The Pine Barrens are a 2000 square mile area in southern New Jersey. It’s a dark and wild place – stepping into them is like walking through a time warp to pre-Colonial America. It is a place where monsters are said to lurk. One monster, in particular, has become famous in folkloric and paranormal circles alike – the Jersey Devil.
The story goes that Mother Leeds (who may or may not have been a witch) and her brood of one dozen children eked out a living in the Pine Barrens in perpetual poverty. When she became pregnant with the thirteen child, legend has it that she exclaimed “let it be the devil.” According to legend, it seems she got her wish as the child was born a monster, with cloven hoofs, legs like a crane’s, bat-like wings, and a head like a horse.
Pretty odd stuff. Odder still, it seems a lot of people have seen the beast in the 260 odd years since its alleged birth. Local folklore contends that the critter appears before a war or a shipwreck – an omen of portending doom. Other stories of sightings involve the beast attacking local livestock – it apparently has a taste for chicken. On at least one occasion, it was said to have ripped the throats out of two German Shepherds – a terrifying thing for any loving dog owner to discover, I’m sure.
It may seem like a quaint old story, but it seems that the Jersey Devil has made its way into popular culture. It has lent its name to a New Jersey hockey team, showed up on The X-Files, and has been featured on a plethora of programs chronicling the paranormal. The Devil isn’t as much an object of fear now as it is a mascot for the state it’s said to live in.
At least, such is the case for the rest of New Jersey. As for the Pine Barrens, it’s certainly a fact that many towns draw income from tourists coming to the area seeking the monster. But for some, the Jersey Devil is very real and very frightening. Reports of strange happenings still drift out from the ancient forests, and the Devil manages to scare a fair number of people who have the misfortune to cross its path.
With all of these eyewitness accounts, it seems to be a bit arrogant to completely dismiss the legend as nothing more than overactive imagination. People are obviously seeing something – what is under debate is what people are actually seeing. Hypotheses range from the plausible to the incredibly bizarre. Because they’re more fun than the most likely explanation (the one I feel is correct, by the way), we’ll take a look at the stranger beliefs floating around out there.
There are some who believe that the Jersey Devil is an honest to God devil, a representation of pure evil. Which seems kind of odd, considering the fact that nothing I’ve read on the matter reports the Devil attacking anything other than animals – in fact, most stories claim that the thing flies off when people approach it, letting off a terrible scream as it does so.
Another belief is that the Devil was nothing more than a deformed child that Mother Leeds kept under veritable house arrest, ashamed of his terrible appearance. This one at least seems plausible, what with how horrible people used to act toward the physically deformed. But then it wouldn’t make any sense because there would be no way that the sightings could continue as long as they have, considering that sightings have been reported on and off for 260 years or so, since 1735.
The most outlandish hypothesis, in my mind anyway, is the ancient underground critter hypothesis. There are some who believe that supposedly extinct creatures may have survived underground. They believe that the Jersey Devil is actually a pterodactyl that has lived for millions of years in the caves beneath the Pine Barrens. I don’t think I have to explain exactly why this one is ludicrous…but not completely ludicrous.
I certainly don’t believe that there are dinosaurs living under the earth. But the descendants of dinosaurs live with us on the surface. Some of us keep them as pets, and others among us are deathly afraid of them (my mother, for one). I’m talking about birds. Specifically, the Sand Hill Crane. The bird is big and has a broad wingspan – point of fact, it is about as large as legends claim the Jersey Devil to be. The crane also lets out a raucous cry, not unlike the cry the Devil supposedly lets off when it’s upset. If the Sand Hill Crane were to stand on its hind legs and spread its huge wings, and if the light were low, it would be fairly easy to mistake it for something it was not.
Now, the Sand Hill Crane couldn’t be responsible for the animal slayings associated with the Devil. But then the Sand Hill Crane isn’t the only creature lurking in the Pine Barrens. Things such as coyotes, bobcats, and once even cougars lurked amongst the pines. Any of these could have been responsible for the animal slayings (with the exception of the German Shepherds, the pair of which would probably have been a match for even the largest cougar. My bet in that case it was a human culprit.)
Be it a crane, an extant dinosaur, a deformed human, or the incarnation of evil, it doesn’t seem like the Jersey Devil is going anywhere anytime soon. It doesn’t much matter whether the creature exists in a biological sense or not. The Jersey Devil exists in the folkloric conscience and in the popular culture of our society. In that sense it is a very real creature, one that lurks in the dark forest of the human imagination.
Andrew Kincaid writes horror and fantasy. He’s making the world a stranger place, one story at a time. Get in touch with him on Facebook and Twitter, and check out his debut horror anthology ON DARK PATHS, available on Kindle!
I’ve always thought that pelicans — the Brown Pelican we have here along the California coast, in particular — look like pterodactyl, too. Especially when flying. So I hear you about the Sand Hill Crane.
And it’s weird to think that birds are the descendents of dinosaurs, haha. I read once that some believe that pterodactyl’s may not have flown all that much – they may have glided. But then I doubt anyone will ever know for certain…unless some of the critters really are lurking under NJ haha