Episode 485: The Jersey Devil Ft Jodie Sweetin

I'm Dan Taberski. In 2011, something strange began to happen at a high school in upstate New York. A mystery illness, bizarre symptoms and spreading fast. What's the answer, and what do you do if they tell you it's all in your head?

Hysterical, a new podcast from Wondery and Pineapple Street Studios, binge all episodes of Hysterical early and ad-free on Wondery. Plus. Hey weirdos, I'm Ash, I'm Elena.

And this is morbid.

We have a special guest today, Weirdos Party, Party, party. It's Jodi Sweetin. Hello, you probably know Jodi as Stephanie Tanner, like, first and foremost because iconic.

Iconic But Jodi, thank you so much for coming on. This is like, huge for us. We're so excited. Oh my gosh, this is huge for me.

I'm a big fan of the show and when I first jumped on the Zoom, I was like, Oh my gosh, like, I know these voices. So yeah, I'm also excited to be here. I love morbid, I love all things spooky and weird and creepy.

And you guys are hilarious, so yeah, oh, thank you. We feel the same way too. As soon as you came on the Zoom, I was like, Oh, my God.

Old friend I was like, This is so weird. Yeah, old friend. Yep, yep, it's true.

Living room Yeah, you didn't even know it, but I was in your living room. That's wild, that's insane.

Not even when the TV was on, just there, standing watching, you had no idea, yep, we were all just hanging out together.

Just vibes. Yeah, yeah, yeah, you didn't. I mean, you guys were asleep. It was a little weird, but you know, it's fine.

We've been through a lot together. yes, in the last five minutes, I mean, we've been through solar flares and planets in retrograde lifetimes. We've lived together.

Lifetimes of things, yeah, planetary events we've lived together, but the main reason that we're all here is the spooky of it all. Hell yeah, so we have a couple spooky questions for you before we get into the actual like cryptid of it all that Alayna is going to present.

But is it cool if we ask you a couple of questions first? Absolutely go for it, all right, cool. So we know that you're into true crime.

What would you say is the one case that interested you the most over the years? Oh man, I know it's always a hard one, there's so many, I mean, God. I was like the weird kid at the library when I was like eight, to checking out books on, like The Anvil, Horror and like all kinds of weird stuff.

Right, all the ghost stories and like, weird stuff at the library, like, Oh, that was you in the other aisle? Yeah, that was me. Yeah, I was hoarding all the weird, creepy books.

Gosh, one, that's fascinating, you know? And it depends because, like, there's like, I'm fascinated with, like, serial killers. Simply because I find, like, abnormal psych or the sort of various shades of psychology really interesting. Because it's just, humans are more terrifying than any monsters we can really make up. So much so for me, I think, also because I'm an L...A. girl. The Night Stalker has always been a fascinating case to me because it also involves the Cecil Hotel in downtown L..A. which I'm also fascinated by.

And my friend and I, my friend lives around the corner there. So we've gone over there many times, trying to, like, figure out how we can be creepy and get in.

But the Night Stalker case in particular. Because I think it was God, what year was that? It was like, Oh, that was early. Yeah, I was going to say, Yeah, I think it was, yeah, because I was, I mean, I was little. But I vaguely remember it being sort of in the ether and like, being talked about.

But for me, it's just such a weird case because there's no rhyme or reason. Yes, the chaos of it all. Usually it's like, it's one of the cases that you go, oh wow, man, like some people, just, it's just that, doesn't? There's no victim profile.

It was there was no map, there was no plan, there was no type like that was just.

That was fascinating to me that it was just across the board chaos. Yeah, it was kids, it was elderly, everything in between.

Yeah, and I also that one is interesting too, because you read so much about, like, his childhood and brain trauma. And not as an excuse, obviously, but it's an interesting. It's just sort of an interesting thing because you can kind of see this whole thing like pieced together. And as an L.A. girl, I'm always fascinated by those, also the, I mean, the Manson murders.

Yeah, obviously, also my friend lives on that property. No way. Yeah, so like, it's just, I mean, obviously. The house has since been torn down and he's built a place and stuff. But but yeah, it's, I mean, it's the property, nonetheless.

Yeah, and that's kind of like a similar thing to like, no rhyme, no reason. Yeah, pure chaos.

Yeah, pure and yeah, and that one had, like, a weird Beach Boys connection, and so yeah, like, there's.

So yeah, there's I have several weird like connections to that case in particular, so yeah, it's pretty, pretty fucked up. Those are two, can I say that?

Yeah, I can say that, yeah, oh, yeah. All the time I was like, Wait, yeah, I can.

OK, just checking. Yeah, I can. What were you going to say? No, I was. Those two are like it.

Really is the chaos of it all that stresses me out, especially about the night stalker case. Yeah, when you can go down to, like kids and go all the way up to like 90 year olds and everything in between. It's like it was no real rhyme or reason as to the way it was done. Method like that.

Yeah, and that, for me, is it again from. Like, the psychology aspect of it is really interesting because it's the chaos of that mind that comes out in that way. Is is, I think that's the thing is. I'm like, I so desperately want to understand, not understand, but like, what? It's so unrelatable, that type of horror to me. And I think that's like a lot of true crime is like, it's so beyond that.

I'm like, what in the world could possibly make someone go there? And anyway, it's just fascinating to me. And yeah, and getting to go to, like, the hotel. Cecil, my friend and I like, figured out how to get into the alley behind the thing there where, like, you can go to the place where, like, he's, yeah, so did anything happen while you were at the Cecil?

Like any kind of paranormal. No, because I mean, we've got, we've also gone during the day, but I mean, I, I've. There's so many great historic, creepy places in downtown L.A. But no, nothing ever happened while we were there. But they've now since reopened it again.

Yeah, I saw that recently and turned it into. they originally were going to take it and turn it into like luxury condos. Yeah, imagine that.

That's a choice which, well, they do that to everything in downtown, L.A. and obviously the housing market sucks and no one has money to buy two million dollar condos downtown anymore. So, yeah, so they, I think they have now reverted it back to, like, low income housing, which was kind of what it was previously, yeah.

But there was also that weird documentarian that that was at the hotel. CECiL Oh, yeah, I want to say he was Dutch, or, yeah, I can't remember what there was.

That guy, Yeah, there was the girl that wound up in the water tank, yeah, the lamb.

That's like a really sad, that's a really wild and just like bonkers. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, there's just all kinds of weird stuff.

But they have now since turned it back into, I think it's low income housing again, which is much needed downtown. But it'll be interesting, you know, that place is just such a people say it's like a hotbed of really weird activity. And so I definitely wanted to figure out how to go in there before they turned it into anything.

I was like, I want to go in here while it's empty. Oh yeah, I feel like that's something would happen. Oh yeah. So have you ever had any paranormal experience in general in your life?

That's been like, holy shit, yes, I have, so, OK, you're like, I'm like, Oh, for this one, I'm like, so picture this. Sicily 19 No.

So this was 10 years ago, or a little more. I worked in drug and alcohol treatment, I was a director of operations. And we had several properties here in L..A. that we rented, and one of which was this huge property up off of Wonderland, here in the Hollywood Hills. And it, I think, used.

It was owned, or Jared Leto bought it after we had rented it out or something iconic. It's a it takes up three addresses. It's a gigantic property, and it was originally built as a military base. They it has a soundstage attached to it.

They would shoot World War Two propaganda films here, and it's also rumored that they held people there without because it was in the Hollywood. It's way back there, like way before there were houses or anything. And it goes down about three or four stories into the side of the mountain, and it's got 18 inch thick cement walls. It's a nuclear fallout shelter.

It's a whole thing. So we had it as a property and we there was, we had it as a sober living, and we had. There was like an art gallery attached. I mean, it was gigantic, right?

So at the time I was looking for an apartment, had to be out of my old apartment, with my kids going through divorce, whatever, it was kind of crazy. And so there was an apartment that was on one of the lower floors of the addresses, had its own separate entrance. It was like twelve hundred square feet, but it was just kind of a big room with a little kitchen attached. And then this ridiculous, gigantic bathroom that I called the scarface bathroom because it was like black and white, tiled and all mirrored. And I'm not kidding you.

When I lived there for like the month and a half with my kids, the bathtub was like a small swimming pool like my kids used to. Just like, paddle through it. Yeah, it was crazy. They're like, Mom, we love this place, right?

And it was, but it was like, weirdly old, like it was just. It was a weird spot to be, but it was kind of cool to live there. So anyway, I was there.

And when we had first acquired the property, the handyman that used to go over there all the time. He would talk about how creepy it was over there. And we would all kind of laugh and be like, Oh yeah, whatever. He's like, No, no, no, like, it's there's like a woman's voice that keeps talking.

And I'm like, anyway, whatever, like. I mean, I didn't discount it because, you know, some stuff happens, but I was like, it's probably fine. There's so many, you know, whatever people coming and going well. I move in and within maybe the first week or ten days, I'm in the bathroom brushing my teeth and my my younger daughter is. B is standing there and kind of looking back into the room and she just starts going, No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.

And I was like, What, what's happening? what are you talking to? and she was like, It's the lady in the corner again, again.

I don't want to talk to her, She's scaring me. Oh, no, oh, I hate. I have goosebumps already. I don't like that at all.

And I was like, OK, you're like, I have to parent through this, like, shit. Well, let's talk to her and let her know, let's communicate. I'm always like, I don't know what, I don't always like, let's reason with them.

You know, so I was like, whoever is here right now, we know that you're, we're in your space. Like, it's OK, but you're scaring my little one right now. And so, you know, if you could leave, that would be great. Like, I don't know what he would say, you know, I feel like that's the perfect thing to say.

And then she said, like, you know, a few minutes later, like, she didn't see her anymore. But we definitely would hear knocks on the door in that hallway and there would be, I mean, it would be late at night. Nobody was there and nobody was in that section of the house. And yeah, like, a lot of creepy things like that happen.

But the creepiest part is that? well, not the creepiest part. I'd say, The lady in the corner is probably the creepiest part. She takes the cake. So I had to store all of my stuff in the old film vaults that were on the property. That's so cool.

I'm Dan Tabersky. In 2011, something strange began to happen at the high school in Leroy, New York. I was like, at my locker and she came up to me and she was like, stuttering, super bad. I'm like, stop around, like, I can't.

A mystery illness, bizarre symptoms and spreading fast, like doubling and tripling. And it's all these girls with a diagnosis. The state tried to keep on the down low. Everybody thought I was holding something back. well, you were holding something back intentionally.

Yeah, yeah, well, yeah, now it's hysteria, it's all in your head, it's not physical. Oh my gosh, you're exaggerating. Is this the largest mass hysteria since the Witches of Salem?

Or is it something else entirely? Something's wrong here, something's not right. Leroy was the new dateline, and everyone was trying to solve the murder. A new limited series from Wondery and Pineapple Street Studios. Hysterical.

Follow Hysterical on the Wondery app, or wherever you get your podcasts. You can binge all episodes of Hysterical early and ad free right now by joining Wondery Plus.

She struck him with her motor vehicle, she had been under the influence, and then she left him there. In January 2022, local woman Karen Reed was implicated in the mysterious death of her boyfriend, Boston Police Officer John O'Keefe. It was alleged that after an innocent night out for drinks with friends, Karen and John got into a lover's quarrel en route to the next location. What happens next depends on who you ask.

Was it a crime of passion? If you believe the prosecution, it's because the evidence was so compelling. This was clearly an intentional act. And his cause of death was blunt. Force trauma with hypothermia. Or a corrupt police cover up, if you believe the defense theory, however, this is all a cover up to prevent one of their own from going down.

Everyone had an opinion and after the 10 week trial, the jury could not come to a unanimous decision to end in a mistrial. It's just a confirmation of just how complicated this case is. Law and Crime presents the most in-depth analysis to date of the sensational case. In Karen. You can listen to Karen exclusively with Wondery Plus.

Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts or Spotify.

And in order to access the film vaults, you had to go downstairs into, like, down into the thing and they. It was like stepping back into like a 1950s like military. It was all that weird. Green metal, you know what? I mean, that you see from like 1950s and 60s offices and stuff. And like big sliding doors that were green metal and all like. And and the lights were the kind that were on sensors. Oh, it was obviously so big.

So you would walk through somewhere and then, if you were still for a while, the lights would turn off. That's a terrible setup. So I would be down, like carrying stuff down to the vaults, or like, getting stuff out or whatever and putting it back. And yeah, there were definitely quite a few times that I'd be in there and it was just like, kunk, kunk. Like, the lights start turning off and you're like, and then you'd be like waving, and if you're not right in front of the sensor, you're like, okay, so you're like waving, running up and down a hallway.

Yeah, it was. It was definitely a creepy, a creepy place to live, but kind of cool. And I'm always glad that I can say that I had that experience. Yeah, that's wild, that's horrifying. Those are a couple of spooky experiences.

It reminded me of the story with your little ones. Yeah, I've told this on the show before, but my little ones. When they went into their first like big girl beds, they freaked out the first night and we were like, Oh, it's, you know, it's a new little big girl bed. Of course, they're going to be a little freaked out, like a toddler bed, right, right, right, of course, it's, yeah.

So we come running in, we're like, what's the matter? And they were like, and they were right next to the door and there was a little hallway right outside their door. And one of them said, There's people that keep coming in my room and they're trying to cut my sheets with scissors. And I was like, Right, right, oh God.

I was like, there's not like, what? I don't know what to do here? And it's like, you're like, Okay, I can't freak out, cause I can't freak them out more. So I was like, Right, right, right. And then I was like, Are they here now?

And they were like, No, they're right there, and they pointed to the dark hallway right outside their room. And I was like, Okay? And I was like, they're just standing there, and they were like, Yeah, they're just there.

And I was like, you're like, it was an old, it was from like the 1800s. So I was like, right, right, right. And I just stepped into the hallway and I was like, Hey, every? And I was like, they're around me right now and they're like, Yeah, and I'm like, awesome.

Okay, and then I'm like, Okay, guys, like, awesome, right? Yeah, you're just like, I don't know what's happening and I feel sort of ridiculous, but all this is fine.

I'd like, you know, I'm going to give this a try. So I was like, Hey guys, like, you're freaking them out, like, can you just like, chill out and not try to cut their sheets tonight? Like, we'll talk about it tomorrow, maybe?

And they were like, I was like, Is everything good now? and they were like, Yeah, they never complained about it again. Just that one time, yeah, you got it.

Yeah, that's what I'm saying. You got to, like, be like, excuse me, take a little charge. I know I know whatever you're going through, you've been trapped in this weird, in-between space for hundreds of years.

I get that.

Could you not freak my kids out while we're trying to sleep? That would be so much appreciated. Yeah, thanks, like, I totally get you're going through it.

If you need someone to talk to, come to me, it's fine really. But like, come try to cut my sheets. Not scare the shit out of the kids because they're never going to go to sleep. And then I'm going to be angry.

Like, I can deal with it, they're going to be traumatized forever. So like, just come in my room like I can handle it right, right, right.

Yeah, look, if you need to cut sheets, whatever here, take it. Here's some old ones. Yeah, have at it, but just leave the kids alone, please.

Do a craft project, go for it. You're dead. I can't imagine what that's like. So yeah, yeah, I get it.

Ghosts look, ghosts need crafts, too. I mean, it's got to get boring for a while, you know? Yeah, you know, yeah, that's wild. They were trying to recreate the scene from Beetlejuice, where they cut the holes out of the eyes of the sheets and just float it in.

They were trying to get us out of the house, that was it, so that someone would notice them, right? But they, yeah.

And they were like, shit, they just went about it in a weird way, you know? Yeah, you know. They were like, Oh man, guys, we're just trying to get our outfits right. Should have just gone to the linen closet.

It's true we had some sheets in there and they weren't Daniel Tiger, so they would have been a little better. I think so incredible. Yeah, I don't miss the days of, like everything, being like a cartoon, yeah.

Something, Yeah, it's fun with my. I have seven year old twins and we're coming out of that a little bit with them. But my three year old is like, Paw Patrol and I'm like, Oh, oh, yeah, yeah.

You're still, no, you're still in it. Seven and three, yeah, I've got 15 and almost 13. It's a it's, it's a wild ride.

That's a different journey, right? That must be such a different journey it is. It is quite a different journey. I just remember who I was at 13 and 15..

I'm like, Sorry mom. sorry, sorry everyone. I've called my mom and apologized so many times. Oh yeah.

So many times, although now my kids are, they're actually great. But it really was, I mean, pandemic did not do anyone any favors. But my older one, like, started middle school right when it it was, she was like, started sixth grade and then it hit, and then it was all seventh and then part of eight. Like, yeah, it was not a great experience because middle school is horrific anyway. In and of itself, I'll be glad that we're done with that. Truly it is.

Not looking forward to that at all. Talk about spooky, just middle school, that's, yeah, I was just going to say, that's horror right there. They are horrifying.

Yeah, I would take someone cutting my sheets every single night. And and the lady in the corner over having to go to middle school again? Oh yeah, 10 times over. I welcome it.

Let's go, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, I feel like all of that is like the perfect transition into the Jersey Devil. Yeah, we're going to talk about the Jersey Devil today.

Or the devil in the pine barrens, the jersey devil. Does he do a gym pan laundry? or is this a totally different kind of jersey? He might? No, no, no.

That's Polly D. Honestly. He might, though, cause there's there's a lot of different versions of him, so who knows, maybe Jersey Shore is a version of him.

Maybe it is, is this like Chupacabra type a little bit, the New Jersey devil a little bit, okay?

Yeah, it's like lore kind of stuff, so I am all about it. I love a good cryptid. Oh, nothing like it.

A good cryptid. We got so many here, cause we're like around the Bridgewater Triangle, where all that fun stuff is. I know, I know.

I remember you guys talking about that one time on one of your episodes about. And I was like, I could go, yeah, like, I will take you on a tour anytime we will. Oh my God.

I, I've done like ghost tours here. I did a whole night at a theater in San Juan Capistrano, and I did a supernatural show here as well with a couple other people. That was really fun. But I, yeah, I, I. I'm the one that, like, goes and finds weird, old, creepy, abandoned places. And I'm like, you guys, we should go in and everyone else is like.

No, thank you, no, you're our people. No, we would go in with you. We got to take you to the Lizzie Borden house, yeah.

Close by us, I would, Oh my God, I want to go there so bad.

We spent the night there. Yeah, we did. It was wild, you did. Was it creepy?

Yeah, it was horrifying. It has sleep, I wouldn't let us. Yeah, it has the harshest vibe in there.

Like, it is really, very hard to relax, you can feel it. Yeah, it's heavy, yeah.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, fascinating, okay?

Yeah, we'll make plans for that after. Yeah, okay, yeah.

Yeah, we'll make our, we'll do our, our. Our Ghost Tour plans after part two is Ghost Tour can't wait. So we're going to talk about the birth of the Jersey Devil first.

So the story of the Jersey Devil is kind of unique to the United States, for sure. It's the Pine Barrens is where it came out of. Wow, and there's so many things that are so unique to the United States that are horrifying.

It's really unique, it's such a nice way to put it.

It's a unique horror to the United States. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

We got, yeah, I know what we're talking about. So, the Pine Barrens in New Jersey is a very dense, forested region, and it covers more than 1700 square miles Wow, which is apparently 1.1 million acres.

Holy shit, that's a lot of acres, that's all of the acres, that's many acres, and it's in southeastern New Jersey.

So what's really spooky about this place is that, although New Jersey is one of the more heavily populated states in the country, according to author James McCloy. Quote One can travel in the pines for many miles and not encounter a single sign of modern civilization. Love that, thank God, there's, you know, too many miles of human civilization, truly.

There's some open space somewhere you can go, like, Ah, I forget about those assholes, and then, yeah, exactly. Just take me all the way off the grid into the pine barrens with the jersey Devil.

Right, just. yeah, seriously, just please stick me in a tree. let's call it a day. Yeah, let's go.

You guys are going together, yeah, we're going to the Pine Barrens. I'm like, have fun, guys. I was just like, tell me about it later. I'm like, I don't think they have Starbucks.

So, in addition to a large amount of timber harvested from the pines. The area was also really important for being a source of iron ore. And it kind of drove the iron industry and munitions production during the 17th and 18th century. So it was a oh okay, interesting.

Yeah, yeah, I was. I was thinking, like, like, World War II, but No 17 like, Yeah, yeah, it goes way back, yeah, way back.

Because, you know, bullets, it's, you know, bullets, you know, bullets. We're always needing bullets again, right?

A uniquely American whore, I feel where we're going with this unique to America. So it's a pretty critical part of the region's economy. But when manufacturers began relying on cheaper and more plentiful iron ore from the West in the mid-19th century, what was once a dense population in and around the pine barrens started to kind of dwindle down.

Much like many industrial cities of the East. Exactly. Sorry, I'm a big history nerd. I'm going to just interject on every stupid little thing. Honestly, I love that.

Yeah, please do so. Who remained were this small number of really like rugged individuals who were just living off the land kind of thing? They were like, we're not leaving.

The hills have eyes, the hills have eyes. That's what I'm feeling.

Exactly, and I think, honestly, that's kind of the kid from the beginning of deliverance. Here we go, here we go, we're off.

And I think they're like the places around them who are more into, like, modern conveniences. Would derogatorily refer to them as the pineys because they were left in the pine barrens, and honestly, the Pineys were like, I don't give a shit. Like, it's cool in here, it's quiet, they're like, we don't like you.

We don't like you anyway. So this is kind of a perfect setting for one of these cryptids, or urban legends to come about. Where it's like the people in the modern civilization, with the people who refuse to leave the pine barrens kind of thing. I think M. Night Shyamalan did that movie.

Yes, wasn't it? The village, the village. I love that movie.

That's one of those movies you either love or you hated. I love it so much. I actually like that one. I do too again, hit or miss, but sorry not to derail the conversation.

That was one that just hit at the end. I was like, all right. And it took place not at the Pine Barrens, but exactly. But close enough, it's reminiscent, for sure.

It's what I'm imagining, it's what I'm picturing. It felt very salem, you know, I could say that, yeah.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, love, love, love. We got to take you to Salem too. Add it to the list, right?

It's right over there, yes, so. According to McCloy, one of the earliest versions of the Jersey Devil's origins are from a woman named Jane. Leeds. So Leeds lived in Estillville, New Jersey, which is about an hour away from the Pine Barrens, and she was a mother of 12..

Whoa of 12, what 12 children at the time?

Well, actually, yeah, 12 children, I will say, I mean, my dad's much older, and his family each had like 17 and 16 kids on his parents side. So, yeah, I get it. Oh my goodness, that's a lot.

I mean, you're living out in the pine barrens, you got to, you know, the kids disappear in the pines there you go. So you got to keep just replacing them cheaper by the dozen.

There you go, Oh, great movie again. And it's I wonder why. But she was actually referred to as Mother Leeds. And I'm like, huh, where'd you get that name? Oh, who could know?

The dozen children.

But and she's still referred to as that when people talk about this story. And I mean, I feel like it'd be grandmother at this point. But great, great, great grandmother Leeds, just Nana Leeds, Old Lady Leeds.

Old Lady Leeds. So. She discovered, though, that she was pregnant with another child, a 13 a 13 child lucky number 13, and she, weirdly enough, was not happy about this.

So she cursed the pregnancy and said, Wait, though, wait, who's the dad? That's kind of what I'm wondering, Yeah, right, Where's the man?

Where's father Leeds? That's my question. Where's old man Leeds over here? Where is he in this picture? I need to talk to him.

That's what I want to know. I'm like, what do you mean? Keep it in your pants. You got 12 kids, my guy. This woman is losing her mind.

She's out grilling, she was. He's just always out grilling. He's like, I'm not here, sorry, he's just like, I've got to go hide the lawnmower.

Although this was probably in the days before any lawnmowers. But anyway, he's chopping down wood. Yeah, what time period are we talking about? By the way? Just so I can picture what clothes to put these people in in my mind.

This was like, 1700s. I want to say, yeah, so he's chopping wood. Oh, okay, got it?

Got it, so this is got it. It was like potato sacks. These are just children coming out of everywhere we are, out in the wilderness.

It is the 1700s. Love sucks, things are not awesome. Why we came here, we don't know.

Everyone's questioning it, everyone's like, why are we here? Yeah, but apparently no one decided to leave. No, and she's like, I'm just going to have all these kids here.

They really settled, truly, they settled, they put down roots, yeah.

Really settled in, that's for fucking sure. They created a civilization of their own. But that it was that 13th child that she was not psyched about, it's always the it's the 13th kid.

That really puts you over the edge, you know what I mean? Number 13, that's the one you when you feel truly outnumbered, it's number 13..

You're like, you know, it's number 13, right, right? I felt like I could handle this, but.

Up until then, me and all my personalities are doing pretty well. But that 13th man, it's just really a bitch. I don't have that 13th, I can't do it. And she said, she said, I am tired of children.

Let it be the devil, let this baby be the devil, she said. Which I have a couple of questions, like, The baby in you.

Yeah, like, what, why? why the Devil? And two? A child would be easier to deal with, I feel like.

All I'm saying is, if she's hoping that the baby is the devil, what is wrong with these kids? They must be pretty bad. They must. If she's like, Look, I'll take a devil baby over these poor assholes, you know what I mean?

Like, honestly, these children must be wild and out. What are your kids doing? lighting shit on fire in the pine barrens, you know, killing small animals? They destroyed half the pine barrens. It must be just poor.

Mother leads is like, I'd rather have a devil baby. Yeah, running amok, well, you know what she got?

One maybe she's like, You know what if I have one devil baby? maybe I'll be about 10 kids lighter, there you go. And she got it. Because apparently, this beastly child came into the world on the evening of a violent storm. That actually came from the direction of the Pine Barrens in 1735..

Oh yeah, so. People also claimed that mother leads probably indulged in sorcery as well, which easily explained. Of course, because she's a woman in the 1700s who had a complaint about having 13 babies, so therefore, she must be a witch.

Get her, she's going to have a devil baby, hurry quick.

Oh well, one less mouthy woman to deal with. So obviously, this is easily what explains what happened, because the legend goes, that mother leads gave birth to a healthy, very normal, average child. But within minutes of being placed in her arms, the baby began to change into a terribly unholy thing. Ooh.

Now, according to McCloy, this is a quote. Human features disappeared. The body elongated tremendously, forming into a long, serpentine shape. Hooves replaced the feet. Its pink, chubby, baby face coarsened into a long, bony structure of a horse's head, bat wings sprung from its shoulder blades.

Finally, it arose from the bed, larger and more powerful than a fully grown man. Then the silence was broken by the monster's rasping snarls as he curled his forked, thick tail and proceeded to No, no, this is always funny. He proceeded to beat everyone in the room with it, including mother leads with the tail, with the tail. Well, I mean, if he's look, how big is this room?

You know what I mean? He might not have meant to like, this baby is just born. It's trying to get a hold of itself. It's probably turning around, like, Oh, shit.

He's got a tail and just whacking people with his giant tail, like, I'm so sorry, oh God, and it's just knocking things over. Maybe Devil Baby didn't mean to, I don't know.

He's got a lot going on, he's got a lot of appendages to deal with. Devil Baby was not to blame here, you know? Look, we've all we've seen the Seinfeld episode, we've all seen some ugly babies.

Exactly maybe this was just a really exceptionally unfortunately stretched out child. They're not cute right after they're born, they look weird. I mean, I bumped into a couple of things.

They do this morning, you know? I walked in and I bumped into my coffee. It could have been the same thing. Was it your tail? He's got a whole ass tail to contend with.

He might not have meant to beat everybody with it, he was just stressed. No spatial awareness, you know what I mean? It's just like I've got a tail.

Oh my God, yeah, it's hard, it's hard. I mean, we've all, we've all seen babies.

Babies don't have any spatial, like a toddler doesn't have spatial awareness. It bangs into everything, and now all of a sudden, this baby's growing from like just fresh out of the oven baby into the full grown fucking bat wolf man beast. Also, I think I read this article in the New York Daily News at the supermarket about three years ago.

It was bat, baby, that's what I'm getting. Oh my god boy. Yeah, he used to be on the front of every tabloid, of everything.

That right, and the weird head and eyes, like, Oh man, that and that was like the days before good a..I, like, someone really fucking photoshopped that thing.

That was the end of those images. They went to town. Hell yeah, his sharpened teeth and weird, and they, like a dark blue under the eyes, look really tired.

Yeah, it was wild, poor thing, yeah, and here he was. This is his beginning right here.

This is his beginning. He was also loud because he had an ear piercing bellow. And then he flapped his huge wings and shot right up the chimney and out into the night. Damn, he just went right for it, he just beat the shit out of everybody in the room and then left.

Wow, that's. It's like a giraffe right after birth, they just get up and go, you know, around. I'm impressed, I am impressed.

He didn't even need to try, and he knew that the chimney went out, which is impressive. Smart, right out the oven. He was like, I bet that leads out.

I'm going to go out there. He's like, you know where that goes, the air, I think that's what that is, and you know what?

You know what I can fit through as a full grown bat human being? a chimney, that chimney, I think so.

Yeah, that'll be fun. So, according to this account, this very believable account, McCloy notes several sleeping children with a jersey Devil's first worldly meal, which is rude.

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Other versions say that his first meal was just the entire Leeds family. So well, there was a lot of them to. You know, he ate his entire family, all 12 children, Mama Leeds, and if there was a daddy Leeds, he was gone too. Or he just went out into the night and ate a bunch of sleeping kids. I mean, I would.

I feel like going with the sleeping kids would probably be an easier get at first. You know what I mean, while you're kind of still learning how to function in this weird, devil body, I think so, you want to?

You don't want to work for it. I mean, my kid's first meal was mashed up avocado, but like sleeping babies are I guess a great first meal for a devil mashed avocado. Whatever, whatever works, whatever you have on hand choices.

All I know is I, we're all canceled now. This is the end of this, that's it, this is the end. I hope. This was really fun.

This is so fun. What a farewell, farewell episode. what a farewell, yep.

The Leeds bad Boy is going to take us all. There's another version of this story, too, in case that wasn't good enough, so this version takes poor mother Leeds totally out of the equation entirely. This baby's creator. Oh yeah, because now there's a totally different young woman who is also lonely.

It's we got to make sure that we know she's lonely and she's from Leeds Point, and it's a 1700s for women, I'm sure she is.

Everybody's lonely. No, it's not like she's like, Hey, let's talk about our feelings, honey. He's like, I'm going to go cut things in the field and have another woman. You're a witch.

So it's like, Yeah, I think they're all lonely is pretty much it. But apparently this poor woman fell in love with a British soldier during the American Revolution. That's, and so the obvious punishment for that is getting a devil baby because she betrayed the American cause. Obviously, that's what I always say, Yeah, I mean, I feel like.

That's also a story that I've heard recently. We were like, you know what happened? A devil baby that's definitely like, you know, this is familiar, so there are besides this one.

So that's, that's. The second way that he came about was just like, Oops, you married a British soldier. Oh wait, sorry. Quick. Tangential question Isn't the New Jersey Devils the name of their hockey team?

Sure is because now they're now we're proud of it. Now we're like, OK. It was a thing where everybody was scared of it. And then at the end they were like, let's name a hockey team after it, they were like, this thing is pretty rad.

This thing that eats children sleeping in bed. We're going to name a hockey team after it. So there are other, less common versions of the story that kind of incorporate like one or more of the elements of those two. Kind of like mix and match. Right, right, right. But in any case, they all just result in some hideous creature being born and either fleeing or being forcibly cast out into the pine barrens.

And that's where it would adapt and live to this very day. So, like any legend, the Jersey Devil exists mostly, or in large part. I would say to kind of explain a variety of unfortunate or difficult events and phenomena in the region. I blame it for everything, I'm everything that's happening right now, fucking Jersey devil.

The Echo in the Zoom. It's his fault, the planet's going backwards. All of it they would blame, like droughts and crops on the Jersey Devil.

Cows underproducing milk, the Jersey devil, the absence of fish in a local stream, the Jersey devil. It's all his fault.

And in one instance, American Naval hero Commodore Stephen, how do you say it? Dave Decatur? I was like, Dave will know Decatur.

Oh yeah, yeah, d-e-c-a-t-e-u-r or whatever, there you go, Commodore Stephen Decatur. I like it.

He visited the Hanover Iron works in Burlington, New Jersey, just to, like, oversee the production of cannonballs. Because he wanted to make sure they met his standards and would actually work. You know, imagine if that was your job? The oversight of cannonballs, truly? I just got to make sure they're cannonballs.

I just got to make sure that the balls are looking good, I just need it to be a sphere, a sphere to measure the balls. But that afternoon, while he was readying the cannons for test firing, he observed a bizarre creature flapping its wings across the range. And everyone present on the range that day backed up his that his aim was perfect when he fired the cannon directly through the jersey devil.

And apparently literally ripped a hole straight through the jersey Devil. But the Jersey Devil just was like, meh. And he just kept going like merely a flesh wound and just flew off. Like, was not at all worried about this, but everyone there was, like, saw it.

He shot a cannonball at the Jersey Devil that's wild. I just picture him like, na na, na, na na, and he's just like flying away, right?

Yeah, yeah, way to test fire. I fought in your general direction. Yeah, like they reenact the entire scene from Monty Python.

Yeah, he's the original now. Across southern New Jersey, the devil was definitely a common scapegoat. He was blamed throughout this 19th century, again, for, like, loss of livestock on farms. He became the source of howling and shrieking that would be heard by farmers. Which I'm also like, maybe what was it if it wasn't that? Maybe we should investigate.

Yeah, I was going to say it was someone being murdered and buried on someone's property as well, but we're just blaming a cryptid. But every now and then, apparently, the devil would make his way out of the pines and would be spotted on battlefields and more heavily populated areas like Atlantic City. So there were sightings.

He's a tourist, you know, he just wants to see the sights. That feels also very on brand for the jersey devil. Like, Hey, I'm going to go to some battlefields and it legs me in Atlantic City.

You know what I mean, like, I'm going to go blow some shit up with those cannonballs and gamble? Exactly, it really makes sense. Has anyone ever seen the Jersey Devil and a certain former president?

I can say I haven't, but who am I to say? That's all? she wrote. Has it been on a Simpsons episode? Because if it has, then we know it is true.

Then we know, Yeah, OK, I like it. But it wasn't really until the very end of the 19th century that he began to begin to appear in news reports. That's when we started reporting on him.

Got it, got it. He started giving interviews there, that's when he was like, his manager was like, you really need to give a quote.

Yeah, he got out. He was like, Look, you've got to get out and fight this story. I mean, I know it's you, you've got to let people know what's going on exactly.

You got to give me a reason I don't want to. People are going to misunderstand me, no one's going to listen, They're going to take it out of context.

And I'm just eating babies, you know, that's it's hard, it's hard. There's that whole story where I beat everyone in the room upon birth with my tail, and he's like, I just was.

It was my tail. No one's going to believe that, right? So I get it, he's.

He's in a difficult position and we believe you. I'm so sorry I've come on as a guest to your show and completely taken it off the rails. Oh no, oh no.

We love that this is what we need. There are no rails off the rails is where we live, We rarely live on the rails.

I was going to say, our show has never, ever been on the rails. It shouldn't be OK good. I only like to do off the rails shows. Because that's how my brain works, it's our brains as well.

So, on July 29th, 1899, issues of the New Jersey City News reported that the beast had quote reappeared in New Jersey. For the first time since. It warned the pioneers of the approach of the civil war. Which I was like, Wow, I love that. He just is like, Hey, this thing is like Nostradamus, too, it's also it's all, yeah.

Wait, wait, who did it warn about the civil war? did it go up to someone and be like, Hey, pass it on, war is going to be really fucked up. Just let you know.

But we're going to call it civil, we're going to call it civil. Did he tell that? did he tell Mr. Cannonball Corporal, Decatur?

I'm saying, Who was he whispering to? I need to know. Because someone knew that the Civil War was coming from the Jersey Devil and didn't say shit. And he didn't pass it on. Yeah, because, because, you know, the Jersey Devil was like, pass it on.

And that guy was like, I'm not going to pass it on. Yeah, he was like, don't let it happen, right? And then now he's like, I'm getting a bad name.

Meanwhile, I tried to warn people. He's like, if I say, pass it on, you, pass it on, you know, at the end of this, I think that we're going to come out. That the jersey Devil is has just been misaligned. This, yeah, hundreds of years, yeah.

Misunderstood? He needs to do a tell all memoir is what he needs to do. Oh, I can't wait, I'll do it.

Let's keep our eyes out for that, it's going to happen. I wouldn't, I wouldn't doubt anything these days. Truly, I don't know.

I wouldn't either. We're manifesting it. It's going to hit number four on the Like New York Times bestseller. I'm going to go, Oh, OK.

Yeah, good for him. I called that. It's like, Oh yeah, I got the audio book. So. The article described the beast as quote, a strange combination of serpentine body, horse head, cloven hooves and forked tail, which is pretty much the origin description.

Oh, OK, we're sticking with the original, original body shape. yeah, we're going with. I hope he's gotten to use the tail a little better at this point, though I think he's gotten used to it at this point.

But he was believed to have been banished from the area many years after, bringing considerable misfortune to the residents of Jersey of South Jersey. But wait, does that mean that he's there hanging out and being welcomed in, and people are like, Come on, buddy. That's what I wonder. I'm like, are you hanging out with him? Then you have a drink.

And then all of a sudden they're like, whoa, whoa, whoa, that was one too many fucking cows. OK, buddy, you gotta go. You crossed a line well. Several years later, in the spring of 1905, the Devil started making headlines again, and this time with a slightly different story attached to him.

Now, so in the article, Oh, exactly, it changes 100,000 times, changing up, right?

Right, he's always evolving with the times. The old story wasn't working, not getting as much traction. Exactly. Change it up a little bit.

Got to change it up, so. The article was titled Story of the Leeds Devil. And a reporter for Camden's Morning Post newspaper alleged that the devil had been born many years ago in Bordentown, New Jersey, and was the product of a relationship between an American sea captain and his wife. Oh well, now it does. It does involve because they called him.

They called the woman a tarleton before she married the captain. Which when I first heard that, I was like, is that like a mixture of a harlot? like a harlot and a charlatan? Yeah, like a lion, a lying, that's what I thought it would be, this woman, but apparently a tarleton is a village in England.

So I think they were just going back to that whole, like, it's not an American, so that's what happened. But like the Mother Leeds origin story, the captain's wife wished not to have a second child and was not psyched about the baby. But even before it was born, so she gave birth to a child bearing a close resemblance to the Orthodox devil, oh so, now we're getting the real devil into it.

And exactly, and now that this, oh, the basfamet, the one with the horns and the basfamet, yeah, like the whole, he's literally right there.

He is, he's hanging out right there. Yes, I love him. yeah, he's great, he's so cool looking.

You know, he is right, he's great, he's doing the whole like as above, but so below thing, yeah, the whoopies.

So that's, this is what that baby did. It was like, whoop, hey? And they were like, that's not OK, so they're like, No, thank you, so judgmental.

Really, you know, I was just trying to get you into, like, free, your thinking. That's all. Listen to what he has to say, man.

But apparently he became known in the neighborhood as the Leeds Devil. And I love, because when this came out, it was like he's walking to school with his backpack. They're like, there's a devil, right?

He's like, Oh yeah, I'm just like, you know, I'm just trying to get to chemistry, but yeah, exactly, I love it. Second period, man. Because it said like it was a surprise to no one that she gave birth to the devil, and it's like to no one.

Like, no one was, I don't know. I feel like I would be surprised if I was there. They're like, That's Harlot, she's from England.

I'm just going to, I'm going to invent tarleton, though, as the word that we describe and just start using it, it feels right like I think it's a word for tarleton.

It's got a good Tarleton to it. Yeah, you Tarleton. And you can say it to people and they know they won't know what. Yeah, at all, but you don't know it's an insult.

That's because it's got all those formal. One, one of those great words that you don't quite know what it means, but you know, it's supposed to slap you. Hell yeah, I love the Tarleton. So, despite being described as looking like the Orthodox devil and being described as a demon human hybrid. The Morning Post said that the beast is not just something of legend, but was actually a real creature that terrorized the town. Until it crawled into the fireplace and up the chimney and into the pine barrens, so it's always going up a chimney.

But once he had left to go in the pines, he would be seen by townsfolk in and around the pines. And in the woodlands. And desolate tracks in the southern section of the state. So that was going on. And then, for much of the 19th century, the story, it appeared in newspapers from time to time, but it kind of was just like a oral storytelling thing. And by the beginning of the 20th century, all of a sudden there was a rash of sightings in more than 30 different towns. And it elevated this story to be like a full blown, like national thing that everybody was watching.

OK, there you go. And during the week of January 16th, 1909, thousands of people from southern New Jersey to Trenton reported seeing the Jersey devil, or at least seeing the tracks left behind. So, in Trenton, the devil's hoofprints were discovered in Whitehorse Park and in some backyards of a bunch of residence houses. Oh my God, imagine if that was your house.

I'm saying, I would think that was pretty cool, I would think that was awesome, I'd be excited, yeah.

Like, I want a bigfoot to just walk through my backyard. Oh, I didn't say that, I did, yeah, I want that.

That's your manifestation. Hey, and just have him walk right through. I would say, yeah, just hey, hey, so cool to see you. Yeah, I want I get it, yeah.

You don't want to be, you want to be left alone out here, minding your business, having your lunch. You know, I get, I'm not going to blow up your spot, I just want to say hi.

Yeah, I see your hat that says, no pictures, it's OK, like, I expect you.

It's fine, you're dressed in disguise, your security people are with you, I get it.

Carry on, carry on my friend. Thanks for the visit. Yeah. But one of the residents told the local local reporter I recognize the tracks from those reproduced in the newspapers.

They look to me as if it was the hoof of was that of a young cult, not a cloven hoof as I've heard of it being described. So if it was a young person, probably then got murdered by the rest of the townspeople. They were like, Hey, it's the devil, and he's like, you guys, I'm pretty sure it's just like a small horse on the loose.

They're like, it's the devil, and he's like, I feel like it's just an animal, though they're like, you're a witch, yeah. And apparently, after these reports came out in Trenton, letters from residents in nearby towns started reporting sightings of what they described as a one legged, one footed bird that had been lurking about the city and attacking.

I had a one legged bird. once a one legged, you had a one legged bird. I had a one legged bird, I had a canary.

Anyway, that's my one legged Canary story. Please go. You had, like, a one third jersey devil. It's a good to edit it out, just edit all of it out.

Just just the intro, Hi, welcome Jodi Sweetin, and then edit everything else. I said out, I'm like, let's get to the fucking point.

That was fun, I thought Jodi Sweetin was there, I feel like she was, she was really here. Like, too much.

Never, never so. The attacks caused a small panic. But to along southern and northern New Jersey. So much so, and I'd this.

I would say this is more than a small panic. They actually closed schools and factories down at one point because they were so panicked and residents were locking their doors and windows. Like, scared, this thing was going to come into their house. Yeah, Jersey Devil is the new snow day.

It is like people were like, it's coming for you and they're like, close the schools, close the close the factories, don't do anything. No more cannonball building.

Like, no more cannonball building, no more cannonball measuring, that's it, no iron.

No, that was his thing. He was like, I don't want to be shot by a cannonball again. I'm going to shut all this shit down. And I don't want these kids getting smart enough to go work in a factory.

So one man in Bristol was actually awakened one night to his young daughter's screams in the night. And when he ran into her room, he saw through the window a large beast standing just outside, along the banks of the river. And he described the noises it was making as quote, like the scratching of a phonograph before the music begins. And yet it also had something of a whistle to it, you know how the factory whistle sounds?

Well, it was something like that, and I said, No, sir. I don't know what the factory whistle sounds like, but I can imagine, wait, was that a quote that would know that was me?

That was me at the end. Oh, that was just you got it. Wouldn't that be amazing if the reporter was like, I don't know what that sounds like, but thank you. But it sounds like a phonograph like Rar, Rar.

And then it also sounds like, I would imagine, you know what, though, Have you ever heard it? Have you ever heard cats fighting on your roof at two in the morning? I can't say I have.

I'm just saying, that shit sounds like the devil it does. I'm not a huge fan of cats, but that, yeah, I just. I can't imagine what like mouth shape this thing was making to make those kinds of sounds like the like scratch sounds and then the like, wow. It was like, you know, it's sort of like beatboxing, you know, you watch people like, I don't know how you're making that noise with your mouth, but it's like coming out.

Yeah, yeah, I mean, they're like, doing it all at once, that's actually hilarious, not like I just did, because that was terrible.

That was really good, I liked it. It was also like, kind of like, ventriloquism, you know, yeah, maybe he had, like, a mean jersey devil.

And he was like, watch what it's about, they're just doing the side thing. Oh, look at this thing. I like that. Scritch, scritch, woo.

I was like, Holy shit. Now. Everyone, from children to police officers, reported seeing the Jersey devil and, in one case, patrolman James Sackville. Woof pause.

Yeah, yeah, just putting that out there. Of the. Bristol police reported going to investigate reports of dogs howling and barking in a resident's yard.

And when he turned to leave the area, he ended up finding himself standing right in front of the jersey. Devil. Oof, also this guy, Patrolman James Sackville. He went on to serve as the city's chief of police. Oh, damn. And he described the devil as winged and hopping like a bird, but also had the features of some peculiar animal.

And he claimed, which this is my favorite claim, because I'm like, No, you didn't. He claims that he ran towards the beast and I was like, Did you, James? did you whatever?

I don't know, I don't know about that. Untrue if this thing is standing there, looking the way it looks and it goes. Ricker, ricker, woo. He had a reputation to uphold.

You shit yourself and then you ran away and changed, and then you were like, I ran after it and you did not. Sir. Yeah, no way. And he and he also said this thing ran away from him.

This thing retreated down the path. Mm Hmm, Chief Sackville. He also said that it emitted a frightening cry, or it's frightening cry, until it flew out of sight. So it went ricker, ricker and then ran out of.

He was like, Remix, I'm going to leave, remix Woo now. While most who claim to have seen the beast described it as birdlike, at least with the wings and all that and that like screechy sound, well, some used completely unique descriptions, e...w.

Minister Bristol's postmaster at the time described the devil as having a head resembling that of a ram with curled horns. And he said his neck was thrust forward in flight, so he was just slithering. Yeah, he's just slithering. But he ended up making his way south from Trenton and he began causing some more havoc.

Now, in the early morning hours of January 19th, Mr. and Mrs. Nelson Evans, that's my birthday. No way.

Well, a couple on your birthday. They were woken up by strange noises and looked out their window to find the devil. Quote cavorting before their eyes. On the roof of their shed, which I just picture him being like, like Sassy on the roof of their shed, just like shimmying a little bit, cavorting to me just seems like it's like, what's happening out there?

Cavorting to me, feels like, was there a late B.G. devil? You know what I mean, was it were things happening on the roof of their house? That's what I thought. Or was he right, or was he just by himself?

Which is weird. Bro, come on, don't do that. Nobody needs to do that in the middle of the night. Not on my roof, don't do it on a shed, I don't need you cavorting on the roof of my house.

Come on, go go to the woods, you've got a whole fucking forest, go find some privacy, you've got an entire pine barrens to do that in with. Like, a lack of civilization. This feels inappropriate, sir.

It really does. But in their report to the newspapers, Mr Evans said the devil was about three feet, three feet and a half high. With a head like a collie dog and a face like a horse, what? How do you have a head like one thing and a face like another?

That's what I was just thinking. Well, he did have a long neck, wings about two feet long. This is what's weird, though. He said. His back legs were like those of a crane, and it had horse's hooves. What?

Sir, I'm sorry. What are you talking about? This man had some chocolate before bed. How did crane legs hold this whole thing? But then the feet are horse's hooves.

It's like, I just also love that. Nobody can agree, what the fuck this looks like, nobody can, nobody can.

He also said he watched this thing for about 10 minutes in the backyard and then he opened the window. This is my favorite part, he said. He opened the window and he went shoo and the devil turned around, barked at him and then flew away. I love that.

It took him 10 whole minutes to think, What should I say to this shoo, shoo? and he went ruff.

And then, if the devil leaves, when I say Shoo, I'm not scared. Well, he wasn't done, because by the end of the week, the devil had made its way down to Philadelphia. Oh wow, a reporter for The Morning Call wrote. Scientists are puzzled to give a name to the beast, which is a combination of bat, kangaroo and pony.

What now? He's a kangaroo, like now that we're adding in kangaroo to the mix. I'm like, Oh, I get locking your doors now, I don't want that, yes.

I wanna know I can't just come and kick your door down, you know what I mean and what part of it is kangaroo. I heard crane legs.

And in this same article from this reporter for the Morning Call, he said If something rather weird is not flying around. The condition of mind of South Jersey and South Philadelphia would provide a feast for students of mob. Hallucination So I think this reporter is like, I think you're all hallucinating.

But in an editorial in the Atlantic City Daily Press, one person wrote When one stops to think about how absurd is the latest jersey sensation? About the Leeds devil, which has been given much space in the newspapers of the entire country. One must feel ashamed of himself to think that he stopped long enough to read the headlines, less the entire article. Rude, which I was like, Okay, that's rude. That was directly at officer shots, fired Officer Balzac, or whatever his name was.

Yeah, it was like, Yeah, bro, that's true, but I'm like, you know, like, live a little. It's also like, let's believe in this little devil. Well, and like, Are you not writing an article?

But can you imagine if you're like, living somewhere and just every story is like a pony kangaroo? Callie showed up at the door. You're like, shut up and your editor's like, you have to write an article about this a week later or so. Sightings of the Jersey Devil After this little article, the sightings just kind of ended and everyone was apparently shamed out of saying it.

Everyone was ashamed of themselves, everyone was ashamed, but then the Jersey devil, the Jersey devil was like, you guys, no, like, I'm not letting you be ashamed. Because he made just one more appearance in a village just outside Salem that February before returning to the Pine Barrens. So in the months and years that followed, people all over southern New Jersey and northern Pennsylvania started to theorize as to what could have caused the sightings.

And they were blaming it on everything from a complete hoax and misidentified creatures to genuine sightings of the actual Jersey devil. The Brooklyn Meteor Research Society suggested it was quote a type of marsupial carnivore, which a kangaroo is a marsupial. Correct? That's what I was just gonna say. Or fish-a-ped, both previously thought to be extinct, so we're thinking it's like an extinct creature that we are like, Oh shit, we're wrong.

What is a fish-a-ped? It's just when you have toes separated to the base, so it just means cloven-footed. Oh, okay, that makes sense. So they thought that was extinct, and they were like, maybe it's not.

And the Academy of Natural Science, on the other hand, told reporters there is no bird which could make such tracks in the snow. And there is no scientific record of such animals. Or, as have been described in the newspapers, so they're like, shut up, shut up. If the Academy of Natural Sciences was unable to find evidence of any animal that would resemble anything described in the papers. It's probably because, despite some of the overlap in those descriptions, like, you know, the wings and the horse feet and the cloven hooves and all that stuff, they also varied so wildly from one description to the next. That it's like, of course, you're not gonna find something that makes sense.

Yeah, no. And also, you know, at night, cavorting on a roof, there's no street lights, there's no outdoor lights. Not like you can flip on the garage sensor light. You know what I mean?

You are just going by what you see, dancing in the dark, dancing in the moonlight, and you just woke up too, so you're groggy. Then, many years after, the Jersey Devil panic of 1909 had kind of ended, people in and around South Jersey started reporting. Reportedly started attempting to create additional action by making their own Jersey Devil footprints and reporting them to authorities and the press.

They wanted to start it up again. Right, right, right, right, because I'm sure that hadn't happened before. That was not right. Yeah, of course not.

All those other ones were real, but these were fake ones, yeah. And in one case, a Philadelphia animal trainer was hoping to bolster attendance to his performances. So he kind of contributed to the press with the whole thing. He told reporters his vampire bat had escaped and was on the loose and attributed that to the increase in devil sightings.

It's like, Oh, sorry. And actually, then this leads right into. One of the biggest hoaxes was from. That was probably the one that Norman Jeffries of New York did. He was an entrepreneur with a real penchant for very bizarre promotional events. He wanted to capitalize on the whole hysteria surrounding the devil.

So he bought a small kangaroo from a friend in upstate New York and planned to pass it off as the Jersey Devil. So there were small kangaroos in upstate New York is what I'm saying. There were, and it's not an issue.

Thank you. Why is there a kangaroo in upstate New York? Your guess is as good as mine. And it gets worse because he painted green stripes on the kangaroo, but the kangaroo licked the paint off before it dried. Oh, now the kangaroo's got lead poisoning.

So then he attempted to attach a set of wings, and apparently the kangaroo just demolished the wings that he made. Because it's a kangaroo and it's like, Why the fuck are you putting wings on me? I'm already cool enough on my own. Yeah, he's like, I'm a fucking kangaroo. What are you doing?

I'm yoked, I am yoked, don't mess with me. So he made a second set of wings out of bronze and rabbit fur, and that worked.

He put the wings on his jersey, devil, and then he draped the kangaroo in nets. And paid about 10 local heathens to act as farmers, with pitchforks surrounding the animal in a cage. Oh, that makes me really sad me too. that's so horrible, like, Fuck you, man.

This animal's like, What is wrong with you? I'm just a small, ouch-carrying kangaroo, and I, Yeah, that's all, that's all.

He's like, I belong in Australia, get me the fuck out of here. And this whole thing happened in the basement of the Dime Museum, and spectators were led in one by one to look at the Jersey Devil. But they could only look at it for a second or two when the curtain would be lifted, and then it would be dropped immediately.

But throughout the 19th century, residents of southern New Jersey feared the Jersey devil, and they panicked at the mere mention of a sighting. It was a big deal. And stories of his presence would circulate from town to town. And sometimes posses were formed to capture it, and bounties were placed on its head. Some ranging from a hundred to a hundred thousand dollars. Damn. And by the 1930s, societal attitudes toward the devil kind of changed. Because all of a sudden, instead of forming posses, to go, you know, to put a bounty on his head, they were like, we kind of love him.

Like, he's kind of our guy. It only took him, like, 130 years, a source of pride. And in 1938, the Jersey Devil was officially designated as the State Demon of New Jersey, making it the first only state demon in the country. Wow.

I was going to say, wait, wait, wait. That feels like it implies that there's other state demons, and I would like to know that. I was so hoping there was more. Can we make more? I would love to make more state demons. It sounds like you could.

You know that there's some states in this country that definitely. I'm like, I could think of a few, I could think of some demons that we could name. And while sightings of the creature definitely became less common than they once were, like we talked about earlier, the name became popular and even became the name of an NHL talkie team called the New Jersey Devils. Look at that foreshadowing, there you go.

Look at, I can't believe. I. First of all, I can't believe I knew the name of the NHL hockey team for New Jersey. That is a random ass piece of information. But secondly, wow, way to just. It would be like if we had the bad boy NHL team here.

The bad boys, that would be a good baseball team, the Bad Boys, although I don't think anybody would be very intimidated by them, I don't think so either.

They'd be like, here, hold my bat three and a half feet tall. As far as we know. Yeah, it's not very intimidating either. What goes away when you say shoo?

No, come on, that's fair, you know what bad boys it is?

Bad boys, there you go, bad boys. But the jersey devil never went away. He still, he appears in books and television shows, he's in video games.

He's in movies, he's like a celebrity, he's on late night talk shows, you know, he is at the forefront of licensing out.

His imaging to AI is what he's doing. Hell yeah, he's going to be on the next one of Like the Hot Wings Show. I've been trying to start my DJ career all of a sudden.

Now he's like, I'm a Soundcloud rapper, I've got, you know, I've got, I've got a podcast, I've got an NHL team. Really. His branding and marketing is genius, top notch, sir.

Congratulations sir. It all started in the beginning. She was like, give a quote, find him on TikTok guys, yeah.

At the Jersey Devil doing trending dances, that's him, I would love that, so that that's the story of the Jersey Devil.

That was so much fun, I really liked that story. The Jersey Devil is fun. Yeah, I kind of love it.

Rarely does it wind up in the naming of an NHL hockey team. You know, truly. So, go New Jersey. How many cryptids can claim that? Yeah.

Yeah, right, pour one out, you know? They got to keep something going and that's good for them. They do, it's true.

Oh, you guys, this was so much fun. this was so much fun. Thank you so much for coming on. Yeah, seriously, thank you.

You are literally welcome back anytime. Well, what I'm going to start doing now is listening to the podcast when I'm driving around in my car and just interjecting my own thoughts. That you will neither be able to hear, nor will anyone else. But I'll feel like I'm a part of the podcast. Voice note them to us. I was just going to say, we'll exchange numbers and you can voice note it.

No, seriously, this has been so much fun. I'm such a huge fan of you guys. I love, I love your energy, I love, like the vibe, everything. It's great for somebody who also obviously tells stories.

With 1,500 side stories, it's really great to listen to.

Thank you so much and we're huge fans. So this was a big deal. I think, what was it that? Drew said? Drew goes this my fiance? He goes, This is your biggest get.

Like, and I was like, Hell yeah, I was like, yes. And our researcher Dave, who did, like all of the research for the Jersey Devil stuff, great work Dave, huge fan, huge hallmark.

He's in the room right now. We got you great job, you did great. I know you're always doing a lot of research and you do a really great job with it.

Hell yeah, Dave for the win. Really great research. Yeah, yeah, cause I know how it is having a podcast.

If I were left to do all of my own work, it would be a shit show. So yeah, we did for a while and then we were like, well, then it was like chaotic. We were like, help.

Help, Dave, help, and Dave swooped in like the jersey devil and said, I've got you. He beat us with his tail. We pulled it out of his little pouch, cause he's a small kangaroo.

Went and just, Yeah, hell yeah, he flew in the room, it was great.

He was just storing it well. This has been amazing. Well, thank you guys so much for listening. thank you Jodi for joining us.

We hope you guys keep listening and we hope you keep it.

Perfect. That was fantastic, cause all of a sudden I was like, Fuck, I'm blanking. I was like, Yes, it's happening.

It's happening at Wondery.com slash survey.