View source for Jersey Devil

'''Jersey Devil''', or '''Leeds Devil'''

Origin:  American Folklore

==Description==
[[File:JerseyDevil PhiladelphiaPost 1909.jpg|200px|thumb|right|1909 drawing of Jersey Devil for the Philadelphia Post....]]
<blockquote>
Whenever he went near it, it would give a most unearthly yell that frightened the dogs. It whipped at every dog on the place. "That thing," said the colonel, "is not a bird nor an animal, but it is the Leeds devil, according to the description, and it was born over in Evasham, Burlington county, a hundred years ago. There is no mistake about it. I never saw the horrible critter myself, but I can remember well when it was roaming around in Evasham woods fifty years ago, and when it was hunted by men and dogs and shot at by the best marksmen there were in all South Jersey, but could not be killed. There isn't a family in Burlington or any of the adjoining counties that does not know of the Leeds devil, and it was the bugaboo to frighten children with when I was a boy."
<br>&mdash; "The Devil of Leeds", Elkhart Sentinel; October 15, 1887
</blockquote>

In New Jersey folklore, the Jersey Devil (AKA the Leeds Devil) is a legendary creature said to inhabit the Pine Barrens of Southern New Jersey. The creature is often described as a flying biped with horns and hooves; it has been reported to move quickly and often is described as emitting a "blood-curdling scream".  

According to popular folklore, the Jersey Devil originated in the late 17th and early 18th Century with a (then) unpopular family named Leeds.  

Daniel Leeds, a Quaker and a prominent person of pre-Revolution colonial southern New Jersey, became ostracized by his Quaker congregation after his 1687 publication of almanacs bearing the family crest, a strange wyvern-like creature, and containing astrological symbols and writings. Leeds' fellow Quakers deemed the astrology in these almanacs as too "pagan" or blasphemous, and the almanacs were censored and destroyed by the local Quaker community.  

In response to and in spite of this censorship, Leeds continued to publish even more esoteric astrological Christian writings and became increasingly fascinated with Christian occultism, Christian mysticism, cosmology, demonology and angelology, and natural magic.   By the 1690s, after his almanacs and writings were further censored as blasphemous or heretical by the Philadelphia Quaker Meeting, Leeds continued to dispute with the Quaker community, converting to Anglicanism and publishing anti-Quaker tracts criticizing Quaker theology and accusing Quakers of being anti-monarchists. 

In the ensuing dispute between Leeds and the southern New Jersey Quakers over Leeds' accusations, Leeds was endorsed by the much-maligned British royal governor of New Jersey, Lord Cornbury, despised among the Quaker communities. Leeds also worked as a councilor to Lord Cornbury about this time. Considering Leeds as a traitor for aiding the Crown and rejecting Quaker beliefs, the Quaker Burlington Meeting of southern New Jersey subsequently dismissed Leeds as "evil".

Daniel Leeds' wife, Jane Leeds, known as Mother Leeds and alleged to be a witch who had already had 12 children, would find herself pregnant for the 13th time in 1735, a child to be named Nephilim Leeds. During a stormy night in 1735, Mother Leeds was in labor with her family and friends gathered around her when the thirteenth child was born as a creature with hooves, a goat's head, bat wings, and a forked tail.  Though the well-wishers could clearly hear the child's growling and screaming as it was whisked upstairs to the attic by the horrified midwife, Nephilim Leeds was declared stillborn by the family doctor and Daniel Leeds, who then tried to hurry the visitors out of the home.

Later, the family's sullen and silent midwife, herself believed to be another witch in the Leeds' coven, and believed to have stayed with the family to care for the monstrous child, would soon be killed by the devil infant, which then escaped the house by flying out of the opened attic prison, into the parlor fireplace, up the chimney, and out into the pines.  

Over the next few months, "devil's footprints" would appear in the snow in over 30 different locations throughout the area after heavy snowfall: the footprints were so called because some people believed that they were the tracks of Satan, as they appeared to have been made by cloven hoofs.  The tracks would take the form of a series of hoof-like marks in the snow, most of which measured about four inches long, three inches across, between eight and sixteen inches apart and mostly in a single file; houses, rivers, haystacks and other obstacles were travelled straight over, and footprints appeared on the tops of snow-covered roofs and high walls which lay in the footprints' path, as well as leading up to and exiting various drain pipes as small as four inches in diameter.

<blockquote>
"It appears on Thursday night last, there was a very heavy snowfall in the neighbourhood of Evasham, Leeds Point, and the surrounding Pine Barrens. On the following morning the inhabitants of the above towns were surprised at discovering the footmarks of some strange and mysterious animal endowed with the power of ubiquity, as the footprints were to be seen in all kinds of unaccountable places – on the tops of houses and narrow walls, in gardens and court-yards, enclosed by high walls and pailings, as well in open fields...."
<br>&mdash; local newspaper report
</blockquote>

There was subsequently an attempt by local clergymen to exorcise the creature from the Pine Barrens, but the exorcisms would end in failure, while the Leeds Devil proceeded to viciously kill local Quaker children in retaliation for the exorcisms; the Leeds Devil would never be successfully exorcised from the area, and is said to have survived there to this day, gaining the new name The Jersey Devil over time.



==Keeper Notes==
<!-- Optional. Suggestions for using these creatures in the CoC RPG, and in fan-fiction. -->
<!-- Optional.  This is a good place to include non-canon and controversial aspects of the creature's mythos.  Suggested Alternative Theories include:  Derleth's elemental scheme; pseudo-science interpretation; "fanon" interpretations; unofficial humorous or eccentric versions; identification with "Real Life" mythological, religious, folklore, natural, and historical phenomena; rumor and speculation contribute some flexibility and ambiguity to the mythos. -->
* Alternative_theory.  ([[source]])


==Associated Mythos Elements==
* setting:  [[Folk Mythos]]


==References==

[[Category:Races]]
[[Category:FolkMythos]]