Nov. 6, 2025

The Jersey Devil: America’s First Monster

The Jersey Devil: America’s First Monster

This conversation explores the legend of the Jersey Devil, tracing its origins back to the Leeds family in colonial New Jersey. It delves into the societal fears and superstitions of the time, the mass hysteria surrounding sightings in 1909, and the potential connections to military experiments and environmental factors. The discussion culminates in a reflection on the spiritual implications of the legend, suggesting that the Jersey Devil serves as a mirror for America's generational sins and unresolved issues.

Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-broadcasting-seeds-podcast--6402290/support.

Broadcasting Seeds Sponsors

ECO Flow - For all your mobile power needs! For home or when you are camping or doing research in the field. ECO Flow has everything you would need.  
https://ecoflowtechnologyinc.pxf.io/19VYO9

Safe Shell VPN - This is the VPN that I use! Secure High-Speed Streaming VPN Different Apps, Different IPs The Best VPN for TV, Movies, Sports and Social Media with Exclusive App Mode-Enjoying content from multiple regions simultaneously! 
https://safeshellvpn.pxf.io/xLqJBR

The Long Story Shirt - for all your Broadcasting Seeds Gear and other High Strangeness Apparel and Swag.   
https://thelongstoryshirt.com

WEBVTT

1
00:00:01.120 --> 00:00:07.120
Year Joe, straight from the broadcast studio and then the

2
00:00:07.200 --> 00:00:10.240
static this ain't no beat sound story, So as prophetic

3
00:00:10.679 --> 00:00:13.000
encrypt the signals from the shadows of the party we

4
00:00:13.119 --> 00:00:16.839
did where the trot got secret snow parted, microphone alchemists

5
00:00:16.839 --> 00:00:20.120
scriptures with a twist, peep the frequency seeds in the

6
00:00:20.120 --> 00:00:23.359
midst We dropped fast like plagues revelations in the catus,

7
00:00:23.399 --> 00:00:27.199
broadcasting truth while they trapped in surveillans wisdom with a

8
00:00:27.280 --> 00:00:30.600
watchman's blade, forth what sound while your whole system faid

9
00:00:31.079 --> 00:00:33.920
blood moons that for love echoes in the pond sas

10
00:00:34.039 --> 00:00:37.479
far sompen through the fault lines of time. We ain't mainstream,

11
00:00:37.520 --> 00:00:40.479
we ain't just stream safer with the prophets to code

12
00:00:40.479 --> 00:00:43.520
the dreams. So with you tune in better guards to mind.

13
00:00:43.560 --> 00:00:45.920
It's broadcasting seeds and were breaking the.

14
00:00:45.840 --> 00:00:46.880
Design of design.

15
00:00:48.920 --> 00:00:54.119
Yeah, yeah, yo yo, Straight from.

16
00:00:53.960 --> 00:00:55.119
The broadcast.

17
00:00:59.399 --> 00:01:03.359
Me stepping to the pines and the night swallows, the

18
00:01:03.439 --> 00:01:07.200
sound of your own breath, the pine barrens do that.

19
00:01:07.799 --> 00:01:15.040
Millions of scrub acres, sugar sand roads that basically go nowhere,

20
00:01:15.799 --> 00:01:21.519
and a sky that feels one size too tight. Now

21
00:01:21.560 --> 00:01:28.200
picture this. They're seventeen thirty five. A storm pins a

22
00:01:28.239 --> 00:01:33.159
small cabin to the earth. Inside a woman named Deborah

23
00:01:33.200 --> 00:01:37.480
Leads curses the life inside her, let it be the devil.

24
00:01:38.319 --> 00:01:46.120
The baby arrives, screams, spreads leather wings, and shoots up

25
00:01:46.159 --> 00:01:50.200
the chimney end of the black That is the story

26
00:01:50.239 --> 00:01:55.879
the locals kept like a family secret. The name stuck.

27
00:01:56.319 --> 00:02:00.400
The Leads devil, the Jersey Devil, a thing with and

28
00:02:00.439 --> 00:02:04.560
a horse's head that tears the quiet and eats fear

29
00:02:05.480 --> 00:02:09.439
for fuel. That version of the legend traces back to

30
00:02:09.520 --> 00:02:13.680
the Leeds family and the area now called Leeds Point

31
00:02:14.080 --> 00:02:19.319
in the southern the southern New Jersey Pines. It is folklore,

32
00:02:20.159 --> 00:02:24.479
but is it is old and stubborn, and it keeps

33
00:02:24.479 --> 00:02:33.280
showing up in maps, museums, museum placards, and oral history

34
00:02:33.639 --> 00:02:38.599
because people swear they've heard it, and sometimes swear they

35
00:02:38.599 --> 00:02:42.080
have seen it. Here's what we're going to do tonight

36
00:02:42.159 --> 00:02:45.639
on broadcasting Seeds. We're going to treat this creature like

37
00:02:45.759 --> 00:02:50.919
evidence in a cold case, no panic, no campfire, theatrics.

38
00:02:51.000 --> 00:02:53.960
We will lay out the origin story and the social

39
00:02:54.520 --> 00:02:58.719
weather around it. We will put the sightings and the

40
00:02:58.800 --> 00:03:03.240
nineteen oh nine on a true or false board and

41
00:03:03.400 --> 00:03:07.840
see what holds up when you press. We will take

42
00:03:07.879 --> 00:03:11.439
a hard look at why monsters bloom in places where

43
00:03:11.479 --> 00:03:15.120
faith is thin, money is dirty, and history does not

44
00:03:15.360 --> 00:03:19.680
heal the way it should. If this thing is real,

45
00:03:21.000 --> 00:03:23.800
you will get the best case I can build in

46
00:03:23.840 --> 00:03:28.560
an hour. If it is not, you will still walk out.

47
00:03:28.719 --> 00:03:31.639
But the theory you can use the next time. The

48
00:03:31.680 --> 00:03:34.240
woods go quiet and the hair on your arms lifts

49
00:03:34.639 --> 00:03:39.439
like a field of grass in a small wind. Quick housekeeping, though.

50
00:03:39.919 --> 00:03:43.080
If you like shows that sit in the tension between

51
00:03:43.080 --> 00:03:49.120
scripture and sightings, between folklore and foya hit like, share

52
00:03:49.199 --> 00:03:53.199
the episode with a friend who knows the pines and

53
00:03:53.319 --> 00:03:57.360
drop a review on Apple or Spotify. Reviews feed the algorithm.

54
00:03:57.800 --> 00:04:02.039
The algorithm feeds the show, and shows bring more witnesses,

55
00:04:02.639 --> 00:04:08.319
more researchers, more truth. That is how this thing grows.

56
00:04:08.319 --> 00:04:25.600
Benettan here broadcasting seeds. Let's go plant a few section

57
00:04:25.680 --> 00:04:34.399
one thirteenth Child Curses, Chaos and Colonial Fever, Colonial Fear.

58
00:04:36.160 --> 00:04:40.240
Picture of the Colonies in seventeen thirty five. No boardwalks,

59
00:04:40.319 --> 00:04:45.439
no diners, no Springsteen, just dense pine wilderness and superstition

60
00:04:45.600 --> 00:04:49.800
thicker than the tar that boiled They boiled to past ships.

61
00:04:51.399 --> 00:04:55.360
In that world, religion wasn't just a Sunday hobby. It

62
00:04:55.519 --> 00:05:00.279
was the oxygen everyone breathed, which is weren't fairytales. They

63
00:05:00.279 --> 00:05:04.639
were neighborhood problems. So when a woman named Deborah Leeds,

64
00:05:04.839 --> 00:05:10.079
already worn thin after twelve children, allegedly cursed her thirteenth,

65
00:05:10.480 --> 00:05:15.360
it stuck struck a nerve deep in the colonial psyche.

66
00:05:15.600 --> 00:05:20.240
Newspapers from the time are long gone, but records confirm

67
00:05:20.279 --> 00:05:23.879
a Leeds family did live in the area that became

68
00:05:23.959 --> 00:05:29.319
Leeds Point. Daniel Lead, Deborah's husband, had a reputation for

69
00:05:29.439 --> 00:05:34.319
being complicated. He was a publisher and a bit of

70
00:05:34.360 --> 00:05:38.759
a heretic by peerdon standards, and he printed almanacs filled

71
00:05:38.759 --> 00:05:45.920
with astrological charts basically colonial horoscopes. That alone was enough

72
00:05:45.959 --> 00:05:49.079
to get you labeled as in league with the devil.

73
00:05:50.040 --> 00:05:57.839
Ben Franklin even roasted him publicly in competing almanacs, calling

74
00:05:57.879 --> 00:06:04.839
his ghost Titan Leads after Daniel's death, funny guy at Franklin.

75
00:06:05.639 --> 00:06:10.279
But that smear stuck like pinesap So when the rumors

76
00:06:10.279 --> 00:06:13.399
began to swirl about a monstrous child born to the

77
00:06:13.480 --> 00:06:18.319
Leeds family, people didn't need proof they already had a villain.

78
00:06:18.839 --> 00:06:22.279
This was the eighteenth century version of going viral. The

79
00:06:22.360 --> 00:06:26.519
legends spread along the coast, fueled by sermons and gossip.

80
00:06:26.959 --> 00:06:31.240
By the time it reached Philadelphia, it had evolved from

81
00:06:31.319 --> 00:06:37.360
strange baby to demonic flier of the Pines. But the

82
00:06:37.399 --> 00:06:40.639
real power of the legend wasn't the creature, It was

83
00:06:40.680 --> 00:06:44.439
the fear behind it. The Pine Barons were a wild,

84
00:06:44.800 --> 00:06:50.480
lawless buffer zone between wealthy coastal merchants and poor farmers,

85
00:06:50.600 --> 00:06:56.240
outcasts and smugglers. Preachers warned their flocks that this wilderness

86
00:06:56.879 --> 00:07:02.079
was God's testing ground, a place where civilization and salvation ended.

87
00:07:02.600 --> 00:07:05.439
When the lightning hit a barn or a crop failed,

88
00:07:05.560 --> 00:07:10.680
it wasn't bad luck. It was the devil's due. It

89
00:07:10.759 --> 00:07:15.439
was the devil taking his due. The leads Devil became

90
00:07:15.480 --> 00:07:18.160
the cautionary tale of a society at war with its

91
00:07:18.160 --> 00:07:23.439
own wilderness and conscious conscience. It was a way to

92
00:07:23.519 --> 00:07:29.560
explain chaos, poverty, and rebellion without taking responsibility for any

93
00:07:29.600 --> 00:07:33.480
of it. Easier to blame a winged creature than confront

94
00:07:33.560 --> 00:07:37.560
that you built your new world on fear and blood.

95
00:07:38.360 --> 00:07:52.279
But monsters, once named, tend to grow. Section two devil

96
00:07:52.319 --> 00:07:57.120
in the pines, citing science and secret experiments. If the

97
00:07:57.199 --> 00:08:00.839
seventeen hundreds gave birth to the legend and the nineteen

98
00:08:00.879 --> 00:08:05.920
oh nine gave it its wings literally, that January, the

99
00:08:06.000 --> 00:08:09.279
Jersey Double went on what newspapers call a week long

100
00:08:09.399 --> 00:08:14.720
reign of terror. The Philadelphia Inquirer and Trenton Times ran

101
00:08:14.839 --> 00:08:19.519
headlines about hoofprints in the snow that walked up fences,

102
00:08:19.720 --> 00:08:24.199
across rooftops and disappeared in the thin air. Schools closed,

103
00:08:24.439 --> 00:08:29.079
factories shut down. Police officers claimed they fired on the creature,

104
00:08:29.480 --> 00:08:33.360
only for bolts to pass straight through it. This wasn't

105
00:08:33.399 --> 00:08:37.240
just gossip, it was mass hysteria. On record, Over a

106
00:08:37.440 --> 00:08:45.480
thousand eyewitnesses reported pouring in without a single business pouring in.

107
00:08:45.639 --> 00:08:49.440
Within a single week, business owners nailed their door shut.

108
00:08:49.559 --> 00:08:53.240
A trolley car full of communters claimed they saw a

109
00:08:53.279 --> 00:08:57.679
gliding overhead, its red eyes glowing like coals. Even the

110
00:08:57.720 --> 00:09:03.600
Philadelphia Zoo offered a ten thousand reward for the creature captured. Seriously,

111
00:09:05.080 --> 00:09:10.879
you can check the archives now. If these were purely

112
00:09:10.960 --> 00:09:14.559
panic that it'd be one thing. But the pine barrens

113
00:09:14.600 --> 00:09:19.159
are home to a mix of things that make legends sticky.

114
00:09:19.919 --> 00:09:26.519
Extreme isolation, weird sounds, and restricted land. Over the next century,

115
00:09:26.679 --> 00:09:30.799
sightings didn't stop, they just changed flavor. In the nineteen fifties,

116
00:09:30.879 --> 00:09:34.759
airmen from nearby McGuire Air Force Base recorded seeing an

117
00:09:34.840 --> 00:09:39.639
unidentified flying creature with bat like wings. Hunters in the

118
00:09:39.679 --> 00:09:43.840
sixties found claw marks on trees fifteen feet high. In

119
00:09:43.919 --> 00:09:47.840
the seventies, State troopers chase something on Route nine that

120
00:09:47.919 --> 00:09:51.799
moved faster than any known animal than vanished when it

121
00:09:51.879 --> 00:09:57.399
hit the tree line. Could it be miss identifications? Sure,

122
00:09:57.720 --> 00:10:02.200
sand hill cranes, dear me even escaped exotic pads. But

123
00:10:02.360 --> 00:10:08.240
there's something else worth considering, the military connection. The Pine

124
00:10:08.240 --> 00:10:11.399
barrens sit next to a cluster of Cold War air

125
00:10:11.519 --> 00:10:17.639
installations McGuire Air Force Base, Lakehurst Naval Air Station, and

126
00:10:18.320 --> 00:10:23.440
Fort Dicks, all of which hosted experimental aircraft programs. Local

127
00:10:23.600 --> 00:10:29.440
rumor says strange sounds, flashing lights, and flying shapes were

128
00:10:29.600 --> 00:10:34.200
common as far back as the nineteen forties. There's even

129
00:10:34.240 --> 00:10:37.039
an older fort of a craft crash on the edge

130
00:10:37.039 --> 00:10:43.120
of the pines that involved a biological specimen officially weather balloon,

131
00:10:43.919 --> 00:10:49.320
but so was Roswell. Then there's a science angle during

132
00:10:49.799 --> 00:10:55.000
the early twentieth century, those same barns were a dumping

133
00:10:55.039 --> 00:11:00.879
ground for chemicals and industrial waste, mutations, deformations, sick wildlife.

134
00:11:00.879 --> 00:11:05.120
It's possible some of the so called devil sightings were

135
00:11:05.159 --> 00:11:12.000
byproducts of American early American experimentation with industry and warfare.

136
00:11:12.559 --> 00:11:15.840
The Leeds legend may have just given people the language

137
00:11:15.919 --> 00:11:21.120
to explain what they couldn't process, something unnatural living in

138
00:11:21.159 --> 00:11:28.080
the woods. But whether this devil flew, mutated, or materialized

139
00:11:28.120 --> 00:11:32.240
from fear itself, it stuck around, maybe because it wasn't

140
00:11:32.320 --> 00:11:36.399
just about a creature. It was about what the creature represented,

141
00:11:36.919 --> 00:11:38.960
and that brings us to the heart of it. This

142
00:11:39.200 --> 00:11:53.960
spiritual echo, the curse that never left Section three, The

143
00:11:54.000 --> 00:12:00.360
spiritual echo America's generational curse. All right, So let's strip

144
00:12:00.440 --> 00:12:04.799
this down to the bone. The Leads Devil, the Jersey

145
00:12:04.840 --> 00:12:08.080
Devil might not just be a monster story at all.

146
00:12:08.799 --> 00:12:14.200
It might be here we go a mirror. Every civilization

147
00:12:14.440 --> 00:12:20.159
has a shadow. Egypt had the plagues, Rome had its burning. America,

148
00:12:20.360 --> 00:12:24.120
for all its talks of light and liberty, was built

149
00:12:24.159 --> 00:12:30.440
on contradiction. Freedom on one hand, slavery on the other,

150
00:12:31.679 --> 00:12:36.120
faith in God mixed with the obsession to control nature

151
00:12:36.200 --> 00:12:39.679
and destiny. The Jersey Devil was born right in the

152
00:12:39.679 --> 00:12:43.679
middle of that conflict, a thirteenth child cursed by its

153
00:12:43.759 --> 00:12:50.200
mother in a land still half wilderness. It's almost poetic,

154
00:12:50.639 --> 00:12:53.480
a nation of rebels giving birth to a creature that

155
00:12:53.600 --> 00:13:00.480
rebelled against creation itself. Some theologians call it a spiritual echo,

156
00:13:01.320 --> 00:13:08.000
the idea that sin unrepented, generational sin les residue. It

157
00:13:08.159 --> 00:13:12.240
stains a place, a bloodline, or a people until someone

158
00:13:12.360 --> 00:13:15.799
breaks it. Maybe that's what the Pine Barons are, a

159
00:13:15.960 --> 00:13:21.159
wound that never healed. Think about it. Thirteen colonies, thirteen

160
00:13:21.279 --> 00:13:26.000
chursed generations, a thirteenth child. That number represents like a

161
00:13:26.159 --> 00:13:30.200
warning label, repeats like a warning label on the soul

162
00:13:30.320 --> 00:13:35.919
of a nation. The wilderness itself, once seen as Satan's territory,

163
00:13:36.399 --> 00:13:43.399
still groans under the weight of what happened there. Broken treaties, greed, pride,

164
00:13:43.919 --> 00:13:47.960
fear of the unknown. And when people say they feel

165
00:13:48.000 --> 00:13:52.399
something in the woods, maybe they do. Maybe it's not

166
00:13:52.480 --> 00:13:57.559
a cryptids call at all. Maybe it's a resonance, an

167
00:13:57.679 --> 00:14:02.559
energy tied to centuries of rebellion and regret. The Devil

168
00:14:02.919 --> 00:14:06.279
of the Pines might be what happens when we forget

169
00:14:06.639 --> 00:14:12.039
that creation has memory, that the land keeps score even

170
00:14:12.360 --> 00:14:17.919
when the courts don't. Or maybe it's simpler, Maybe every

171
00:14:18.000 --> 00:14:21.440
generation invents its own monster to make sense of the

172
00:14:21.559 --> 00:14:26.279
darkness it refuses to name. In seventeen thirty five, it

173
00:14:26.440 --> 00:14:30.919
was the Devil's Baby. In nineteen oh nine, it was

174
00:14:31.039 --> 00:14:36.759
the winged Beast. Today, maybe it's different information division and

175
00:14:36.919 --> 00:14:43.679
spiritual apathy, the same demon wearing a digital base. So

176
00:14:43.840 --> 00:14:47.639
whether it's hooves in the mud or algorithms in your feed,

177
00:14:47.960 --> 00:14:52.000
the effects the same. The legend doesn't die because the

178
00:14:52.120 --> 00:15:05.840
lessons not learned closing the pines, and that's the story.

179
00:15:06.879 --> 00:15:12.000
Or maybe the warning of the Jersey Devil, a legend

180
00:15:12.039 --> 00:15:16.200
that never quite lands, just circles overhead like a buzzard

181
00:15:16.240 --> 00:15:20.000
waiting for a meal. Whether you see it as folklore,

182
00:15:20.559 --> 00:15:25.000
a flesh and blood mutation, or a spiritual echo stitched

183
00:15:25.039 --> 00:15:31.879
into the soil of every America, of soil of early America,

184
00:15:32.399 --> 00:15:36.240
the point is the same. Some monsters don't need proof

185
00:15:36.279 --> 00:15:42.600
to be real, They just need believers. If this episode

186
00:15:42.639 --> 00:15:46.320
planted something in you, a question, a chill, maybe the

187
00:15:46.600 --> 00:15:51.399
urge to drive down a forgotten pine barren road at midnight,

188
00:15:52.559 --> 00:15:55.440
don't keep it to yourself, share, like, and review the

189
00:15:55.480 --> 00:16:00.320
podcast wherever you're listening. That's how the signal grows, and

190
00:16:00.360 --> 00:16:03.679
that's how more curious minds find their way into this

191
00:16:03.759 --> 00:16:08.759
little corner of strange. Next time we'll open another file,

192
00:16:10.559 --> 00:16:14.200
brush off another rumor, and see if the facts hold

193
00:16:14.480 --> 00:16:18.360
when the flashlight hits them. Until then, keep your eyes open,

194
00:16:18.879 --> 00:16:23.679
your face steady, and your curiosity sharp. This is Benettantin,

195
00:16:24.120 --> 00:16:26.559
and you've been listening to broadcasting seeds.

196
00:16:27.320 --> 00:16:30.360
The wind was wailing through the pie.

197
00:16:33.200 --> 00:16:40.759
A curse was whispered down the line. Thirteen cries and

198
00:16:40.919 --> 00:16:49.519
one still born, born and blood baptized in storm.

199
00:16:50.000 --> 00:16:54.879
They said heer sins would take their shade.

200
00:16:55.879 --> 00:16:59.519
A devil child, no soul to say.

201
00:17:01.639 --> 00:17:07.440
And when the lighting split the sky, something screamed and

202
00:17:07.799 --> 00:17:09.640
learnt to fight.

203
00:17:11.519 --> 00:17:18.960
Born in the storm, where the crosses are forgotten by

204
00:17:19.000 --> 00:17:22.880
the faithful, remembered by the Lord.

205
00:17:24.799 --> 00:17:31.039
When the thunder rose, you can hear her more. The

206
00:17:31.079 --> 00:17:32.759
devil's child.

207
00:17:32.559 --> 00:17:55.720
Was born, was born in the storm.

208
00:17:55.880 --> 00:17:59.519
The hunted shadows through the trees.

209
00:18:01.359 --> 00:18:09.039
Heard wings that be like blasphemy. The preachers swore have

210
00:18:09.359 --> 00:18:16.240
seen its face, half a man and half d scraze

211
00:18:18.359 --> 00:18:24.920
the pine roots twist the river stays. No child of

212
00:18:25.039 --> 00:18:33.279
God could wear that name. But every century she returns

213
00:18:33.400 --> 00:18:34.440
in every.

214
00:18:34.319 --> 00:18:41.799
Sin stood borne him the sword.

215
00:18:43.079 --> 00:18:50.039
Where the crosses arrived and forgotten by the faithful, remembered

216
00:18:50.240 --> 00:18:51.519
by the laws.

217
00:18:53.119 --> 00:18:59.839
When the thunder you can hear her more. The devil's

218
00:19:00.119 --> 00:19:17.519
child was born, was born in the storm, they say.

219
00:19:17.559 --> 00:19:24.160
The forest remembers every curse, leaves a scarf, and the

220
00:19:24.279 --> 00:19:27.880
pines they whisper back.

221
00:19:29.839 --> 00:19:34.680
Born in the store, In the store where the prayers grow, called,

222
00:19:34.799 --> 00:19:39.200
where the prayers grow call, and still go through the

223
00:19:39.440 --> 00:19:46.279
sole She's store. When the thunder called, under her car

224
00:19:46.480 --> 00:19:51.720
better by your door, while your thirteen child is home.

225
00:19:56.559 --> 00:20:15.200
Forever at assassa

226
00:20:18.960 --> 00:20:23.039
Atta