Jersey Devil Documentary(Part 1)
Monday, 15 April 2013
Sunday, 14 April 2013
Others version story of Jersey Devil
Others version Story of Jersey Devil
The legend of the Jersey Devil trace the
devil back to Deborah Smith who emigrated from England in the 1700s to marry a
Mr. Leeds. The Leeds family lived in the area of the NJ Pine Barrens (Leeds
Point, Galloway Township, Atlantic County). Mrs. Leeds had given birth to 12
children and was about to give birth to her 13th. The story goes that Mrs.
Leeds invoked the devil during a very difficult and painful labor and that when
the baby was born, it either immediately, or very soon afterwards, (depending
on the version of the story), grew into a full-grown devil and escaped from the
house.
Another
version of the story says it was when Mrs. Leeds found out she was pregnant
with her 13th, that she said that if she were to have one more child, "may
it be a devil".
Another
version is that the child/devil was the result of a family curse.
Another
version is that Mrs. Leeds, who was a Quaker, had refused to be converted from
the Quaker faith and that the clergyman who had been trying to convert her was
so angry that he told her that her next child would be an offspring of Satan.
Another version is that the
child was born a monster and that Mrs. Leeds cared for the child until her
death. In this version the child/devil "flew off" into the swamps
after Mrs. Leeds' death.
People in
the 1700s still believed in witchcraft and many people of the period felt a
deformed child was a child of the devil or that the deformity was a sign that
the child had been cursed by God.
It may be
that indeed Mrs. Leeds gave birth to a child with a birth defect and given the
superstitions of the period, the legend of the Jersey Devil was born.
In any event
there do not seem to be any subsequent reported encounters with the Jersey
Devil in which he/it actually harmed anyone.
In the last
200 years or so, there have been a number of "sightings" and the
hearing of eerie noises/wails in the forests which have been attributed to the
Jersey Devil, but since these accounts are, in the main, generic descriptions,
one is somewhat drawn to the conclusion that any number of "weird"
things in southern Jersey are attributed to the Jersey Devil as a matter of
course.
Over the
years the Jersey Devil has been called by a number of names,
"Hoodle-Doodle Bird", "Wozzle Bug" and the "Leeds
Devil".
This is all
not to say that people do not believe in the Jersey Devil. Many over the year
have believed and reported sightings of the creature.
Sightings
included one in 1870 by a Long Beach fisherman who said he saw the Jersey Devil
serenading a mermaid.
The best
known sightings however were in January 1909 when Councilman E.P. Weeden of
Trenton claimed to have been awoken by flapping wings outside his bedroom
window. The Councilman said he found cloven footprints in the snow and several
other instances of similar footprints were reported in Trenton at the time.
Hundreds, if not thousands, of other people also claimed to have seen the Devil
within a week or so of the Councilman's "sighting" and news of the
multiple sightings were reported in local papers. The January 1909 sightings
were not limited to New Jersey...there were reported sightings across the river
in Pennsylvania and some sightings in Delaware as well.
In 1978 two
teenage boys were ice-skating near Chatsworth in the Barrens and smelled an
odor like "dead fish" and saw two red eyes staring at them. They
didn't stay around to investigate, but claimed they had encountered the Jersey
Devil.
A number of
people have claimed, not to have seen the Devil, but to have heard him,
rampaging through woods, or emitting blood-curdling cries.
People have
found "strange" tracks and attributed them to the Jersey Devil. One
instance of such tracks was reported, (along with loud shrieks), near May's
Landing in 1960. Also in 1960, merchants in Camden offered a $10,000 reward for
the capture of the Jersey Devil. They said they would build a private zoo to
display the creature if anyone could capture it. The reward is unclaimed.
The Story Of The Jersey Devil
The Jersey Devil
Story
Accodring to legend, an evil old witch
named Mrs.Shrounds lived in leeds Point, NJ. She made a wish that if she ever
had another child, she wanted it to be a devil. Her next child was born
misshapen and deformed. It had hooves instead of feet, a houses head, a forked
tail and dragon-like creature. She called it the Jersey Devil and kept it
locked up in her house, so the curious couldn’t see it. One stormy night, the
child flapped it’s arms, and they turned into wings. It escaped out the chimney
and was never seen by the old witch again.
In the early
19th century, commodore Stephen Decatur,a naval hero, was testing
cannon balls on the firing range when he saw a strange creature flying across
the sky. He fired and hit the creature but it kept right on flying across the
field. Joseph Bonaparte, former king of spain and brother of Napoleon, saw the
Jersey Devil when he was hunting. Many sheep and chickens were killed by a
creature with a piercing scream and strange tracks. The Jersey Devil was
sighted by George Saaorsy, a prominent business man, at the NJ/NY border. This
was the last reported sighting before the turn of the century.
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