bipedal. One
thing that I I love about this sketch, the reason
I want to touch, to have an excuse to talk
about it, is I wish more people would talk about
the sort of insusian facial expression of this creature. It
looks it looks like it's maybe a friendly It's got
(07:19):
a friendly labrador vibe, like it just hurt someone say,
walk ye got a bit of a come hither look,
perhaps there or inquisitive. You know, it's it's it's just
like it wants you. It wants to be your friend.
It's also eyeing the camera or the beholder like side
I right at the camera, slash the person illustrating it,
(07:41):
like pose like this like this walking and by the way,
I mean like the word you used, Matt Memacia, it
is absolutely right. But like there's no way those weird
little skinny legs would support the mass that is that
upper body and head. And it's also leaning forward, so
presumably those little wing they're gonna have to flap really
hard just to keep it balanced out. You know, it's
(08:03):
uh just just on the ground. Um, can we really
quickly just talk about that ridiculous Jersey devil drawing that's
in the X Files episode. I think it's like a
meme unto itself. It's like a weird like naked person.
It's a big foot with boobs. YEA, well no, no, no no, no, no,
(08:24):
not that one. No, there's there's just a really dumb
stick drawing of like a person with like long hair
and like arms kind of out with like no detail.
That's the one from the episode. Oh maybe I'm wrong.
There's another one I'm seeing like in an a B
with a big foot with boobe. But the main one
that I remember from the episode is like really stupid looking,
(08:45):
like not scary at all, just kind of like pin
drawing of like a dude with his arms out and
like long hair. Well in that in that episode, you know,
which is clearly fiction. Right in that episode, what they're
attempting to do is make the real X Files explanation
for the Jersey Devil be something more human like possibly
(09:09):
a possibly a relic population of Neanderthal. I think is
the big is the big reveal, But that looks nothing
like the historical depictions of this devil. Uh. The specifics
of its appearance vary from one siding to the next,
which often happens in the world of cryptozoology. But it's
got some common themes, just like people might describe Bigfoot
(09:31):
differently but all agree it's tall and hairy. Uh. Most
people will describe the devil differently, but they all agree.
It's hooved, it's a biped it has wings. Uh. They
also say it has the body of something like a kangaroo,
sometimes as hornes or antlers. It has these little tiny arms,
so claude hands, and it's got that forked tail that
(09:52):
you mentioned earlier. Noal, It also is very fast. It
moves quickly, so it's tough to keep an eye on.
It is a local farm pet best terrorizing dogs and
chickens and other small animals, but not quite humans. I
think were a little bit above its predation class. The
big thing, the big final commonality that many witnesses describe
(10:17):
is a quote, blood curdling scream, Paul, could you hit
us with a wilhelm? Yeah, something like that. Yeah like that.
That's where they got the original recording of that and
blood curdling scream. There's so many interesting, you know, ways
to think about that and where we're gonna talk about
(10:38):
it more in the episode, Like what could that scream
actually be if it is a creature that they're hearing,
you know, it could be rabbits. I say, rabbits scream
when they die. It's like the only sound they make.
They're completely docile and innocuous, silent creatures until they die,
and then all of a sudden they let up the
most horrific blood curdling scream. Yeah, death screams. Um. People
(11:01):
don't talk about it too much, but and I think
that's because the majority of people in the West are
probably not killing the animals they eat these days. But yeah, animals,
animals do scream, and they know when they're dying. But
the the stories of the Jersey Devil, I've been around
for long, long, long time. That's something of interest in
(11:23):
fiction when when they explore the devil, but it's never
been photographed. It's been the subject of multiple books, films,
and of course makes it appearance in the X Files.
So where does this creature come from? When did humans
start learning about it? Well, if you look now, what
you're gonna see are a lot of references to a
(11:44):
legend dating back to the early seventeen hundreds and a
woman known commonly as Mother Leads, allegedly a Quaker and
the wife of a man named Daniel Leads. Some historians
today believe that Mother their Leads was a real historical
figure named Deborah Smith. She was a person in the
(12:06):
Quaker faith was known to live in the area at
the time. And so our story goes to a dark
and stormy night in seventeen thirty five, Mother Leads, already
a mother of twelve children, is giving birth to her
thirteen child in a place called a Stellville, which is
about thirty kilometers or a little bit less than nineteen
(12:29):
miles west of a town called Leeds Points isn't it
funny that we've only adopted the metric system in the
United States to measure bullet calibers and drugs. Sorry, there's
a hot take putting that out there real quick. Um No,
the this uh, this birth UM was rumored to have
(12:49):
had some black magic involved, essentially that this child. It's
funny the number thirteen um being significant in certain ways, uh,
having been sired by the devil himself, Yeah, rather than
Mr Leo to Daniel. And then there there's all kinds
of stuff that gets lumped into this story where there
(13:11):
are some tales that perhaps someone actually cursed the birth
or cursed the mother Mrs Leads like a clergyman, or
leads herself like curse the infant before like as it
was being born or just before the birth, some have reported,
or at least there are tales that the infant was
born and when it was born it was deformed in
(13:34):
some pretty terrible way. Yeah, which you know definitely happens
at this time in history as well as in the
modern day. UM children can be born with any any
number of things that might be considered minor to major abnormalities,
stuff like something's like a cleft, palates or you know,
(13:58):
actually a lot of children are born polydactyl. Did you
guys know that they have an extra an extra digit
or two on their hands and they're just removed at
birth and in many countries. So as you're listening now,
if you want to do this, yeah, no guarantees, but
take your hand and check for scars sort of. Um,
(14:22):
if you look at the side of your hand where
your pinkie is and you go a little south toward
that kind of plumper part of your palm along the edge,
there there is a small but not insignificant chance that
you may see a light vertical scar, says the case. Uh.
And you're in contact with your parents, feel free to
ask them you might have been a six fingered kid.
(14:44):
Tough questions. Yeah, yeah, well, and also the you know,
people died from fairly well now fairly curable things very often.
So having thirteen children is it's still a lot, but
you know, the the need to have more children existed
in that time. Yeah, because it's also a source of
(15:07):
free labor. Right. Also, consider the very high, unfortunately the
high probability of infant mortality when compared to the modern day.
So if you wanted to guarantee the likelihood of your
lineage continuing. Then you would want to have more than
one child. You want to have as many as economically
(15:29):
and physically feasible. But that's that's the story. We'll stay
in the legend mode here before we poke holes in anything.
So in some versions of the story, this kid is
born normal, healthy for all appearances, at least at first,
but then soon after its birth it changes form. It's morphine.
(15:50):
It's growing wings, it's sprouting hoofs and horns or antlers,
and it's something really interesting is going on with its head.
It's elongating, it's becoming more equine than human. And this creature,
this this child, whatever it may be, it's freaking out.
This is birth is one of the most traumatic things
(16:10):
and human being will experience. And immediately after this, apparently
old boy is experienced, young boy literally is experiencing a
second very traumatic event, transmographication. It flies into the air,
It lets out that soon to be infamous, blood curdling shrink,
and it either it kills a midwife, where it kills mother,
(16:32):
leads and zooms up the chimney and lights out for
the woods, never to return, but to be seen in
the in the Barons of New Jersey for centuries to come.
That's important to note. It is the Pine barrens, like
the legendary Pine bear bear Sopranos rears its head again,
(16:53):
so culturally important. Sorry, I'm a huge fan and my
yearly rewatched great episode. Um but yeah, the the it's
true that this is like a very kind of you know,
think about it now that you think in New Jersey
is being super industrialized and developed obviously, and but there
are still parts of it that are still pretty rural.
And this part is it remains that way, pretty rugged
(17:15):
and uh, you know, great place for the mafia to
high bodies or you know for maybe someone or a
group of people who worshiped different things to be a
little more isolated in exactly if if that part of
the story was true, absolutely, if the if the occult
does have a piece here or a police here, and
(17:36):
and you know it's true. At this time, it was
also much easier to go off the grid because very
little of what we would understand as a grid existed.
You could keep secrets, but I would argue it would
be in order of magnitude more difficult to keep secrets
or aberrant behavior under wraps in a township. Because there
(17:58):
were so few people, they were almost all incredibly religious,
or we would consider them so to date. They were
in each other's business and they kind of had to
be to survive. But still, yeah, it was a very
different world and people were prime. The primary mode of
communication was oral communication, right word of mouth. And when
(18:19):
we are in a world where the primary currency of
communications oral storytelling, oral communication, that we see the telephone
game ramp up the full speed almost immediately. That's why
there's so many different versions, variations and additions to this story,
Like there's one, there's one really interesting one, uh that
(18:41):
doesn't get a lot of love in the modern day.
The ideas that upon the discovery of mother leads or
the midwife's body, a band of local clergy maybe, if
we're styling on it, one of the clergymen who cursed
the child, they get together, they posse up, and they
go into the woods, into the barons to hunt and
(19:02):
or exercise this creature. There's no report really on what
happened to that group, if they ever existed, except that
they were ultimately unsuccessful. This would be a fantastic horror film.
How has someone not made it yet, you know what
I mean. You've got all the highst elements, you got
the folklore, you got a monster, got a cult, potentially
(19:23):
like some kind of a secret cult, the Devil in
the Woods. Yeah, I feel like that movie has been made.
We've just never heard of it before or seen it
because in a slightly different configuration, you know, I mean this,
these are all kind of like classic tropes for for
B horror movies. Yeah. I'm just imagining Shutter just made
(19:45):
something and it went into Shutter and now it's gone.
That's yeah, So let us know if that let us
know if that's out there. I for one would love
to watch it, especially if it's really bad. Yes, I
just want to put this out there. If you go
to to Jersey History dot org, you can read uh
kind of a collection of everything we just mentioned. There
(20:08):
of different versions of the story if you're looking just
to get that the full back story. Yeah, and I
know a lot of at this point, a lot of
those stories are not traceable to a primary source because
they arose from this method of or from this time
in which people were swapping roomers basically and gathered around
(20:30):
the fireplace at night telling their kids. There would be
consequences to being bad. But that's that's again, that's a trope.
And uh, to steal an awesome pun from my friend Victor.
We're all about supporting the tropes here on stuff they
don't want you to know. Thank you for your service. Yes,
and and that's a yeah in credit where it's due. Um,
(20:51):
But sounds like some troped up charges to me. But okay,
let's yes, yes, let's see where we could go with
tropes today. So ordinarily, folks, and especially if you're a
fan of cryptids, you know this, this would be where
the trail goes cold. Cryptids that have specific legends and
origin points usually end up becoming commodified. They become draws
(21:14):
for tourists like Mothman right in West Virginia, or they
become the subject of tongue in cheek celebrations for the locals,
like Mothman in West Virginia. But the story of the
Jersey Devil is a little bit different. It's distinct because
we may know much more about the origin of this
cryptod and its story than legend would have you believe.
(21:37):
So today's episode, now we have all the facts down
about the legends, what is the truth about the Jersey
Devil will tell you after a word from our sponsors.
Here's where it gets crazy. So before we did, wait,
(21:58):
have you guys been to New Jersey? Oh gosh, I
feel bad. I know I've passed through um not like yeah, yeah,
that's it. Not not only No, I went to the
Yeah we we we we all went through Jersey together
in a car. What were we up there doing? What
(22:19):
were you doing? Guys? I'm completely blanking. I have a
distinct memory of stopping at Roy Rogers, at that big,
huge rest area on the New Jersey Turnpike. We we
went on a tour of the northeast in a Ford SUV. Right.
I remember this because I drove because my name was
(22:40):
on the thing for a couple of days and then
we gotta switch to everybody anyway. Yeah, we drove a
lot around that area. That's what it was. But I've
spent quite a bit of time in Elizabeth, New Jersey,
which is close to Jersey City, like the the the
it's close to New York, but um, never in the barrens. Yeah.
New Jersey is one of those states that has um
(23:05):
that can be a very different experience for people, depending
on what part of it they're in, right, Like many
people simply transit through New Jersey on the turnpike with
some of my my initial experiences there as well. But
not for nothing is it called the garden state there.
There is a lot of natural beauty there. And if
(23:28):
you were in the Jersey area before the early nineteen hundreds,
especially you were there before nineteen o nine, which is important.
We'll explain why it's a key, or we'll get to
it in a moment. But if you were there in
the early nineteen hundreds, you've gone back in time. You
had the choice for some reason, you picked New Jersey.
You might be surprised to learn that you would almost
(23:48):
never hear the phrase Jersey devil. Instead, you would hear
about the exact same thing, but the exact same reports
of cloven hoofs in the snow and mysterious large, flying,
shrieking creatures. But this thing would be called the Leads
devil or the devil of Leads. It's focused on that
(24:11):
tail in the family. It's not it hasn't been exploded
out into this whole state's thing yet. Yeah, yeah, exactly,
So this would this Leads devil. The name would be
either in connection with a local farm owned by the
Leeds family or with a southern New Jersey town called
Leeds Point, which is still around today. If you if
(24:34):
you look at it, you can orient yourself to Atlantic City. UH.
Leads Point is best described as this small protuberance into
the swampy shallows of the Great Bay. It's just north
of Atlantic City. It's surrounded by the Pine Barons that
Matt mentioned earlier. The pine barons are a million acres
(24:56):
of very dense pine trees where you can very easily
become law store, very easily hide a body. You could.
You know, if you're a teenager you want to go
somewhere and like drink underage, smoke a little weed, pine
barrens might be the place. Just saying that it's easy
to not get caught. Yeah, it's also easy to get lost,
you know. I mean as his evidence by that, so
(25:17):
Brando's episode, So leave a bread crumb trailer or whatever.
But Leeds Point was named after a gentleman by the
name of Daniel Leeds who was the surveyor of the
land UH and he eventually attained ownership of it via
a grant. Daniel Leeds was an englishman who immigrated to
the US in sixteen seventy eight, spent most of his
adult life publishing The American Almanac. He created this publication
(25:42):
as well, um and it continued to print new issues
until his retirement in seventeen sixteen. Um And he then
passed the business down to his son's Just quick shout out,
he immigrated to the colonies. Excuse me, thank you, thank you. Yes,
(26:03):
he he immigrated to the colonies. He also, as we'll find,
had some political ambitions and opinions that would come back
to bite him. It makes sense that he would be
a person of note because he is publishing and therefore
controlling written communication. And I know I'm hammering home the
(26:26):
differences between the primacy of oral communication versus the rise
of commonly understood and disseminated written communication, but it's important
for stories like these. You're thinking, perhaps, oh, an almanac.
I've heard of that those were very popular in early
colonial history that later becomes American history. But I thought
(26:50):
Benjamin Franklin wrote the Almanac. Who's this Daniel Leeds guy? Well,
there's kind of a coke Pepsi situation because Benjamin Franklin
wrote an almanac called poor Richard's Almanac, and in seventeen
thirty five he even gives Leads a shout out in
a very snooty way. He calls Leads quote the first
(27:10):
author south of New York for including that fact because
it is important. It does further confirmed that Daniel Leeds
was mentioned in the legend, is a real person and
the next arc of the story. So like we have
that established, right, the next arc of the story in
the public sphere for the Jersey Devil really begins. In
(27:32):
nineteen o nine, there's a flurry of newspaper reports about
people who are certain they've cited the Devil and the
Jersey Devil. And these reports are interesting because they're not
reports that say some people have said they've seen something
weird in the sky. There's specific police officers sited, members
(27:53):
of fire departments, local political officials. They're all saying I
saw something it was wonky. Out of these dozens and
dozens and dozens of stories, they're all happening in the
same rough area, right this Pine Barren area, and they're
all happening around the same time. And this led people
like Brian Dunning over as skeptoid to say, you know,
(28:17):
based on just the physical writing about this at this time,
the New Jersey Devil may actually be one of the
world's most well documented cryptids. And of course, being well
documented and being real are not necessarily the same thing.
Like look at look at the extensive uh sophistication and
(28:39):
thoroughness of Wikipedia entries about things like the Transformers or
Star Wars. They're very well documented. They are also not real.
I feel like that's an approachable comparison. You know what
I mean? Matter you an optimist prime extremist? I know? No,
(29:00):
do you see a truck and think that's might be
an alien robot? Uh? You know it's really it's when
I see those jeeps, you know, the they look like
jeep wranglers, but they've also got a truck bed on them.
You ever seen those there? I would call those abominations,
is what I would call those. Well, when I see those,
(29:21):
I'm like, that shouldn't be like that. Something's up with
this vehicle. Something very suss, very sess. It makes sense.
I I also, you know, there's something about automotive design
where you can clearly see the intention was to have
multiple things going on at once, and sometimes those become
the best argument for having a vehicle. That's just the
(29:44):
one thing. Yeah, just it's okay for a truck to
just be a truck. You're right, those in those in
peat cruisers, those are the only ones that I feel
are sauce. So I don't care for those cube things either.
Just for the record, a the psion, Yeah, man, no,
(30:04):
it was. It was a weird time for everybody, But
I wish everyone everyone the best. Tell us what tell
us the weirdest cars you've seen? Because they are They're
like cryptid autos, I guess. Uh. So there's a problem though,
there's a problem with this story, this Jersey devil story,
this legend. Even even after we accrue some basic historical facts,
(30:27):
it is an impossible story according to its own timeline. First,
Daniel Leeds real dude, almanac maker, local taste maker. He
passed his away in seventeen twenty, that's about fifteen years
before seventeen thirty five, when the devil was allegedly born. Secondly,
(30:47):
um as historians and researchers or want to do later humans,
it started prying into Daniel leeds love life and they
learned some stuff that applies to this legend. Yeah. First thing,
you should know is that he was with a woman
named Anne Stacy. She unfortunately died in while giving birth
(31:09):
to a child. Um, so he was married married to
this woman she died during childbirth. We can already see
that perhaps there's the seed of some part of this story,
just the act of childbirth and a death. After her
death and Stacy's he married a woman named Dorothy Young
and guess what m hm. They stayed married uh until
(31:34):
he passed away in seventy So there was what what
what was the woman's name? There was Ms Smith who
became Deborah Deborah Smith who became Mrs Leeds. Allegedly according
to the story, at least on paper, there's no record
of that person in connection with Mr Leeds. Right, So
(31:57):
that person did exist, but they were not They were
not getting down making the Jersey Devil with two backs,
at least her and Daniel Leeds. So there's another guy
Wanta introduced to this story much Mounch later. His name
is Professor Fred McFadden of Coppin State University over in Baltimore.
He did the work. He dug deep into everything you
(32:19):
could find about the life of Daniel Leeds and then
also into the earliest mentions of the devil in some
form in print, and some of McFadden's work was published
in a book in nineteen seventy three called South Jersey
Town's History and Legend, the kind of book that you
would see maybe for sale in the gift shop of
a regional bed and breakfast. And it turns out that
(32:43):
this date of seventeen thirty five, the people ascribed to
the legend comes from the earliest print reference to a
quote devil that McFadden could find. But the location of
this devil was given as Burlington. That's tricky because Linton
And at this time is the name of a whole
(33:04):
county or region, it's not the name of a specific town. Additionally,
there aren't any contemporary sources connecting Daniel Leads the man
or either of his wife to a devilish character of
any sort, any shape, form, or fashion. So even this
guy professional historian McFadden was only able to speculate and say, Okay,
(33:28):
maybe this devil mentioned from seventy five and Burlington is
somehow a predecessor of the same creature that gets popularized
way later in nine. So the legend doesn't hold up
to the timeline or the historical facts as we know them,
which means we have to ask, where does the story
(33:49):
of the devil really begin? We have an answer. This
is not just the tease. We do kind of have
an answer. Will tell you after word from our sponsors,
we're back. Some of our more cynical folks in the
(34:10):
crowd today may have listened to the first part of
this episode and said, you know what, I'll tell you,
who needs fake monsters when we have real politicians. That
might seem a necessarily edgy, but it is a good point,
and it plays a huge role in this story. It
sure does. It turns out that the mystery of the
(34:31):
Jersey Devil could well lie in the murky world of propaganda,
or at the very least um smear campaigns bad pr
let's call it. Daniel Leeds was an editor and local politician,
which means, of course he had enemies. Anybody you know
that's that's a double threat. He had the power of
the press and he was a politician, so he had
(34:53):
many opportunities to make enemies. Most notoriously, leads fill the
position serving as deputy to one Edward Hind, the Lord
of Cornberry or Lord Cornberry. I love that. Um. He
He was the colonial governor of New York and New
Jersey under Queen Anne Um and in seventeen eight Lord
(35:15):
Cornberry was recalled to England because he was so incredibly unpopular,
and therefore leads By association was also unpopular, and he
withdrew from public office and never again served in politics. Yeah,
that's that's the thing. He's a British loyalist, which is
not a particularly popular political stance. Uh. And it's in
(35:41):
fact an increasingly unpopular one as we get closer and
closer to the Revolutionary War. He was then known, you know,
he had kind of a stigma as the deputy of
this disgraced governor, and so he became a scapegoat in
a lot of ways. You know, this is this is
someone that you can publicly deride. In fact, people who
(36:04):
are supportive of the cause of independence can bond together
by getting by, you know, hanging out and talking trash
about this guy. You know, if we can all agree
this one guy is a dick, then fine, let's have
another round of meat and talk revolution. Right, Um, let's
have some meat and talk leads, you know, the meads
on leads, So we don't know if they were drinking meat,
(36:27):
But we shouldn't let the facts get in the way
of a good story, which is sort of a thematic
through line here. He was, you know, he was open
to ridicule. Add to this, it seems that several of
his real children were unfortunately born with mental disabilities. This
also made him an easy target for bad press, from
(36:51):
unscrupulous muck breakers and so on. So that's so this
becomes a political attack. Right, we're demonizing this guy's kids
were also attributing characteristics through to him through this story. Right,
It's quite possible, and this is speculative, but it's quite possible,
(37:12):
for instance, that the story of a child of the
Devil not being the child of Daniel Leads and the
inclusion of horns could have been a visual reference to
cuckolding for instance. Right, this is the kind of symbolic
language that would be used and is still used in
a different way in political cartoons and satire today. By
(37:36):
the time the story starts blowing up in the eighteen hundreds,
Leads is dead. He passed away, but his name is
still familiar with people who are alive, and his name
is intimately associated with British loyalists. So it's still a
great target for the press because when they read leads,
they immediately think of that, and then when they read Devil,
(37:58):
then you know, it gets even juicy because you dropped
the D word. Fast forward nine nine. That deluge of
sightings hits the news, but by this point a lot
of people have lived and died. No one really cares
too much about leads. The US is already a thing
and has been for a while, so the connection lost
(38:19):
some of its power. The brand name, if we want
to think of it in that way, shifted from Leeds Devil,
which was no longer serving its purpose, to the Jersey Devil,
which now is something people can more clearly associate. Right,
So what gives with nineteen o nine, How did this
legend suddenly become a piece of newsworthy reporting for multiple outlets. Well,
(38:44):
there's a fellow named Joe Nicol who is an investigator
and writer of sorts, and according to him, it all
goes back to a fun little hoax, very clever hoax. Uh,
that was kind of building off of the work that
the muck rakes had done previously to Mr Leeds. And
we've got a little quote here in January nine, the
(39:06):
monster was revived by a hoax displayed in a private
museum in Philadelphia. The creature was actually a kangaroo outfitted
with fake wings affixed by a harness to make it
leap at spectators. When the curtain was drawn, a boy
hidden at the rear of the cage prodded the unfortunate
animal with a stick. So now it's it's almost like
(39:31):
a a circus side show or something. You see Ripley's
believe it or not, you know, the cur pay your
nickel or whatever. The curtains it probably wasn't nicolas, probably cheaper,
and the curtains pulled, and then all of a sudden,
blood curdling scream, flapping wings. Thank god it's in a cage.
Ha ha, that's great, let's get funnel cake or whatever. Well,
(39:53):
it certainly explains the illustration of the Jersey Devil, don't
you think? Yes, I agree, it's uh. But this the
thing about this one is we don't know we know
what really happened. Nichols work is sound, but we don't
know the specific date of this exhibit. And it sounds
to me like this is only my opinion. It sounds
(40:13):
to me like the amount of trouble they went to
on this, getting a kangaroo body for one Uh. It
sounds like it was an attempt to capitalize on an
existing craze instead of one person singlehandedly trying to resurrect
this legend, which might be true because back to historian McFadden,
(40:39):
he found a report from an archivist in Gloucester County,
a guy named R. C arch At uh and R.
C arch At was able to track down a photograph
from that allegedly shows the cloven hoofs of the Jersey Devil,
like it walked up on someone's porch and it left
these hoof marks. This is the beginning of the period
(41:01):
when all these footprints started being reported in the press.
And that's that's the important thing, because remember at the
top we said, uh, there there have been many reports,
but there have been no photographs. There have been a
lot of photographs of proposed Jersey Devil hoofprints, but something
was definitely leaving footprints all around this area. As of
(41:25):
it appears that we will probably never know what's set
off this renewed interest in the Leeds Devil, but there
was definitely a political aspect to it. It is quite
possible that this thing was a campfire tale, or it
began as a political satire, or shortly after becoming a legend,
(41:48):
it uh became used as a political satire, and then
later people forgot it was satire, and then mass hysteria
kicked in and people were seeing things and you know,
equating it the first thing they would have thought of,
which is the tale of this Jersey Devil. But we're
talking cryptids, and we know that we we're talking cryptids.
(42:09):
Many many sightings of animals that are attributed to cryptids
later turn out to be misidentified natural creatures. So the
first question you have to always ask yourself when you
hear a story about a cryptod, is could it be
based on a known creature? That's especially important in the
story of the Jersey Devil. It's distinct because it has
(42:31):
basically an origin point that's somewhat you know, closer to
the modern day. Uh. Secondly, it has a specific sort
of run of time in the news and in reporting.
But third it's pretty distinct because of the sheer amount
of time here. Given the length of time the story
has been around, the number of sightings across that period
(42:53):
of time. Again, a ballpark three hundred years. It's incredibly
unlikely that a single individual organism on land of this
size could be responsible for every single sighting, right yeah.
But but but at the same time, I mean, like
you know, it's one of those fish out of water
type stories potentially where maybe you know, we know some lizards,
(43:13):
for example, live very very very long lives. Not to
mention things like Galapagos giant tortoises that can live up
to eighty five years, a hundred years sometimes, you know,
Asian elephants ben you pointed out, can live up to
eighty six years. But finding but not to mention though,
finding an animal that can live longer than a three
hundred years, it's a very tall order not to mention
(43:36):
one that would be able to survive in this climate.
The ones that we're talking about that would live this
long would not do well in the pine barrens of
New Jersey, right Yeah. Land animals especially, you know there
there are maritime animals that can live a very very
long time. And make a great point about the Galapagos
(43:57):
giant tortoise, but it does things actually fit the description,
and it's not built to live in the pine barrens. Guys,
it's it's a demon, it's immortal, you can live as
want to demon rules. Yeah, maybe that explains it, right,
So uh, demonology demon biology aside. Uh. If something like
(44:22):
this existed, if it were secular, it would almost certainly
mean there there would have to be some sort of
small breeding population, maybe one that's occasionally on the move,
which might help explain why these sightings seem to rise
and fall across time. If there is a mundane explanation
for the Jersey Devil, I I propose that we consider
(44:46):
our number one suspect, the Sandhill crane. Have included a
picture here just to get a look at it, all right,
What you're seeing, guys, If you look at this picture,
you're seeing two sandhill cranes chilling at a gas station,
no other context. I would run. I would run there.
(45:06):
They could be pretty tall, they're they're ungainly looking their
land dwelling birds. If you pull up that picture of
the Jersey Devil and you put it next to uh picture.
If you pull up that sketch rather of the Jersey
Devil and you put it next to this photo of
the Sandhill crane, then you can see some interesting kind
(45:27):
of commonalities They both look like rather than gainly bipeds.
Um technically they both have wings. Although the cranes are folded,
they've got slightly along the beak could look like a
slightly elongated head. These things are also pretty pretty crazily big,
like they can be up to four ft six in
(45:49):
height and the wingspan can stretch to over seven feet.
So you would notice this thing if you're in the
woods and you see it taking off, or you see
it landing, or you know, you see it just chilling
like it's chilling outside of the gas station there. I
love that picture because I wonder what they're waiting on. Yeah, yeah,
(46:10):
somebody drops some garrito's. But it's it is really compelling
when you imagine being out in the woods, especially in night,
in that area, and you just caught a glimpse of something.
It's just far enough away. The light that you have
isn't quite reaching it. You've got some moonlight. You see
something with huge wings just take off and you you know,
(46:33):
if you just see it enough, but you can't make
out the exact dimensions, the exact shape. Uh. I can
imagine that sand hill crane being you know, misattributed to
something much more sinister. Yeah, yeah, exactly. And also some
populations of sand hill crane are migratory. So this is
just a thought experiment. I want to see if you
(46:55):
guys think this is possible, plausible or total bunk. Sandhill cranes,
especially the migratory populations. In the winter, they'll band together
to form things called survival groups. And these are interesting
because it's not all related sandhill cranes. For for the
good of just a style on it. For the good
(47:19):
of the gander. Unrelated cranes will all gather together in
this mass, meaning that for a period of time, specific
areas of their range may suddenly become home to thousands
of cranes cough cough, excuse me, devil's cough cough at once.
So you could have grown up in this area seventeen
eighteen hundred's early nineteen hundreds and then been walking around
(47:42):
your normal woods and saw something unusual. There's a crane
you misidentified, and you talked to someone else about it,
and they've also seen something. They're like, yeah, it's crazy.
There's this huge thing in the sky flying. I'm freaked
out there everywhere. Did you see It's in the paper.
The papers are writing about it, which makes it real.
(48:02):
The in the cranes could also be partially responsible for
all those nine pictures of hoofprints or footprints, right, because
as snow melts, you know this from our big Foot episodes,
As snow melts, any kind of footprint left by an
animal will become deformed. Often it can look bigger than
(48:22):
it was originally. Um And there's a little bit of
like circumstantial textual evidence. There's a guy named Alfred Heston
in six he was writing in Jersey Wagon John's Uh.
He said that he spoke with residents of Salem who
called the nineteen o nine creature that they also believed in.
They called it the Ostrich Devil. Interesting. Huh, Yeah, I'm not.
(48:47):
I'm not taking all these bird comparisons. These are the
creepiest ones to birds with with the are tall and powerful,
with skinny legs and dangly necks. No, thank you. You
gotta go for the neck and stay away from the legs.
Off there. But you can see how ostrich devil, you know,
would make sense if you were observing just a bunch
of these strange birds that you had never seen before.
(49:10):
They're terrifying. And there are other possible animal origins. There
are things like the common barn owl. There's a guy
named J. A. Singly who was writing with a delightfully
skeptical tone to the Dallaviston Daily News, and he said
the leads devil. He said, the leads devil that has
(49:32):
described as a bug a boo bird is probably just
a barn owl. And we have we have a quote. Okay,
I'm gonna try to muster my way through this guy's
The bird has an uncanny appearance, generally agreed, and this,
aided by a lively imagination they are the stuff of nightmares,
has probably originated the blood curdling story of the leads devil. Dude, Look,
(49:57):
I know I play and I play up my fear
of birds, little bit um. I'm certainly not like totally
terrified of birds. I wouldn't necessarily run. But if a crane,
uh let let alone, a gaggle of cranes whatever you
call that, it should be a murder of cranes was
assembled or ostriches or something like that, and they were
coming at me, Yeah, my imagination would do serious tricks,
(50:18):
uh And I would absolutely run, and that would haunt
my dreams for the rest of my life. So I
think I'm with this, um this explanation. Guys, have we
heard the Sandhill cranes sounds? Do we know what they
sound like? That it's blood curdling? I don't know. I'd
be interested to play something here and see if it
what what everyone thinks. Matt, I'm so glad you asked.
(50:40):
I proudly present what could be either the Sandhill crane
or the Jersey Devil or both. Listen along, folks, let
us know if you think this is blood curdly, can
you imagine a whole gaggle of those or just that,
(51:01):
Like you're saying, you're describing large groups and that sound
is just occurring, certainly with kurdel my blood just fine. Yeah,
I was gonna check out everybody's blood. That's a weird
sentence out of context, but yeah, you can see, like
at first, when it's just one, it doesn't sound too crazy,
but it would be unexpected. But then you hear multiple
things and you think you're all coming from the same creature,
(51:22):
then that's that's pretty that's pretty nuts. I do also
want to point out, um, for any anybody who's feeling
pedantic in the crowd state, Yes, uh, the group name
for a group of cranes is a sedge S E
D G E. Also, those group name things you always hear,
like a parliament of so and so, a gaggle and
(51:43):
and so on, those are not scientifically accepted, like actual
ornithologist and biologists get. I don't want to say weirdly offended,
but they're they're they're very not fun about it. And
I love those group names for things. I think they're delightful,
Like like a basket of kittens. Nobody ever uses that anymore.
(52:04):
I'm sorry explain, but if you've got multiple kittens together,
it's a basket of kittens. That's okay. No, I'm making
it up, hoping that you're trying to make basket of
kittens happen. Matt, Yes, I applaud you as much more
wholesome than a burlap sack of kittens. Gosh, I'm glad
(52:26):
you didn't go that direction. But but okay, so that's
that's the call, right, And you can see if we
put ourselves back in the eighteen hundreds the early nineteen hundreds,
you can see how hearing that in an unexpected way
and then later seeing a large flying thing could very
well persuade you that the crazy campfire story you've heard
(52:46):
since you were a child might have some sand to it.
But the most interesting part of this line of thinking
is simply this. It doesn't solve the riddle. There's no
solid proof that dozens and dozens of people in nineteen
nine we're seeing cranes and barnells. And I would argue,
the further back you go in the history of a region, um,
(53:08):
the more familiar people tend to be with the natural
world and the flora and fauna, So it almost seems
less likely that after a certain amount of time living
in the area, people would still misidentify cranes. So we
don't We don't have solid proof. We also don't have
solid proof that they weren't all caught up in an
outbreak of hysteria. Yeah, no, there's no question about the
(53:32):
hysteria angle. And also, let let's not forget I mean,
the fear of Satan, you know, the fear of the
devil itself is something we haven't mentioned specifically, or at
least a bunch, but that was very, very real, and
these were people. It reminds me of the movie The Witch,
you know, where people are settling you know, a very
hostile environment, and there's a lot of isolation, you know,
(53:55):
especially out in the woods in these pine barren areas,
and these are folks who often come from kind of
puritanical backgrounds, so it's very easy for this hysteria or
this like you know, satanic panic to kind of set in,
and the idea of there being some sort of demon
out in the woods could become very very real. Yeah. Absolutely,
(54:16):
I think that that's a very good point. Belief plays
such a huge role in human psychology, and it affects
the world around us the same way that a r
technology affects your perception of the world, I would argue,
and if you take each of these alleged sightings one
by one by one, there's always still this tantalizing measure
(54:39):
of ambiguity. You look at one sighting and you say, well, yeah,
that could have been an owl. Look at another and
you say, well, yeah, that could have been a creating.
And in some cases, honestly, it could have been some
poor schmuck's friends pranking them, you know what I mean.
They're they're like, oh, man, Danelle is on acid again today,
Let's get out the suit. I don't know I don't
(55:02):
know if, but I love that idea. There's a group
of people with a wingsuit and a friend that always
does ask that or you know, or something, and then
it never learns. He never learns. Uh So maybe that's
maybe that's where we leave it. Because at this point
(55:24):
one thing is for sure. Whatever the devil is, whatever
it was, humans have had a long long time to
figure it out, and centuries have past without anyone managing
to conclusively solve the mystery. I believe that we have
some very good, mundane explanations or possibilities. Not at all
all are proven or even provable at this point in time.
(55:47):
But that leads I don't know, but you, guys, that
leads me to think has the human species collectively decided
not to let the facts get in the way of
a good story. If so, I'd just like to say,
classic human It's the sort of thing the species loves
to do, and humans have never needed help from a
devil to do it? Here here wow? Okay, Well, I
(56:12):
don't know about you guys. Um have you have you
ever seen a crane in Atlanta? Yes? Yes, all one
um recently got recently time? What is it? Uh? There,
there's like a little pond across from Pont City Market
or offices. It's it's more than a little pond. It's
like a whole cute little area with like, you know,
like a walking trail. And I saw a crane I'm
(56:36):
like hanging out perching on like a guardrail. Uh, And
in that area as herons. That's probably what it was.
That's probably what it was. And they look real weird
when they fly because when they're when they're getting super
into it, they lean back their necks and fold them down.
It looks like they have this weird double chin. That's
(56:56):
that's one of them. I think I may have told
the story on the show before. But in our backyard
there's a very small creek. It's not really creek, it's
just where the runoff water goes, got a place to go.
And every once in a while back there you'll hear
some weird sounds. We hear some owls near our house
every once in a while. But not long ago, Diana
was in the backyard and something giant. It was in
(57:19):
the middle of the night and dark, something giant spread
its wings. She could tell it was wings, but she
couldn't see it really well. And it just flew up
into the air, through the through the trees, and a
couple of couple of days later it was this. It
was a heron. It's a blue heron. I think for great.
It looked great. Devil, I'm calling it devil. No, I
(57:43):
reversed my entire opinion. It's the Devil. It's moving in
non linear time. It's gonna come after it. This is
gonna be the episode that breaks the show. This is
the time that we will finally have consequences. It will
be the Jersey Devil that did us in. It's been
a wild ride, fellas. Uh, there's absolute pleasure to work
(58:04):
with you. Um. If you feel like leaving, uh, comment
at our memorial after the Devil finishes its work with us. Uh.
There are any number of ways you can contact us
if one or all of us somehow survives. Of course,
we'll keep doing episodes, and to do that we'd love
some help from you, So please give us your suggestions.
(58:25):
Your hang on this door randomly opened. Keep this part in, Paul,
I don't know why the store opened. Cranes are pretty smart, though.
They can open doors with their creepy gangly necks and
pokey beaks. Really, I don't know. I guess it depends
on the handle the losser. Actors can in the movie
Jurassic Park descended are sorry, I don't know what happened. Oh,
(58:50):
we know, Ben, We just discussed that intimately. Okay, uh,
and let it. Let us know if there are any
cryptic stories from your neck of the woods that you
feel have some sort of explanation, especially if there is
an actual undocumented animal out there, we'd love to hear
from you. We try to make it easy to find
us online. That's right. We're conspiracy stuff on Twitter and Facebook,
(59:11):
conspiracy stuff show on Instagram. You can also give us
a telephone call tell us about that, Matt. That's right.
We have a number. It is one eight three three
st d w y t K. When you first call
in after you hear Ben's lovely tones telling you to
leave a message, please state your name or that which
you would like for us to call you. It's a
(59:31):
weird way to put it, whatever name you want to
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You've got three minutes. If you'd like to say something
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(59:54):
that you reach out to us a slightly different way,
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(01:00:22):
Stuff they Don't want you to Know is a production
of I heart Radio. For more podcasts from my heart Radio,
visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
you listen to your favorite shows.
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to know. A
production of I Heart Brady. Hello, welcome back to the show.
(00:25):
My name is Matt, my name is Noel. They called
me Ben. We're joined as always with our super producer
Paul Mission Controlled deconds. Most importantly, you are you, You
are here, and that makes this stuff they don't want
you to know. Shout out to all our fellow conspiracy
realists in the northeast uh and in New Jersey, in
(00:47):
the southern part of New Jersey in particular. It is
time finally once again for a cryptic episode and full disclosure.
I am biased. This is for a long time, but
one of my favorite cryptid stories, and in fact we'll
see in this episode. This story is somewhat unique in
(01:08):
the world of crypto zoology for a number of reasons.
I think for a lot of people in the audience today,
you may have first heard of this cryptid in an
episode of The X Files, the fifth episode of season
one called Simply the Jersey Devil. Do you all remember
(01:29):
this one? I do, and I am not going to
spoil it for anyone who has not seen it. It's
first season. I think it's it's really early, right. Yes, Um,
it's a version of the Jersey Devil that's very different
than what we'll be talking about here. It turns out
with Joe Piscopo the whole time kind of we're talking
about the yes, the the real uh Jersey Devil. And
(01:53):
you know, we get a lot of correspondence with people
asking us to do more cryptid episodes, to do more
paranormal episodes, things like that. Thanks to everybody, by the way,
who wrote in about haunted objects. Uh, there were some.
There was some pretty bracing uh stories we received that
I may show up in a listener mail in a
(02:14):
few weeks, but for today, we wanted to dive into
some old school stuff. They don't want you to know.
We're going to look at the purported origin of this
cryptod and some of the sightings, and then we're going
to ask some questions and see whether we can separate
fact from fiction. So what better way to start. Here
(02:36):
are the facts, And the first fact is if you
go to YouTube dot com slash conspiracy stuff, you can
watch our video called does a devil live in Jersey.
That's the first facts. Still a great title. It's still
a great title, and clearly the answer to that is yes,
I think many devils probably occupy the area known as
(02:57):
New Jersey. For the for the thumb ail of that
that episode, I literally put an extreme close up of
a horse's eye. As I remember that, I always assumed
it was a fox's eye. Mad. This is some real
behind the curtains info here. It's that had for a
long time a well, I I could say we, but
(03:18):
it was mainly you. Matt had this collection of just
hundreds and hundreds of close ups of different creatures eyes, um,
which was an idea. Oh my god, an I know
for another story we're gonna do. But and also you
never know when they all come in handy for like,
if you're trying to do a cryptic episode, just a
close up of an eye, like a Christmas card, perhaps
(03:41):
you know, a birthday or just you know, just a
business card, just hands and what afflects you give someone
your business card. There's nothing written on it, it's just
the close up of like a goat's eye. Yeah. Well,
but there's a reason that I use a horse's eye
and we're going to tell you about it in just
the yes. Yeah, And if you are someone who lives
(04:03):
in southern New Jersey, or if you spent much time
in that area, then you already know why we're talking
about a horse's eye at the top here. You are
doubtlessly familiar with something called the Jersey Devil. True believers
who are around even today will tell you this creature
has been haunting the area and hunting in the area
(04:25):
for around three hundred years now, that is far beyond
the natural lifespan of most large animals. Since at least
the eighteen hundreds, all sorts of people, including Napoleon's elder
brother Joseph Bonaparte, have claimed to have seen this mysterious
creature in this area through some set of circumstances. Yeah,
(04:48):
Joseph was like the check of the Bonaparte family that
we don't really hear much from him, you know, like
the Billy was it? Billy Carter. Didn't Jimmy Carter have
a brother, No one knows, and I'm sure he did.
I'm sure he did. Everyone's got one, unless you're an
only child like me, which you know could be a
good thing. Billy Carter, Yes, famous as a brewer of
(05:11):
alcoholic beverages. But here's the thing. When we talk about
the Jersey devil, first we have to talk about the
biggest badger in the bag, the elephant in the room.
It does not look especially intimidating if you look at
the most famous sketch of it, which comes from a
rash of sightings in nineteen o nine, which is part
(05:32):
of the big mystery here. Um, what you're seeing looks
as much like a political cartoon of the era as
it would a naturalist drawing, uh, drawing a creature that
actually exists. I mean this, Maybe we can take some
time before we go into the written descriptions. Maybe we
can just take some time and describe. Why don't you,
(05:54):
guys tell us what you're seeing or what you think
when you look at that nineteen o nine sketch, It's
I got pokemon of some sort. It's got hooves, it's
like a camel's neck and face, bat wings and little weird,
weedy kind of horse hoofs, and it's rearing up on
back skinny legs that kind of resemble a crane, but
(06:15):
it has hooves, and then it has sort of a
forkid tail like like like you might see a demon.
You know, it's sort of a cliche demon image in
a lot of ways. This it's not a political cartoon,
but it is a cartoon put out in a newspaper,
the Philadelphia Bulletin. And just for my take, I see
(06:36):
an emaciated horse, like that's too thin um with yeah,
wings and a tail. That's really what I'm seeing and
that's why I use that horse. Yeah, and the and
the four limbs. The two front limbs are t rex style,
so like this clearly would not walk well as a
(06:58):
quadruped and the Jersey Devils often described as bipedal. One
thing that I I love about this sketch, the reason
I want to touch, to have an excuse to talk
about it, is I wish more people would talk about
the sort of insusian facial expression of this creature. It
looks it looks like it's maybe a friendly It's got
(07:19):
a friendly labrador vibe, like it just hurt someone say,
walk ye got a bit of a come hither look,
perhaps there or inquisitive. You know, it's it's it's just
like it wants you. It wants to be your friend.
It's also eyeing the camera or the beholder like side
I right at the camera, slash the person illustrating it,
(07:41):
like pose like this like this walking and by the way,
I mean like the word you used, Matt Memacia, it
is absolutely right. But like there's no way those weird
little skinny legs would support the mass that is that
upper body and head. And it's also leaning forward, so
presumably those little wing they're gonna have to flap really
hard just to keep it balanced out. You know, it's
(08:03):
uh just just on the ground. Um, can we really
quickly just talk about that ridiculous Jersey devil drawing that's
in the X Files episode. I think it's like a
meme unto itself. It's like a weird like naked person.
It's a big foot with boobs. YEA, well no, no, no no, no, no,
(08:24):
not that one. No, there's there's just a really dumb
stick drawing of like a person with like long hair
and like arms kind of out with like no detail.
That's the one from the episode. Oh maybe I'm wrong.
There's another one I'm seeing like in an a B
with a big foot with boobe. But the main one
that I remember from the episode is like really stupid looking,
(08:45):
like not scary at all, just kind of like pin
drawing of like a dude with his arms out and
like long hair. Well in that in that episode, you know,
which is clearly fiction. Right in that episode, what they're
attempting to do is make the real X Files explanation
for the Jersey Devil be something more human like possibly
(09:09):
a possibly a relic population of Neanderthal. I think is
the big is the big reveal, But that looks nothing
like the historical depictions of this devil. Uh. The specifics
of its appearance vary from one siding to the next,
which often happens in the world of cryptozoology. But it's
got some common themes, just like people might describe Bigfoot
(09:31):
differently but all agree it's tall and hairy. Uh. Most
people will describe the devil differently, but they all agree.
It's hooved, it's a biped it has wings. Uh. They
also say it has the body of something like a kangaroo,
sometimes as hornes or antlers. It has these little tiny arms,
so claude hands, and it's got that forked tail that
(09:52):
you mentioned earlier. Noal, It also is very fast. It
moves quickly, so it's tough to keep an eye on.
It is a local farm pet best terrorizing dogs and
chickens and other small animals, but not quite humans. I
think were a little bit above its predation class. The
big thing, the big final commonality that many witnesses describe
(10:17):
is a quote, blood curdling scream, Paul, could you hit
us with a wilhelm? Yeah, something like that. Yeah like that.
That's where they got the original recording of that and
blood curdling scream. There's so many interesting, you know, ways
to think about that and where we're gonna talk about
(10:38):
it more in the episode, Like what could that scream
actually be if it is a creature that they're hearing,
you know, it could be rabbits. I say, rabbits scream
when they die. It's like the only sound they make.
They're completely docile and innocuous, silent creatures until they die,
and then all of a sudden they let up the
most horrific blood curdling scream. Yeah, death screams. Um. People
(11:01):
don't talk about it too much, but and I think
that's because the majority of people in the West are
probably not killing the animals they eat these days. But yeah, animals,
animals do scream, and they know when they're dying. But
the the stories of the Jersey Devil, I've been around
for long, long, long time. That's something of interest in
(11:23):
fiction when when they explore the devil, but it's never
been photographed. It's been the subject of multiple books, films,
and of course makes it appearance in the X Files.
So where does this creature come from? When did humans
start learning about it? Well, if you look now, what
you're gonna see are a lot of references to a
(11:44):
legend dating back to the early seventeen hundreds and a
woman known commonly as Mother Leads, allegedly a Quaker and
the wife of a man named Daniel Leads. Some historians
today believe that Mother their Leads was a real historical
figure named Deborah Smith. She was a person in the
(12:06):
Quaker faith was known to live in the area at
the time. And so our story goes to a dark
and stormy night in seventeen thirty five, Mother Leads, already
a mother of twelve children, is giving birth to her
thirteen child in a place called a Stellville, which is
about thirty kilometers or a little bit less than nineteen
(12:29):
miles west of a town called Leeds Points isn't it
funny that we've only adopted the metric system in the
United States to measure bullet calibers and drugs. Sorry, there's
a hot take putting that out there real quick. Um No,
the this uh, this birth UM was rumored to have
(12:49):
had some black magic involved, essentially that this child. It's
funny the number thirteen um being significant in certain ways, uh,
having been sired by the devil himself, Yeah, rather than
Mr Leo to Daniel. And then there there's all kinds
of stuff that gets lumped into this story where there
(13:11):
are some tales that perhaps someone actually cursed the birth
or cursed the mother Mrs Leads like a clergyman, or
leads herself like curse the infant before like as it
was being born or just before the birth, some have reported,
or at least there are tales that the infant was
born and when it was born it was deformed in
(13:34):
some pretty terrible way. Yeah, which you know definitely happens
at this time in history as well as in the
modern day. UM children can be born with any any
number of things that might be considered minor to major abnormalities,
stuff like something's like a cleft, palates or you know,
(13:58):
actually a lot of children are born polydactyl. Did you
guys know that they have an extra an extra digit
or two on their hands and they're just removed at
birth and in many countries. So as you're listening now,
if you want to do this, yeah, no guarantees, but
take your hand and check for scars sort of. Um,
(14:22):
if you look at the side of your hand where
your pinkie is and you go a little south toward
that kind of plumper part of your palm along the edge,
there there is a small but not insignificant chance that
you may see a light vertical scar, says the case. Uh.
And you're in contact with your parents, feel free to
ask them you might have been a six fingered kid.
(14:44):
Tough questions. Yeah, yeah, well, and also the you know,
people died from fairly well now fairly curable things very often.
So having thirteen children is it's still a lot, but
you know, the the need to have more children existed
in that time. Yeah, because it's also a source of
(15:07):
free labor. Right. Also, consider the very high, unfortunately the
high probability of infant mortality when compared to the modern day.
So if you wanted to guarantee the likelihood of your
lineage continuing. Then you would want to have more than
one child. You want to have as many as economically
(15:29):
and physically feasible. But that's that's the story. We'll stay
in the legend mode here before we poke holes in anything.
So in some versions of the story, this kid is
born normal, healthy for all appearances, at least at first,
but then soon after its birth it changes form. It's morphine.
(15:50):
It's growing wings, it's sprouting hoofs and horns or antlers,
and it's something really interesting is going on with its head.
It's elongating, it's becoming more equine than human. And this creature,
this this child, whatever it may be, it's freaking out.
This is birth is one of the most traumatic things
(16:10):
and human being will experience. And immediately after this, apparently
old boy is experienced, young boy literally is experiencing a
second very traumatic event, transmographication. It flies into the air,
It lets out that soon to be infamous, blood curdling shrink,
and it either it kills a midwife, where it kills mother,
(16:32):
leads and zooms up the chimney and lights out for
the woods, never to return, but to be seen in
the in the Barons of New Jersey for centuries to come.
That's important to note. It is the Pine barrens, like
the legendary Pine bear bear Sopranos rears its head again,
(16:53):
so culturally important. Sorry, I'm a huge fan and my
yearly rewatched great episode. Um but yeah, the the it's
true that this is like a very kind of you know,
think about it now that you think in New Jersey
is being super industrialized and developed obviously, and but there
are still parts of it that are still pretty rural.
And this part is it remains that way, pretty rugged
(17:15):
and uh, you know, great place for the mafia to
high bodies or you know for maybe someone or a
group of people who worshiped different things to be a
little more isolated in exactly if if that part of
the story was true, absolutely, if the if the occult
does have a piece here or a police here, and
(17:36):
and you know it's true. At this time, it was
also much easier to go off the grid because very
little of what we would understand as a grid existed.
You could keep secrets, but I would argue it would
be in order of magnitude more difficult to keep secrets
or aberrant behavior under wraps in a township. Because there
(17:58):
were so few people, they were almost all incredibly religious,
or we would consider them so to date. They were
in each other's business and they kind of had to
be to survive. But still, yeah, it was a very
different world and people were prime. The primary mode of
communication was oral communication, right word of mouth. And when
(18:19):
we are in a world where the primary currency of
communications oral storytelling, oral communication, that we see the telephone
game ramp up the full speed almost immediately. That's why
there's so many different versions, variations and additions to this story,
Like there's one, there's one really interesting one, uh that
(18:41):
doesn't get a lot of love in the modern day.
The ideas that upon the discovery of mother leads or
the midwife's body, a band of local clergy maybe, if
we're styling on it, one of the clergymen who cursed
the child, they get together, they posse up, and they
go into the woods, into the barons to hunt and
(19:02):
or exercise this creature. There's no report really on what
happened to that group, if they ever existed, except that
they were ultimately unsuccessful. This would be a fantastic horror film.
How has someone not made it yet, you know what
I mean. You've got all the highst elements, you got
the folklore, you got a monster, got a cult, potentially
(19:23):
like some kind of a secret cult, the Devil in
the Woods. Yeah, I feel like that movie has been made.
We've just never heard of it before or seen it
because in a slightly different configuration, you know, I mean this,
these are all kind of like classic tropes for for
B horror movies. Yeah. I'm just imagining Shutter just made
(19:45):
something and it went into Shutter and now it's gone.
That's yeah, So let us know if that let us
know if that's out there. I for one would love
to watch it, especially if it's really bad. Yes, I
just want to put this out there. If you go
to to Jersey History dot org, you can read uh
kind of a collection of everything we just mentioned. There
(20:08):
of different versions of the story if you're looking just
to get that the full back story. Yeah, and I
know a lot of at this point, a lot of
those stories are not traceable to a primary source because
they arose from this method of or from this time
in which people were swapping roomers basically and gathered around
(20:30):
the fireplace at night telling their kids. There would be
consequences to being bad. But that's that's again, that's a trope.
And uh, to steal an awesome pun from my friend Victor.
We're all about supporting the tropes here on stuff they
don't want you to know. Thank you for your service. Yes,
and and that's a yeah in credit where it's due. Um,
(20:51):
But sounds like some troped up charges to me. But okay,
let's yes, yes, let's see where we could go with
tropes today. So ordinarily, folks, and especially if you're a
fan of cryptids, you know this, this would be where
the trail goes cold. Cryptids that have specific legends and
origin points usually end up becoming commodified. They become draws
(21:14):
for tourists like Mothman right in West Virginia, or they
become the subject of tongue in cheek celebrations for the locals,
like Mothman in West Virginia. But the story of the
Jersey Devil is a little bit different. It's distinct because
we may know much more about the origin of this
cryptod and its story than legend would have you believe.
(21:37):
So today's episode, now we have all the facts down
about the legends, what is the truth about the Jersey
Devil will tell you after a word from our sponsors.
Here's where it gets crazy. So before we did, wait,
(21:58):
have you guys been to New Jersey? Oh gosh, I
feel bad. I know I've passed through um not like yeah, yeah,
that's it. Not not only No, I went to the
Yeah we we we we all went through Jersey together
in a car. What were we up there doing? What
(22:19):
were you doing? Guys? I'm completely blanking. I have a
distinct memory of stopping at Roy Rogers, at that big,
huge rest area on the New Jersey Turnpike. We we
went on a tour of the northeast in a Ford SUV. Right.
I remember this because I drove because my name was
(22:40):
on the thing for a couple of days and then
we gotta switch to everybody anyway. Yeah, we drove a
lot around that area. That's what it was. But I've
spent quite a bit of time in Elizabeth, New Jersey,
which is close to Jersey City, like the the the
it's close to New York, but um, never in the barrens. Yeah.
New Jersey is one of those states that has um
(23:05):
that can be a very different experience for people, depending
on what part of it they're in, right, Like many
people simply transit through New Jersey on the turnpike with
some of my my initial experiences there as well. But
not for nothing is it called the garden state there.
There is a lot of natural beauty there. And if
(23:28):
you were in the Jersey area before the early nineteen hundreds,
especially you were there before nineteen o nine, which is important.
We'll explain why it's a key, or we'll get to
it in a moment. But if you were there in
the early nineteen hundreds, you've gone back in time. You
had the choice for some reason, you picked New Jersey.
You might be surprised to learn that you would almost
(23:48):
never hear the phrase Jersey devil. Instead, you would hear
about the exact same thing, but the exact same reports
of cloven hoofs in the snow and mysterious large, flying,
shrieking creatures. But this thing would be called the Leads
devil or the devil of Leads. It's focused on that
(24:11):
tail in the family. It's not it hasn't been exploded
out into this whole state's thing yet. Yeah, yeah, exactly,
So this would this Leads devil. The name would be
either in connection with a local farm owned by the
Leeds family or with a southern New Jersey town called
Leeds Point, which is still around today. If you if
(24:34):
you look at it, you can orient yourself to Atlantic City. UH.
Leads Point is best described as this small protuberance into
the swampy shallows of the Great Bay. It's just north
of Atlantic City. It's surrounded by the Pine Barons that
Matt mentioned earlier. The pine barons are a million acres
(24:56):
of very dense pine trees where you can very easily
become law store, very easily hide a body. You could.
You know, if you're a teenager you want to go
somewhere and like drink underage, smoke a little weed, pine
barrens might be the place. Just saying that it's easy
to not get caught. Yeah, it's also easy to get lost,
you know. I mean as his evidence by that, so
(25:17):
Brando's episode, So leave a bread crumb trailer or whatever.
But Leeds Point was named after a gentleman by the
name of Daniel Leeds who was the surveyor of the
land UH and he eventually attained ownership of it via
a grant. Daniel Leeds was an englishman who immigrated to
the US in sixteen seventy eight, spent most of his
adult life publishing The American Almanac. He created this publication
(25:42):
as well, um and it continued to print new issues
until his retirement in seventeen sixteen. Um And he then
passed the business down to his son's Just quick shout out,
he immigrated to the colonies. Excuse me, thank you, thank you. Yes,
(26:03):
he he immigrated to the colonies. He also, as we'll find,
had some political ambitions and opinions that would come back
to bite him. It makes sense that he would be
a person of note because he is publishing and therefore
controlling written communication. And I know I'm hammering home the
(26:26):
differences between the primacy of oral communication versus the rise
of commonly understood and disseminated written communication, but it's important
for stories like these. You're thinking, perhaps, oh, an almanac.
I've heard of that those were very popular in early
colonial history that later becomes American history. But I thought
(26:50):
Benjamin Franklin wrote the Almanac. Who's this Daniel Leeds guy? Well,
there's kind of a coke Pepsi situation because Benjamin Franklin
wrote an almanac called poor Richard's Almanac, and in seventeen
thirty five he even gives Leads a shout out in
a very snooty way. He calls Leads quote the first
(27:10):
author south of New York for including that fact because
it is important. It does further confirmed that Daniel Leeds
was mentioned in the legend, is a real person and
the next arc of the story. So like we have
that established, right, the next arc of the story in
the public sphere for the Jersey Devil really begins. In
(27:32):
nineteen o nine, there's a flurry of newspaper reports about
people who are certain they've cited the Devil and the
Jersey Devil. And these reports are interesting because they're not
reports that say some people have said they've seen something
weird in the sky. There's specific police officers sited, members
(27:53):
of fire departments, local political officials. They're all saying I
saw something it was wonky. Out of these dozens and
dozens and dozens of stories, they're all happening in the
same rough area, right this Pine Barren area, and they're
all happening around the same time. And this led people
like Brian Dunning over as skeptoid to say, you know,
(28:17):
based on just the physical writing about this at this time,
the New Jersey Devil may actually be one of the
world's most well documented cryptids. And of course, being well
documented and being real are not necessarily the same thing.
Like look at look at the extensive uh sophistication and
(28:39):
thoroughness of Wikipedia entries about things like the Transformers or
Star Wars. They're very well documented. They are also not real.
I feel like that's an approachable comparison. You know what
I mean? Matter you an optimist prime extremist? I know? No,
(29:00):
do you see a truck and think that's might be
an alien robot? Uh? You know it's really it's when
I see those jeeps, you know, the they look like
jeep wranglers, but they've also got a truck bed on them.
You ever seen those there? I would call those abominations,
is what I would call those. Well, when I see those,
(29:21):
I'm like, that shouldn't be like that. Something's up with
this vehicle. Something very suss, very sess. It makes sense.
I I also, you know, there's something about automotive design
where you can clearly see the intention was to have
multiple things going on at once, and sometimes those become
the best argument for having a vehicle. That's just the
(29:44):
one thing. Yeah, just it's okay for a truck to
just be a truck. You're right, those in those in
peat cruisers, those are the only ones that I feel
are sauce. So I don't care for those cube things either.
Just for the record, a the psion, Yeah, man, no,
(30:04):
it was. It was a weird time for everybody, But
I wish everyone everyone the best. Tell us what tell
us the weirdest cars you've seen? Because they are They're
like cryptid autos, I guess. Uh. So there's a problem though,
there's a problem with this story, this Jersey devil story,
this legend. Even even after we accrue some basic historical facts,
(30:27):
it is an impossible story according to its own timeline. First,
Daniel Leeds real dude, almanac maker, local taste maker. He
passed his away in seventeen twenty, that's about fifteen years
before seventeen thirty five, when the devil was allegedly born. Secondly,
(30:47):
um as historians and researchers or want to do later humans,
it started prying into Daniel leeds love life and they
learned some stuff that applies to this legend. Yeah. First thing,
you should know is that he was with a woman
named Anne Stacy. She unfortunately died in while giving birth
(31:09):
to a child. Um, so he was married married to
this woman she died during childbirth. We can already see
that perhaps there's the seed of some part of this story,
just the act of childbirth and a death. After her
death and Stacy's he married a woman named Dorothy Young
and guess what m hm. They stayed married uh until
(31:34):
he passed away in seventy So there was what what
what was the woman's name? There was Ms Smith who
became Deborah Deborah Smith who became Mrs Leeds. Allegedly according
to the story, at least on paper, there's no record
of that person in connection with Mr Leeds. Right, So
(31:57):
that person did exist, but they were not They were
not getting down making the Jersey Devil with two backs,
at least her and Daniel Leeds. So there's another guy
Wanta introduced to this story much Mounch later. His name
is Professor Fred McFadden of Coppin State University over in Baltimore.
He did the work. He dug deep into everything you
(32:19):
could find about the life of Daniel Leeds and then
also into the earliest mentions of the devil in some
form in print, and some of McFadden's work was published
in a book in nineteen seventy three called South Jersey
Town's History and Legend, the kind of book that you
would see maybe for sale in the gift shop of
a regional bed and breakfast. And it turns out that
(32:43):
this date of seventeen thirty five, the people ascribed to
the legend comes from the earliest print reference to a
quote devil that McFadden could find. But the location of
this devil was given as Burlington. That's tricky because Linton
And at this time is the name of a whole
(33:04):
county or region, it's not the name of a specific town. Additionally,
there aren't any contemporary sources connecting Daniel Leads the man
or either of his wife to a devilish character of
any sort, any shape, form, or fashion. So even this
guy professional historian McFadden was only able to speculate and say, Okay,
(33:28):
maybe this devil mentioned from seventy five and Burlington is
somehow a predecessor of the same creature that gets popularized
way later in nine. So the legend doesn't hold up
to the timeline or the historical facts as we know them,
which means we have to ask, where does the story
(33:49):
of the devil really begin? We have an answer. This
is not just the tease. We do kind of have
an answer. Will tell you after word from our sponsors,
we're back. Some of our more cynical folks in the
(34:10):
crowd today may have listened to the first part of
this episode and said, you know what, I'll tell you,
who needs fake monsters when we have real politicians. That
might seem a necessarily edgy, but it is a good point,
and it plays a huge role in this story. It
sure does. It turns out that the mystery of the
(34:31):
Jersey Devil could well lie in the murky world of propaganda,
or at the very least um smear campaigns bad pr
let's call it. Daniel Leeds was an editor and local politician,
which means, of course he had enemies. Anybody you know
that's that's a double threat. He had the power of
the press and he was a politician, so he had
(34:53):
many opportunities to make enemies. Most notoriously, leads fill the
position serving as deputy to one Edward Hind, the Lord
of Cornberry or Lord Cornberry. I love that. Um. He
He was the colonial governor of New York and New
Jersey under Queen Anne Um and in seventeen eight Lord
(35:15):
Cornberry was recalled to England because he was so incredibly unpopular,
and therefore leads By association was also unpopular, and he
withdrew from public office and never again served in politics. Yeah,
that's that's the thing. He's a British loyalist, which is
not a particularly popular political stance. Uh. And it's in
(35:41):
fact an increasingly unpopular one as we get closer and
closer to the Revolutionary War. He was then known, you know,
he had kind of a stigma as the deputy of
this disgraced governor, and so he became a scapegoat in
a lot of ways. You know, this is this is
someone that you can publicly deride. In fact, people who
(36:04):
are supportive of the cause of independence can bond together
by getting by, you know, hanging out and talking trash
about this guy. You know, if we can all agree
this one guy is a dick, then fine, let's have
another round of meat and talk revolution. Right, Um, let's
have some meat and talk leads, you know, the meads
on leads, So we don't know if they were drinking meat,
(36:27):
But we shouldn't let the facts get in the way
of a good story, which is sort of a thematic
through line here. He was, you know, he was open
to ridicule. Add to this, it seems that several of
his real children were unfortunately born with mental disabilities. This
also made him an easy target for bad press, from
(36:51):
unscrupulous muck breakers and so on. So that's so this
becomes a political attack. Right, we're demonizing this guy's kids
were also attributing characteristics through to him through this story. Right,
It's quite possible, and this is speculative, but it's quite possible,
(37:12):
for instance, that the story of a child of the
Devil not being the child of Daniel Leads and the
inclusion of horns could have been a visual reference to
cuckolding for instance. Right, this is the kind of symbolic
language that would be used and is still used in
a different way in political cartoons and satire today. By
(37:36):
the time the story starts blowing up in the eighteen hundreds,
Leads is dead. He passed away, but his name is
still familiar with people who are alive, and his name
is intimately associated with British loyalists. So it's still a
great target for the press because when they read leads,
they immediately think of that, and then when they read Devil,
(37:58):
then you know, it gets even juicy because you dropped
the D word. Fast forward nine nine. That deluge of
sightings hits the news, but by this point a lot
of people have lived and died. No one really cares
too much about leads. The US is already a thing
and has been for a while, so the connection lost
(38:19):
some of its power. The brand name, if we want
to think of it in that way, shifted from Leeds Devil,
which was no longer serving its purpose, to the Jersey Devil,
which now is something people can more clearly associate. Right,
So what gives with nineteen o nine, How did this
legend suddenly become a piece of newsworthy reporting for multiple outlets. Well,
(38:44):
there's a fellow named Joe Nicol who is an investigator
and writer of sorts, and according to him, it all
goes back to a fun little hoax, very clever hoax. Uh,
that was kind of building off of the work that
the muck rakes had done previously to Mr Leeds. And
we've got a little quote here in January nine, the
(39:06):
monster was revived by a hoax displayed in a private
museum in Philadelphia. The creature was actually a kangaroo outfitted
with fake wings affixed by a harness to make it
leap at spectators. When the curtain was drawn, a boy
hidden at the rear of the cage prodded the unfortunate
animal with a stick. So now it's it's almost like
(39:31):
a a circus side show or something. You see Ripley's
believe it or not, you know, the cur pay your
nickel or whatever. The curtains it probably wasn't nicolas, probably cheaper,
and the curtains pulled, and then all of a sudden,
blood curdling scream, flapping wings. Thank god it's in a cage.
Ha ha, that's great, let's get funnel cake or whatever. Well,
(39:53):
it certainly explains the illustration of the Jersey Devil, don't
you think? Yes, I agree, it's uh. But this the
thing about this one is we don't know we know
what really happened. Nichols work is sound, but we don't
know the specific date of this exhibit. And it sounds
to me like this is only my opinion. It sounds
(40:13):
to me like the amount of trouble they went to
on this, getting a kangaroo body for one Uh. It
sounds like it was an attempt to capitalize on an
existing craze instead of one person singlehandedly trying to resurrect
this legend, which might be true because back to historian McFadden,
(40:39):
he found a report from an archivist in Gloucester County,
a guy named R. C arch At uh and R.
C arch At was able to track down a photograph
from that allegedly shows the cloven hoofs of the Jersey Devil,
like it walked up on someone's porch and it left
these hoof marks. This is the beginning of the period
(41:01):
when all these footprints started being reported in the press.
And that's that's the important thing, because remember at the
top we said, uh, there there have been many reports,
but there have been no photographs. There have been a
lot of photographs of proposed Jersey Devil hoofprints, but something
was definitely leaving footprints all around this area. As of
(41:25):
it appears that we will probably never know what's set
off this renewed interest in the Leeds Devil, but there
was definitely a political aspect to it. It is quite
possible that this thing was a campfire tale, or it
began as a political satire, or shortly after becoming a legend,
(41:48):
it uh became used as a political satire, and then
later people forgot it was satire, and then mass hysteria
kicked in and people were seeing things and you know,
equating it the first thing they would have thought of,
which is the tale of this Jersey Devil. But we're
talking cryptids, and we know that we we're talking cryptids.
(42:09):
Many many sightings of animals that are attributed to cryptids
later turn out to be misidentified natural creatures. So the
first question you have to always ask yourself when you
hear a story about a cryptod, is could it be
based on a known creature? That's especially important in the
story of the Jersey Devil. It's distinct because it has
(42:31):
basically an origin point that's somewhat you know, closer to
the modern day. Uh. Secondly, it has a specific sort
of run of time in the news and in reporting.
But third it's pretty distinct because of the sheer amount
of time here. Given the length of time the story
has been around, the number of sightings across that period
(42:53):
of time. Again, a ballpark three hundred years. It's incredibly
unlikely that a single individual organism on land of this
size could be responsible for every single sighting, right yeah.
But but but at the same time, I mean, like
you know, it's one of those fish out of water
type stories potentially where maybe you know, we know some lizards,
(43:13):
for example, live very very very long lives. Not to
mention things like Galapagos giant tortoises that can live up
to eighty five years, a hundred years sometimes, you know,
Asian elephants ben you pointed out, can live up to
eighty six years. But finding but not to mention though,
finding an animal that can live longer than a three
hundred years, it's a very tall order not to mention
(43:36):
one that would be able to survive in this climate.
The ones that we're talking about that would live this
long would not do well in the pine barrens of
New Jersey, right Yeah. Land animals especially, you know there
there are maritime animals that can live a very very
long time. And make a great point about the Galapagos
(43:57):
giant tortoise, but it does things actually fit the description,
and it's not built to live in the pine barrens. Guys,
it's it's a demon, it's immortal, you can live as
want to demon rules. Yeah, maybe that explains it, right,
So uh, demonology demon biology aside. Uh. If something like
(44:22):
this existed, if it were secular, it would almost certainly
mean there there would have to be some sort of
small breeding population, maybe one that's occasionally on the move,
which might help explain why these sightings seem to rise
and fall across time. If there is a mundane explanation
for the Jersey Devil, I I propose that we consider
(44:46):
our number one suspect, the Sandhill crane. Have included a
picture here just to get a look at it, all right,
What you're seeing, guys, If you look at this picture,
you're seeing two sandhill cranes chilling at a gas station,
no other context. I would run. I would run there.
(45:06):
They could be pretty tall, they're they're ungainly looking their
land dwelling birds. If you pull up that picture of
the Jersey Devil and you put it next to uh picture.
If you pull up that sketch rather of the Jersey
Devil and you put it next to this photo of
the Sandhill crane, then you can see some interesting kind
(45:27):
of commonalities They both look like rather than gainly bipeds.
Um technically they both have wings. Although the cranes are folded,
they've got slightly along the beak could look like a
slightly elongated head. These things are also pretty pretty crazily big,
like they can be up to four ft six in
(45:49):
height and the wingspan can stretch to over seven feet.
So you would notice this thing if you're in the
woods and you see it taking off, or you see
it landing, or you know, you see it just chilling
like it's chilling outside of the gas station there. I
love that picture because I wonder what they're waiting on. Yeah, yeah,
(46:10):
somebody drops some garrito's. But it's it is really compelling
when you imagine being out in the woods, especially in night,
in that area, and you just caught a glimpse of something.
It's just far enough away. The light that you have
isn't quite reaching it. You've got some moonlight. You see
something with huge wings just take off and you you know,
(46:33):
if you just see it enough, but you can't make
out the exact dimensions, the exact shape. Uh. I can
imagine that sand hill crane being you know, misattributed to
something much more sinister. Yeah, yeah, exactly. And also some
populations of sand hill crane are migratory. So this is
just a thought experiment. I want to see if you
(46:55):
guys think this is possible, plausible or total bunk. Sandhill cranes,
especially the migratory populations. In the winter, they'll band together
to form things called survival groups. And these are interesting
because it's not all related sandhill cranes. For for the
good of just a style on it. For the good
(47:19):
of the gander. Unrelated cranes will all gather together in
this mass, meaning that for a period of time, specific
areas of their range may suddenly become home to thousands
of cranes cough cough, excuse me, devil's cough cough at once.
So you could have grown up in this area seventeen
eighteen hundred's early nineteen hundreds and then been walking around
(47:42):
your normal woods and saw something unusual. There's a crane
you misidentified, and you talked to someone else about it,
and they've also seen something. They're like, yeah, it's crazy.
There's this huge thing in the sky flying. I'm freaked
out there everywhere. Did you see It's in the paper.
The papers are writing about it, which makes it real.
(48:02):
The in the cranes could also be partially responsible for
all those nine pictures of hoofprints or footprints, right, because
as snow melts, you know this from our big Foot episodes,
As snow melts, any kind of footprint left by an
animal will become deformed. Often it can look bigger than
(48:22):
it was originally. Um And there's a little bit of
like circumstantial textual evidence. There's a guy named Alfred Heston
in six he was writing in Jersey Wagon John's Uh.
He said that he spoke with residents of Salem who
called the nineteen o nine creature that they also believed in.
They called it the Ostrich Devil. Interesting. Huh, Yeah, I'm not.
(48:47):
I'm not taking all these bird comparisons. These are the
creepiest ones to birds with with the are tall and powerful,
with skinny legs and dangly necks. No, thank you. You
gotta go for the neck and stay away from the legs.
Off there. But you can see how ostrich devil, you know,
would make sense if you were observing just a bunch
of these strange birds that you had never seen before.
(49:10):
They're terrifying. And there are other possible animal origins. There
are things like the common barn owl. There's a guy
named J. A. Singly who was writing with a delightfully
skeptical tone to the Dallaviston Daily News, and he said
the leads devil. He said, the leads devil that has
(49:32):
described as a bug a boo bird is probably just
a barn owl. And we have we have a quote. Okay,
I'm gonna try to muster my way through this guy's
The bird has an uncanny appearance, generally agreed, and this,
aided by a lively imagination they are the stuff of nightmares,
has probably originated the blood curdling story of the leads devil. Dude, Look,
(49:57):
I know I play and I play up my fear
of birds, little bit um. I'm certainly not like totally
terrified of birds. I wouldn't necessarily run. But if a crane,
uh let let alone, a gaggle of cranes whatever you
call that, it should be a murder of cranes was
assembled or ostriches or something like that, and they were
coming at me, Yeah, my imagination would do serious tricks,
(50:18):
uh And I would absolutely run, and that would haunt
my dreams for the rest of my life. So I
think I'm with this, um this explanation. Guys, have we
heard the Sandhill cranes sounds? Do we know what they
sound like? That it's blood curdling? I don't know. I'd
be interested to play something here and see if it
what what everyone thinks. Matt, I'm so glad you asked.
(50:40):
I proudly present what could be either the Sandhill crane
or the Jersey Devil or both. Listen along, folks, let
us know if you think this is blood curdly, can
you imagine a whole gaggle of those or just that,
(51:01):
Like you're saying, you're describing large groups and that sound
is just occurring, certainly with kurdel my blood just fine. Yeah,
I was gonna check out everybody's blood. That's a weird
sentence out of context, but yeah, you can see, like
at first, when it's just one, it doesn't sound too crazy,
but it would be unexpected. But then you hear multiple
things and you think you're all coming from the same creature,
(51:22):
then that's that's pretty that's pretty nuts. I do also
want to point out, um, for any anybody who's feeling
pedantic in the crowd state, Yes, uh, the group name
for a group of cranes is a sedge S E
D G E. Also, those group name things you always hear,
like a parliament of so and so, a gaggle and
(51:43):
and so on, those are not scientifically accepted, like actual
ornithologist and biologists get. I don't want to say weirdly offended,
but they're they're they're very not fun about it. And
I love those group names for things. I think they're delightful,
Like like a basket of kittens. Nobody ever uses that anymore.
(52:04):
I'm sorry explain, but if you've got multiple kittens together,
it's a basket of kittens. That's okay. No, I'm making
it up, hoping that you're trying to make basket of
kittens happen. Matt, Yes, I applaud you as much more
wholesome than a burlap sack of kittens. Gosh, I'm glad
(52:26):
you didn't go that direction. But but okay, so that's
that's the call, right, And you can see if we
put ourselves back in the eighteen hundreds the early nineteen hundreds,
you can see how hearing that in an unexpected way
and then later seeing a large flying thing could very
well persuade you that the crazy campfire story you've heard
(52:46):
since you were a child might have some sand to it.
But the most interesting part of this line of thinking
is simply this. It doesn't solve the riddle. There's no
solid proof that dozens and dozens of people in nineteen
nine we're seeing cranes and barnells. And I would argue,
the further back you go in the history of a region, um,
(53:08):
the more familiar people tend to be with the natural
world and the flora and fauna, So it almost seems
less likely that after a certain amount of time living
in the area, people would still misidentify cranes. So we
don't We don't have solid proof. We also don't have
solid proof that they weren't all caught up in an
outbreak of hysteria. Yeah, no, there's no question about the
(53:32):
hysteria angle. And also, let let's not forget I mean,
the fear of Satan, you know, the fear of the
devil itself is something we haven't mentioned specifically, or at
least a bunch, but that was very, very real, and
these were people. It reminds me of the movie The Witch,
you know, where people are settling you know, a very
hostile environment, and there's a lot of isolation, you know,
(53:55):
especially out in the woods in these pine barren areas,
and these are folks who often come from kind of
puritanical backgrounds, so it's very easy for this hysteria or
this like you know, satanic panic to kind of set in,
and the idea of there being some sort of demon
out in the woods could become very very real. Yeah. Absolutely,
(54:16):
I think that that's a very good point. Belief plays
such a huge role in human psychology, and it affects
the world around us the same way that a r
technology affects your perception of the world, I would argue,
and if you take each of these alleged sightings one
by one by one, there's always still this tantalizing measure
(54:39):
of ambiguity. You look at one sighting and you say, well, yeah,
that could have been an owl. Look at another and
you say, well, yeah, that could have been a creating.
And in some cases, honestly, it could have been some
poor schmuck's friends pranking them, you know what I mean.
They're they're like, oh, man, Danelle is on acid again today,
Let's get out the suit. I don't know I don't
(55:02):
know if, but I love that idea. There's a group
of people with a wingsuit and a friend that always
does ask that or you know, or something, and then
it never learns. He never learns. Uh So maybe that's
maybe that's where we leave it. Because at this point
(55:24):
one thing is for sure. Whatever the devil is, whatever
it was, humans have had a long long time to
figure it out, and centuries have past without anyone managing
to conclusively solve the mystery. I believe that we have
some very good, mundane explanations or possibilities. Not at all
all are proven or even provable at this point in time.
(55:47):
But that leads I don't know, but you, guys, that
leads me to think has the human species collectively decided
not to let the facts get in the way of
a good story. If so, I'd just like to say,
classic human It's the sort of thing the species loves
to do, and humans have never needed help from a
devil to do it? Here here wow? Okay, Well, I
(56:12):
don't know about you guys. Um have you have you
ever seen a crane in Atlanta? Yes? Yes, all one
um recently got recently time? What is it? Uh? There,
there's like a little pond across from Pont City Market
or offices. It's it's more than a little pond. It's
like a whole cute little area with like, you know,
like a walking trail. And I saw a crane I'm
(56:36):
like hanging out perching on like a guardrail. Uh, And
in that area as herons. That's probably what it was.
That's probably what it was. And they look real weird
when they fly because when they're when they're getting super
into it, they lean back their necks and fold them down.
It looks like they have this weird double chin. That's
(56:56):
that's one of them. I think I may have told
the story on the show before. But in our backyard
there's a very small creek. It's not really creek, it's
just where the runoff water goes, got a place to go.
And every once in a while back there you'll hear
some weird sounds. We hear some owls near our house
every once in a while. But not long ago, Diana
was in the backyard and something giant. It was in
(57:19):
the middle of the night and dark, something giant spread
its wings. She could tell it was wings, but she
couldn't see it really well. And it just flew up
into the air, through the through the trees, and a
couple of couple of days later it was this. It
was a heron. It's a blue heron. I think for great.
It looked great. Devil, I'm calling it devil. No, I
(57:43):
reversed my entire opinion. It's the Devil. It's moving in
non linear time. It's gonna come after it. This is
gonna be the episode that breaks the show. This is
the time that we will finally have consequences. It will
be the Jersey Devil that did us in. It's been
a wild ride, fellas. Uh, there's absolute pleasure to work
(58:04):
with you. Um. If you feel like leaving, uh, comment
at our memorial after the Devil finishes its work with us. Uh.
There are any number of ways you can contact us
if one or all of us somehow survives. Of course,
we'll keep doing episodes, and to do that we'd love
some help from you, So please give us your suggestions.
(58:25):
Your hang on this door randomly opened. Keep this part in, Paul,
I don't know why the store opened. Cranes are pretty smart, though.
They can open doors with their creepy gangly necks and
pokey beaks. Really, I don't know. I guess it depends
on the handle the losser. Actors can in the movie
Jurassic Park descended are sorry, I don't know what happened. Oh,
(58:50):
we know, Ben, We just discussed that intimately. Okay, uh,
and let it. Let us know if there are any
cryptic stories from your neck of the woods that you
feel have some sort of explanation, especially if there is
an actual undocumented animal out there, we'd love to hear
from you. We try to make it easy to find
us online. That's right. We're conspiracy stuff on Twitter and Facebook,
(59:11):
conspiracy stuff show on Instagram. You can also give us
a telephone call tell us about that, Matt. That's right.
We have a number. It is one eight three three
st d w y t K. When you first call
in after you hear Ben's lovely tones telling you to
leave a message, please state your name or that which
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(59:31):
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(59:54):
that you reach out to us a slightly different way,
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