Cold Open: The Jersey Devil. Is it a kangaroo-like creature with the head of a goat, horse, or dog? Most agree that it has wings, hooves, horns, and a tail. Where does it come from? Many describe a dragon-like creature. Or does it walk on two legs like others have reported? Some say it can fly. Legends say it has killed. It supposedly once survived a cannonball blast. It emits a blood curdling scream. It might be a pterodactyl. It can die and come back. It is almost certainly demonic. It murdered it’s own human mother and some midwives moments after its brith before flying up the chimney. It has a NHL hockey team named after it. There’s a good chance it worked as a roadie on Bruce Springsteen’s Darkness tour in the summer of 1978, handling sound check duties and replacing guitarist Steven Van Zandt’s signature bandana whenever he either sweated through it or when he felt a new bandana was needed to get him in the correct artistic zone to play certain songs, like Born to Run.

Okay, I may have made up the Springsteen shit. But the rest of this info does come from historical accounts.

So when did the legend of this creature originate? What do people think this creature is? What does it want? Is there any cryptozoological basis for this legend or do the origins of the Jersey Devil have nothing to do with a beast at all? Let’s get weird Timesuckers. Let’s head to Jersey, back to the it’s beginning, and crawl into the darkest corners of the Garden State to solve the enduring mystery of the Jersey Devil, today, on Timesuck.

PAUSE TIMESUCK INTRO I. Welcome Happy Monday Suckers! Hail Nimrod. Praise Bojangles. And Be gone Lucifina! I’m Dan Cummins and this is Timesuck. Happy Martin Luther King, Jr. day! I’d do a Timesuck on Dr. King but it’s already been done. One of my faves actually. Timesuck 42 if you want to check it out.

Recording from the Suck Dungeon again today with Josh Krell watching the levels. Tweaking the sound a bit since last week. Trying to get it perfect!

Couple quick tour dates I hope you’re buying tickets to and then it’s Jersey Devil time! Super cool Timesucker Update this week regarding getting out of a traffic ticket due to being in the Cult of the Curious.

Providence, RI January 19-20th. The Comedy Connection! Get over there damn it!

And again - NO show in Chicopee, MA on Jan 21st because the venue went out of business and didn’t care about warning anyone. Damn it! Hopefully that doesn’t happen again. Ever.

Philadelphia! January 25-27th. Get to the Punchline!

And get to Baltimore January 28th at Magooby’s - tickets are for sale now.

Chicago! January 31st through Feb. 3rd Tell me you’re coming to Zanies. It’s an amazing comedy club.

New York City - Gotham Comedy Club, one night only, Feb. 11th.

Detroit! Feb. 16th at the Magic Bag in Ferndale with the boys from Small Town Murder. One show is a swap cast and the other is standup.

Minneapolis tickets are on sale! Stand up shows March 2nd and 3rd. Very limited tickets. The live Timesuck in Minneapolis is already sold out! I told you tickets would go fast for that one. Sorry to any of you who can’t make it. BUT - that standup show is very Timesuck-esque and there are still standup tickets available.

Cleveland just added to the calendar in March - March 22-24.

Another live podcast just added in Spokane, Washington. One show only, Sunday night May 6th!

More announcements at the end of the show including more tour dates. It’s Jersey Devil time!

PAUSE INTERLUDE

II. Pine Barrens, NJ: To learn about the Jersey Devil you gotta head to the Pine Barrens of Jersey, Central and Southeast Jersey. Gotta talk about some “Piney” culture! The Pine Barrens take up part of the 1.1 million acres - the Pinelands National Reserve - America’s first National Reserve, established in 1978, 22% of New Jersey’s total land area and the largest body of open space on the Mid-Atlantic seaboard between Richmond, Virginia and Boston. Massachussets.

While there are no towns in the Reserve today, there used to be several; ruins of ghost towns are found throughout the dense forest. And these old towns, places with names like “Rattlesnake Ace’s Town”, “Calico”, and “New Egypt” were populated by people referred to as “Pineys”. Living conditions in the sandy, acidic soil of the Pine Barrens was hard - the land was considered un-farmable by early settlers, and those who decided to live there were considered to be the dregs of society by East Coast city folk and even small town Northern Jersey small-town folk; the “Pineys” were fugitives from the law, poachers, moonshiners, runway slaves, and deserting soldiers. Early “Pineys,” as Barrens residents call themselves, included Quakers who’d been expelled from their congregations for fighting in the Revolution; outlaws and smugglers; and Tory loyalists known as the Refugees who, despite their politics, rode in packs and killed and robbed indiscriminately.

“Pineys” also mined Bog Iron during colonial times which appears as horrible as it sounds. Lot of Revolutionary War steel was carried out of the Pine Barrens. Bog iron is literally just chunks of “bog ore”, big chunks of oxidized iron - giant rocks, that you dig out of bog mud. From what I saw online, the rocks, size-wise, tend to be somewhere between the size of a cantaloupe and the size of a small watermelon. And you dig them out of the mud or collect them from the bottom of a pond and carry them to have the iron smelted out of them. A very low- tech type of mining; light on equipment/heavy on back breaking labor. Dudes with shovels literally digging rocks out of bog mud. Or, even worse, dudes without shovels digging rocks out of mud.

And many of the “pineys” mining this bog ore were part of a culture of living off of the grid in various cabins sprinkled throughout the forest. The “pineys” were a poor people, the Jersey equivalent to the poor Appalachian people of West Virginia and the backwoods rural folks of Kentucky. I can picture the Idaho County equivalent where I grew up. There was a family I will just refer to as the Johnsons so I don’t embarrass any of them if they somehow listen to podcasts now. I worked at the grocery store in Riggins in high school, and sometimes I would work early in the morning before school started and before the store opened stocking freight. Well the Johnsons would come down from their family mountain ranch about once a month for supplies, and they’d come in early before the store opened. They’d stock up on flour, sugar, butter, and other perishables and canned food and take several shopping carts of shit back up to the ranch, far away from town. And other than that, other than occasionally grabbing a bunch of fuel as well, no one ever saw them. They avoided town as best they could. And they looked like they had been cast in some hillbilly movie. Straight out of Deliverance. Dental care was not a strong family priority. They didn’t even have a casual interest in toothbrushes and toothpaste. Or deodorant. Or shampoo let alone conditioner. Didn’t seem to be big fans of soap. And they just looked off. Even if they were cleaned up, they had the facial characteristics that seem to correlate from generations of inbreeding and poor nutrition. If this family popped up in a movie, you’d be like, “Oh, shit! What the fuck??”

And it seems like the back woods of the Pine Barrens of NJ had some similar families.

And this rural, backwoods area of Jersey has served as a cultural petri dish for growing the strange legend of the Jersey Devil.

A. Nucky Thompson: There were old dirt roads cutting through the trees to clay factories and cranberry bogs and wood mills back in the 18th and 19th centuries. Along the roads where roadhouse inns and taverns where outsiders were rumored to have been robbed and killed. Some of the characters you can watch in HBO’s Boardwalk empire came from this rough and rugged place - like Enoch Johnson, the inspiration for the Buscemi’s main character, Atlantic City kingpin Nucky Thompson.

B. Atlantic Monthly Article: In May of 1859, an article appeared in the Atlantic Monthly which described the culture of the inhabitants of the Pine Barrens as “aboriginal in [its] savagery.” The residents were referred to as “Pine Rats” and described as “people as barely human in their squalid living conditions” and “besotted and brutish in their ignorance.” Sounds like the Johnson family I remember! Wow.

C. Goddard’s Eugenic’s study: In the early 1900s, the living conditions and inhabitants of the Barrens were so concerning that a eugenics study was carried out by American psychologist Henry H Goddard, and it labeled the Pineys as a genetically inferior, almost sub-human group or intellectual inferiors. Jesus! Goddard was looking into a genetic cause for what he labeled “feeble- mindedness”, a general category of conditions that included mental retardation, learning disabilities, and mental illness.

He studied the ancestry of a Pine Barrens woman by the name of Emma Wolverton, born in 1889. And, according to Goddard, Emma’s Piney family tree was full of virtually nothing but criminals, inbreds, folks with various levels of mental retardation, and, basically, lazy, good-for-nothing, delinquents with no moral compasses. And all of these conditions were traced back by Goddard to some kids born out of wedlock generations prior. He came to the conclusion that this moral lapse - these bastards born out of wedlock - were the origin of all kinds of undesirable traits. That living a sinful life could genetically destroy your lineage. And he published a book, The Kallikak Family, that was wildly successful, a book that warned people that shacking up with the wrong guy or gal could destroy your family tree. Take up with a girl from the wrong side of the tracks, and suddenly your kids are gonna look like extras from The Hills Have Eyes.

Cheat on your wife with a Piney and you’re gonna end up with a couple of three-eyed hunchbacks living under your front porch snacking on neighborhood pets they’ve managed to snag with their critter-like raccoon paw hands. I’ve been thinking BOJANGLES was an immortal former inhabitant of Atlantis - a prophet of Nimrod - a time-traveling fighter of communism. But maybe he’s just some kind of Piney Carney! What if our fearless one-eyed three-legged mascot didn’t lose and eye and a leg in an epic battle with Zeus? What if he was born one-eyed and three-legged because his mom was also his sister, cousin, grandma, and somehow even his Uncle as well? What if his dad was his half-brother, first-cousin, and also his stepmom? What if he wasn’t fighting communism in South American jungles with Triple M? Yah Mo Timesuck!! What if he was selling elephant ears and running the Tilt-a-Whirl for some Atlantic City carnival?

ANYWHO - Goodard’s book and findings have since been discredited - he was a total quack - but at the time, he stereotyped the Pineys as a bunch of poor, uneducated, inbred deviant hillbillies and the public at-large believed in his assessment.

And if you’re wondering who Bojangles is and what that was about you need to listen to some more episodes. Get your shit together!

Goddard was far from the only historical figure to malign these poor people.

D. Kite’s Report: In 1913, a researcher named Elizabeth Kite published a report called “The Pineys” that included tales of heavy drinking, livestock quartered in children’s bedrooms, and widespread inbreeding.

Here are some of Elizabeth’s findings: “Several children lived in shacks with a woman and successive male companions - or vice versa - to whom they may or may not have been married, but to whom each could have had blood-line ties. The women were not prostitutes. They were adamantly defensive of their men, who were often abusive. But, they saw no wrong in having a “frolic” with another man, nor did they object to their own man’s wanderings. Children raised in this atmosphere had no example of moral conduct, saw no need to alter the pattern of existence, and so continued to perpetuate and spread this “contamination”. Existence was basically hand to mouth. Wants were simple: Cleanliness practically unheard of and venereal disease rampant…”

Wow. Sounds both horrible and AMAZING! Back when I was a 21 year old dirtbag, the ol’ Pine Barrens might have just been some sort of bacchanalian (“Bach-a-nail-ian”) utopia!

She allegedly witnessed the following incident first-hand “the husband swore at Mag over some soup she had cooked and said “I’d like to know what I ever married you for”. To which Mag replied “Cause ol’ Dory Foster made you”. That made the husband madder and he broke the soup plate over her head. When the couple was arrested some time later for instigating the children to breaking into homes and smashing and scattering the possessions, the father was glad of a legal opportunity to leave. Mag, having mothered 11 children, 2 illegitimate, and 4 in State Mental Institutions, said she’d “get out and get another man”.

On second thought, maybe it only sounds terrible. Sounds like a utopia for ol’ Ricky Randy and Rodney Bobby. “Hot damn Ricky Randy! We done found paradise! None hardly any workin’! None hardly no ‘sponsibilities! Homemade soup! Lots of baby makin’ but the babies done do raise themselves!”

“Oh you done is preaching to the choir band Rodney Bobby! It just is like home is was. Nothing but Mama Sister Girlfriends! They done raise you, cook for you, make a man at you, make a man out of your friends! Piney forever!”

“Piney Forever!”

“Not let’s go hunt that thar Swamp Devil!”

“Let’s done kill that kangaroo bat! Let’s done eat us kangaroo bat soup for breakfast supper! Whoooo! Whooo!!”

Well - a lot of people did NOT think it was a Utopia. They were disgusted by what they’d heard was going on in the Pine Barrens and wanted something done about it.

E. Governor Fielder’s “Piney” sterilization plan: In March of 1913, Woodrow Wilson resigned as governor of New Jersey to become the 28th president of the United States, and then Senate President James F. Fielder, a Democrat from Jersey City, succeeded Wilson as acting governor and began campaigning to keep his new job come November. He campaigned largely on the platform of reforming the people who lived in the wilderness of the Pine Barrens, fresh in Jersey residents minds thanks to the recent publication of Kite’s report. He was gonna do something about this blight upon society!

According to a newspaper account, Fielder traveled to Burlington County and was introduced to a 31-year-old Southampton farmhand and his 18-year-old bride, the man's third marriage to date, with no record of divorce from the previous two. And they were so unfortunate looking he vomited all over their dirty Piney faces! And these two degenerates, far from being offended, were happy to have a free meal. They licked most of his puke off of each other’s faces and out of each other’s beards and then fucked right in front of him, both making steady eye contact with the politician. The moment they were done a new-born gremlin popped out of the woman’s butt, snatched the startled governor’s wallet and ran up a tree with it while the gremlin’s parents broke into a banjo duet. (redneck jamboree song) “Well, look-ee here now I got some puke, tastiest puke I ever did lick, out of my woman’s beard. Well look-ee here now, with the full belly, I made a butt-baby with that woman o’mine, and the governor’s wallet we got! Whoo! Yi- haw!!!”

Alright. He didn’t vomit on their faces. But he was disgusted with them!

The “Piney” farmhand recently had been released from jail on bigamy charges, which authorities were forced to drop when it was revealed his previous two wives had been married to other men at the same time they were exchanging wedding vows with him. So technically, the farmhand had never previously been legally married and was not a bigamist. Bigamy cancelling out more bigamy. That’s some next level backwoods tomfoolery.

In front of some journalists, the acting governor quizzed the farmhand on the month and year and the man drew a blank. That’s pretty bad. Makes me feel better about usually not knowing the day. The wife wasn’t much better, somehow managing to work into a conversation that she had no idea who her father was as multiple spouses were a long-standing family tradition.

And the governor, morally outraged, felt he had to take drastic measures to keep these degenerates from continuing to breed. “The state must segregate and sterilize these people, particularly the mature ones," Fielder said in the Boston Evening Transcript. The news made the wire services.

”New Jersey Degenerates" was the headline in the Boston newspaper on June 28, 1913. "Terrible Conditions Found by Governor Fielder Among the 'Pineys' — Segregation and Sterilization Advocated."

Wow! Holy shit. As backwards as people were in some ways at the turn of the 20th century, it was not common, especially politically, to advocate sterilization. Especially white people wanting to sterilize other white people. That shit was unheard of. Rightly or wrongly, the Pineys were looked at as being so cartoonishly impoverished and morally bankrupt people were seriously considering sterilizing them to keep them from continuing to pop out more Pineys. ““Well, look- ee here now I got some puke, tastiest puke I ever did lick, out of my woman’s beard. Well look-ee here now, tried to get a wife but she had too many husbands but at least I weren’t have to go to jail! Yi-haw!!!”

And, while an influx of tourists and modernization has changed the culture of the Pineys - there are now middle class and wealthy Pineys - there is still a stigma.

F. Today’s attitude towards Pineys: In a chat room online, I found a comment left by someone in 2010 who states their grandma said that the Pineys were “dwarves who are hostile to outsiders”. And he he asked others if this was true. So random to add dwarf. Not sure what that has to do with being backwoods. (paranoid woman) “They were inbreeders! And thieves! Living in squalor! And lazy! And worst of all - they were far shorter than the average man! I will not visit no place no how full of inbred, lazy thieving dwarves!”

The Pine Barrens area is still seriously impoverished. As of 2016, over 1 in 3 Atlantic City residents lived below the federal poverty line, meaning they either made less than $12,000 a year as an individual or made less than $25,000 a year as a family of four.

God, reading about all of this reminds me or working at Child Protective Services in college. There are some incredibly impoverished little rural communities around Spokane where no one in the family has all of their teeth, no one has a high school education, drug abuse is common, there is no care for personal hygiene or basic nutritional needs, and I, on a few occasions had to accompany a social worker and remove children from truly squalid, appalling living conditions. Had to take kids from parents who really should not be allowed to be parents. Giving their kids NO chance of success in life.

And, while there was a lot of unnecessary slander regarding the Pineys, based on everything I’ve read, I have no doubt that life in the Pine Barrens was for many, backwoods as fuck. I was reading one article where the author said that in some parts of the Barrens, you might only be five miles from some cute little tourist trap of a township, but it suddenly feels like you’re three time zones away in a completely different culture.

The more I read about the Pine Barrens the more I think about horror movies. It sounds like the kind of place where crazy, axe- wielding hill folk chase around college kids staying in a cabin on Spring Break in some B movie slasher flick. If any Piney Timesuckers think this assessment is way, way off - please write in and correct me!

Whether or not it really is as backwoods as article after article claim - there is no doubt that it is in these woods where the Jersey Devil legend was born and where it has most often been spotted.

So what, exactly, is the Jersey Devil? Let’s talk about some possibilities.

III. What is the Jersey Devil?

A. Is it a bird?: One theory is that the Jersey Devil was a bird, possibly a sand hill crane. The crane used to live in South Jersey until it was pushed out by man. The sand hill crane weighs about 12 lbs., is 4 foot high, and has a wingspan of 80 inches. It avoids man but if confronted it will fight. It has a loud, whooping scream that can be heard at a distance. This could account for the screams heard by witnesses. The crane also eats potatoes and corn. This could account for the raids on crops. Oh, and the crane also has the head of a demon and prefers the taste of human flesh and can shape shift and time travel. Almost forgot to mention that. Yeah right. Probably is not a crane. The crane theory doesn't explain the killing of live stock that has been attributed to the Jersey Devil. It also doesn't explain why people described the devil as having a horses head, bat wings and tail, all of which the crane doesn't have. At least not any cranes I’ve come across.

B. Pterodactyl? A man who goes by the name of Professor Bralhopf and may or may not be a professor since his name only seems to appear in cryptozoology books and he never lists the college he supposedly teaches at, said that" the tracks were made by some prehistoric animal form the Jurassic period". Sounds reasonable. Well, Reverend Doctor Professor Bralhopf believes the creature survived underground in a cavern. Huh. Another expert who claims to have worked at the Smithsonian Institute but doesn’t have a linked in profile to verify that had a theory about ancient creatures surviving underground. He said the Jersey Devil was a Pterodactyl. The Academy of Natural Sciences could find no record of any creature, living or extinct, that resembles the Jersey Devil.

What in the fuck!?! How is one Pterodactyl gonna stay alive in a cave for at least 65 million years. What is it going to eat? More importantly, how is it going to avoid dying of old age? Did I miss hearing that pterodactyls can only be killed and don’t die on their own? I feel like I’d remember that. Is there some type of anti-aging cavern out there I don’t know about? Should I be living in a cave? Does Jennifer Aniston live in a cave? Should I be living in a cave with Jennifer Aniston? It’s all very confusing!! Should I kidnap and murder Reverend Doctor Professor Bralhopf and dump his body in a cave?

C. Deformed Child? Jack E. Boucher, author of Absagami Yesteryear, has a theory in which he believes the devil was a deformed child. He thinks Mrs. Leeds, the woman most associated with the legend, had a disfigured Piney child and kept it locked away in the house.

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She grew sick and couldn't feed the child anymore. It escaped out of hunger and raided local farms for food. This theory doesn't take into account the incredible life span of the devil. The child would have been 174 years old in 1909. It also doesn't account for the sightings of ther devil flying. AND I don’t think a kid who’s been locked up in a room somewhere for years, once he or she gets out, is gonna be able to figure out how to live off of stolen goods.

D. Series of Hoaxes? Are the Devil sightings all just a series of hoaxes? Possibly but, the Jersey Devil has been seen by reliable people such as police, government officials, postmasters, businessman, as opposed to just Piney riff raff. As for the hoof prints, even if some were hoaxes, there is still no way to explain most of the tracks, especially the ones on roof tops and tracks that ended abruptly as if the creature took wing. However, no modern hard evidence had been found of some previous unidentified creature. And, while maybe the Jersey Devil isn’t a series of actual hoaxes, it could be a series of people letting their imaginations get away from them. Hmmmm.

E. The Embodiment of Evil Itself? Many people believe that the Jersey Devil could be the very essence of evil, embodied. It is said that the devil is an "uncanny harbinger of war”, and appears before any great conflict. The Jersey Devil was sighted before the start of the Civil War. It was also seen right before the Spanish American War and WW I. In 1939, before the start of WW II, Mount Holly citizens were awakened by the noise of hooves on their roof tops. The Devil was seen on December 7, 1941, right before Pearl Harbor was bombed. He was also seen right before the Vietnam War. Allegedly. He was allegedly seen all these times. If only someone had a decent pic! Note to Piney Timesuckers! Please, steal what you need to steal to raise money for a camera of some sort. Figure out how to teach your inbred Piney fingers how to work a camera. Stop having sex with your siblings for one day, lay off the moonshine for a few hours, and buy a camera so you can get some proof!

F. The Result of a Curse? Another Jersey Devil origin story tells of a young Leeds Point girl who had fallen in love with a British soldier. The British had come to the region because the iron furnaces at Bat-sto Village were supplying the privateers. In 1778, the British engaged the Americans at the Battle of Chestnut Neck. The townsfolk opposed the match, calling her liaison an act of treason. And they cursed the girl. According to legend, when she later gave birth to a child – it became known as the Leeds Devil.

Oh. Well that explains it. Why didn’t I just state that earlier? She was cursed and gave birth to a Devil. Those are the facts! Next creature. Next story!

A variation on this tale tells of a young woman who encounters a passing gypsy begging for food. She was frightened and refused and the gypsy cursed her for her refusal. Years later in 1850, with the curse forgotten, when the girl gave birth to her first child – a male – he became a devil and fled into the woods.

THIS is what happened for sure. Who is more capable of cursing than a Piney gypsy? That’s like a gypsy squared. Only human more capable of cursing is a gypsy piney carnie - a true immortal! A gypsy piney carnie is un-killable. They can live years on just a few bags of cotton candy and a jug of moonshine. They can hibernate in their pterodactyl caves.

G. The Product of a Halloween Ritual? Or - is the Jersey Devil a product of some Piney Halloween tradition? In October of 1830, a resident of Vienna, New Jersey, a Mr. John Vliet was entertaining his children with a mask he had made. A mask of a monstrous face. It became a yearly tradition and was adopted by the local townsmen. Its popularity grew and was repeated late in October as parents and children alike put on scary faces and costumes.

This is the weakest explanation yet. How as this one made some internet lists? Bullshit. Too many sightings occur nowhere near Halloween.

Alright. So those are some possibilities tossed forth by the web. Before we Suck into where I think the legend came from, let’s go over some alleged Jersey Devil sightings. IV. Jersey Devil Sightings: These are some of the most prominent sightings, doled out in no particular chronological order.

A. The 1909 Devil Crazy: Jersey went Devil Crazy in 1909 when nearly 1,000 reports came in from eyewitnesses throughout South Jersey and the Pine Barrons.

That year, a track walker on the electric railroad saw the devil fly into the wires above the tracks. There was a violent explosion which melted the track 20 feet in both directions. No body was found and the devil was seen later in perfect health.

Yep. Either that happened or he did something really stupid and fucked the tracks up himself and was terrified of getting fired and made up the whole thing to save his own ass. One of those things happened!

While testing cannon balls at Hanover Mills Works in the Pine Barrens, Navy Commander Stephen Decatur reportedly saw the creature and shot it. The cannon ball blew a hole in the Devil, but it wasn't fazed by the projectile. Strange tracks were found in fields, but bloodhounds allegedly refused to follow the tracks. There was so much hysteria over the monsters, schools in the Pine Barrens were closed.

Now - I should state here that this account ONLY shows up on cryptozoology type websites. This encounter doesn’t even get mentioned on Stephen’s lengthy wikipedia page. Soooo… probably never happened. But, what if it did??

Can you imagine that if your’e a kid? You’re already living some backwoods lifestyle where superstition has to be running rampant and the education level is low. You’re dirt poor, your parents are first cousins - Piney first cousins who actually breed. Not just Albert Einstein first cousins who just cousin- fuck for fun, and now your school is closed because there’s a monster in the woods that the Navy is hunting but can’t kill. Holy shit, if real, I bet there were a lot of terrified kids laying wide-eyed in their raggedy button-ip long undies in their cold scrap lumber shacks that night. Lot of Piney parents put their banjos and harmonicas down that night and put their hands on their shotguns.

Sitting in there way out in the dark words, knowing the police are looking for an actual monster nearby. Hearing all the strange sounds the forest makes at night. Is that a possum or a raccoon walking across the porch? Or a monster about ready to smash through your front door and tear your family limb from limb? Navy couldn’t kill it with a cannon, what chance to do you have with your 22 bolt action rifle? Did a deer just step on a small branch and crack it? Or did the Jersey Devil just snap your dog in half?

B. Napoleon’s brother: Joseph Bonaparte, the brother of Napoleon, onetime King of Spain claimed to see the Devil. This claim actually does show up on mainstream sites. Unsuccessful in defending Spain against England during the Peninsular Wars, he was forced to abdicate his throne in 1813. Following Napoleon's defeat, he went into exile in America. Joseph purchased eight-hundred acres at Bordentown, New Jersey because it was between the two great sea ports of New York and Philadelphia. A place where he could obtain the very latest news from France and Spain.

He built himself a lovely mansion with beautiful, landscaped grounds and plenty of parkland where he entertained many of the great men of his day, such as President John Adams, the Marquis of Lafayette, and Daniel Webster. He led a very glamorous social life, throwing marvelous parties with mountains of food and many guests. He also lived on the edge of the Pine Barrens - dangerously close to some filthy Pineys! And one day a band of brother- cousins and their wife-sister-moms came a'limping and a'crawling and a’scurrying up to his mansion and they chanted their incantations and they beat on their tobacco can drums and they whooped and yi-hawed and openly fornicated the Jersey Devil into existence. And the monster ate the former Monarch, sharing his kill with his backwoods revelers, and THAT is what the recipe for canned pork and beans is actually based on. Weezer was actually singing about the Jersey Devil!

No. That is some nonsense. Here’s what actually happened.

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One snowy afternoon, the ex-King of Spain was hunting alone in the woods near his house when he spotted some strange tracks on the ground. They looked like the tracks of a two-footed donkey. Bonaparte noticed that one foot was slightly larger than the other. Obviously some kind of deformed, inbred Piney donkey Devil!!!! The tracks ended abruptly as if the creature had flown away. He stared at the tracks for a long moment, trying to figure out what the strange animal might be.

At that moment, Bonaparte heard a strange hissing noise. Turning, he found himself face to face with a large winged creature with a horse-like head and bird-like legs. Astonished and frightened, he froze and stared at the beast, forgetting that he was carrying a rifle. For a moment, neither of them moved. Then the creature hissed at him, beat its wings, and flew away.

When he reported the incident to a friend later that day, Bonaparte was told that he had just seen the famous Jersey Devil. And I’m guessing his friend told everyone he knew that the former King of Spain was losing his damn mind.

Bonaparte was captivated by the story of the Jersey Devil, and thereafter kept a lookout for the fabulous creature whenever he went hunting. Once things settled down in Europe, Joseph Bonaparte said goodbye the Barrens, reunited with his wife in Italy, and never saw the Jersey Devil again.

C. Salem City Cab attack: In 1927, a taxi driver in Salem City allegedly encountered the Jersey Devil while changing a tire. The man told the police that a winged creature was pounding on the roof of the cab. Guess the Jersey Devil really needed a ride that night.

D. 1957: In 1957, the Department of Conservation found a strange corpse in a burned out area of the pines. It was a partial skeleton, feathers, and hind legs of an unidentifiable creature. The devil was thought to be dead but then it reappeared just when the Pineys thought they were safe. “Haha Pineys! As if your lives weren’t already hard enough with the malnourishment and the inbreeding and the constant socioeconomic judgement - now a Devil monster is back to eat your dirty, beady-eyed young-ins!”

E. 1960 Mays landing screams: In 1960, several residents of Mays Landing heard horrifying screams in the night. There was no explanation for the noises and people began to panic. Police hung flyers assuring residents that the Jersey Devil was a hoax, but a circus owner countered the appeal by offering a $100,000 reward for anyone who could capture the creature. No one received said reward.

F. 1972 - Mary Ritter Christianson encounter: Mary Ritzer Christianson told Weird NJ that she got the "heebie jeebies" one night in 1972 when she spotted the Jersey Devil on Greentree Road. Christianson was driving from Blackwood to Glassboro when she says she saw a towering figure crossing the road about 25 feet behind her car. She described the figure as standing taller than the average man, with thick haunches like a goat and a huge, wooly head.

G. 1980 Pig Massacre: In 1980, Wharton State Forest Chief Ranger Alan MacFarlane, a man who normally knows his animals, allegedly saw something that both grossed him out and stumped his wild animal knowledge: a brutal scene on a South Jersey farm where a pack of pigs had been killed. He reported that the backs of their heads were eaten and their bodies were scratched and torn. However, there were no tracks surrounding the bodies and no blood on the ground. Why the backs of the heads? Is that the tastiest part of a pig? Have we been eating the wrong parts all these years? Is Pig back-of-head bacon the most delicious??

H. 1993 Forest Ranger encounter: In 1993, another Forest Ranger, John Irwin, was driving along the Mullica River when he saw a strange creature blocking the road ahead of him. He said it was about six feet tall with horns and matted black fur. The two stared at each other for several minutes before the creature turned and ran into the forest.

I. Eyewitness account: In 1977, another Ranger, Smooth Jazz Ranger Donald Fagen couldn’t give two shits about the Jersey Devil but he did care enough about Steely Dan to recruit Michael Motherfuckin’ McDonald for some red hot background vocals on Peg! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LI7NDDQLvbo (Play starting at 1:05)

What does that have to do with today’s episode? Nothing. But it has everything to do with the Suck. You just got McDonald’d and you got Steely Dan’d!

Anyway.

J. Miscellaneous Encounters: In 1981, a young couple spotted the devil at Atsion Lake in Atlantic County. In 1987, in Vineland an aggressive german Shepherd was found torn apart. It’s body was located 25 feet from the chain which had been hooked to him. Around the body were strange tracks that no one could identify. Damn you Devil!

But those stories area nothing compared to the original. The origin story is a whopper of a tale. So rich. So monstrous. So over-the-top. So best ten minutes out of a horror movie you’re embarrassed to recommended to a friend. It’s fantastic.

K. Leeds origin encounter: Legend has it that in 1735, a Pines resident known as Mother Leeds found herself pregnant for the thirteenth time. 13! The Devil’s number! Almost as bad as having 33 Mason kids. Or 666 Devil kids! Actually, if you have 666 kids, the Devil IS real and it does have something to do with you or your kids.

Mother Leeds was married to a Piney drunk who made few efforts to provide for his wife and twelve children. Reaching the point of absolute exasperation upon learning of her thirteenth child, she raised her hands to the heavens and proclaimed “Let this one be a devil!”

Mother Leeds went into labor a few months later, on a tumultuously stormy night, forgetting the curse she had utter previously regarding her unborn child. Probably distracted by her 12 kids and her drunk, deadbeat husband. If social media had been around, she’d be ending a lot of tweets and Instagram posts with #FML. 1. “Pregnant with 12 kids. Fire in chimney just burned out. Husband to drunk to fix it. #FML.” 2. “9th kid just broke arm. Live a two day’s wagon ride from a doctor. Don’t have wagon thanks to deadbeat Piney husband. #FML.” 3. “Possum stew for dinner again tonight. Drunk husband not motivated enough to hunt deer. 4th kid just pushed 11th kid off porch. 3rd dog just attacked 5th dog and killed it. 13th baby has me stuck in bed. #FML”

Her children and husband huddled together in one room of their Leeds Point home while local midwives gathered to deliver the baby in another. The birth went routinely, the thirteenth Leeds child a seemingly normal baby boy.

For a few minutes, all was well. As well as can be for a woman living on barren land with a drunk husband in 1735 after shooting a human out of her vagina for the 13th time with no anesthesia that is.

And then all Jersey, Piney Hell broke loose.

Within minutes, Mother Leeds’s unholy wish of months before began to come to fruition. The baby started to change, and metamorphosized right before her very eyes. Within moments it transformed from a beautiful newborn baby into a hideous creature unlike anything the world had ever seen. The wailing infant began growing at an incredible rate. It sprouted horns from the top of its head and talon-like claws tore through the tips of its fingers. Leathery bat-like wings unfurled from its back, and hair and feathers sprouted all over the child/monster’s body. Its eyes began glowing bright red as they grew larger in the monster’s gnarled and snarling face. The creature savagely attacked its own mother, killing her, then turned its attention to the rest of the horrified onlookers who witnessed its tempestuous transformation. It flew at them, clawing and biting, voicing unearthly shrieks the entire time. It tore the midwives limb from limb, maiming some and killing others.

The monster then knocked down the door to the next room where its own father and siblings cowered in fear and attacked them all, killing as many as it could. But it couldn’t get them all - mostly because it had 12 siblings to mow down. That’s a lot of murder, even for a Jersey Devil!

Those who survived to tell the tale then watched in horror as the rotten beast sprinted to the chimney and flew up it, destroying it on the way and leaving a pile of rubble in its wake. Damn you Jersey Devil! Did you really have to fuck the chimney up too? My God. Was it not enough to kill most of your family? But then you have to ruin the family chimney for the rest? You’re a real asshole, Devil!

“Mom dead. Drunk dad almost dead. Most siblings dead. No fire and chimney destroyed. New little brother is a real monster. #FML”

The creature then made good its escape into the darkness and desolation of the Pine Barrens, where it has lived ever since. To this day the creature, known varyingly as the Leeds Devil and the Jersey Devil, claims the Pines as its own, and terrorizes any who are unfortunate enough to encounter it.

As crazy as this Leeds story is, this legend does appear to be based on a real family. Let’s really talk about the Leeds.

V. Origins of the legend and the Slow Build of the Jersey Devil Mythology

A. Earliest reference to “the Leeds Devil”: Some have surmised that Mother Leeds was Deborah Leeds, who, according to genealogical records, bore 12 children between 1704 and 1726. That 13th kid isn’t on the record because it was a MONSTER!!

Deborah’s husband was Japheth, a son of Daniel. Daniel had arrived in America from England in 1677 and settled in Burlington, N.J.

The association between the Devil and the Leeds family seems to have started with Daniel, according to historian Brian Regal. In 1687, Daniel began publishing an almanac, which included the use of astrology, much to the consternation of his Quaker neighbors. Quakers at that time considered astrology to be ungodly and called Daniel "Satan's Harbinger.” Damn you Daniel - publishing your Devil numbers and your Satanic crop predictions!

In 1716, Daniel retired and handed the almanac publishing business over to his son Titan. In 1728, Titan redesigned the masthead to include the family crest: three "dragonlike" creatures with "clawed feet" and "batlike wings" — creatures that bore a striking resemblance to the Jersey Devil.

In the mid-1700s, amid high anti-British sentiment, the "Leeds family made easy marks," says Regal. They had sided with "the hated Lord Cornbury," the first royal governor of New Jersey, and were accused of "somehow being in the occult." When the Revolutionary War started, "the 'Leeds Devil' stood as a symbol of political ridicule and scorn.”

Alright - this sounds interesting. Let’s deep dive into this whole Leeds origin story.

VI. The Full Leeds Story: A. European settlement of the area now the state of New Jersey, Settlement of New Jersey began in the 1620s as a slow trickle of only a few hardy souls. Sir George Carteret (1610-1680) received the land between the Hudson and Delaware Rivers as a grant from the British Crown. As he hailed from the island of Jersey in the English Channel, an island long known for Sicilian mafia ties and Bon Jovi-esque hair metal bands, it became known as New Jersey. Kidding of course!

The region was divided, with the area bordering New York called East Jersey, and the half bordering Pennsylvania called West Jersey. Settlers to West Jersey came initially from Holland and Sweden. Not until the 1660s did larger numbers arrive, predominantly from England and members of the recently created religious order the Society of Friends, more commonly called Quakers. Catholics and particularly Anglicans too found their way to the region. In West Jersey Quaker communities, farms and Meeting Houses appeared from the Atlantic Ocean to Philadelphia (Burlington had its first meeting house built in 1683). In 1702 East Jersey and West Jersey unified as a single colony.

B. Cornbury: The first Royal governor of New Jersey, Edward Hyde, Lord Cornbury (1661-1723), simultaneously served as governor of New York through 1708. Cornbury is remembered as one of the most vilified and hated governors in colonial America. A portrait widely believed to be Cornbury hangs in the New York Historical Society and shows him dressed as his aunt Queen Anne. Historians feel his political and religious rivals slandered him by spreading tales of him cross dressing, an activity far from morally acceptable in Colonial America.

Historical documents reveal letters written by Quaker opponents of Cornbury accusing him wearing women’s clothes between 1707 and 1709. As Cornbury was genuinely and widely disliked, the accusations were accepted by the general public.

Well, when Lord Cornbury received his orders to take charge of New Jersey, one of his original councilors was a one Daniel Leeds.

C. Daniel Leeds (1651-1720) hailed from Stansted, Essex, England. He followed his father Thomas and his brothers to the New World towards the end of the 1670s and landed in Burlington. About twenty-five years old and a devout Quaker, Daniel Leeds claimed to have had several ecstatic visions as a young man. His first wife passed while still in England, so he married a second time in 1681. His new American wife, Ann Stacy, died in Burlington giving birth to a daughter named Ann, who did not survive long after. He married a third time, to Dorothy Young, who also passed, though not before producing eight children by 1699. He married a final time to Jane (Revell) Abbot-Smout. Some variants on the story of the Leeds Devil reference the name the ‘mother’ of the Jersey Devil as ‘Jane,’ though it is unclear if Jane Leeds produced any actual children. There are no contemporary sources referring to any of his wives as ‘Mother Leeds.’ However, her name could have been mixed up with the name of her 12 child-having daughter-in-law we already mentioned.

In 1682 Daniel Leeds became a member of the local assembly. He also rose to surveyor general. This position carried influence as land ownership disputes and boundary issues came up often in the wilds of the New World. As a symbol of his prosperity and religious conviction he contributed a subscription of £4 to build the first Burlington Quaker Meeting House just off High Street. In the 1690s he surveyed and acquired land in the Great Egg Harbor on the Atlantic coast, eventually handing it down to his eldest son as a family seat which came to be known as Leeds Point: the area most associated with the Jersey Devil legend.

D. Leed’s Tie ins with Quakers: Running through the story of the Jersey Devil is the story of the Quakers. When Daniel Leeds arrived in Burlington, Quakerism had been in existence barely longer than he had. Born of the upheavals of the English Civil Wars in 1647, a group of dissenters formed a new sect they called “The Society of Friends.” Because they claimed to shake with the inner light of the Lord, the name “Quakers” became popular. They believed an individual need not have a priest or clergyman or other official between them and God. The connection with the divine came through a relationship with Jesus. Their rejection of organized authority brought them into conflict with the forces of law and order. Persecutions from without and wrangling from within pushed the originally decentralized Quakers to form a more rigid and disciplined internal structure.

Persecutions also drove them to seek relief in the New World, to which they travelled in numbers. In the 1650s the Puritans ejected the newly arrived Quakers out of Massachusetts, so they headed to Pennsylvania and the Jerseys (where they found an easier time). We talked about how well the Puritans and Quakers got along in one of my favorite Timesucks, Bonus episode nine, the Salem Witch Trials.

Publicly and officially, Quaker doctrine renounced witchcraft and the occult as foolishness. But Privately, many Quakers enjoyed and were titillated by ghost stories and were fascinated by the supposed behavior of witches. They rejected it, but did not persecute it the way the Puritans of New England did. When witch trials broke out in Massachusetts in 1692, the Quakers were not involved; indeed the Quakers barely escaped accusations themselves, and again, if you’ll recall, Quakers had already been hanged by Puritans simply for being Quakers and promoting their theology.

E. How Leeds pissed off the Quakers: Along with farming and surveying, Daniel Leeds aspired to more intellectual and metaphysical activity. He began publishing an almanac in 1687. Titled “An Almanac” - keep it simple - he referred to himself as a “student in agriculture.” Popular in New England by the mid-1600s, almanacs appeared in the Middle Atlantic region by 1682. Leeds created the first one in New Jersey. 1. Reading almanacs supplied farmers with agricultural news, forecasts of weather and meteorological information, home spun wisdom, and even a joke or two. In the rural and agrarian culture of New Jersey and Pennsylvania, where few books were printed or even available, almanacs proved useful, entertaining, and popular.

Leeds went initially with a single page broadside for his publication, and later to the more traditional almanac model of multi-page pamphlet. He included tidal information based on Philadelphia, setting and rising of the sun and moon, and the movements of other heavenly bodies. Leeds also included inspirational words along the almanac’s mast-head. “No man is born unto himself alone,” the first one said, “who lives unto himself lives alone.”

F. Leeds angers Quakers: Leeds’ agricultural, seemingly innocuous, astrological data did not please all his readers. Not long after its appearance, several members of the Quaker Burlington Monthly Meeting complained that he used inappropriate language and astrological symbols for names of days and months that were a little too ‘pagan’ for some tastes.

A technique common to almanacs, Leeds made connections between star signs and various human body parts—Aries for the head and face, for example. He eventually included astrological medical advice as well. “It is generally approved to be good to purge and bleed in the months of March and April,” he wrote. As to bleeding, that should be done “when the moon is in Cancer.”

An order was sent out to collect up all the copies of the Leeds almanac not in circulation and destroy them. Burn those heretical pamphlets! Burn that Devil print! At the next Quaker Meeting, Leeds publicly apologized for having given offense, but privately had no intention of cancelling his almanac. In fact, he only seems to have been warming up and would soon establish himself as one of the Quakers most outspoken critics.

The year after he first published the almanac, Leeds put together a book called “The Temple of Wisdom for the Little World” (1688). The Temple of Wisdom is as unconventional a book as a colonial Quaker was likely to produce. It is a compilation of theology and the budding Scientific Revolution. Rather than a completely original text, Leeds paraphrased and outright copied large sections of other authors, including Francis Bacon, to cobble together a personal cosmology.

He included sections on angels, natural magic, astrology, theology, philosophy, and the behavior of devils. The “Behavior of Devils” I love how ridiculous these assholes were. “What are you working on father?” “Just writing a new chapter on how Devils behave my dear boy.” “And how do Devils behave, father?” “They bother their father while he’s working and while they should be in bed. Now get to sleep, Devil!”

Along with Bacon, the other source Leeds used extensively was the work of the German Pietist, mystic Jacob Boehme (1575-1624). From a humble background, Boehme taught himself to be a philosophical theologian and claimed to have had ecstatic visions of the mystical aspect of the universe.

G. Boehme’s writings: Boehme’s writings focused upon the nature of sin and redemption. He argued that the fall of man needed to occur for him to gain entry to heaven. He saw a correspondence between zodiac signs and such human conditions as love and sweetness, or natural conditions such as dryness and sound. In his writings, Boehme argued that mainstream Lutheranism had lost its way, become dull and lifeless, and had abandoned the proper zeal, strict behavior, and direct Bible study and emotion Christianity demanded.

Leeds saw Boehme as a kindred spirit: one who, like himself, had experienced ecstatic visions, been called before religious authorities for his work, and who rebelled against the local establishment.

Defending himself and his astrological work using Boehme’s words, Leeds says “everyone that will speak or teach of divine mysteries, that we have the spirit of God.” H. Leeds Was not a Devil worshiper: The published work of Daniel Leeds shows him to be simultaneously a Christian occultist and purveyor of the Scientific Revolution. (He was an early proponent in North America of the Copernican view of the solar system). He was not a dark magician, but a pious shepherd leading his flock to the light. There is no evidence that Leeds ever engaged in attempts to manipulate extra-terrestrial or magical processes. For Leeds and other almanac compilers, astrology was not a dubious, fringe activity, but a Christian technique for gaining deeper insight into the divine. As historian T.J. Tomlin expresses it, “Almanacs and their astrological formulations complemented and even promoted Christianity across eighteenth-century British America.” The majority of readers of Leeds’ work in West Jersey would have been unfamiliar with the philosophical and confusing nature of his writings and so they must have saw more occultist than Christian in him.

The Quaker Philadelphia Meeting immediately suppressed Leeds’s work. The Quaker Burlington Meeting exerted growing power and control over Quaker life in the region during this period and were able to rally support to crush Leeds’ book. They “demanded and obtained general conformity” of its members. The suppression was so complete only one known copy of The Temple of Wisdom is extant. Leeds felt betrayed. His intention with both the almanac and Temple of Wisdom centered on bringing philosophy, theology, and science to his New Jersey neighbors. Their rejection and destruction of both wounded him. Brokenhearted by the religion he had so fully embraced, he turned on the Quakers. I. Bring on the Politics - Leeds vs Quakers:

So now Daniel Leeds, a man who considers himself righteous and the correct type of religious, has been scorned by his religion for doing what he loves, for, in his mind, promoting religion. And he’s pissed off about it.

Daniel Leeds seeks influence through local politics on the side of Royal authority and against the Quaker position. When New Jersey became a Royal colony, he aligns, as we stated above, with the anti-Quaker, pro-British governor Lord Cornbury.

In his role as councilor, Leeds advised the new governor not to swear in several Quaker members appointed to the assembly by local election. Zing! Little payback. How ya like me now Quakers?? The rest of the assembly complained to Cornbury about these “groundless accusations,” but to no avail. Cornbury alienated the West Jersey Assembly and its Quaker population through “arbitrary practices” by being inconsiderate, listening to false accusations against its members, and by not spending much time in the colony of which he was governor. That British BASTARD!!!

The Quakers saw the Anglican Governor Cornbury as a local tyrant representing the larger empire who sought to keep them under control and who opposed their religion as heretical. “You don’t think we have the best ideas, guv’nah? Well than fook off!”

When Daniel Leeds, as one of their own, sided with Cornbury and the establishment, they saw him as a turncoat. He was done. He was out forever. He was part of the problem. Adding insult to injury, Leeds showed loyalty to his sovereign with a ditty ending the 1713 edition of the almanac. “God save Queen Anne,” he wrote, “her foes destroy, and all that do her realms annoy. J. How the Devil became his name: Leeds backed anti-Quaker proponents such as George Keith (1638-1716). An early member of the Society of Friends, George Keith knew founder George Fox, William Penn, and the original Jersey proprietor, Robert Barclay. Keith came to New Jersey in 1685, became a surveyor, and took his place as a leader of the Quaker community. He did the survey which separated East from West Jersey and founded the town of Freehold. He eventually soured on the Society of Friends and began preaching aggressively that the Quakers had strayed too far for proper Christianity. He accused the Quakers of being Deists, was disowned by the London Friends, and eventually converted to Anglicanism. Following the public rejection of both his almanac and his heart felt book, Daniel Leeds, too, left the Friends, renounced Quakerism, joined the Anglican Church, and proceeded to zealously attack his former fellow religionists as the real heretics.

Involved openly in the Keith controversy, Daniel Leeds felt obliged to defend and explain his position. He addressed the issue of his work in “The Innocent Vindicated from the Falsehoods and Slanders of Certain Certificates” (1695), where he worked to show he stood on the side of right - where the Quakers did not.

The Burlington Meeting of the Friends had grown increasingly upset with what Leeds published. In the 1698 meeting they referred to him as “evil” for his publications and other unseemly behavior. At odds with the Friends, Leeds produced an outright anti-Quaker book, “The Trumpet Sounded Out of the Wilderness of America “(1699), in which he deconstructed Quakerism. I’d read you an excerpt but it is terribly, terribly boring. Leeds argued that Quaker theology denied the divinity of Jesus. In addition to the theology he accused Quakers of being anti-monarchists.

A defense of Quakerism appeared as “Satan’s Harbinger Encountered…Being Something by Way of Answer to Daniel Leeds “(1700). With this pamphlet, Leeds stood publicly accused of either working for or actually being some sort of devil.

This was not a new type of accusation! Political mudslinging was alive and well in colonial America. You think the accusations of the past few elections were bad? Back then, Alex Jones would’ve fit right in - it was common to accuse your rivals of being demonic. It was not unusual for political rivals to ridicule each other by calling them devils. Depictions in religious and political tracts of Satan— many which resemble the later popular image of the Jersey Devil— go back to the Middle Ages, actually.

The Early Modern era and the introduction of wood block printing saw the devil rendered in humorous ways as a tactic to deflate and lampoon evil. The image of a creature with hooves for feet, claws for hands, leathery wings, and a pointy tail did not originate with the Jersey Devil legend, but drew upon a robust tradition. Identifying a political rival as a monster—as with calling them devils—also proved a useful technique and contributed to the growing popularity of political satire.

An early example of this is “The Life and Character of a Strange He- Monster” (1726), in which a political rival is called “the scabby offspring of a Scotch Moggy by a scratching pedlar…” Out of Boston came The Monster of Monsters (1754), which concerned a local alcohol tax. This tax, the author notes in overblown prose, stands as “the most hideous form and terrible aspect such as one as was never seen in America. Unscrupulous land grabs following the Revolution resulted in The Deformity of a Hideous Monster Discovered in the Province of Maine (1797). Colonial New Jersey brimmed over with devils and monsters, and political rivals regularly made accusations of many types. Scandal and back stabbing in print occurred as much during the seventeenth and eighteenth century as it does today, and Daniel Leeds was in the thick of it. K. The Pamphlet Wars: So we have the Pamphlet wars, the 18th century equivalent of Twitter. Daniel Leeds now found himself in a pamphlet war with the Quakers.

“Quakers trying to bring me down again. Lost another wife this afternoon. So sick of venison. #FML!”

Leeds opposer came in the form of Caleb Pusey. A friend of William Penn, Caleb Pusey came to Pennsylvania in 1700. He opened a mill, entered local politics, became a member of the provincial Supreme Court, and member of the executive council, and he also got into the Keith debacle. He attacked Daniel Leeds, a supporter of Keith. Initially a friend of the heretic George Keith, Pusey repudiated him when the controversy began. Pusey vigorously defended William Penn and Quakerism and responded directly to the writings of Daniel Leeds. It was Pusey who referred to Leeds in print as Satan’s Harbinger.

Leeds responded to Pusey with” A Challenge to Caleb Pusey and to Check his Lies and Forgeries” (1700). Playing off the title of one of his earlier works, Leeds quickly followed with “News of a Strumpet ( another word for prostitute) Co-Habitating in the Wilderness” (1701).

Here Leeds referred to the “spiritual and carnal whoredoms and adulteries of the Quakers.” Oh it’s on now! Calling the Quakers whores and adulterers. Them’s serious fighting words!”

He charged them with adultery, fathering children out of wedlock, cheating tradesmen, and other insidious crimes. Pusey replied with “Daniel Leeds Justly Rebuked “(1702), to which Leeds craftily countered with The “Rebuker Rebuked” (1703). Leeds became a machine, putting out biting and sarcastic anti-Quaker publications with regularity. Historian Patricia Bonomi refers to Leeds as “perhaps the best surviving example of early Middle Colony scandal mongering.”

VII. Titan Leeds Vs. Benjamin Franklin A. Almanac Continues: Daniel Leeds continued to publish his almanac until 1714, when he retired from public life. He turned the business over to his son Titan, who early showed aptitude in math, science, and astronomy. Titan Leeds (1699-1738) had already been doing the calculations for the almanac and had a gift for anticipating lunar eclipses. After taking over the running of the almanac at the tender age of sixteen, Titan found the Leeds family still had enemies and that the term “Devil” was still associated with them.

In the 1720 edition of the almanac, he mentioned he might not be able to continue publishing the almanac because an unnamed monstrous rival was giving him grief. “If I write no more,” he said, “you may think ’tis because of a smoak breathed out to stifle me by the Devil’s Emissary.” This person, this Devil of Leeds, was guilty of “lying, cheating, treachery, and malice.” Where his father had once been labeled Satan’s harbinger, now Titan Leeds used a similar title upon another. Demonic influence concerned many in early America and so any author wishing to tarnish the image of a rival could do no better than to make them out to be a monster or a devil. It is unclear just who Titan Leeds meant when he referred to his enemy as Devil’s Emissary, but it would not be long before he fell afoul of yet another, and found himself in one of the most notorious almanac feuds of them all, with founding father Benjamin Franklin.

B. Let the Battle Commence: The up and coming Philadelphia printer, scientist, statesman, and soon to be Founding Father Benjamin Franklin entered the almanac game in 1732 with “Poor Richard’s Almanac.” Writing under the name Richard Saunders (he took the name Richard Saunders from a popular London almanac), Franklin followed the standard formula of agricultural and astrological material, including the inspirational quotes.) As competitors in a lucrative market, Franklin decided to go after his successful rival in print by creating an almanac feud. It was like a rap battle but way, way less entertaining.

In the 1733 edition of Poor Richard’s Almanac Franklin, writing as Saunders, used astrological techniques to predict Titan Leeds’ death on October 17 of that year. Franklin referred to Leeds in his typical jaunty manner as “my good friend and fellow student” of astrology. Franklin approached all this in a humorous vein. Titan Leeds, however, did not. He retaliated in the Leeds Almanac by saying that Franklin “has manifest himself a fool and a liar” for his antics.

Franklin replied with mock outrage, saying Leeds was “too well bred to use any man so indecently and so scurrilously” so this must not be the real Titan Leeds, but a manifestation from the spirit world. (once again making a supernatural association between a Leeds and the devil) He said he had “received much abuse from the ghost of Titan Leeds.” When he referred to Leeds, Franklin always did so with the language of the astrologer. “The stars are seldom disappointed,” he said when he predicted Leeds’ death. The only reference Franklin makes to Daniel Leeds came when he said that Titan followed “the honor of astrology, the art professed both by him and his father.”

Leeds could do little but fume. Franklin found the whole project irresistible and kept it going because he was an asshole. Even after Titan Leeds finally died in 1738, Franklin faked a letter from him supposedly written from the great beyond (he is literally a 12 year old boy). Franklin had Leeds say that he can see much further into the future because, having died, “I got free from the prison of the flesh.”Franklin then responded to his own creation that “Honest Titan, deceased, was raised [from the dead] and made to abuse his old friend [Franklin].”

Largely out of fun, Benjamin Franklin had publicly cast his rival almanac publisher as a ghost, and all but a reanimated sorcerer brought back to haunt his enemies. In the end Franklin’s ploy worked: Poor Richard’s Almanac flourished and is remembered while the Leeds Almanac disappeared to be forgotten. The traditionally believed period of the ‘birth’ of the Jersey Devil coincides roughly with the death of Titan Leeds as well as the Franklin/Leeds almanac war. Coincidence? Maybe. Maybe not.

C. Bringing it all together: With a few fits and starts the Leeds almanac stopped being printed after Titan’s death and the family receded from the public eye. The basis of the Leeds family as unintentional progenitors of the Leeds Devil myth springs from how their reputations—both real and manufactured—were remembered.

Starting as the Leeds Devil, the elements that came together to form the Jersey Devil mythos percolated and fermented over the next century in the culture of the Pine Barrens. The leisurely pace of this transmutative process meant that not until the late nineteenth and particularly the early twentieth century did the legend arrive, spurred on by the agitation over the supposed mystery hoof prints in the snow.

By the nineteenth century, quarrels, fights, and animosities that seemed so important in the eighteenth century no longer seemed so. The Quaker rivalries, the political fighting, the almanac wars, and Daniel and Titan formed a memory that like paint chips flaking away from a wall mural left a distorted version of the original image behind. The texts through which this conflict played out passed into obscurity as well. The ephemeral nature of these publications contributed to their disappearances. Aside from the almanacs, the Bradford family printed the Daniel Leeds tracts in small numbers and few survived. The active censorship and destruction of Leeds material contributed to this evaporation. Their memory had become so hazy that an 1848 newspaper article on the history of almanacs in New Jersey incorrectly stated the Franklin/Leeds feud occurred in 1773. This dissipation of memory had so set in that by 1900 even the biographer of the Leeds family, genealogist Clara Louise Humeston, incorrectly called Daniel Leeds “the writer of the single volume called the Book of Wisdom.”This was copied without question by a later Leeds family chronicler, Alfred M. Heston, in an article for the Proceedings of the New Jersey Historical Society.

D. Media attention: The newspaper articles of 1905 reduced the entire Leeds family down to ‘Captain Leeds’ and his occult leaning wife ‘Mother Leeds,’ while moving the events to the early nineteenth century and blotting out the eighteenth century family altogether. The 1909 media attention focused on reports of mysterious horse- like tracks found in the snow around the Pine Barrens region and attributed them to the Leeds Devil, though accusations of a Philadelphia press agent inventing it all flew about as well. Charles A. Bradenburgh, the owner of the Ninth and Arch Street Dime Museum in Philadelphia, and his press agent Norman Jeffries, saw an opportunity to cash in on the wave of 1909 monster foot print sightings. Always eager for any outlandish scheme to bring paying rubes into the museum, and showing no scruples about honesty or accuracy, Jeffries began to plant stories about the Leeds Devil and its sinister behavior in local newspapers. These early January 1909 press releases were read by an eager public already interested in the reports of snowy foot prints. Bradenburgh and Jeffries then faked an actual Leeds Devil and put it on display, further heightening interest.

The newspaper accounts—for the Jersey Devil is a product of the media rather than genuine folklore—began the birthing process. The Trenton Evening News exclaimed on its front page that the “Leeds Devil has Jersey People Frightened.” The scheme had the desired effect and attendance at the museum grows. The New York Tribune declared if anybody doubted the stories of tracks in the snow, they have now been confirmed. And from here, now firmly cemented in the collective memory of the Pine Barrens, the legend continues to grow.

Interesting, isn’t it? How a slight in a publication here, an association there, more similar slights and slanders a generation later, all beating that same drum that the Leeds are a family of anti- Quaker Devils, it sinks into the collective consciousness of an area. A stigma sticks for generations. And then some carnival barker type promoter really, really beats the “Leeds Devil” drum in 1909, pushing up attendance at his museum of curiosities and cementing the legend in the minds of the public for over a century and counting.

I have no proof that this how the Jersey Devil came to be, but it feels right to me. I get how this mythology can grow.

There’s a family where I grew up - the Damons. They have the reputation of being a family of delinquents. Partly earned for sure. There have been some felons in the family. There have been some perfectly able-bodied men and women who seem all to content to just live off of public assistance. However, there have also been some wonderful family members. Star athletes, amazing students, and wonderful people. BUT - the overall reputation of this one family, going at least as far back as my great-grandparents, right or wrong, is that of ne’er-do-wells. The name Damon, where I grew up does not have a positive association in the sense that if anyone my age or older, and for all I know the younger generations as well, heard that a “Damon” got into this or that trouble, there would be a general reaction of “Well that figures.”

There are rumors about me. There were rumors in high school that I was gay. The only “gay” thing I did was not have girlfriends. I was awkward and not good with girls. I didn’t have any balls. I had low self-esteem. Zero confidence with women. Would’ve loved to have been a hit with the ladies but it just wasn’t the case. Oh - and I didn’t get shitfaced out in the woods with some guys from school on the weekends. And I didn’t do that because I had a crazy stepmom who was constantly grounding me. But - the combo of me not doing typical bro shit - getting fucked up on Saturday night, AND, never having a real girlfriend - was enough for some to think I was for sure gay. And if I suddenly announced myself as gay today, there would be a certain segment of the population where I grew up who think, “I fucking knew it!”

With the Leeds, starting with Daniel, it was the imagery of smearing your political rival by describing them as some of Devilish beast, the same kind of beast that showed up in other pamphlets about other people. The same type of beast showing up in pamphlets these recent immigrants had seen in Europe. And then adding more “Devilish” association to Daniel’s son, Titan, that gave this family the stigma of Devil. The family had taken on the Quakers and when it came to a battle of reputations, the Quakers had won.

And then you got these backwood 18th and 19th century pineys, these barely literate superstitious hill folk repeating half-baked memories, and pretty soon the original political meaning is lost, and there is just a term remaining - “Leeds Devil”. And attached to this term is a variation of the original imagery used in political smear campaign - hoovers, bat wings, horns, and fangs. And again, the original political association is lost. And now it’s this monster. Now it’s a campfire tale told my imaginative fathers to scare their kids. Told to keep them from misbehaving - “Go to bed before the Leeds Devil gets you!” And then, people start seeing what they want to see - a real monster. And then a museum owner starts, I’m guessing, making hoof prints in the snow. Working up a bit of public hysteria. Starts getting people to see what he wants them to see to drive traffic to his curiosity museum. And once one person convinces a community they’ve seen something, everyone starts seeing something. It’s like in Bonus episode 2, Alien Extravaganza, how after 1947, when amateur pilot named Kenneth Arnold claimed he saw nine crescent-shaped objects in the sky while flying near Mount Rainier in Washington and his story was published across the nation, suddenly EVERYONE started seeing UFOs. Did an unusual amount of UFOs come to Earth in 1947? Or did a lot of people’s imaginations get the best of them. I haven’t noticed any weird shadows at night in weeks, but, after the shadow people episode - I saw a whole bunch of creepy shadows. I thought for sure I saw a pair of red eyes in the basement. 99% sure I saw lights from my TV. And now that I’m thinking about shadow people again, I’ll probably see those eyes again. Imaginations are powerful, powerful things.

But that’s just what I think about the Jersey Devil. And what I think isn’t always that entertaining. But you know what IS always entertaining? What the Idiots of the Internet think.

PAUSE IDIOTS OF THE INTERNET INTRO

VIII. Idiots of the Internet A. Here is a typical Jersey Devil post I found under a weirdnj.com article on The Jersey Devil.

1. FB Denise08611: This is a true story, and the N.J State Police were even involved with this matter. It was the summer of 2009, my ex and I went out to the pine barons in the middle of the night to fire a newly purchased gun. We got there about 2am - and right around 3am we started to hear loud screeching noises, more or less like a hawk but a lot louder, we decided to leave and head home something just didn't feel right.. I had that strange feeling in the pit of my stomach.... As we started to head back to my car we then hear a loud flapping noise, the tree tops were swaying back & forth, but there was no wind? Now I am really scared! We got back to the car to head home and I realized that my cell phone was not where I left it (on the middle hand rest). We looked and looked and looked? I knew I left my phone there as I always do.. I thought it might of fell off of my lap onto the ground, so we proceeded to look around the outside of the car.. Nothing there.. I was standing on the driver side of the car with the door open, and he was on the passenger side doing the same.. All of a sudden, my cell phone came flying past my face like a bullet from behind! smashed into the roof of my car and slid across to my ex on the passenger side, we both looked at each other and started to scream and jumped into the car... At the time I had a Chrysler 300m and as we all know I really had no business driving that car through the woods, but I put the car into drive and I flew down the path at 50-70 mph! my car was bouncing all around and I didn't care, all I know is I wanted to get away from whatever was out there as fast as I could. I am going to admit I have never been more scared in my life, I litterley peed my pants. We were both crying, screaming and confused.. I had to stop the car because I actually couldn't breath, I was in full panic mode... We decided to pull over and switch seats so he can drive.. As we stopped the car and switched seats we hear the loud flapping and screeching again, but this time it was right about us..We heard birds chirping loudly as if they were warning the other birds of something.. We finally got onto 206 and we couldn't driver any faster... We were driving so fast that the State Police pulled us over, we were in such a panic that the police thought my ex was trying to kidnapped me or something, we explained to them what had happened, and what we heard and saw.. We showed the officer my cell phone that was smashed to pieces, the officer said that it looks like if that phone had hit me in the head I probably would of been knocked unconscious. The officer shared almost the same story with us, as far as the screeching and flapping noise and the uneasy feeling. I grew up in Clementon all I knew the Pine barons like the back of my hand, I have been there numerous times and never experienced anything like I did that night! I will NEVER EVER return to the Pine Barrons again..

This poster no longer has a FB account. I’m guessing they are still full of shit. What? I love it when people are like, “This is a TRUE story. You can coronate it with the New Jersey Police department. No officer name, no department name, no date. No info of their own to contact them and get any further info. Nada.

“it’s a true story you guys! And you don’t have to just take my word for it. This guy George also was there. Look him up! He’s on the internet. Name of George. A dude. Last name starts with a letter. He should be easy to find.”

And why in the Hell were you going to shoot a new gun at 2 in the morning? That is NOT the idea time for target practice. Unless you are on meth - then I’m guessing it sounds like a perfectly reasonable thing to do. “Fuck man! We’ve already drank last call. Want to go back to my place? I’ve got more beer, more meth, and we can shoot my new gun!” “I like the first two parts of that plan. How ‘bout we go grab some beers, grab some meth, then take your gun out into the woods to shoot it?” “Fuck yeah Darrel! You are a GODDAMN GENIUS!!!”

And - despite a good setup - being out in the Pine Barrens around 3 in the morning with a gun - your story fucking sucks. You heard birds chirping, it got windy, and whoever you were with threw your phone at you and then didn’t want to ‘fess up to it when they broke it. And then you freaked out and a cop pulled you over and you somehow didn’t go to jail for a DUI. Next story!

So much Jersey Devil stuff is like that. No actual creature spotted. No real encounter of any kind. Just someone wither bullshitting or getting spooked in the woods and blaming the feeling of being spooked on a name they’ve heard - the Jersey Devil! B. Under a Youtube video called “Does the Jersey Devil really exist?”, I found the following comment.

User IAA015 states: “Search for jersey devil thermal footage.. its actually very interesting as you can see wings, also radiating heat as a regular mammal.”

Okay user IAA015 - I will search for thermal footage. I Googled “Jersey Devil Thermal Footage” and made it to a Jersey Devil article on Ghost Theory dot com. The article is titled, Paranormal State’s ‘Jersey Devil’: Deer, Devil Or Hoax?”

And it features alleged “thermal imaging” photos of what appears to be a pic of children’s toy. Something about the same size and shape as a My Little Pony figurine. And equally scary looking. It’s a filtered version of a pic I’ve seen before.

There is this shitty Jersey Devil pic that keeps popping up on the web. It’s from this alleged sighting video that even made it’s way to ABC news. This dude named David Black, who appears to be 100% whackadoodle, claims that in 2015, on the way home from work, driving through the Pine Barrens at around 6PM, he saw what he first thought was a llama, and then the creature sprouted wings and flew over the road. And he has this pic capturing it in flight. It’s so fucking bad. Laughably bad. It looks like a toy he altered a bit and glued to his windshield and then took a crappy photo of. But, it’s become the Jersey Devil equivalent of that fuzzy Patterson-Gimlin photo of Bigfoot we’ve all seen walking through the California woods.

In the comments below this article, an article that comes to no real conclusions about anything, there is Idiot gold and some witty hilarity as well! 1. Facebook user M81 shits on all the cryptic speculative fun, posting: “I have two unicorns a pegasus and a jersey devil living with me. They are my pets.” I love this mostly because it feels like something I would also right. Well played you sarcastic asshole.

2. Facebook user The Survivor is one of my favorite type of internet idiot - the truth demander! They post: “why hasn"t this story been turned into a actual documentary and showed to people. I think we deserve to see the truth!”

As if the government has some vested interested in hiding the real truth of the Jersey Devil from us. Like there is finally gonna be a press conference. “Okay everyone. The jig’s up. The Jersey Devil is real. We didn’t want to scare the public so we’ve been hiding the truth. There is a horned, llama-like, bat-winged demon on the loose in the Pine Barrens of Jersey, and it’s been there for over 200 years. At lease. And we can’t catch or stop it. And it’s a real murderous asshole. So, you know, careful hiking and what not. Okay. In other news, the new corporate tax reduction is now effective and we’re proud to announce that…” Get the fuck out of here. There’s no reason to hide it.

C. And then there is another one of my favorite internet archetypes, the cocky idiot who thinks they’re an intellectual. User Einstein_Incarnate posts “Some of you guys are blindingly dumb. Let me school you. Only 4% of the worlds rainforests have been explored. 4%,thats roughly the size of America, minus Alaska.Thats like exploring Rhode Island when something only lives in California, and claiming it proven fake. Better yet, less than 1% of the worlds oceans have been explored.Thats equal to walking down main street in small town IA, and saying hippos don’t exist. Feel free to apply that alien life. Statistics would prove that 50%+ of you believe in god. haha! Good luck proving that.”

First off Einstein - he who made love to his first cousin - PASS IT ON! - first off, why be a dick about religion at the end? What does that have to do with anything else you were talking about? You seem to be building a case to believe in the paranormal based on a lot of the world not being explored. You seem to be building a case that we should, logically, believe in things we haven’t seen, such as cryptos and aliens, because there is so much we haven’t explored with your flawed statistical argument. But then you seem to slam faith. Doesn’t really flow with your argument. I think you were trying to say that if you are open to believing in God, something you can’t scientifically prove, you should be open to a belief in cryptids, because just like we haven’t explored every realm and dimension of the universe, where God may be, we haven’t explored every inch of the earth, where cryptos may be. Fair enough. Bit if you’re gonna open a rant with “Let me school you”, then come correct with a better argument and proper logic.

Now let’s get into those stats you build your case with. Thanks for providing no sources for all of your specific numbers. You claim we’ve explored less than 1% of the world’s oceans? Not true. According to the National Ocean Service, a branch of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. According to scientists paid to study the Ocean, almost 5% of the world’s oceans have been explored. So, while we still have so much to explore, you were off by over 5 times in your analysis.

What about your only 4% of the world’s rainforests have been explored claim? I’m 100% sure you pulled that out of your ass because there is no conclusive statistic regarding rainforest exploration. Especially not one for the whole world.

Oh - and according to the latest Gallup poll, from 2016, 89% believe in God, which a genius like you should know is a MUCH bigger number than 50%.

And according to a 2012 “Global Religious Landscape” analysis of more than 2,500 censuses, surveys, and population registers quoted in The Washington Times, 84% of the word’s population believes in God. Still a much bigger number than 50%. You seem to be at least 34% off in your argument. I doubt Einstein was ever more than a third off in a mathematical argument.

Turns out YOU are blindingly dumb Einstein Incarnate. Do you even know what “Incarnate” means? It’s a deity or spirit embodied in the flesh. If Einstein had taken over your body, you would be way, way, way better at statistics, statistics being 100% reliant on numbers, Einstein being 100% super duper good at numbers his entire life. Einstein_Incarnate, an arrogant dumb dumb - pass it on!

D. And then, under the same article, user Sifoni Fetuani posts my favorite comment, with “im not saying it is real or anything but it could of been a pegasus.”

Haha! “Hey guys. I’m not gonna say that this creature is real or not real. BUT - I do think we should consider the very real possibility that thing is a pegasus. May not be a Jersey Devil - good change it is an ancient Greek mythological winged stallion. Just some food for thought. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m late for an important lunch meeting with Einstein Incarnate. We’re finalizing the details on your GoFundMe campaign to raise money to open a think tank.

Alright, I think that is quite enough Idiots of the Internet for today.

PAUSE IDIOTS OF THE INTERNET OUTRO

IX. Conclusions A. Alright you guys. So that’s about it for the Jersey Devil. Gotta say - this one seems to be 100% nonsense. Unlike Mothman or Bigfoot, no one can even agree on how this thing even looks. Seems to be a legend where a political rivalry and stories of devil accusations were then filtered through over 100 years of superstitious uneducated, backwoods Piney culture, and then a curiosity museum operator stoked the flames big time, probably planted some fake hoof prints to sell some tickets, and now we have a legend!

Either that or evil incarnate lives in the woods of Jersey. Who knows. It’s not like I’ve hiked around looking for the monster. I have been to Jersey several times and it is pretty strange in places.

Time for some top five takeaways!

PAUSE TOP FIVE TAKEAWAYS

X. Top Five Takeaways 1. Number one: The Jersey Devil may not be real but it has one Hell of an origin tale! The 13th baby of Mother Leeds metamorphosing into some demonic monster with bat wings, horns, and talons and then eating it’s own mother. “New baby is growing up fast. Just sprouted bat wings and horns from eat. Looking at me now like it wants to literally eat me. Drunk Piney husband doesn’t seem to care. #FML!”

2. Number two: Don’t mess with the Quakers! They’ll tarnish your family name for centuries.

3. Number three: The famous Napoleon never saw the Jersey Devil but his brother claimed to. Even some Europe conquering Emperors have wacky brothers. Whacky family members is just for Pineys.

4. Number four! The people of New Jersey thought so little of their Pine Barrens brethren that they wanted them sterilized. Who knew that the old cast of he Jersey Shore weren’t the trashiest people Jersey had to offer. I hope I make it out there some day. Would love to hit some sketchy diners and shake some Piney hands. Bet they make a mean meatloaf down there. Love me some hillbillies! Even if their flatlander, Piney hillbillies. ““Well, look-ee here now I got some puke, tastiest puke I ever did lick, out of my woman’s beard. Well look-ee here now, with the full belly, I made a butt-baby with that woman o’mine, and the governor’s wallet we got! Whoo! Yi-haw!!!”

5. And Number 5, new info! Nothing! There is no new info on the Jersey Devil. You really have heard all the best parts. This monster - highly doubtful it exists. A website I seem to frequent now, Live Science dot com, sums it up best:

“Could the creature be real? The Jersey Devil's diverse features are strong evidence that it does not — and cannot — exist as a real animal. The most obvious biologically implausible feature is its wings: they would need to be much bigger, and anchored in a much more massive musculoskeletal structure, to lift the animal's body weight into the air. Birds and bats can fly because their bodies are relatively lightweight; the reputed heavy muscles and thick limbs of the Jersey Devil would never work; you'd have better luck putting butterfly wings on a rhino. Most images of the Jersey Devil look like a monster that a high school Dungeons & Dragons player might dream up as a composite of different, unrelated animals whose features could never actually exist in the same animal, but look weird and scary.

So what's the explanation for the Jersey Devil? There's very little to "explain"; we have a monster whose origin is obviously rooted in myth, and whose features are anatomically impossible.”

PAUSE TOP FIVE TAKEAWAYS OUTRO XI. Closing Announcements A. So that’s it. The Jersey Devil. If you do a quick Google Image search, the description of a monster conjured up by a high school dungeons and dragons player is PERFECT. I used to draw shit like the Jersey Devil when I played Dungeons and Dragons in high school. “Let’s see, give it the head of a demon, with the wings of a bat, the body of a goat/horse hybrid. Mmmm. Let’s make the arm muscles bigger. Make the talons longer. More fangs!”

B. Alright. Time for some more tour dates.

Houston and Dallas have been added to the tour! I’ll be at the Secret Group theater in Houston on Friday April, 13th.

And I’ll be at the Texas Theater in Dallas on Saturday, April 14th. One show only in Dallas, one show only in Houston, in 2018.

Many more dates at www.dancummins.tv. Click the tour page.

C. App: Had a great meeting with the App designers and the coming Space Lizard features are looking good. Sorry I don’t have the Patreon info quite yet. Coming very, very soon.

Thanks for buying tees and hoodies and hats and more at he Timesuck store All at timeusckpodcast.com and on the app. I finally just got my own box of the new Danger Brain stuff and it is fucking great! They are so good at what they do. The colors are so rich and fantastic. The design so solid. If you want to work with them, go to www.thedangerbrain.com Some Timesuckers are working with them now.

It’s all done with discharge ink, the ink is in the fabric, and the Bella Tri-Blends don’t work as well for that, so we used Next Level shirts and hoodies and the Next Level does fit a little different. For me - it’s more of a true size. Maybe even a tiny bit big on me. A large in the Bella - used on the first four generation shirts - is a little tight on me. A large with Next Level fits great. I’m wearing a large zip up Cult of the Curious hoodie right now and it’s plenty big. And I sometimes wear an extra large hoodie. Also - the zip up hoodie is a light hoodie, which I like. But it is not a “I’m gonna wear this out in 20 degree weather Winter hoodie.” The Space Lizard pullover hoodie is much, much thicker. That is a let’s get warm and cozy deal.

Thanks to Sydney Shives for killing it on social media and Harmony Vellekamp for all of her kick ass positive energy help on the social media as well with her @secretspacelizards handles. And thanks to Jesse Dobner for the kick ass editing work.

Quick note on topic suggestion emails - be sure you correctly type your email in the appropriate spot when you send it in so we can get back to you. If not, we send a reply to a dead address. So maybe copy and paste or double check. We get a few messages every week that we’re unable to reply to.

Big thanks to Rebecca “Reba” Lillie, a Bojangles research intern and Jersey native. Also thanks to all of you who recommended this Suck - Alan Howell William Nunez, Alexandra Winkler, Austin Steers, Seth Cano, and anyone else I missed.

Thanks to all of you who write in, listen, spread the word, buy merch, come to shows, click the Amazon link on timesuckpodcast dot com to support the show while you shop, thanks to all of you who spread the word to your friends and family and who rate and review the show everywhere you listen to it to build up the Suck and make this show possible. The show is over 2400 reviews on iTunes. If you want to be part of the next Friday Bonus suck vote to determine that next bonus suck topic, which will drop on January 26th, follow the show on Instagram. @timesuckpodcast. And follow the show on Twitter and Facebook, also at Timesuckpodcast, just to show us you care. Links to so much of this right there in the podcast description.

Please keep the follows and the reviews coming in. Not only does it help with sponsors, it helps with bookings. The more followers the show has the more places I can bring it. Every follow and like and review helps. So if you love the show and haven’t reviewed it yet, please do so. Do it anywhere. Do it everywhere. It all helps so much! It’s like how Yelp works for a restaurant. When someone is looking for a new podcast to listen to, they look at the reviews. You spread the suck every time you leave a nice one. You’re actively helping my career so much and I can’t thank you enough.

D. Contest: Well suckers, as shown on the @secretspacelizards Instagram, we are announcing the LAST Contest invite to the 2018 Space Lizard Elite Event, hosted at the Timesuck Headquarters, in CDA Idaho!!!!

This is a private small gathering of Space Lizards, to come hang out with myself and the Timesuck team. Didn’t promote it a ton on the show because there is VERY limited space. We’ll another one down the road and figure out how to open it up to more people. The qualifiers to enter the contest were to

The winner of the LAST 2018 Space Lizard Elite Event invitation is Grant Shepher! Congratulations from everyone on the Timesuck team!

Grant’s favorite Episode is: “Sasquatch vs Loch Ness is one of my favorites,Gotta love the Whackadoodles and sooooo much idiot Gold” Hope you loved today’s Jersey Devil episode Grant.

Grant’s entry says: “To The Great Oracle of Sir Doctor Reverand Dan "Suckmaster" Cummins, or WHOMever it mayest concernest:

HEAR THIS! I've been a "DanFan" since Bojangles was just a pissed off badass little pupper. I discovered The Suck while listening to some classic Dan standup on Pandora. TimeSuck quickly became my first/favorite podcast and a great escape for me from a job I hated and felt stuck in. Long story short, I quit that job and moved back home to my super small, rural, quirky hometown of Santa Claus, IN. (Where I gathered all of the info necessary to solve the most epic Christmas Conspiracy. Damn you JINGLE JANGLE!) TimeSuck then became a great way for me and my dad to connect while I was home. I introduced him to the suck and I was so happy that he immediately went full Space Lizard. We often spend time together now driving around in the truck laughing at episodes and making references to Nimrod and MMM that confuse the hell out of my mother.

Being a Space Lizard to me means having a special bond with a bunch of curious weirdos who can come together to discuss whackadoodle topics, express themselves, and learn from each other.

Tell Dan I said thanks again for reading my insane Dyatlov Pass email. It's really encouraged me to pick back up my interest in writing and comedy. I hope he reads this one, It'd be really fucking cool to meet him and hangout with the other Space Lizards.

HAIL NIMROD! Grant Shepherd

Thanks Grant, YOU SUCK SO HARD! You will be receiving your official personal invitation via email shortly from our Events Coordinator.

Thank you so much for the Jingle and Jangle Story, its heavily loved by all our suckers, and was even illustrated by Harmony Vellekamp on the “secretspacelizard” Instagram, for the holidays.

Keep up the creative flow, and most of all, KEEP ON SUCKIN GRANT!

E. NEXT WEEK: Stalin. Back to Russia we go! Will Chikatilo pop up? I feel like there’s a decent chance. Stalin ruled the Soviet Union with an iron fist for three decades. Some historians hold him accountable for the deaths of roughly 25 million people. His policies created famine. His gulags unjustly imprisoned millions. His subordinates executed hundreds of thousands of Russians. He intensified an already existent culture of paranoia and blind loyalty. He also left a legacy with many as a champion of the working man who grew Mother Russia from a peasant society into a legitimate world military and industrial power. He helped the Allies defeat the Nazis and then was on the opposite side of the allies during the arms race and the Cold War. Love him or hate him he’s one of the most significant historical figures of the 20th century and I am going to suck the fucking shit out of him next week.

It is now time for some Timesucker Updates!

PAUSE TIMESUCKER UPDATES

XII.Timesucker Updates

A. First up - this update made my week. Holy shit this is a cool update from Sucker Kelsey Brisbin.

“So. I emailed you the other day thanking you for the weekly suck. Now I have even more reason to say thanks! Today, I was on my way to work when I hit a patch of ice. I then attempted to keep my car in its lane. I failed. I drove into oncoming traffic. Thankfully, no one was hurt and no vehicles damaged, but all parties were a little shaken up. We got out of our vehicles to make sure everyone was okay, then went on our way more cautiously. Shortly there after I was pulled over because I had forgotten to turn my headlights back on after the incident. I pulled over and grabbed my ID and insurance from my wallet and after a short exchange, I handed my documents over. I hadnt noticed at the time that I still had Freemasons Ep. 2 playing on my radio. The officer took my documents and went back to his car to do whatever it is they do back there. Then returned to my window. While handing me back my documents, he said "Hail Nimrod" and simply walked back to his vehicle. HOLY SHIT. He drove off before I could even realize what was happening but I am pretty sure that Timesuck got me out of a ticket today. So thank you. I am a forever sucker and as he said, "Hail Nimrod" Thanks for the free pass.”

Holy shit. This makes me SO HAPPY! Thanks for sharing Kelsey! It’s like an adrenaline shot straight into my Timesuck Heart. WOW. Whoever you are Officer - Hail Nimrod to you!

Man - shout out to our police officer listeners btw. Still keeping our citizens safe despite massive media scrutiny and a starting wage in some areas that should be criminal. A few bad apples really tainted the national view of many towards officers. Are there some racist officers? Of course. Some officers who abuse their power? Of course. They’re human beings. Of course they’re flawed. Also - lot of fucking heroes out there putting their lives on the fucking line, day in and say out. Hail Fucking Nimrod to our nation’s police.

B. Oak Island Update! Next in - an Oak Island update. This comes in from Timesucking Mother Sucker Seth Farra, who writes:

“Suck Master of the Sordid Squall of Stupid Simians of Simulated Space:” - NICE - killing it with the alliteration game! “So, about Oak Island, a friend sent me this: https://www.facebook.com/ ScienceChannel/posts/1420607311513655 It details about how, using logic and science, they believe they figured out what really happened to some extent at Oak Island. Apparently, it might be a Viking longship, that moored up during a storm, and subsequently fell into a sinkhole, at a nearly vertical angle. There's some YouTube videos linked in there. Makes a lot more sense than pirate booty to me. Anyways, keeping sucking! - Seth”

Well Seth I watched the video, and it is a very interesting theory. There are sinkholes on the island - that is a fact. The underbelly of the island is a natural labyrinth of limestone tunnels and caves. Viking ships could float in shallow water, a high tide could’ve possibly, theoretically taken the ship close to the island. Vikings could’ve carried the ship on land, a sinkhole could’ve opened up, and the ship could’ve fallen in it, much like cars and homes have fallen into Florida sinkholes.

Far fetched? A little. Sure. BUT - like Seth said - it does make more sense, or, at least AS MUCH sense as pirate booty. And, if it did happen, what a shitty day for those Vikings!! You finally get the fucking boat out of the water, finally think you’re safe on land, and then you essentially get swallowed up and drown on land. There were some dudes super pissed at Thor or whatever Norse God they prayed to that day.

C. Mason Update from Joshua Russell: Dear Sir Mothersucker, after listening to your Freemasons podcasts I started to seriously look into joining, however every Freemasons lodge website (and the Freemasons of California site) list that a requirement for joining is a belief in a monotheistic religion. I haven't seen this question answered anywhere online and I'm hoping you can help: can someone just BS their way into the Freemasons by just saying that they believe in a god? I'm curious to hear your thoughts on this. Thanks.

My girlfriend and I are looking forward to see you in San Francisco

Cool Josh. Yes, you can lie about it if you’re okay with that. Another Freemason actually wrote me in based on last week’s episode and he just said, yes, just see you believe in something, and then once you’re in, it’ll never be a problem and never be brought up again.

D. This in from Sucker from another Mother Anthony Engelman: Hi Dan,

I am a relatively new convert to The Suck, having linked from a Pandora ad (how I originally found you, and started listening to your stand up). I now have the Time Suck app and am using my weekly commute to and from the airport to get caught up, one podcast at a time. In the veritable deluge of "alternative media" sources available on line it has been refreshing to find a community of people dedicated to finding truth, and genuinely seeking real knowledge, as opposed to simply checking the box on what ever personally validating polarized ideology suits them on any given day. On more than one occasion, I have had to stop and reevaluate what I actually believe and why, and in several cases, been forced to alter my opinion in light of either complete information, or an alternative opinion I had not given proper thought. I believe being open minded enough to actually have a real conversation about traditionally volatile topics, and being willing to have your opinion changed are both rare commodities in news, social media, or entertainment. I have stumbled upon all of that and more in this pod cast and am working diligently now to help spread The Suck. All hail, Reverend Doctor. You've helped make me a better person. Best Regards, Anthony Engelman

Well thank you Anthony! That was very nice. Thank you very much. And your update leads into a teaser for next week’s update. Originally, I was gonna share a big update from Super Sucker Jessica Doud, one that is making me rethink some views - BUT - we’re still going back and forth and I need to let it simmer some more in my brain crock pot.

Timesucker Jessica Doud and I have been emailing back and forth regarding the fraternal aspect of the Freemasons. It’s too much info to list al of our exchanges, but, basically, Jessica was disappointed in my endorsement of the Freemasons right to have a men’s only organization because, as a chemical engineer, she works in a male- dominated field and the networking opportunities with Freemasons could be very beneficial to her career. Beneficial in ways that me going to a meeting of the mocha moms, the all female group I referenced the other week, would not compare to. Essentially, in a patriarchal society, where men historically have held all the power, a group like the Masons helps keeps that power in the hands of men because there isn’t a female equivalent group.

We’ve been going back and forth, having a very positive discussion about balancing freedom with equal opportunity. It’s complicated, and fantastic, and challenging, and hard, and exactly what Timesuck should be. And I’ll share it next week.

PAUSE TIMESUCKER UPDATES

XIII.Goodbye!! A. Thanks for listening to another Timesuck everyone. Have a great week and I hope to see some of this weekend in Providence Rhode Island. And careful in Jersey. Watch out for the Devil if you’re in the Pine Barrens. And really watch out for Pineys. Keep on Suckin’!

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