Every US state has an assortment of official somethings. State tree, state flower, state bird. Only New Jersey has a state demon: the Jersey Devil, also known as the Leeds Devil. It says so right up there at nj.gov.
Unlike Bigfoot, which fits more into the zoological niche—large primate unknown to traditional science—or Mothman, which is more of a paranormal entity, the Jersey Devil has its roots in history. Accounts vary, but the most common story is that in 1735, in the Pinelands of New Jersey, poor Mother Leeds was pregnant for the thirteenth time. She was so completely over it that she laid a curse on the child. It was born a normal baby but quickly transformed into a hooved biped with a long body, a large horse-like head with antlers like a stag, short arms and clawed hands, batlike wings, and a forked tail. It may or may not have slaughtered its parents and most or all of its siblings before it shrieked and flew up the chimney.
After its strange and no doubt traumatic birth, it took up residence in the piny wetlands. Through the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, it was seen off and on by travelers and locals. Celebrity witnesses included Stephen Decatur and Napoleon’s brother Joseph Bonaparte.
Then in January of 1909, a rash of sightings over the course of a week caused a panic throughout the region, not just in New Jersey but in Pennsylvania, Delaware, and Maryland. Up to that point the creature had been called the Leeds Devil, but now it was the Jersey Devil. Schools closed; adults stayed home from work. Posses formed to hunt the beast down. Then, as suddenly as it appeared, it vanished, and the panic died down. But its legend endured.
The Devil doesn’t appear to have done anything too terrible despite the panic, except for allegedly attacking a trolley. There had been tales of attacks on livestock back in the 1800s, and there was the question of whether it murdered its family shortly after its birth, but for the most part it was just a scary thing to come across in the pine woods at night.
Thirty years after the week of terror, the state of New Jersey named the Devil its state demon. It’s been sighted off and on before and since. Belief in it is as strong as belief in, say, Bigfoot.
So what is it? Folklore and folk legend have created and fed its story, but people are seeing something out among the pines. One theory is that it’s a sandhill crane blown out of its usual habitat. These birds are big, grey, and have a somewhat prehistoric look, and their cry is a “loud, rolling, trumpeting sound.”
Or it could be based on actual history, twisted and mythologized into a mythical beast. According to this theory, in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries a Quaker named Daniel Leeds published almanacs so full of esoterical and alchemical extremism that the community cast him out. He retaliated by becoming a rabid anti-Quaker. He was blasted for his beliefs, called a pagan and accused of doing the Devil’s bidding. His son and successor, Titan, carried on in the same vein.
It was Titan who set the family crest on the masthead of the almanac. Prominent on the crest is a heraldic beast, a wyvern: a dragonlike creature, bipedal, with wings and a forked tail. Add a set of antlers and you have something pretty close to the Jersey Devil.
Whatever it is, it’s still out there. People are still telling stories about it, and still claiming to have seen it. New Jersey takes pride in it. After all, what other state can boast its own state demon?
