In 1733, a Witch known as Mother Leeds discovered she was pregnant with her thirteenth child. For reasons that she never shared, she had no desire to see another soul into the world. Desperate to find a solution, one night, Mother Leeds taunted the Fates:
“I hope this one’s not a child; let this one be a devil.”
As the story goes, the Fates were listening.
The Witch’s pregnancy was normal, and even when she went into labor, her midwife delivered the baby with ease.
But minutes after leaving the womb, the infant doubled in size. It then tripled. Its eyes turned black, and two horns emerged from the top of its scalp. From its back sprouted two bat wings and its legs turned into those of a horse. Its delicate newborn nose transformed into a snout and a forked tail snaked around a pair of black hooves.
As she’d requested, Mother Leeds had indeed given birth to a devil.
The midwife was stunned. She had never seen anything so strange in all her years. Not knowing what else to do, she reached for a blanket to swaddle the child. But her panic caused her to fumble, and with a flick of its wrist, the devil sliced open the midwife’s throat. The creature then flew up the chimney and deep into the pine forests of southern New Jersey.
Little more is known about Mother Leeds, but most assume that she went on to live a normal life with her twelve children. The Leed’s Devil, on the other hand, has haunted the Pine Barren community since that fateful night.
According to witnesses, over the past two centuries, this sinister being has made his home deep within the pine woods. It roams in solitude but has been known to give humans a fright if they wander too far into the trees.
One such case took place in 1813. Joseph Bonaparte, the former King of Spain and Napoleon Bonaparte’s brother, claimed that while tracking game in the pine woods, he discovered a set of mysterious markings. While he was trying to decide if the tracks were made by human or animal, he saw a shadow out of the corner of his eye. When he spun around to catch the beast, he saw it was neither human nor animal, but a combination of the two. According to him, he saw a tall creature with the face of a horse and the wings of a bat. He told everyone he knew that the Leed’s Devil was alive and well, so farmers and ranchers beware…
But just because the Leed’s Devil was rumored to spend most of its time in rural communities doesn’t mean that someone who lived far from the woods was safe from its otherworldly urges.
Because the most famous encounters with this creature took place in the city.
According to local newspapers, in the winter of 1909, the Leed’s Devil attacked a trolley car in the Haddon Heights area of New Jersey. A few days later, roadway workers in Atlantic City reported a large bat-like creature flying erratically and crashing into electrical lines. Similar reports poured in from across state lines—some as far as Pennsylvania!
At the pinnacle of these sightings, an elderly woman in Camden called police when something injured her dog. Even though the animal was in the woman’s backyard, she claimed that a devilish monster had flown over the fence and was terrorizing her beloved pet—even going as far as to bite off a piece of its face. Luckily, when the woman heard the commotion and emerged from the house, she did so with such intensity that the Leed’s Devil took to the skies and was never seen around those parts again.
And then, as quickly as they began, the reports stopped.
So, was it real?
It’s easy to say these stories are all a bunch of hogwash, that the devilish creature born that night in the pine forests was nothing more than a reflection of a superstitious mind or a tall tale meant to prevent kids from straying too far. But people who witnessed the Leed’s Devil were spooked, and rightfully so.
After the hundreds of sightings in 1909, scared citizens stopped traveling alone at night, city officials hired police to guard the trollies, loggers became frightened of the woods and contemplated going on strike, and even experienced hunters started hunting in packs if they couldn’t afford to take the season off.
Today, hysteria over the Leed’s Devil has subsided to a whisper, and tales about Mother Leeds and her unholy spawn are regarded as remnants of an ancient myth. But despite the assumption that the Leed’s Devil is just another mythological creature, it’s not uncommon for Jersey locals to claim that they too have seen or sensed a devilish presence when driving along the sleepy, tree-lined roads within the great pine forests.
Crystal Skull 2 pc
$ 12.00
$ 14.00
Crystal skulls measure about 1 inch tall and 2 will be chosen at random. Stone possibilities include agate, tigers eye, green aventurine, clear quartz, black tourmaline, rose quartz, malachite and others. Listing is for 2 pieces.… read more
