August 20, 2024 • 50 mins
Welcome to Haunts and Legends! Hosts Ray and Ciara delve into the enigmatic legend of the Jersey Devil. From its historical roots involving Daniel and Titan Leeds' feud with Benjamin Franklin, to its modern-day sightings, they explore the rich tapestry of stories and theories surrounding this notorious cryptid.
Discover how the Jersey Devil transitioned from a local legend to a creature of widespread fear, causing mass panic in early 20th-century Philadelphia. With guest shoutouts and engaging banter, this episode promises a deep dive into one of New Jersey's most infamous mysteries.
Join us as we dissect historical accounts, reported sightings, and even humorous anecdotes about the Jersey Devil's supposed antics. Whether you're a skeptic or a believer, this episode will leave you questioning the line between myth and reality.
Tune in for a spooky, informative, and entertaining exploration of the Jersey Devil on Haunts and Legends!
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Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
Music.
(01:59):
With the paranormal unite A party like never before Under the moon's airy light
The vibe is dark, the air is cold Spirits taking flight Get haunted in Ghost
Magazine Leading the fright,
Ghosts and ghouls dancing hand in hand Lost souls roaming the haunted land On
the battleship New Jersey We gather with glitty horror A paranormal.
(02:21):
Music.
A sight to see Oh, the rain I'm Ray.
And I'm Ciara. Spider went on the ground.
(02:47):
And this is Haunts and Legends.
What is up, everyone? Welcome. Welcome to Haunts and Legends.
If you didn't see that intro, let me talk about it real quick.
So I have a really good friend. His name is Dominic from Next of Kin.
If you haven't heard of him, well, that's a shame because you should.
(03:11):
We love him so much. He was so gracious to make that intro for us.
And we are absolutely obsessed.
So look forward to seeing that every week from now on. Because again, I'm obsessed.
Now, if you're new here, I'm Ciara. And I'm Ray. And again, we're Haunts and Legends.
(03:32):
So welcome in, everybody. Today's topic is interesting.
The Jersey Devil. Most people have heard of it. But how much of it do you really know?
Perhaps by the end of this episode, you're going to know more than you did right now.
Now, we'll get to the comments. Say hi to all our friends and family that are
(03:55):
tuning in to see our beautiful faces.
And Ray. Just kidding.
We got Icy in the house. Hello, Icy. Hey.
We have my mama. Hi, mom. We got Sir Damien of Scotland. Hello, hello.
(04:17):
Amber popping in with a little ghosty. Hi.
We got Lexi, my little sis. Hello. We got little miss staying up past her bedtime, Miss Stephanie. Hi.
We got Andrew. Hello.
Hello, Mr. Thomas. oh look we got joe b this is dominic's dad also a really
(04:44):
cool dude we love him hi julie,
right on right on the money he really did love love this kid oh we got jake
hi jake the holy holy holy shrine in person i can't say that i know what that
is so send me links No clue.
(05:09):
But once again, hello. We are here to talk about the Jersey Devil.
Bray, what do you know about the Jersey Devil? I know that it's like an hour
away from me and I want to go find it.
And how many acres is this area? It is the Jersey Pine Barrens and it is 1.1 million acres.
(05:31):
So that's a lot of land.
Do you think that you'd have a chance of finding it?
No. That's a lot of acres.
I go hunting on maybe 60 acres and I just can't cover every bit of that in a day. Fair. Fair.
(05:54):
That's that is a very wide area. Very wide area. It covers a huge part of Jersey.
You probably pull a quick picture of it. of it yeah listen
damien we already talked about you being bait for the jersey devil okay you've
upgraded from bigfoot you're now at the jersey devil stage i'm just gonna be
(06:18):
the one to hold the camera so we
have an actual still video of some of the cryptid somewhere in this world.
Again i say this almost every almost every like cryptid episode
like hold the camera steady i don't care how scared
you are hold the camera steady right and
if you're holding the camera while you're gonna eat
in by bigfoot then hopefully you have like a cloud drive
(06:41):
so i can pull that video that's all i'm saying look that's
insane it covers almost the whole southern part of jersey it's wild that's again
that's a lot of area right like from here to here,
(07:01):
bottom to top, I don't know, hour and a half,
drive if you went straight through.
So, walking there would be pretty terrible. I wouldn't be walking.
There's no way in hell I would rent like an ATV or something. I ain't walking.
(07:22):
It is a small state, but it's a pretty big area.
Coming from the man who can drive from the top to the bottom of scotland in
like seven hours we can't even you can barely you can drive from western new
york to delaware in seven hours two and a half i said western new york oh.
(07:49):
But anyways jersey devil right so to start off by a little description right
the jersey devil is described like a kangaroo-like creature with the face of
a horse, the head of a dog,
bat-like wings, with horns and a tail.
That's a whole lot of stuff. A whole lot of stuff.
(08:12):
Now, can you imagine walking down the street one day and this thing comes running at you?
At that point, I would probably just lay on the ground and play dead.
And just let nature take its course.
I would let nature take its course.
In 1938, it was designated as the country's only state demon.
(08:34):
I didn't know that states had demons. It's like a state bird.
But Jersey's got a state demon. Of all places.
Of all places. The first published writing of the Jersey Devil was in an 1860s
article written by a traveling author who met a woman in the Pine Barrens.
(08:58):
And she told him of a story of the Leeds Devil. And as she's telling him this
story, she was like, wait a minute.
Sorry, I can't tell you anymore. She knew she was saying too much,
so she just dropped it and just walked away.
Way now the story
of the jersey devil has been
(09:18):
around for 250 years and it
said that he this devil is said to prowl through the marshes of southern jersey
and come out every once in a while when he wants to cause chaos on cities and
towns and people around which i get i often like to choose chaos too so like
i can resonate with that maybe we could be friends.
(09:41):
Part of the things that he likes to do i feel like this is almost like a dating
profile for the jersey devil so if anybody wants to hook up with the jersey devil let me know,
we'll put you in contact aka you're gonna be bait so he enjoys raiding chicken
coops and farms destroying crops and killing animals.
(10:02):
He's been seen and felt by many across 50 different towns and he just likes,
again, to cause chaos among the residents of these places.
So if you want to hook up with the Jersey Devil, call me. I'll set up an arrangement.
(10:23):
I'm too funny. So when people think of the Jersey Devil, they think of the most popular story, right?
And that is, there's a woman called Mother Leeds.
And she was a resident of Estillville, Jersey.
Jersey she was absolutely up in arms upset frantic when she found out she was having 13 a 13 child,
(10:48):
13th child now mind you side note
right do you want to know why this woman had 13 kids because i can i can just
imagine in today's day and age having 13 kids and i would probably sign myself
up for the next mental institutions like bed you're like i'm gone like i need
a break but Did you want to lie that she had 13 kids? What's that?
(11:11):
I'm glad you asked. So her late husband, before he passed, they had one child together. One.
Before he passed, he wrote out
a will. And in that will, he had 12 other children's names in that will.
Will so this woman trying to honor her late husband's wishes was like well i
(11:37):
gotta have 12 more kids just to you know appease my dead husband if that was
me be like sorry bro oh absolutely not,
love does not span after death sorry this is where i draw the line but 13 kids
13 now back in this Back in this day, we're talking 1730s, right?
(12:01):
Having a plethora of children wasn't uncommon.
Right. But still, 13?
13? All because your dead husband wrote it on a piece of paper? Right.
Make it make sense anyways back to
back to mother leads when she found
(12:22):
out that she was having another child she cried
out and i quote let it be the devil the
way the story goes is that when the child arrived it was a baby devil the creature
gave a screech unfolded its wings and flew up the chimney and up gone never
to be seen again in another entry it says it was a quaker woman,
(12:48):
she gave birth to the the devil child in the middle of a thunderstorm said the
room flickered with candlelight the wind howled some believed her to be a witch a sorceress.
Some say that the child is born deformed some say
that she cursed the child because of her because of
her dire like oh my
(13:10):
god it's another kid when later
on like after she cursed the child the child
developed an elongated body winged shoulders
and a large horse-like head cloven feet
and a thick tail and apparently it was confined until it escaped and then it
(13:31):
became the devil so you have two different two different popular stories there's
one story saying that she gave birth to the devil himself and there's the other
story saying that she cursed the child,
with her witchy abilities and over time don't know how much time it just morphed
into this thing and then escaped can you imagine giving birth to a devil baby,
(13:59):
I mean, I feel like that's not my mom's group or something, you know, a weekly mom's group.
Hey, you know, you're there and you're talking like, oh, yeah,
little Johnny, you know, he pooped and smeared poop all over the wall or a little Susie.
She she took my apple pie off the counter and shattered on the floor or whatever.
(14:19):
And then, you know, you come to mother leads. Yeah, my son's the devil.
Like that's i can't imagine
now that's that's what everybody believes about
that's the story that people believe in right they
believe that the child was born the child was cursed that's where
(14:40):
the jersey devil came from and that's what i thought too until i started digging
more into it and I came across a very familiar name that potentially could have
some backing to where the story came from, right?
Because all stories come from somewhere, right?
(15:01):
So we're going to go back in time a little bit to the late 1600s.
And we are going to talk about a fellow by the name of
daniel leads now daniel was a
quaker he settled in what is
what was then west jersey in the community of what is now burlington now it's
(15:21):
funny that burlington came up because we've been to burlington to investigate
now daniel he wanted he wanted more to his life like he was a farmer he He crafted barrels and sold it,
but he wanted something more of just day-to-day things.
He wanted more, which is natural for all of us, right? Totally.
(15:48):
I just want to put this up here. Can you imagine talking about first steps?
She's like, my boy came out of the womb and flew up the chimney. Yeah.
Oh okay that made me chuckle anyways he wanted more for himself right which in ways we all do,
so daniel had this idea well he wanted he wanted his goal was to be a man of
(16:11):
position and somebody that was socially important right so famous technically
so he had this idea that his way
to contribute to his society, to his community,
his Quaker community, was by
bringing forth his ideas and beliefs and his backing of science to Jersey.
(16:37):
So in 1687, Daniel began publishing an almanac.
When he published this almanac, a lot of people were not happy with him.
You got to think, The Quakers are very religious, very like,
stick to what you know, don't stray away, do as you're supposed to.
Now, the Quaker elders, the people that are in charge, felt that they were not
(17:04):
happy with the beliefs that he had portrayed in his almanac.
So they felt that it was unchristian. It was very occult.
So dare you do something different? Dare you believe something different from somebody.
So what do the elders do? They go and they find all of the published copies
of this almanac and they round them all up and they set them on fire because
(17:29):
they don't want that in their community.
Now there is one copy that of his almanac that is original that still exists.
And that is in London at the British library, which so it's a bit of a hike
for us why is it all the way in London though if it was written in the US.
(17:55):
I tried. I tried to find that answer. I couldn't find it. But it's in London, of all places.
So because of Daniel seeking out or trying to tell people of his beliefs,
you know, trying to get a following, whatever, he had developed a very bad reputation
with his friends and his family,
(18:16):
his community, everything.
Very bad reputation.
They started calling him evil. They called
him the devil and they even went
to a point and called him satan's harbinger harbinger so
because he's not he's this man is
just has a different way of thinking from every from everybody else and he's
(18:38):
trying to verbalize that that thinking he has but he's the devil he's the devil
now so being that his entire community was upset with him.
He took a little bit of a break, didn't publish another almanac.
He came to a realization. He's like, well, maybe my almanac wasn't clear enough
(19:02):
of what I was trying to get across.
Maybe it just wasn't enough. Maybe I need to do it in a better way.
So over the course of two years, Daniel decides to write a book called The Temple of Wisdom.
Thinking that now they're going to get it. Now they're going to understand where
I'm coming from. Like, they're going to be so happy.
My boy Daniel was let down again. The Quaker elders got mad.
(19:28):
Even madder than the first time. Even more mad than the first time.
So they went they gathered up
all the published books again set them
on fire and basically dragged
Daniel to I'm assuming what was like a meeting hall whatever and demanded he
apologize for his behavior like demanded like under God you apologize for acting
(19:52):
the way that you do and And my boy Daniel was like, nah, bro,
like, I'm good. So he left the Quakers.
Now, when he left the Quakers, Daniel left with a vengeance.
He couldn't understand why they were treating him this way.
(20:13):
They couldn't understand why they wouldn't just open their minds a little bit
to believe something other than what they already what they were taught to believe.
Yeah. So he went on and started a new almanac and was basically being a thorn
in the side of the Quakers.
Completely, like, hey, I'm right here. Not going to let you go.
(20:38):
He went on to write about the crimes that they commit, how much they lie,
steal, cheat, whatever else.
So in this almanac that he made again, he wanted to tell people about astrology
and how you could use it to become a better Christian, which noble of you, it's noble.
(21:01):
So in the 1710s, Daniel retires, right?
He's older now. He ain't got time for all this crap anymore. more.
So he goes and he gives the almanac and everything over to his son, Titus.
Now, Titus was living his best life, minding his own business.
(21:23):
And then one day, one day, our boy, Benjamin Franklin, decides to roll up to Philly.
And when Benjamin rolls up to Philly, he's like, hmm.
A publisher. He's like, hmm, I'm going to write an almanac.
But back then he knew, okay, that Leeds almanac, that's number one right now.
(21:47):
That's the number one right now. I don't want them to be number one. I want to be number one.
So Ben goes and he's thinking, how can I be number one? How can I surpass this?
So what better way to draw attention than to add in some controversy topics into there, right?
(22:07):
So our boy Benjamin created chaos.
Chaos. So Ben
Franklin decides to go and publish an almanac and states
within that almanac that through
astrological research search that titan is going titan leads is going to die
(22:31):
in 1736 it's like this hey i'm all knowing this is what i'm telling you he's
gonna die he is going to die so when titan sees this he is furious,
and mind you mind you my boy my boy
ben's he's smart right he's a
smart little cookie he went and he
(22:53):
published all of this under a false name richard richard
something but again he didn't put it with publishing under his his name he did
it under richard now what's short for richard what a dick what a dick and i'm
just gonna pause real quick and just check out comments real quick.
(23:19):
Damien said he could go steal the book. How interesting. I do not condone that for legal purposes.
Oh, Trevor's here. Hi, Trevor. Hey, Trevor. Josh says he can't wait to have us on.
So, if you guys didn't see our post, we will be live with Josh on Saturday at 8 o'clock.
(23:43):
The Animal Paranormal Podcast. We will be there.
8 or 9? 8.
Gotta get my time right. You better be there.
I'll be there so yeah check
it out it's gonna be a fun time it's probably just gonna be just
a bunch of bs and it's gonna
(24:05):
be a great time going with the flow but anyways
back to back to my boy my boy
ben so like i said he
goes and he says hey and 1736
this guy this guy titan he
gonna die guy he gonna be a goner now titan
is like he sees this and
(24:28):
he's like yo bro what the hell like who the
hell is this richard guy like what so he
writes back saying like i don't know who you are but like cut
the crap you're a liar you're a fake blah blah blah
so they went back and forth right
now ben franklin he
was in it for the long run he did
(24:51):
not falter he did he did not
fade he just kept going and kept going and kept going now when the date in 19
and 1736 came around the date that supposedly titan was going to die right when
that that version of the almanac came out.
(25:13):
Franklin included his obituary titan's obituary
when he was very much still alive very much
still alive can you just like can you just like imagine like
you're just at work one day and someone comes up to you and be like hey bro
i thought you were dead i'm like what do you mean i'm dead well look at this
look at this omelette this paper look at it it says you're dead i would be i
(25:36):
would probably in 2024 like i would laugh and be like no i'm gonna play damage control but back then,
crazy so when titan found out that he is supposedly dead because of this obituary.
Damien said sorry history would have been different i'd kill ben i think a lot
(26:02):
of people back in the day would but here's the thing is that he they knew him as Richard.
They didn't know it was Benjamin.
So you got to think back in the day, there was a big beef between Benjamin Franklin
and Titan Leeds. Real big beef.
So Titan goes and messages him back, right?
(26:25):
Goes and writes back and was like, hey, stop it. It's not true.
Completely off the wall, you're an asshole, right? and.
Ben was just like, this is ADHD brain.
So when he wrote back, Ben was like, listen, I was friends with Titan. We were buddies.
(26:51):
He wouldn't talk to me like that. He's like, this must be an imposter or the
ghost of Titan because this isn't the real Titan.
He kept going and going and going. in
right now publicly in
these almanacs ben referred to
titan as the devil right so
(27:13):
now you have it put in it so he's working with the devil if he's still like
transcribing like through the almanac whatever now you have the father daniel
who's referred to as the devil because of him leaving the quakers and having
a different form of belief than they did now you have titan who.
(27:33):
Didn't take a bad joke.
And now he's a devil, right?
Eventually, the Leeds almanac fades out.
And what Ben Franklin wanted to do, he wanted to be the number one dog. He wanted to be the best.
So he got what he wanted. After the Leeds almanac faded out,
(27:58):
not a lot of people heard of Titan anymore.
He died, I think, two years after this all happened between him and Ben. He died in 1738.
So by the 1830s and 40s, people knew of the Jersey Devil, but they didn't know
it as in relation to Daniel and Titan Leeds.
(28:19):
They knew it as it was this monster, right?
Now, what I will say about that is...
Story we hear comes from somewhere right now
many generations ago something
could happen right and by the time it
gets down to me that story is not going to be the same story as it was when
(28:43):
it was first told there's going to be parts missing there's going to be parts
that have been put into it it's not going to be the original story it's like
a game of telephone so and i think we know
we partly i'm not saying that the jersey devil isn't real it's not what i'm
saying i'm saying by the facts and by the history that there is out there is
(29:05):
that it is a possibility that the jersey devil is something that we all just
believe is out there because a lot of people don't know,
the the beef between the leads and benjamin franklin and the weight in the way
wait, Quakers, I almost said wankers, wrong people.
(29:29):
But after the 1830s and 40s, that's when the Jersey Devil story like really
started like spiraling, right?
Another interesting fact is in 1728,
Titan decided to include the Leeds
family crest on the front cover of
the almanac what is interesting about that is
(29:51):
the family crest is depicted as a wyvern which
is a bat-winged dragon-like legendary creature
that stands upright on two clawed feet
and it
was also in when the whole jersey
devil story came out it's also like
the thing that they had back then to be like oh it kind of looked like that.
(30:14):
Kind of thing like that's what it looked like so again you already have a family
that's being accused of being the devil and now their their family crest is
apparently a picture of the devil,
kind of crazy so that's that's that's the the leads jeff people want to say
(30:36):
jefferson the leads Leeds and Franklin, like, story.
So it started, like, the whole Leeds devil, Jersey devil, it started way back when.
It just didn't really take off until the 1800s.
After 1909 so
1909 there was a whole lot of things go happen and there was
a whole bunch of sightings everything else the there
(31:00):
was a bunch of science professors from philadelphia and
from the smithsonian that thought
the devil to be a prehistoric creature from the
jurassic period that had possibly survived in near nearby
limestone caves however the
academy of natural sciences in philly could not
(31:21):
locate a record of a living or dead
species that even closely resembled
the jersey devil yeah like nothing
which again it's not saying that it's not real it's
just saying that they don't have it like how much of the ocean do
we that is unexplored that we don't know
about you know right and not
(31:44):
all fossils survive either i mean not everything thing
dies and becomes a fossil right so
kind of going back to the
dating profile of the jersey devil right apparently now
some of these i'm gonna tell you are gonna be a little funny however i'm just
(32:05):
giving you the information that i have received but in 1870 he was seen hanging
out at sea with a mermaid. He, as in the Jersey Devil.
Jersey Devil hanging out with a mermaid.
He was also said to have had a ham and egg breakfast with Republican Judge French.
(32:28):
Can you imagine just sitting at a cafe? You are a man of stature. You are a judge.
And you're sitting there with the Jersey devil sipping on a cup of coffee.
Like, what? Hi, Candy. Hi, Candy.
Oh, is it natural to just hang out with mermaids on a beach?
Is that like a natural thing?
(32:52):
So, again, like I said, he was there seeing a mermaid, eating breakfast.
Commodore Stephen Decatur was a naval hero in the early 19th century.
The story goes that he was visiting the hanover mill works to inspect the cannonballs
that were being forged and while he was there he visited a firing range and
(33:15):
saw a flying creature flapping its wings he fired a cannonball directly upon
it and it had no effect and the creature flew away,
okay the fact that it could i can't imagine if if i was a jersey devil i don't think i'd be
standing in one spot for very long right i had
to be flying around so you're telling me that this jersey this devil stood there
(33:36):
so you could load the cannon aim the cannon and then fire the cannon unless
he knows he can't die maybe hi courtney hey courtney at least the jersey devil
likes coffee there was another sighting by joseph bonaparte bonaparte who was
(33:58):
the brother of napoleon bonaparte and former king of spain he has said to be
the he has said to have seen the devil in bordentown new jersey while he was
game hunting in the nearby woods.
No here's another funny one everybody knows captain kid except for ray apparently
i still I still don't understand how you like not know who Captain Kidd is.
(34:21):
I don't have a lot of research into pirates.
I mean, I don't know. I don't, I don't know any facts about the man,
but I know he was a pirate.
You were like, I don't know. I've never heard of Captain Kidd. I know.
I know two, two pirates. I know Blackbeard and Jack Sparrow. Jack Sparrow.
(34:42):
I feel like I give you homework almost every episode. See, look.
Look who I'm not the only one.
Listen, Jess, do some homework. But anyways, captain kid was said to have buried
treasure and bargain that bay. Okay.
(35:02):
Legend has it that he beheaded one of his men to guard forever over his buried treasure.
So, which I guess, I guess makes sense to be like, hey, bro,
thanks so much for helping me carry all this treasure from this boat.
Like, I know it was heavy. You worked so hard. Done. Thanks.
Just so he can eternally as a ghost sit there. and if that
(35:25):
if I was in that position and I died because of
that and I became a ghost I would have been
like no fam I ain't staying with this treasure like I'm I'm gonna go sink your
ship next time you try to pull something
like this if Damien if I remember correctly I don't think it was.
(35:49):
I do not think it was. But I could probably be wrong. Because information is hard.
So, going back to Captain Kidd, he kills this guy. The guy is forever had to guard the treasure.
People have claimed to see a
(36:10):
headless pirate and the Jersey Devil walking
a nice stroll in
the the evening down along the
atlantic and nearby marshlands so the
sightings of the jersey devil have covered a lot
of places from bridgeton to haddonfield
(36:32):
in 1859 to the new york border
in 1899 from gloucester gloucester gloucester from there to trenton in 1909
until that time the the story of the jersey devil was told word of mouth right.
(36:55):
A published police and newspaper accounts during 1909 take the story of the
jersey devil being like just a legend just like you know a kind of made-up thing
to being like oh crap like this is a thing,
and it appeared in across many different newspapers now
(37:16):
in Pennsylvania outside
of Philly right 1909 this was in January of 1909 there were a like the whole
the whole place shut down like kids didn't go to school like curfews like the
whole place shut down because Because of sightings of the Jersey Devil. So...
(37:41):
The 16th and the 23rd. So for about a week, like the entirety of Philadelphia, like shut down, right?
It is said that a police officer shot at the creature in the early morning hours
of January 17th before it flew off.
Now, when I dug deeper into this, I came across an article.
(38:05):
It was on some random web page so
take it as you will but it said
along the lines of that the police officer was walking downtown philadelphia
patrolling whatever and he heard a scream of
a woman coming from a nearby alleyway so when he
went to investigate this alleyway he came
(38:26):
upon this woman and a
very large black creature with wings like
over top of her like getting ready to attack her kind of thing so he fired shots
off at this thing grabbed the woman and they start running right and as this
guy's running he goes and he turns behind him to look back to see this thing
(38:49):
flying up into the trees.
And it is said that when he saw this, he said aloud, had I really just saw,
he said, did I really just see the devil himself? Scared the crap out of him.
Crap crazy so when do you think the last time that anybody saw the jersey devil was right,
(39:14):
probably within the last couple years 2020 february
10th 2020 was the
last reported sighting that's four years ago it happened in pennsylvania where
in pennsylvania i wasn't able to find that information but in pennsylvania there
was a railroad conductor by the name of william William Callahan said that he
(39:36):
saw it flying over a paper mill.
He said that it was a creature that had a large head, a long neck, and big wings.
And he said it was flying to the east, likely returning to New Jersey.
With all that land and a pine barren, I don't understand why.
(39:57):
Why would he be going to PA? Why is it traveling around that far?
I mean, if you think about it, if you have wings, right, and if you're all cooped
up and not being able to fly around, like, your wings are going to go all crampy.
Like, you got to spread them out, right?
You have 1.1 million acres with plenty of food to eat.
(40:18):
What if he was just going on a joint ride? Maybe.
And if this thing is actually real, right?
What if he already, what if he already, look, because he can fly,
what if he already explored all those acres?
What if he's like, eh, I need to change the scenery.
(40:39):
250 years, I hope you got a chance to explore all those acres.
I mean, that's the thing. If the Jersey is real, like how long does it live? Right.
One of them you can't reproduce unless it reproduces.
With itself right possible or
maybe it's immortal maybe damien said
reproduction how what if
(41:03):
how sir damien let's let's think
about this too what is because it came if
it was birthed by a human maybe it can reproduce with
humans what if it's like taken female like random
people off the side of the road and just like you
have a host a female host right and you
go and being the
(41:27):
big bad demon boy you are you go
do what you gotta do and when the devil baby's born
she i would assume you know
goes back home with a lot of trauma and
a high therapy bill or she dies yeah
the thing that i thought of is
(41:47):
not appropriate for this podcast so i'm
going to refrain from saying that i'm gonna
leave that one alone maybe breeds
with animals artificial insemination baby devils eats
its way out maybe but i
will say something that somebody brought
(42:08):
to my attention today when i was talking about the jersey
devil is one other
trait that the that is said that the jersey devil has.
Is red eyes what is another cryptid that's large black with glowing red eyes.
Mothman Mothman and West Virginia and New Jersey really aren't that far apart.
(42:36):
Mothman was seen, had a sighting in Chicago of all places.
Yeah, that's pretty far from West Virginia. Yeah, but there was a sighting there. Right.
So who is to say that the Jersey Devil is just the Mothman or a different Mothman?
(42:59):
Could be. A lot of things are possible.
But I would like to know, like I said, the original story with Daniel Leeds,
Titan Leeds, and Ben Franklin, right?
Is the story of the Jersey Devil just something that was started back in the
(43:22):
day because you wanted to have the better newspaper, the better almanac?
Was it just twisted in ways throughout history to then be left with a fear to cause mass panic?
Maybe. But if that's the case, why in 1909 did this part of the country go crazy? Why did it shut down?
(43:48):
If it wasn't the Jersey Devil attacking, who was attacking?
Do we run into another scenario where if you have a large group of people that
believe in something so hard and so wholeheartedly, can we believe it into existence?
I don't know. It's possible. I think it's possible for all those beliefs to
(44:11):
be manifested in a reality.
But if we have the power to... Go ahead. Especially when it's talked about so much. Mm-hmm.
It if we have the power to create a cryptid right to believe in something so
wholeheartedly that it's created out of nothing can you imagine all the good shit we could do.
(44:36):
But no let us just believe in a human eating devil that flies around and torments us.
We we won't believe in you know end
world world hunger or anything like crazy that's
that's too crazy yeah but i don't know i i don't know i don't know if i believe
(44:58):
in the jersey devil but again i don't not believe in it i feel like again it
would have to be something that i would have to see with my own eyes well there's
another theory that it could possibly be.
The great horned owl really interesting and
if they're seeing the jersey devil at night well what is
(45:20):
a nocturnal animal an owl makes sense
and apparently they are the biggest owls
in this area hmm what's the you would take away the elongated head the elongated
neck right but if it's dark i mean you might see a little bit of it i mean i
(45:43):
go hunting in the morning it looks like
you see a buck light comes out and all of a sudden it's just tree branches true
true i will say in some of the sightings that people saw they claimed like when
they went out doors and looked,
like there was hoof prints yeah which i guess would line up with the horse but
(46:05):
right where's the hoof prints at though is it like on the ground yeah now if
there was hoof prints on a roof you know like it snowed and all of a sudden
there's hoof prints on the roof.
Then i'd be a believer you would believe that that's hoof prints but,
you believe that was a jersey devil itself i don't know i hope nobody's on my
(46:27):
roof in the middle of nowhere i would hope not i would hope not but that is about it that i have,
i don't have any other theories that i've come across.
Mom said sansa rudolph oh the problem with santa is if you have something on
(46:52):
your roof you're only going to see one set of prints rather than all eight reindeer
you want to know who else has hooves what,
Krampus. Really? Have you not seen the movie? He got hoes. No, I haven't seen it.
There's more stuff to add to the list. Add it to the homework list. I at least know who he is.
(47:16):
At least. You're going to learn all about him come December 24th. That's right.
See, Melissa knows. More homework for Ray.
She already gives me enough homework sending me broken meters.
Well, maybe you should fix them first in the first place.
But that is the end. Thank you all, as always, for coming and hanging out with
(47:42):
us on your Tuesday evening.
We would not be here without you guys. We would spend a lot of time talking
to ourselves, which Ray does already. So it's nothing out of the norm.
But tune in with us next week. Same time, same place, exactly where you found us.
(48:03):
Now, next week, we have a few special guests coming along to the podcast.
If you guys are not familiar with the Staticom project, you are not going to
want to miss this. Ray and I have seen the staticom in person, in action.
(48:27):
And believe me when I say I truly believe that this is the next big thing in
the paranormal field. Like.
Goodbye, SB7s. Goodbye, Ovilus.
Goodbye, any of these talking apps or portal boxes, whatever.
(48:50):
I truly, truly love this device.
I have seen what this thing does, and I'm a fan. I need one.
Yeah, definitely. definitely you be here tuesday 7 p.m sir damien and you listen
(49:11):
to the podcast and you let me know this is actually one that damien's gonna
like spitfire questions boom there will be video,
of some of the stuff they caught yes and correction little change in plans,
it's going to be at 9 o'clock next Tuesday.
(49:34):
My gosh 9 o'clock on Tuesday we will be live we're pushing it back we have some,
there's four guests total coming on, two of them are on time zone issues so
9 o'clock is going to be when we air so it's going to be a little bit different
(49:56):
but we do hope to see you guys there,
Once again, thank you so much for coming out and hanging out with us and have a wonderful week.
Have a great week, guys. Stay spooky. Yes.
Wait, wait, don't end it.
The Jersey Devil and Mothman are in a love triangle with the Pukwudgies.
(50:23):
All right, I'm done. Thank you, Russ. Thank you for that. Coming in at the last moment.
We'll catch you guys later see you guys on saturday everybody.
Music.
(01:59):
With the paranormal unite A party like never before Under the moon's airy light
The vibe is dark, the air is cold Spirits taking flight Get haunted in Ghost
Magazine Leading the fright,
Ghosts and ghouls dancing hand in hand Lost souls roaming the haunted land On
the battleship New Jersey We gather with glitty horror A paranormal.
(02:21):
Music.
A sight to see Oh, the rain I'm Ray.
And I'm Ciara. Spider went on the ground.
(02:47):
And this is Haunts and Legends.
What is up, everyone? Welcome. Welcome to Haunts and Legends.
If you didn't see that intro, let me talk about it real quick.
So I have a really good friend. His name is Dominic from Next of Kin.
If you haven't heard of him, well, that's a shame because you should.
(03:11):
We love him so much. He was so gracious to make that intro for us.
And we are absolutely obsessed.
So look forward to seeing that every week from now on. Because again, I'm obsessed.
Now, if you're new here, I'm Ciara. And I'm Ray. And again, we're Haunts and Legends.
(03:32):
So welcome in, everybody. Today's topic is interesting.
The Jersey Devil. Most people have heard of it. But how much of it do you really know?
Perhaps by the end of this episode, you're going to know more than you did right now.
Now, we'll get to the comments. Say hi to all our friends and family that are
(03:55):
tuning in to see our beautiful faces.
And Ray. Just kidding.
We got Icy in the house. Hello, Icy. Hey.
We have my mama. Hi, mom. We got Sir Damien of Scotland. Hello, hello.
(04:17):
Amber popping in with a little ghosty. Hi.
We got Lexi, my little sis. Hello. We got little miss staying up past her bedtime, Miss Stephanie. Hi.
We got Andrew. Hello.
Hello, Mr. Thomas. oh look we got joe b this is dominic's dad also a really
(04:44):
cool dude we love him hi julie,
right on right on the money he really did love love this kid oh we got jake
hi jake the holy holy holy shrine in person i can't say that i know what that
is so send me links No clue.
(05:09):
But once again, hello. We are here to talk about the Jersey Devil.
Bray, what do you know about the Jersey Devil? I know that it's like an hour
away from me and I want to go find it.
And how many acres is this area? It is the Jersey Pine Barrens and it is 1.1 million acres.
(05:31):
So that's a lot of land.
Do you think that you'd have a chance of finding it?
No. That's a lot of acres.
I go hunting on maybe 60 acres and I just can't cover every bit of that in a day. Fair. Fair.
(05:54):
That's that is a very wide area. Very wide area. It covers a huge part of Jersey.
You probably pull a quick picture of it. of it yeah listen
damien we already talked about you being bait for the jersey devil okay you've
upgraded from bigfoot you're now at the jersey devil stage i'm just gonna be
(06:18):
the one to hold the camera so we
have an actual still video of some of the cryptid somewhere in this world.
Again i say this almost every almost every like cryptid episode
like hold the camera steady i don't care how scared
you are hold the camera steady right and
if you're holding the camera while you're gonna eat
in by bigfoot then hopefully you have like a cloud drive
(06:41):
so i can pull that video that's all i'm saying look that's
insane it covers almost the whole southern part of jersey it's wild that's again
that's a lot of area right like from here to here,
(07:01):
bottom to top, I don't know, hour and a half,
drive if you went straight through.
So, walking there would be pretty terrible. I wouldn't be walking.
There's no way in hell I would rent like an ATV or something. I ain't walking.
(07:22):
It is a small state, but it's a pretty big area.
Coming from the man who can drive from the top to the bottom of scotland in
like seven hours we can't even you can barely you can drive from western new
york to delaware in seven hours two and a half i said western new york oh.
(07:49):
But anyways jersey devil right so to start off by a little description right
the jersey devil is described like a kangaroo-like creature with the face of
a horse, the head of a dog,
bat-like wings, with horns and a tail.
That's a whole lot of stuff. A whole lot of stuff.
(08:12):
Now, can you imagine walking down the street one day and this thing comes running at you?
At that point, I would probably just lay on the ground and play dead.
And just let nature take its course.
I would let nature take its course.
In 1938, it was designated as the country's only state demon.
(08:34):
I didn't know that states had demons. It's like a state bird.
But Jersey's got a state demon. Of all places.
Of all places. The first published writing of the Jersey Devil was in an 1860s
article written by a traveling author who met a woman in the Pine Barrens.
(08:58):
And she told him of a story of the Leeds Devil. And as she's telling him this
story, she was like, wait a minute.
Sorry, I can't tell you anymore. She knew she was saying too much,
so she just dropped it and just walked away.
Way now the story
of the jersey devil has been
(09:18):
around for 250 years and it
said that he this devil is said to prowl through the marshes of southern jersey
and come out every once in a while when he wants to cause chaos on cities and
towns and people around which i get i often like to choose chaos too so like
i can resonate with that maybe we could be friends.
(09:41):
Part of the things that he likes to do i feel like this is almost like a dating
profile for the jersey devil so if anybody wants to hook up with the jersey devil let me know,
we'll put you in contact aka you're gonna be bait so he enjoys raiding chicken
coops and farms destroying crops and killing animals.
(10:02):
He's been seen and felt by many across 50 different towns and he just likes,
again, to cause chaos among the residents of these places.
So if you want to hook up with the Jersey Devil, call me. I'll set up an arrangement.
(10:23):
I'm too funny. So when people think of the Jersey Devil, they think of the most popular story, right?
And that is, there's a woman called Mother Leeds.
And she was a resident of Estillville, Jersey.
Jersey she was absolutely up in arms upset frantic when she found out she was having 13 a 13 child,
(10:48):
13th child now mind you side note
right do you want to know why this woman had 13 kids because i can i can just
imagine in today's day and age having 13 kids and i would probably sign myself
up for the next mental institutions like bed you're like i'm gone like i need
a break but Did you want to lie that she had 13 kids? What's that?
(11:11):
I'm glad you asked. So her late husband, before he passed, they had one child together. One.
Before he passed, he wrote out
a will. And in that will, he had 12 other children's names in that will.
Will so this woman trying to honor her late husband's wishes was like well i
(11:37):
gotta have 12 more kids just to you know appease my dead husband if that was
me be like sorry bro oh absolutely not,
love does not span after death sorry this is where i draw the line but 13 kids
13 now back in this Back in this day, we're talking 1730s, right?
(12:01):
Having a plethora of children wasn't uncommon.
Right. But still, 13?
13? All because your dead husband wrote it on a piece of paper? Right.
Make it make sense anyways back to
back to mother leads when she found
(12:22):
out that she was having another child she cried
out and i quote let it be the devil the
way the story goes is that when the child arrived it was a baby devil the creature
gave a screech unfolded its wings and flew up the chimney and up gone never
to be seen again in another entry it says it was a quaker woman,
(12:48):
she gave birth to the the devil child in the middle of a thunderstorm said the
room flickered with candlelight the wind howled some believed her to be a witch a sorceress.
Some say that the child is born deformed some say
that she cursed the child because of her because of
her dire like oh my
(13:10):
god it's another kid when later
on like after she cursed the child the child
developed an elongated body winged shoulders
and a large horse-like head cloven feet
and a thick tail and apparently it was confined until it escaped and then it
(13:31):
became the devil so you have two different two different popular stories there's
one story saying that she gave birth to the devil himself and there's the other
story saying that she cursed the child,
with her witchy abilities and over time don't know how much time it just morphed
into this thing and then escaped can you imagine giving birth to a devil baby,
(13:59):
I mean, I feel like that's not my mom's group or something, you know, a weekly mom's group.
Hey, you know, you're there and you're talking like, oh, yeah,
little Johnny, you know, he pooped and smeared poop all over the wall or a little Susie.
She she took my apple pie off the counter and shattered on the floor or whatever.
(14:19):
And then, you know, you come to mother leads. Yeah, my son's the devil.
Like that's i can't imagine
now that's that's what everybody believes about
that's the story that people believe in right they
believe that the child was born the child was cursed that's where
(14:40):
the jersey devil came from and that's what i thought too until i started digging
more into it and I came across a very familiar name that potentially could have
some backing to where the story came from, right?
Because all stories come from somewhere, right?
(15:01):
So we're going to go back in time a little bit to the late 1600s.
And we are going to talk about a fellow by the name of
daniel leads now daniel was a
quaker he settled in what is
what was then west jersey in the community of what is now burlington now it's
(15:21):
funny that burlington came up because we've been to burlington to investigate
now daniel he wanted he wanted more to his life like he was a farmer he He crafted barrels and sold it,
but he wanted something more of just day-to-day things.
He wanted more, which is natural for all of us, right? Totally.
(15:48):
I just want to put this up here. Can you imagine talking about first steps?
She's like, my boy came out of the womb and flew up the chimney. Yeah.
Oh okay that made me chuckle anyways he wanted more for himself right which in ways we all do,
so daniel had this idea well he wanted he wanted his goal was to be a man of
(16:11):
position and somebody that was socially important right so famous technically
so he had this idea that his way
to contribute to his society, to his community,
his Quaker community, was by
bringing forth his ideas and beliefs and his backing of science to Jersey.
(16:37):
So in 1687, Daniel began publishing an almanac.
When he published this almanac, a lot of people were not happy with him.
You got to think, The Quakers are very religious, very like,
stick to what you know, don't stray away, do as you're supposed to.
Now, the Quaker elders, the people that are in charge, felt that they were not
(17:04):
happy with the beliefs that he had portrayed in his almanac.
So they felt that it was unchristian. It was very occult.
So dare you do something different? Dare you believe something different from somebody.
So what do the elders do? They go and they find all of the published copies
of this almanac and they round them all up and they set them on fire because
(17:29):
they don't want that in their community.
Now there is one copy that of his almanac that is original that still exists.
And that is in London at the British library, which so it's a bit of a hike
for us why is it all the way in London though if it was written in the US.
(17:55):
I tried. I tried to find that answer. I couldn't find it. But it's in London, of all places.
So because of Daniel seeking out or trying to tell people of his beliefs,
you know, trying to get a following, whatever, he had developed a very bad reputation
with his friends and his family,
(18:16):
his community, everything.
Very bad reputation.
They started calling him evil. They called
him the devil and they even went
to a point and called him satan's harbinger harbinger so
because he's not he's this man is
just has a different way of thinking from every from everybody else and he's
(18:38):
trying to verbalize that that thinking he has but he's the devil he's the devil
now so being that his entire community was upset with him.
He took a little bit of a break, didn't publish another almanac.
He came to a realization. He's like, well, maybe my almanac wasn't clear enough
(19:02):
of what I was trying to get across.
Maybe it just wasn't enough. Maybe I need to do it in a better way.
So over the course of two years, Daniel decides to write a book called The Temple of Wisdom.
Thinking that now they're going to get it. Now they're going to understand where
I'm coming from. Like, they're going to be so happy.
My boy Daniel was let down again. The Quaker elders got mad.
(19:28):
Even madder than the first time. Even more mad than the first time.
So they went they gathered up
all the published books again set them
on fire and basically dragged
Daniel to I'm assuming what was like a meeting hall whatever and demanded he
apologize for his behavior like demanded like under God you apologize for acting
(19:52):
the way that you do and And my boy Daniel was like, nah, bro,
like, I'm good. So he left the Quakers.
Now, when he left the Quakers, Daniel left with a vengeance.
He couldn't understand why they were treating him this way.
(20:13):
They couldn't understand why they wouldn't just open their minds a little bit
to believe something other than what they already what they were taught to believe.
Yeah. So he went on and started a new almanac and was basically being a thorn
in the side of the Quakers.
Completely, like, hey, I'm right here. Not going to let you go.
(20:38):
He went on to write about the crimes that they commit, how much they lie,
steal, cheat, whatever else.
So in this almanac that he made again, he wanted to tell people about astrology
and how you could use it to become a better Christian, which noble of you, it's noble.
(21:01):
So in the 1710s, Daniel retires, right?
He's older now. He ain't got time for all this crap anymore. more.
So he goes and he gives the almanac and everything over to his son, Titus.
Now, Titus was living his best life, minding his own business.
(21:23):
And then one day, one day, our boy, Benjamin Franklin, decides to roll up to Philly.
And when Benjamin rolls up to Philly, he's like, hmm.
A publisher. He's like, hmm, I'm going to write an almanac.
But back then he knew, okay, that Leeds almanac, that's number one right now.
(21:47):
That's the number one right now. I don't want them to be number one. I want to be number one.
So Ben goes and he's thinking, how can I be number one? How can I surpass this?
So what better way to draw attention than to add in some controversy topics into there, right?
(22:07):
So our boy Benjamin created chaos.
Chaos. So Ben
Franklin decides to go and publish an almanac and states
within that almanac that through
astrological research search that titan is going titan leads is going to die
(22:31):
in 1736 it's like this hey i'm all knowing this is what i'm telling you he's
gonna die he is going to die so when titan sees this he is furious,
and mind you mind you my boy my boy
ben's he's smart right he's a
smart little cookie he went and he
(22:53):
published all of this under a false name richard richard
something but again he didn't put it with publishing under his his name he did
it under richard now what's short for richard what a dick what a dick and i'm
just gonna pause real quick and just check out comments real quick.
(23:19):
Damien said he could go steal the book. How interesting. I do not condone that for legal purposes.
Oh, Trevor's here. Hi, Trevor. Hey, Trevor. Josh says he can't wait to have us on.
So, if you guys didn't see our post, we will be live with Josh on Saturday at 8 o'clock.
(23:43):
The Animal Paranormal Podcast. We will be there.
8 or 9? 8.
Gotta get my time right. You better be there.
I'll be there so yeah check
it out it's gonna be a fun time it's probably just gonna be just
a bunch of bs and it's gonna
(24:05):
be a great time going with the flow but anyways
back to back to my boy my boy
ben so like i said he
goes and he says hey and 1736
this guy this guy titan he
gonna die guy he gonna be a goner now titan
is like he sees this and
(24:28):
he's like yo bro what the hell like who the
hell is this richard guy like what so he
writes back saying like i don't know who you are but like cut
the crap you're a liar you're a fake blah blah blah
so they went back and forth right
now ben franklin he
was in it for the long run he did
(24:51):
not falter he did he did not
fade he just kept going and kept going and kept going now when the date in 19
and 1736 came around the date that supposedly titan was going to die right when
that that version of the almanac came out.
(25:13):
Franklin included his obituary titan's obituary
when he was very much still alive very much
still alive can you just like can you just like imagine like
you're just at work one day and someone comes up to you and be like hey bro
i thought you were dead i'm like what do you mean i'm dead well look at this
look at this omelette this paper look at it it says you're dead i would be i
(25:36):
would probably in 2024 like i would laugh and be like no i'm gonna play damage control but back then,
crazy so when titan found out that he is supposedly dead because of this obituary.
Damien said sorry history would have been different i'd kill ben i think a lot
(26:02):
of people back in the day would but here's the thing is that he they knew him as Richard.
They didn't know it was Benjamin.
So you got to think back in the day, there was a big beef between Benjamin Franklin
and Titan Leeds. Real big beef.
So Titan goes and messages him back, right?
(26:25):
Goes and writes back and was like, hey, stop it. It's not true.
Completely off the wall, you're an asshole, right? and.
Ben was just like, this is ADHD brain.
So when he wrote back, Ben was like, listen, I was friends with Titan. We were buddies.
(26:51):
He wouldn't talk to me like that. He's like, this must be an imposter or the
ghost of Titan because this isn't the real Titan.
He kept going and going and going. in
right now publicly in
these almanacs ben referred to
titan as the devil right so
(27:13):
now you have it put in it so he's working with the devil if he's still like
transcribing like through the almanac whatever now you have the father daniel
who's referred to as the devil because of him leaving the quakers and having
a different form of belief than they did now you have titan who.
(27:33):
Didn't take a bad joke.
And now he's a devil, right?
Eventually, the Leeds almanac fades out.
And what Ben Franklin wanted to do, he wanted to be the number one dog. He wanted to be the best.
So he got what he wanted. After the Leeds almanac faded out,
(27:58):
not a lot of people heard of Titan anymore.
He died, I think, two years after this all happened between him and Ben. He died in 1738.
So by the 1830s and 40s, people knew of the Jersey Devil, but they didn't know
it as in relation to Daniel and Titan Leeds.
(28:19):
They knew it as it was this monster, right?
Now, what I will say about that is...
Story we hear comes from somewhere right now
many generations ago something
could happen right and by the time it
gets down to me that story is not going to be the same story as it was when
(28:43):
it was first told there's going to be parts missing there's going to be parts
that have been put into it it's not going to be the original story it's like
a game of telephone so and i think we know
we partly i'm not saying that the jersey devil isn't real it's not what i'm
saying i'm saying by the facts and by the history that there is out there is
(29:05):
that it is a possibility that the jersey devil is something that we all just
believe is out there because a lot of people don't know,
the the beef between the leads and benjamin franklin and the weight in the way
wait, Quakers, I almost said wankers, wrong people.
(29:29):
But after the 1830s and 40s, that's when the Jersey Devil story like really
started like spiraling, right?
Another interesting fact is in 1728,
Titan decided to include the Leeds
family crest on the front cover of
the almanac what is interesting about that is
(29:51):
the family crest is depicted as a wyvern which
is a bat-winged dragon-like legendary creature
that stands upright on two clawed feet
and it
was also in when the whole jersey
devil story came out it's also like
the thing that they had back then to be like oh it kind of looked like that.
(30:14):
Kind of thing like that's what it looked like so again you already have a family
that's being accused of being the devil and now their their family crest is
apparently a picture of the devil,
kind of crazy so that's that's that's the the leads jeff people want to say
(30:36):
jefferson the leads Leeds and Franklin, like, story.
So it started, like, the whole Leeds devil, Jersey devil, it started way back when.
It just didn't really take off until the 1800s.
After 1909 so
1909 there was a whole lot of things go happen and there was
a whole bunch of sightings everything else the there
(31:00):
was a bunch of science professors from philadelphia and
from the smithsonian that thought
the devil to be a prehistoric creature from the
jurassic period that had possibly survived in near nearby
limestone caves however the
academy of natural sciences in philly could not
(31:21):
locate a record of a living or dead
species that even closely resembled
the jersey devil yeah like nothing
which again it's not saying that it's not real it's
just saying that they don't have it like how much of the ocean do
we that is unexplored that we don't know
about you know right and not
(31:44):
all fossils survive either i mean not everything thing
dies and becomes a fossil right so
kind of going back to the
dating profile of the jersey devil right apparently now
some of these i'm gonna tell you are gonna be a little funny however i'm just
(32:05):
giving you the information that i have received but in 1870 he was seen hanging
out at sea with a mermaid. He, as in the Jersey Devil.
Jersey Devil hanging out with a mermaid.
He was also said to have had a ham and egg breakfast with Republican Judge French.
(32:28):
Can you imagine just sitting at a cafe? You are a man of stature. You are a judge.
And you're sitting there with the Jersey devil sipping on a cup of coffee.
Like, what? Hi, Candy. Hi, Candy.
Oh, is it natural to just hang out with mermaids on a beach?
Is that like a natural thing?
(32:52):
So, again, like I said, he was there seeing a mermaid, eating breakfast.
Commodore Stephen Decatur was a naval hero in the early 19th century.
The story goes that he was visiting the hanover mill works to inspect the cannonballs
that were being forged and while he was there he visited a firing range and
(33:15):
saw a flying creature flapping its wings he fired a cannonball directly upon
it and it had no effect and the creature flew away,
okay the fact that it could i can't imagine if if i was a jersey devil i don't think i'd be
standing in one spot for very long right i had
to be flying around so you're telling me that this jersey this devil stood there
(33:36):
so you could load the cannon aim the cannon and then fire the cannon unless
he knows he can't die maybe hi courtney hey courtney at least the jersey devil
likes coffee there was another sighting by joseph bonaparte bonaparte who was
(33:58):
the brother of napoleon bonaparte and former king of spain he has said to be
the he has said to have seen the devil in bordentown new jersey while he was
game hunting in the nearby woods.
No here's another funny one everybody knows captain kid except for ray apparently
i still I still don't understand how you like not know who Captain Kidd is.
(34:21):
I don't have a lot of research into pirates.
I mean, I don't know. I don't, I don't know any facts about the man,
but I know he was a pirate.
You were like, I don't know. I've never heard of Captain Kidd. I know.
I know two, two pirates. I know Blackbeard and Jack Sparrow. Jack Sparrow.
(34:42):
I feel like I give you homework almost every episode. See, look.
Look who I'm not the only one.
Listen, Jess, do some homework. But anyways, captain kid was said to have buried
treasure and bargain that bay. Okay.
(35:02):
Legend has it that he beheaded one of his men to guard forever over his buried treasure.
So, which I guess, I guess makes sense to be like, hey, bro,
thanks so much for helping me carry all this treasure from this boat.
Like, I know it was heavy. You worked so hard. Done. Thanks.
Just so he can eternally as a ghost sit there. and if that
(35:25):
if I was in that position and I died because of
that and I became a ghost I would have been
like no fam I ain't staying with this treasure like I'm I'm gonna go sink your
ship next time you try to pull something
like this if Damien if I remember correctly I don't think it was.
(35:49):
I do not think it was. But I could probably be wrong. Because information is hard.
So, going back to Captain Kidd, he kills this guy. The guy is forever had to guard the treasure.
People have claimed to see a
(36:10):
headless pirate and the Jersey Devil walking
a nice stroll in
the the evening down along the
atlantic and nearby marshlands so the
sightings of the jersey devil have covered a lot
of places from bridgeton to haddonfield
(36:32):
in 1859 to the new york border
in 1899 from gloucester gloucester gloucester from there to trenton in 1909
until that time the the story of the jersey devil was told word of mouth right.
(36:55):
A published police and newspaper accounts during 1909 take the story of the
jersey devil being like just a legend just like you know a kind of made-up thing
to being like oh crap like this is a thing,
and it appeared in across many different newspapers now
(37:16):
in Pennsylvania outside
of Philly right 1909 this was in January of 1909 there were a like the whole
the whole place shut down like kids didn't go to school like curfews like the
whole place shut down because Because of sightings of the Jersey Devil. So...
(37:41):
The 16th and the 23rd. So for about a week, like the entirety of Philadelphia, like shut down, right?
It is said that a police officer shot at the creature in the early morning hours
of January 17th before it flew off.
Now, when I dug deeper into this, I came across an article.
(38:05):
It was on some random web page so
take it as you will but it said
along the lines of that the police officer was walking downtown philadelphia
patrolling whatever and he heard a scream of
a woman coming from a nearby alleyway so when he
went to investigate this alleyway he came
(38:26):
upon this woman and a
very large black creature with wings like
over top of her like getting ready to attack her kind of thing so he fired shots
off at this thing grabbed the woman and they start running right and as this
guy's running he goes and he turns behind him to look back to see this thing
(38:49):
flying up into the trees.
And it is said that when he saw this, he said aloud, had I really just saw,
he said, did I really just see the devil himself? Scared the crap out of him.
Crap crazy so when do you think the last time that anybody saw the jersey devil was right,
(39:14):
probably within the last couple years 2020 february
10th 2020 was the
last reported sighting that's four years ago it happened in pennsylvania where
in pennsylvania i wasn't able to find that information but in pennsylvania there
was a railroad conductor by the name of william William Callahan said that he
(39:36):
saw it flying over a paper mill.
He said that it was a creature that had a large head, a long neck, and big wings.
And he said it was flying to the east, likely returning to New Jersey.
With all that land and a pine barren, I don't understand why.
(39:57):
Why would he be going to PA? Why is it traveling around that far?
I mean, if you think about it, if you have wings, right, and if you're all cooped
up and not being able to fly around, like, your wings are going to go all crampy.
Like, you got to spread them out, right?
You have 1.1 million acres with plenty of food to eat.
(40:18):
What if he was just going on a joint ride? Maybe.
And if this thing is actually real, right?
What if he already, what if he already, look, because he can fly,
what if he already explored all those acres?
What if he's like, eh, I need to change the scenery.
(40:39):
250 years, I hope you got a chance to explore all those acres.
I mean, that's the thing. If the Jersey is real, like how long does it live? Right.
One of them you can't reproduce unless it reproduces.
With itself right possible or
maybe it's immortal maybe damien said
reproduction how what if
(41:03):
how sir damien let's let's think
about this too what is because it came if
it was birthed by a human maybe it can reproduce with
humans what if it's like taken female like random
people off the side of the road and just like you
have a host a female host right and you
go and being the
(41:27):
big bad demon boy you are you go
do what you gotta do and when the devil baby's born
she i would assume you know
goes back home with a lot of trauma and
a high therapy bill or she dies yeah
the thing that i thought of is
(41:47):
not appropriate for this podcast so i'm
going to refrain from saying that i'm gonna
leave that one alone maybe breeds
with animals artificial insemination baby devils eats
its way out maybe but i
will say something that somebody brought
(42:08):
to my attention today when i was talking about the jersey
devil is one other
trait that the that is said that the jersey devil has.
Is red eyes what is another cryptid that's large black with glowing red eyes.
Mothman Mothman and West Virginia and New Jersey really aren't that far apart.
(42:36):
Mothman was seen, had a sighting in Chicago of all places.
Yeah, that's pretty far from West Virginia. Yeah, but there was a sighting there. Right.
So who is to say that the Jersey Devil is just the Mothman or a different Mothman?
(42:59):
Could be. A lot of things are possible.
But I would like to know, like I said, the original story with Daniel Leeds,
Titan Leeds, and Ben Franklin, right?
Is the story of the Jersey Devil just something that was started back in the
(43:22):
day because you wanted to have the better newspaper, the better almanac?
Was it just twisted in ways throughout history to then be left with a fear to cause mass panic?
Maybe. But if that's the case, why in 1909 did this part of the country go crazy? Why did it shut down?
(43:48):
If it wasn't the Jersey Devil attacking, who was attacking?
Do we run into another scenario where if you have a large group of people that
believe in something so hard and so wholeheartedly, can we believe it into existence?
I don't know. It's possible. I think it's possible for all those beliefs to
(44:11):
be manifested in a reality.
But if we have the power to... Go ahead. Especially when it's talked about so much. Mm-hmm.
It if we have the power to create a cryptid right to believe in something so
wholeheartedly that it's created out of nothing can you imagine all the good shit we could do.
(44:36):
But no let us just believe in a human eating devil that flies around and torments us.
We we won't believe in you know end
world world hunger or anything like crazy that's
that's too crazy yeah but i don't know i i don't know i don't know if i believe
(44:58):
in the jersey devil but again i don't not believe in it i feel like again it
would have to be something that i would have to see with my own eyes well there's
another theory that it could possibly be.
The great horned owl really interesting and
if they're seeing the jersey devil at night well what is
(45:20):
a nocturnal animal an owl makes sense
and apparently they are the biggest owls
in this area hmm what's the you would take away the elongated head the elongated
neck right but if it's dark i mean you might see a little bit of it i mean i
(45:43):
go hunting in the morning it looks like
you see a buck light comes out and all of a sudden it's just tree branches true
true i will say in some of the sightings that people saw they claimed like when
they went out doors and looked,
like there was hoof prints yeah which i guess would line up with the horse but
(46:05):
right where's the hoof prints at though is it like on the ground yeah now if
there was hoof prints on a roof you know like it snowed and all of a sudden
there's hoof prints on the roof.
Then i'd be a believer you would believe that that's hoof prints but,
you believe that was a jersey devil itself i don't know i hope nobody's on my
(46:27):
roof in the middle of nowhere i would hope not i would hope not but that is about it that i have,
i don't have any other theories that i've come across.
Mom said sansa rudolph oh the problem with santa is if you have something on
(46:52):
your roof you're only going to see one set of prints rather than all eight reindeer
you want to know who else has hooves what,
Krampus. Really? Have you not seen the movie? He got hoes. No, I haven't seen it.
There's more stuff to add to the list. Add it to the homework list. I at least know who he is.
(47:16):
At least. You're going to learn all about him come December 24th. That's right.
See, Melissa knows. More homework for Ray.
She already gives me enough homework sending me broken meters.
Well, maybe you should fix them first in the first place.
But that is the end. Thank you all, as always, for coming and hanging out with
(47:42):
us on your Tuesday evening.
We would not be here without you guys. We would spend a lot of time talking
to ourselves, which Ray does already. So it's nothing out of the norm.
But tune in with us next week. Same time, same place, exactly where you found us.
(48:03):
Now, next week, we have a few special guests coming along to the podcast.
If you guys are not familiar with the Staticom project, you are not going to
want to miss this. Ray and I have seen the staticom in person, in action.
(48:27):
And believe me when I say I truly believe that this is the next big thing in
the paranormal field. Like.
Goodbye, SB7s. Goodbye, Ovilus.
Goodbye, any of these talking apps or portal boxes, whatever.
(48:50):
I truly, truly love this device.
I have seen what this thing does, and I'm a fan. I need one.
Yeah, definitely. definitely you be here tuesday 7 p.m sir damien and you listen
(49:11):
to the podcast and you let me know this is actually one that damien's gonna
like spitfire questions boom there will be video,
of some of the stuff they caught yes and correction little change in plans,
it's going to be at 9 o'clock next Tuesday.
(49:34):
My gosh 9 o'clock on Tuesday we will be live we're pushing it back we have some,
there's four guests total coming on, two of them are on time zone issues so
9 o'clock is going to be when we air so it's going to be a little bit different
(49:56):
but we do hope to see you guys there,
Once again, thank you so much for coming out and hanging out with us and have a wonderful week.
Have a great week, guys. Stay spooky. Yes.
Wait, wait, don't end it.
The Jersey Devil and Mothman are in a love triangle with the Pukwudgies.
(50:23):
All right, I'm done. Thank you, Russ. Thank you for that. Coming in at the last moment.
We'll catch you guys later see you guys on saturday everybody.
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