Burying The Leeds Devil

The Jersey Devil had a good run, terrorizing the good citizens of the Garden State for three centuries, devouring wandering livestock, penned livestock, caged livestock, and finishing up each meal by meticulously flossing using the copious pine found all across his massive, rural home. 

Sadly, the educational system being what it is in this country, more American schoolchildren can identify the Loch Ness monster than our very own, openly demonic, unquestionably native son. But for hundreds of years, the new paranormalcy in New Jersey meant countless sightings of the creature, rampaging through the state’s farmlands, swamplands, and other...lands. The only Jersey Devil they know is the hockey team, a toothless, faceless, and offensive caricature that lives on to this day. It’ll never change. A constituency of one can’t muster up enough outrage for a cause. Say your time is Jim and the newly founded Providence baseball club decides to name their team after you and use, as their mascot, a freakish doodle of you on your worst looking day? That’s how JD has felt for years. Can you really blame him for spending so much time ravaging the chicken coop? 

As the story goes, early in the 18^th century, a woman named Leeds, the proud mother of twelve children, learned she was again, with child. This is when things took a turn. You might think that the thirteenth child is some sort of prized child. For some, it is. The whole concept of the baker’s dozen was started by the original bakers – pregnant women. “12 for me, one for free.” 

For Leeds though, it wasn’t that at all. Some say she cursed herself, others say she had a d’alliance with Beezlebub himself, it being New Jersey in a much slower time. Long before Bruce, The Sopranos, and Snooki. There wasn’t much to do besides make nice with hellish figures passing through town on their way to New York City. Over the years, descriptions have varied. Some say he looks like a dragon, others a lizard, and still others claim he looks just like Tom Skerritt, fresh off his Alien notoriety.  

Many people can’t understand how a mother could cast out a child into the wilderness. But a demon baby is different. There wasn’t enough room for JD to spread his wings in their crowded hovel. Plus, hooves are loud and his appetite was prodigious. Given the fact he’s survived for about 300 years, can we all agree that Mother Leeds made the right decision? She set him free. What was the alternative exactly? JD wasn’t a suit and tie guy, who’d run a general store or an inn for wayward travelers. He was a beast, the son of Satan, who preferred the company of sizable deer ticks to people.

Eventually, the crime families of New Jersey and Philadelphia were fed up with the midnight marauding of JD. He affected their bottom line. Together, they owned a few dairy farms and JD would arrive looking for burgers, not milk. 

Initially, they planned on paying him off, sending him out west to Arizona like Joe Bananas, out of their hair and into the hot desert sun. But some people never leave New Jersey. An altercation broke out between the devil and two made guys. They knocked him out and since they were already in the Pine Barrens, given that his ramshackle home was in one of the most remote sections of the area, they decided to bury him right there. The two thugs rolled him up in a rug and carried him a few hundred yards from his estate.

The thing is, when they unfurled the rug, inside was nothing but a bunch of old bones from every critter in the area. The two mobsters spent a few hours looking for him, confused but not surprised. This was a supernatural event, after all. Eventually, they gave up and went home, first stopping at a Roy Rogers, assuming, or hoping that JD was rotting a ditch somewhere. 

He wasn't. They never did figure out the mystery of the disappearing demon. Maybe one day. 

The Jersey Devil lives on, in myth, memory and not too far from the Mullica River. You can write to him if you get an address. Some say he moved out of the Pine Barrens and resides in a Philly townhouse. Others think he’s just another commuter, making his way to the big city to fulfill his dreams, or, being the Devil's spawn, nightmares.