In the early 1700s, Jane Leeds (also known as mother Leeds) was your typical stay-at-home wife. At this point in her life, she had 12 children. Much to her surprise, she found out she was pregnant with her 13th child. This did not sit very well with mother Leeds, and she cursed the child and said it would be the Devil. Around nine months later, on a stormy night in 1735, the child was to be conceived.

Mother Leeds was surrounded by her family and friends during when the child was born. At first, it looked like an ordinary baby boy. However, this would not last, and things turned for the worse within minutes. The baby grew hooves, a goat’s head, bat wings, and a forked tail. The creature let out a horrible scream and started to beat everyone in the room with its tail. After getting its fill of violence, it took off up the chimney and into the Pine Barrens of New Jersey.

This is the typical origin tale you will hear about the Jersey Devil. Some alterations include saying Mother Leeds was a witch and the Devil’s father. Another version is where a clergyman went into the Pine Barrens to exorcise the beast. You can only imagine how this went. Whatever the story may be, one thing is for sure, the Jersey Devil is still spotted to this day.

Some of the more famous sightings include Stephen Decatur seeing the Devil. He was visiting the Hanover Millworks and saw the creature flying overhead. He fired a cannonball at the beast, but it was not affected. During 1840, there were many livestock killings in the area and it was blamed on the Jersey Devil. Not a year later, they found tracks and even heard screams. Then you have an actual attack. A cab driver in 1927 was changing a tire when the beast started to pound on his roof, trying its best to get at him.

Marry Christianson was out driving in 1972 when she felt like something was off. She looked behind her and saw a massive creature walking across the road. She said it had a giant fuzzy goat head. In 1993 a forest ranger saw an enormous creature blocking the road. They both just stared at each other for a few minutes until the creature took off into the woods. Many more sightings of the beast can be found up to the modern-day. Typically, they see a weird creature, but the beast seldom seems violent besides livestock.

Taking a deep dive, you can find that the Leeds family was real, and “mother Leeds” was Deborah Leeds. This was found out because her Husband Japhet Leeds named twelve children in a will he wrote in 1736. They also lived in Leeds Point, where the story takes place. There is also the possibility that Titan Leeds, who ran the family’s almanac business, is to blame. The reason for this is 1; the Quakers did not like the family because what they were doing was pagan. 2, the family’s crest, which Titan put on everything, was a wyvern. 3, the family was openly mocked by Benjamin Franklin. With these three things, people saw the Leeds family as devils, and so came the Leeds Devil, which was said to lurk in the Pine Barrens.

Now that you have heard the story of the Jersey Devil, what do you think? Is the beast real? Or is it just old tales passed down from family to family?