Jersey Devil an *Enigma Something hard to understand or explain By Nathan Pearce Deerwood Elementary 4th grade

The Jersey Devil Is Located in the New Jersey Pine Barrens

What is the Jersey Devil & Where does it live A mythical creature that lives in the New Jersey Pine Barrens. It has haunted New Jersey for the past 260 years by poisoning creeks, damaging farm crops & even killing animals. It has been described as a large flying bird with hooves or a kangaroo like creature with a goat head and wings. It moves fast and has a loud high pitch scream. It has never been captured or photographed. *Pine Barrens - Heavily forested area across New Jersey

Does it Harm People? People have said throughout the 1700’s,1800’s & 1900’s that it has killed animals & even humans. However, there has never been any evidence or proof of these killings.

Most Popular Legend The most popular legend is about a lady known as Mother Leeds from the Pine Barrens who had 12 children. The story says that when she was pregnant with her 13th child that she cried out “let this one be the devil”! The child was born normal, but then turned into a creature with hooves, a goat’s head & bat wings.

The 7’s Legend Another legend is that the Jersey Devil was the 7th child, of the 7th son, at the 7th hour and at the 7th second of the 7th minute. Due to these exact numbers, people think it changed to a monster.

Leeds Devil Legend Benjamin Franklin was competing against the Leeds family printing press and accused Titan Leed of being a ghost or the devil. Therefore, people began referring to Titan as the “Leeds Devil”. People believed the story because the Leed family crest had winged dragons on it that resembled a monster.

Fun facts! There was a group called ‘The Devil Hunters’ that hunted the jersey devil. The New Jersey state hockey team was named after the creature! In 1909 the Philadelphia Zoo offered a $10,000 reward for the monster. The most recent sighting was in 1993. A forest ranger said he was driving by the Mullica River when the creature appeared in the road. In 1960 the owner of a circus offered $100,000 reward for it. He wanted to add it to a slideshow at his circus!

BIBLIOGRAPHY Wikipedia http://www.prairieghosts.com/jerseydevil.html http://americanfolklore.net http://www.csicop.org/si/show/the_jersey_devil_the_real_story

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