Cryptids of North America #8: New Jersey
Image credit: StrangeMorris on Reddit
And so we leave New England in the rearview mirror and reenter the Mid-Atlantic region in search of more of North America’s cryptozoological wonders. The Garden State may be most well known among paranormal enthusiasts for being the home of the Jersey Devil, but if Monica Gallagher and this chart from Reddit user StrangeMorris are to be believed, the fifth-smallest state in the Union hosts twenty-one cryptids to keep the state’s demonic mascot company. And we’re going to talk about all of them here this Halloween season (or at least as many as I can find information about). In addition to Gallagher and Morris, information was also gleaned from the book Monsters of New Jersey by Loren Coleman and Bruce G. Hallenbeck.
So let’s explore the Pine Barrens and beyond as we hunt down the legends that probably kept a young Bruce Springsteen up at night.
The Beast of Lake Hopatcong
New Jersey’s largest body of freshwater, nestled between Sussex and Morris Counties in the Northern Highlands, has long been known as a day trip vacation spot for Manhattenites. It is also said to be the home of New Jersey’s answer to the Loch Ness Monster.
The beast, also known as “Hoppie,” has been spotted in the lake as early as 1894, when the August 4th issue of the Lake Hopatcong Angler reported that a creature with the body of a snake and a head resembling a St. Bernard had been spotted near the inlet to the River Styx (yes, really). One man claimed to have even fired at it, only to have the bullet bounce off the creature’s head. Another witness, A. Chamberlin, asserted that the beast had reared up from the water near his boat. He described the serpent as 40 feet long, as thick as a man’s leg, and colored dark on its back and white on its belly.
Hoppie largely seemed to slither back into the depths after that initial wave of sightings. One local legend has it that the serpent died at some point and that when its bones washed ashore, they were incorporated into the Wildcat rollercoaster at the Bertrand’s Island amusement park. Others have argued that the serpent indicates a local population of boa constrictors, even though such animals likely wouldn’t survive the winter as they can’t stand temperatures lower than 60 degrees. Such rumors weren’t helped when, in 2014, a serpent that turned out to be a 26-foot green anaconda was spotted in the lake. Some have even gone as far as to claim that the creature in Lake Hopatcong is the same one that was spotted in the ocean off Sandy Hook (more on that later).
Whatever its true identity, the community around the lake has embraced Hoppie as a welcome resident, with many insisting it is a “creature” rather than a “monster,” as it largely seems to keep to itself and is not usually aggressive. As Budd Lake resident Inger Hanright states in this Daily Record article, “Every lake needs a monster, right?”
Big Red Eye
This particular Bigfoot, said to lurk in the woods around Sussex County, is distinguished from its brethren by one unsettling feature: its piercing red eyes. It is also said to have a booming voice that sounds like no other animal familiar to residents of Jersey’s Skylands region. While sightings of the beast have tapered down since its most active period in the mid 70s (C. Louis Wiedemann, writing for FATE magazine in September 1977, claimed that there had been over sixty sightings reported across four counties between February 1975 and December 1976), many Skylands residents believe Big Red Eye is still with them. Here are some encounters, as recorded by the editors of Weird NJ and in Monsters of New Jersey:
-1972: Big Red Eye made his grand entrance when Wantage resident Tom Card, then working as a ranger for High Point State Park, reported hearing what he thought was a siren at first. He then noticed two men running down a road away from the sound, at which point he began to suspect he was listening to an unknown animal. Shortly afterward, Wantage residents reported a rash of pet rabbits turning up dead.
-1975: A forest ranger walking down the Sussex County Trail claimed to have been startled by an eight-foot-tall creature with big red eyes.
-Summer 1975- Two boys were riding their bikes along a lakeshore outside Rutherford when a “Bigfoot nearly nine feet tall” walked across the trail in front of them, causing them to flee in the opposite direction.
-August 1, 1976: One of the most unnerving sightings reports comes from two boys (aged 13 and 7) who were picking berries in the woods (their location isn’t specified) when an eight-foot-tall hairy monster reared out of a patch of raspberry bushes and walked into the forest. The most disturbing detail of this account was that, according to the seven-year-old, Big Red Eye’s eyes weren’t just red; they were bleeding.
-1977: Several residents living along Wolfpit Road heard strange moaning, wailing, and screaming between 2 a.m. and dawn over two weeks. They described the sounds as “this low guttural sound” that “went right through you,” and that “it sounded like some kind of huge primate.” However, no one on Wolfpit Road seems to have seen the beasts, although one reported getting his trash cans knocked over.
-May 17, 1977: The New Jersey Herald ran a story about an “odd creature” that had been harrassing the Sites family in Wantage for the past week. The terror had started when the mother, Barbara, had gone out to let the dairy herd into the pasture when she was startled by a noise that sounded “like a woman screaming when she was being killed.” She later found her garage door torn from its hinges and the occupants of the family rabbit coop dead or mutilated.
The family waited for it to return, shotguns and rifles in hand. The next night, two red eyes showed up under the mercury-vapor lamp that illuminated the front yard. The family fired thirty rounds at the beast, only for it to crash through the chicken coop and escapr through the apple orchard. The local police blamed the incident on a bear, a wild dog, or a raccoon. The Sites’ described the creature as standing seven feet tall, walking on two legs, covered with hair with a beard and mustache, and having human hands.
-October 8, 1995: A fisherman returning to his car to drive home along Bassests Bridge Road in Sussex around nine in the evening is confronted by an eight-foot-tall hairy creature covered in hair and with red glowing eyes standing 25 feet away from him. The creature growled at the witness as he moved slowly to his car and then drove away. He recalls the red eyes flickering like matches at one point.
-1996: A woman known only as J.D. Grant claims to have been walking down Layton Road with a friend one night when they spotted a tall, shaggy creature with red eyes spying on them from the brush on the side of the road. She thinks the red glow came from reflection rather than the eye itself. In any case, the women were spooked and quickly booked it out of there.
-November 1, 1998: Local publication The College Hill reports on strange noises heard in the woods outside Sussex that drove local cats and dogs into hysterics. The sounds were described as “strange screams” that tore through the night between the hours of two and four a.m. The source of these screams was never spotted, although it did overturn some garbage cans in the night.
-2016(?): Former Hamburg resident Amanda G. was driving down a dirt road called Shady Lane toward her residence at Scenic Lakes when she saw what she described as an “awkward looking bear” cross the road. The “bear” stopped for a few seconds and stared at her with red eyes before continuing on its way. Amanda was “scared shitless” and immediately booked it home.
-2023(?): David C., who had recently moved to Sussex County at the time, claims to have seen something that looked like a seven-foot-tall hairy man as he was pulling into his driveway after a dentist’s appointment. The creature vanished almost as soon as he saw it, and he didn’t notice any red eyes. He did hear a howling/growling noise in the distance shortly afterward.
-Summer 2023 (?): Mike V., living in the apartment complex on Paddington Square in Mahwah with his wife, claims they heard a guttural sound from about 30 yards away while walking their dog. They were so unnerved that they called the police twice to investigate, but they found nothing out of the ordinary.
Of course, there have also been plenty of Bigfoot sightings in Jersey that are entirely unrelated to Big Red Eye. Indeed, the Bigfoot Field Researcher’s Organization has 78 reports from the state on record. Here are some of the more notable incidents:
January 9, 1894: The New York Herald reports on a “wild man hunt in New Jersey” around Mine Hill Township in Morris County that was first spotted by three mill girls who “shrieked so loud and so long that the business of the mill and nearly the whole town came to a standstill.” The wild man was cornered by hounds belonging to woodcutters Bill and Mike Dean, but the man clubbed one of the dogs to death and ran off into the brush, never to be seen again. Bill called it “a bear or some varmint,” although he noted that “his face was covered with a dark, unkempt beard,” which isn’t a common feature on most bears.
1927: A taxi driver on his way to Salem had stopped to change a flat tire when the car started shaking. He saw “something that stood upright like a man but without clothing and covered in hair.” The driver was so unnerved that he drove off without taking the flat tire and jack with him. When he and two friends returned to the site, they found the objects but no wild man (some versions of this tale claim the creature could fly, which would likely make it a Jersey Devil sighting instead).
April 15, 1966: The Trenton Evening Times reported on a wave of animal disappearances taking place in Burlington County that was initially blamed on a raccoon shot by Stanley Silcoch on the 8th. However, Silcoch’s dogs disappeared shortly afterward, and State Trooper Alfred Potter found a footprint “so large a man’s hand could not cover it.”
August 1966: A Monmouth County resident, who was a teenager at the time, was driving with three of his friends through Allaire State Park at around 10-11 in the evening when they were startled by a high-pitched screech from somewhere behind them. When they spun the car around to investigate, they were confronted with a reddish-brown “man-thing” standing only 3 feet from the front of the vehicle. The creature stood there with a deer-in-the-headlights look for a few seconds, not even reacting when the driver honked the horn.
Autumn 1966: A couple residing in Washington Township decided to start leaving food out for a strange grey-haired creature that left 17” five-toed tracks outside their house and had started peering into windows seven feet off the ground. When they forgot to leave food out one night, the creature reacted violently, throwing their garbage can against the wall. The husband was forced to fire shots over the animal’s head to get it to back off.
October 1971: Two teens hiking along the Passaic River near Fairfield Township claimed they stumbled across four Bigfoot-type creatures standing 75 yards away. They described the creatures as covered in black hair with lighter faces with prominent muscles and heads shaped with a rounded peak. The largest one stood eight feet tall and had arms reaching down to its knees. The boys observed for a while until their nerves got the better of them and they ran away.
Spring 1977: A Mercer County resident recalls an incident from his youth where he and a friend were walking to his favorite fishing spot in John A. Roebling Park outside Bordentown when a strange creature suddenly crossed the path about 50 yards ahead of them. The creature, standing 6-7 feet tall and covered in dark brownish-black hair, briefly paused to look at them before it continued on its way.
Summer 1977: A Somerset County couple was driving home from a family get-together when they nearly ran over something walking on two legs on the road between Mendham and Bernardsville. They later described the creature as standing six feet tall, walking in a hunched posture, and entirely covered in brown fur except around the face.
Winter 1979: Robert J. Schneider, who was 14-15 at the time, claims to have had an encounter after a snowstorm stranded him alone at his uncle’s hunting camp near Layton in Sussex County. He was awoken shortly after midnight by “wild guttural screams…like nothing I’d ever heard before or since.” Rob was so unnerved by the screams that he let his uncle’s equally terrified German Shepherd sleep in the house with him despite it being against his uncle’s rules. He never saw what made the noises, and they faded into the distance after a couple of hours.
1981: Two fishermen claimed to have seen a reddish-brown hairy creature cross the road in front of them while they were driving near the Newark Watershed. They decided to follow it down a hiking path but lost it when their car got stuck in the mud. They described it as 6.5 feet tall with a flat face and human ears.
July 1998: A motorist driving down the Garden State Parkway stumbled across a seven-foot tall manlike creature covered in grey hair in a wooded area. It briefly stopped to regard the witnesses before stepping over a guardrail and vanishing.
Fall 2003: A motorist on Hogback Road in Bordentown rounded a bend and saw “a primate-looking creature running across the road.” It stood five feet tall, was hunched over, and was covered in thick and shaggy dark brown hair.
2005: A group of teenagers hanging out on a back porch on the Wanaque Reservoir near Riverdale were alerted to the sight of a grey apelike creature sitting near the edge of the woods. One of them fired at the creature with a pellet gun, which hoisted itself over a boulder and disappeared into the woods.
June 9, 2009: Professional psychic Nancy Bradley writes on her blog about an encounter at Lake Owassa when she was eight. She was staying at her grandparents’ log cabin and had decided to head out to a nearby ice cream stand one early evening when she noticed a pair of eyes looking at her from the trees. She first dismissed it as a black bear but noticed it stood nine feet tall. She didn’t get a good look at it, as it was hiding behind a large oak tree and didn’t hang around long enough in any case.
When Nancy told the cashier at the ice cream stand what she had seen, he ordered his son to accompany her back to the cabin with a rifle in hand and later confessed that he had seen a similar creature in the woods. She also told of “Big John” Lonewolf, an Indigenous man of Ute heritage, who lived on the lake and claimed he had been hunting a bearlike creature in the region for years.
December 29, 2012: A resident of Woodstown in Salem County was driving home from his girlfriend’s house at 10:30 p.m. when he noticed lights reflecting off an object standing next to a telephone pole. He was unnerved to realize that the lights were actually the eyes of a humanoid standing 7.5-8.5 feet tall and covered in matted brownish-black hair. It darted off into the woods, and when the witness got out of his truck to investigate, he heard strange grunts and screeches in the woods. He also noticed a dead deer lying in a nearby field.
December 2, 2014: Mark K., who was homeless and living in a tent in the Camden County community of Berlin at the time, was lying down to sleep when he was suddenly overwhelmed by an odor that smelled like “a combination between really nasty B.O., feces, skunk and most of all smelly feet.” He started to unzip the tent to air it out when he heard someone approaching via a nearby forest path. The footsteps circled Mark’s tent, and he heard heavy breathing. When it pressed its face against the tent and started sniffing, Mark yelled at it and whacked the side of the tent to scare it off. The creature growled at him, walked into the woods, knocked a tree twice, and left. Mark also notes that a horse was found disemboweled in the same area a year before.
March 20, 2016: A mother and daughter residing in Atco (Camden County) reported hearing screams and howls from the woods near their house at 2 a.m., lasting anywhere from 30 seconds to a full minute. The mother also claimed to have seen a Bigfoot-type creature cross the road near their house the previous August, standing 7 feet tall with a muscular build and covered in matted brownish-black hair.
Some Bigfoot experts believe New Jersey’s Bigfoot population may be seasonal migrants from New York State. Indeed, there was also a reported sighting of a seven-foot red-eyed Bigfoot near Lake George in October 1983. Who knows? Anything is possible.
The Cape May Sea Serpent
New Jersey’s entry in the canon of globsters (that is, organic masses washed up on ocean shores so decomposed as to be unidentifiable) washed up on a beach at the southern tip of the state in September 1921. Newspapers at the time reported the carcass as around 76 feet long, although photos of the corpse like the one above show that the length was probably closer to 26 feet. Onlookers were confused by the six-foot-long tusks that jutted from the animal’s mouth, with many convinced that they were looking at a new species of sea mammal.
Even at the time, however, many other onlookers were convinced that the carcass was of a known sea mammal like a sea cow or a whale. Indeed, in the weeks prior to the globster showing up at Cape May, a whale carcass had washed up on shore three times at different locations around Delaware Bay and been towed back out to sea. The “tusks” could be explained by the whale’s lower jaw splitting apart as decomposition advanced. Indeed, Markus Hemmler, writing for the blog Globsters, Blobs, and More, believes that the carcass’ description closely matches that of a rorqual whale, a family which includes such species as the fin whale, the sei whale, the minke whale, the humpback whale, and the blue whale.
There have been other sightings of strange animals around Cape May. According to the April 20, 1855 edition of the New York Times, a 100 foot sea serpent was spotted off the cape, and a $1,000 reward was offered to anyone who could capture it. Like with every other cash prize offered to prospective monster hunters, the reward was never collected.
The Hoboken Monkey Man
Image credit: Cole Herrold of the New World Explorers Society
This hairy man-thing left the schoolchildren of the city that gave birth to baseball and Frank Sinatra in a panic in October of 1982. He was said to stalk school grounds day and night, looking for vulnerable children to attack. Some students even went as far as to claim that he had murdered a teacher and made a hobby out of throwing children from school windows.
After two weeks, the hysteria had gotten so bad that the Hoboken Police Department and the Public Safety Council launched a joint investigation, searching for witnesses or anyone matching the Monkey Man’s description. Not only did they not find anyone or anything matching the creature’s description, but they couldn’t even find anyone who had actually seen the Monkey Man in the flesh, instead getting witness reports to the tune of “I heard it from a friend who heard it from a friend who…” In the end, city officials were forced to conclude that there was no truth to the rumors.
In the years since, however, some unusual stories have come out that may shed some light on the legend's origins. The blog New World Explorers Society argues that the urban legend derived from a report by Jack D. made in 1981 of a strange creature he and his girlfriend saw while driving down River Road (since renamed Sinatra Drive). Jack claims that he saw an ape-like creature swinging through the trees, which he stopped to look at. While it resembled a monkey or chimpanzee at first glance, Jack noticed more human-like qualities upon closer inspection, like a Neanderthal-shaped face and even what looked like clothing fashioned from animal skins. Jack yelled a threat at the being, which grunted back at him and continued on its way, swinging into the deep woods until Jack lost sight of it. Two rangers working for Atlantic County Park would later claim to see a similar creature walk upright across the road as they drove down Route 50.
The editors of Weird NJ magazine would later uncover even more bizarre reports. For instance, Evelyn recounted an incident when she was 10, in which she was sitting in her bedroom reading and suddenly experienced an overwhelming feeling of dread. She got up to investigate and noticed a janitor sweeping up an apartment across from her bedroom window. She seemed uneasy at the sight of him, which was only exacerbated when the janitor turned around and revealed himself to have a monkey’s face. The terrified girl woke up her dad, but by the time he got to the window, the monkey-faced janitor had vanished.
Another report came from Mary, a resident of 9th Street in Bayonne, who claims that two of her children saw a monkey-faced man covered in long brown hair and wearing a ragged green shirt and pants while walking along one of the forest trails that lines Newark Bay. Her youngest son would later report seeing the same monkey-faced man walking a dog. Mary also claimed to have heard rumors that the Monkey Man had taken up residence in the Old PT Boat Factory (having apparently moved out of the cow barn on the Belcolville Munitions Plant that he was said to live in during the 1982 scare).
While reading this story, it’s hard for me to shake the feeling that (apart from the creature reported in 1981, which could easily be a misidentified chimp) what the urban residents of Hudson County were reporting was merely a homeless person who was mistaken for something inhuman, whether due to excessive body hair or a birth defect of some kind. I also can’t help but wonder if there is an element of racism in this story, as comparing Black people to apes or monkeys is a common white supremacist trope. Artist Jennifer Hathway seems to agree, as she makes clear in the commentary on her piece titled Hoboken Monkeyman: All Windows, No Doors:
For me, the Monkeyman/Boogeyman phenomena is all about conformity, willful self-delusion, and isolation. He is Anawim [Hebrew for “poor in spirit” or “faithful remnant”], cast out, an “other” who becomes a monster to the “normals.” The normals are unhappy, fearful, stressed and hurt by the system they inhabit, but they project their angst, pain and fear onto him, the guy who reminds them of their real terror- the threat of not belonging.
He becomes the repository of their cast-off darkness because he doesn’t fit in with their torturous society. As such, he is not a human being worthy of compassion. He is not welcome in their world. He is the embodiment of human evil.
But think about it: if this all grew from an actual unhoused person, a cast-away man on the street, then perhaps their perspective on what is “monstrous” could use some tweaking.
All windows, no doors: I see you out there, and you’re not welcome in here.
For better or for worse, though, the Hoboken Monkey Man still lives on the streets of his namesake city as a warning to kids whenever they misbehave.
The Jersey Devil
Image credit: pyro-helfier on DeviantArt
It’s hard to know where to start when talking about the Jersey Devil. The Pine Barrens’ most infamous resident has long since become one of the worldwide superstars of cryptozoology, his popularity rivaled only by Bigfoot, Mothman, and the Loch Ness Monster. Of course, as cryptozoologists like Loren Coleman have noted with frustration, discussion of the Devil is also hampered by the fact that his appearance seems to be rather malleable, as New Jerseyans have a habit of labeling any strange animal spotted in the state a “Jersey Devil.” The form most commonly associated with the Devil is usually based on the famous illustration published in the Philadelphia Bulletin during the wave of sightings in January 1909. Quoth Wikipedia:
The creature is often described as a flying biped with hooves, but there are many variations. The common description is that of a bipedal kangaroo-like or wyvern-like creature with a horse- or goat-like head, leathery bat-like wings, horns, small arms with clawed hands, legs with cloven hooves, and a forked or pointed tail. It is also said that it has a strange elongated body and a thick tail.[2] It has been reported to move quickly and is often described as emitting a high-pitched "blood-curdling scream".
Perhaps the creature’s supposed origin story is the best place to start.
By the time Deborah Leeds became pregnant with her thirteenth child in 1735, the Leeds family of Leeds Point (located in modern-day Galloway Township in Atlantic County) had long since become pariahs in their community. Their ostracization began in 1687 when Daniel Leeds was excommunicated from the local Quaker congregation for writing about astrology in his almanac, which others of the flock considered pagan blasphemy. Daniel responded by converting to Anglicanism, publishing almanacs even more influenced by occultism and Western esotericism, and fiercely criticizing the Quakers’ anti-monarchist philosophy. The Quakers responded by accusing Daniel of worshipping Satan.
The Leeds’ pariah status only deepened in the 1730s when their almanac was forced to compete with none other than Benjamin Franklin and his famous Poor Richard’s Almanac. Daniel’s son Titan, who had taken over publishing duties in 1716, took particular offense to a joke Franklin made in the 1733 edition of PRA where he used astrology to predict Titan’s death in October of that year, denouncing the future founding father as a fool and liar. It didn’t help that Frankin jokingly referred to Titan as a “ghost” from then on. Titan eventually died for real in 1738.
At this point, Deborah Smith (who married Japhet Leeds, son of Daniel and brother of Titan) and her infamous thirteenth child enter the picture. The legend states that when “Mother Leeds” learned that she was pregnant for the thirteenth time, she cursed the child, allegedly proclaiming it to be a “devil.” Whether or not she cursed it during the pregnancy or during an unusually difficult labor process varies depending on the retelling. In any case, the thirteenth child was born a normal baby but quickly transformed into a hideous creature with a goat’s head, a forked tail, hooved feet, and batlike wings. What happened to the family afterward also varies depending on the retelling. Some say the Jersey Devil killed its entire family (although FindaGrave.com says Japhet and Deborah both died in 1748, so this seems unlikely). Others say the beast settled for giving them a good thrashing with its tail before vanishing up the chimney. Still others say that Deborah hid the child in the attic or the cellar and that it escaped one night. Whatever happened that night, the Jersey Devil legend was born.
One of the earliest stories involving the Devil, more commonly referred to as the Leeds Devil for roughly the next two centuries, involves a priest who tried to consecrate the Pine Barrens in the 1740s to stop the beast from returning for another 100 years. However, the spiritual restraining order didn’t last quite so long, for early 19th-century naval hero Stephen Decatur is said to have spotted the Devil flying over the Hanover Iron Works while inspecting the cannonballs manufactured at the plant. The Commodore decided to test one of the projectiles against the beast and was astonished to see it not reacting in the slightest when the ball punched a hole right through it.
He wasn’t the only celebrity sighting reported during this period. Joseph Bonaparte, former King of Spain and brother of Napoleon, is said to have stumbled across the Devil while hunting game on his estate in Bordentown around 1820. The Devil would go on a rampage on livestock killings in 1840, a hundred years after its supposed exorcism. Sightings continued sporadically throughout the rest of the century, sometimes even ranging into Pennsylvania and New York. New reports would tell of Pine Barrens residents being afraid to go out after dark because of the flying terror stalking the woods.
But what really cemented the Jersey Devil’s place as a superstar of American folklore was the week-long wave of sightings across the state between January 16 and 23, 1909, centered mainly on the Delaware River Valley. With as many as one thousand sightings being reported that week according to some sources, it would be impossible to list them all here, but here are some of the most notable in chronological order:
Sunday, January 17: Thack Cozzens of Woodbury was the first to see the Devil during this tumultuous week when, as he exited the Woodbury Hotel, he was startled by a hissing sound and saw something white fly across the street. He later described it as “a white cloud, like escaping steam from an engine” with “two spots of phosphorus” that resembled eyes.
The Jersey Devil then flew across the river to Bristol, Pennsylvania, where it was first spotted at 2 in the morning by John McOwen near the Delaware Division Canal as he went to calm his crying infant daughter. Shortly after, police officer James Sackville spotted a birdlike animal that hopped like a kangaroo down Buckley Street and opened fire on it. The monstrous screams the creature uttered as it took to the skies woke Postmaster E. W. Minister, who saw what he described as a crane with a ram’s head that glowed like a firefly as it flew across the river.
Back in New Jersey, the Devil circled the home of Burlington resident Joseph W. Lowden and tried to break down his back door. When he and his family went out to investigate the following day, they found hoofprints in the snow and their garbage can half-emptied. Indeed, similar tracks would be reported all across the region during the rest of the week, especially around Burlington, often appearing in inaccessible places, abruptly disappearing in the middle of the street, and even varying in size from as large as a horse’s hoof to as small as three inches. Hunting dogs reportedly refused to follow the trails.
Tuesday, January 19: One of the most dramatic Jersey Devil sightings, which directly inspired the famous Philadelphia Evening Bulletin illustration, occurred in Nelson Evans’ backyard in Gloucester City at 2:30 a.m. Awoken by strange noises, Evans and his wife looked out their bedroom window and saw a 3 1/2-foot-tall winged creature with a horse’s face dancing on the roof of their shed. They stood entranced by the beast for ten minutes until Nelson mustered the courage to open the window and tell the Devil to “Shoo!” It responded by barking at him and flying off.
Wednesday, January 20: Moorestown residents John Smith and George Snyder both spotted the Devil in quick succession. Smith saw it near Mount Carmel Cemetery and chased it into a nearby gravel pit, while Snyder saw it while he was out fishing. They described the creature as three feet tall with a foot-long tail, split hooves, a monkey’s front limbs, a doglike face, and long black hair covering its body.
Later that evening, Edward Davis was operating the Springside trolley car when “a winged kangaroo with a long neck” suddenly hopped through the light of the car’s headlights and disappeared into the shadows.
Meanwhile, in Riverside, Joseph Mans found his puppy dead and blamed it on enemies he’d made through recent court testimony, despite small horselike tracks surrounding the corpse. Mans insisted the tracks were a hoax to throw him off the real culprits, but Justice Ziegler wasn’t so sure, especially after finding similar tracks in his own yard. He made plaster casts of the prints and displayed them in his office.
Thursday, January 21: Thursday was easily the most harrowing day in the Jersey Devil’s “phenomenal week,” as James F. McCloy and Ray Miller Jr. called it in their 1976 book The Jersey Devil, as it is jam-packed with some of the most dramatic encounters ever recorded in the Devil’s mythos.
It started at 1 a.m. during a Black Hawk Social Club meeting in Camden when one member got distracted by a weird sound and turned to see the Devil staring at him through the window. Most of the club members fled in terror, and the ones that stayed managed to chase the Devil away with a club, which uttered “blood-curdling sounds” as it flew away.
An hour later, the Public Service Railway Trolley was passing by Haddon Heights when several terrified passengers saw the Devil flying alongside it. When it stopped to pick up more passengers, the monster circled above the car and hissed at it before it flew away. Conductor Lewis Boeger described the beast as resembling a four-foot-tall, long-necked, winged kangaroo.
The Devil then paid a visit to the capital city of Trenton, where it frightened Trent Theater doorman William Cromley as he drove his horse-drawn carriage home and tried to break into city councilman E. P. Weeden’s house. Cromley described the creature as a dog-faced animal covered in fur, feathers, and glowing eyes. Weeden never saw the creature, as it flew away when he opened his second-story window.
By 6 a.m., the Devil had made it to Burlington, where it frightened Mrs. Michael Ryan when she looked outside to investigate a noise. She described it as a horse-headed monstrosity with long birdlike legs.
There was more than one instance on Thursday where the Jersey Devil was reported as being injured or even killed. William Wasso claimed to have been walking the train tracks between Calyton and Newfield when he saw the Devil get caught up in a massive explosion when its tail touched the third rail. An equally dramatic account came from Pleasantville, where phone company lineman Howard Campbell was chased up a telephone pole by the Devil and even went as far as to throw himself on the wires in his desperation to escape. Fellow lineman Theodore Hackett arrived with a gun and shot a hole through the Devil’s wing. The wounded creature limped off into the ticket, uttering inhuman screams as it went. Hackett described it as having a horse’s head, batlike wings, and a long ratlike tail.
The wound didn’t seem to impede the Devil’s travels much, for it next showed up in Philadelphia, where J.H. White’s wife found it curled up in her yard while she was hanging sheets on the clothesline. The alligator-skinned creature rose to six feet and started spewing fire from its mouth, causing Mrs. White to faint in terror. Her husband managed to chase the monster away by swinging a clothesprop at it. A motorist on Sixteenth Street narrowly escaped running the Devil over as it fled.
The Devil next menaced another social club, this time a women’s meeting in Westville, where it landed in a snowy field next to their meeting place. Their husbands gathered a posse to hunt the beast down, to no avail.
In West Collingswood, two firefighters saw what they at first mistook for an ostrich peering at them over the fire chief’s house. When they realized it was the Jersey Devil, they rang the fire alarm and sprayed the Devil with a firehose. The beast first fled down the street, then charged at the frightened fire company, ignoring the sticks and stones they threw at it. It bypassed its assailants at the last possible second and soared off into the night.
The day-long rampage ended where it had begun in Camden, where the Jersey Devil mauled a dog belonging to Mary Sorbinski. Her screams of terror drew the attention of neighbors, who called the police. The responding officers were startled by screams from Kaighn Hill, where they spotted the Devil and fired upon it. The Devil ignored them and flew off into the night.
Friday, January 22: The Jersey Devil remained in Camden the rest of the night, where it woke up the Stenburgs by perching on their roof at two in the morning and startled police officer Louis Strehr when he saw it drinking from a horse trough. He described it as resembling a kangaroo with deer antlers and bat wings and said it reminded him of the eponymous monster from the Lewis Carrol poem “Jabberwocky.”
The Devil laid low until dusk, apparently inside a railcar in Chester, Pennsylvania, where it frightened two women when it suddenly flew out that evening. At seven o’clock, saloonkeeper C.C. Hilk received a phone call saying that the Devil had been captured in his barn in Morrisville, Pennsylvania. Sadly, though, the beast had escaped by the time Hilk returned home.
The last sighting recorded that week was in Salem, where a bulldog belonging to Jacob Henderson reportedly chased the Jersey Devil out of his owner’s backyard. The Devil apparently hung out around Salem for quite a while, as another sighting was reported in February when Leslie Garrison reported seeing a bizarre birdlike creature with legs trailing 5-6 feet behind it with humanlike feet soaring through the air.
As businesses and schools closed across the state and trolley car conductors started arming themselves, theories abounded as to what had terrorized South Jerseyans during that phenomenal week. Some thought it was a Mesozoic-era pterosaur that had somehow survived into the modern age. Others thought it was the result of a “Gypsy curse.” Still others thought it was a creature from another world, likely unintentionally brought forth by Mother Leeds’ curse.
Of course, there is also the possibility that the whole incident was the result of hoaxes combined with mass hysteria. We know that when the Philadelphia Zoo offered a $10,000 reward for the capture of the Jersey Devil, Norman Jeffries tried to pass a kangaroo with artificial claws and glued-on bat wings as the legendary beast. Jeffries was motivated to do this as a publicity stunt to save his workplace, the Arch Street Museum, from being closed down. Even noted cryptozoologists Loren Coleman and Ivan T. Sanderson have favored the hoax theory, with Sanderson theorizing that the incident was part of an elaborate real estate scam to get gullible country bumpkins sacred enough to sell their property. He even claimed to have found the fake feet used to make the Devil’s footprints in an old barn.
Of course, there is also the strong possibility that the sightings were caused by misidentified wildlife. One of the most popular suspects in this arena is the sandhill crane, a species that is not indigenous to New Jersey and would have been unfamiliar to New Jerseyans at the time (incidentally, sandhill cranes have also been blamed for inspiring the Mothman legend in West Virginia). Brian Dunning of the Skeptoid podcast has suggested that barn owls may have also played a role. Personally, though, if I had to place money on a real-life animal being to blame, I’d bet it on the hammer-headed bat, a species indigenous to the rainforests of Central and West Africa that bears a striking resemblance to the Philadelphia Evening Bulletin illustration (likely brought over on a ship that docked in Africa at some point that month).
Despite such rational explanations, however, Jersey Devil sightings have continued since the phenomenal week. Some of the most notable post-1909 sightings include:
December 15, 1925: The Woodbury Daily Times reports that Greenwich Township resident William Hyman claimed to have shot and killed the Jersey Devil when he discovered it eating his chickens. He described it as a kangaroo-like beast the size of an Airedale terrier covered in black hair with four webbed toes on its hind feet. There are even reports that out of the 100 people Hyman showed the corpse to, none could identify it. However, Loren Coleman and Bruce Hallenbeck, in Monsters of New Jersey, claim they could find no record that William Hyman ever existed, let alone his Jersey Devil carcass.
July 28, 1937: The Philadelphia Evening Bulletin reports on a hunting posse that was formed after a strange kangaroo-like creature was spotted outside Downingtown, Pennsylvania.
November 22, 1951: The second biggest incident in the Jersey Devil’s history, the “Invasion of Gibbstown,” began when a ten-year-old boy hanging out at the Dupont Clubhouse looked out the window and saw a creature so terrifying that he went into convulsions. Several hunters who went out looking for the monster heard unearthly screams, while Jerry Ray claimed the beast actually attacked him. This Jersey Devil was described as a seven-foot-tall manlike creature with an ugly, bestial face.
As panic spread through the region, the police started putting up signs proclaiming the Jersey Devil to be a hoax, both to assuage local fears and to dissuade an influx of unwanted tourists. Even so, unexplainable tracks kept showing up, and local dogs kept turning up dead. One resident stood to watch for the creature in his backyard, a flashlight in one hand and a broomstick in the other until he caught a glimpse of the monster just before the flashlight burned out. He described what he saw as a four-foot-tall wildcat with gray hair.
October 1957: A strange carcass resembling the Jersey Devil was discovered in the Pine Barrens near Hampton Furnace after a forest fire swept the region. The charred skeleton included claws, feathers, and hind legs that resembled no animal known to exist in the region.
1960: Residents of Mays Landing were frightened by strange cries in the night and weird footprints found on the ground. That same year, two different rewards were posted for anyone who could capture the Jersey Devil. The first was from the Camden Broadway Improvement Association, at $10,000. The second was from Harry Hunt, proprietor of Florence’s Hunt Brothers’ Circus, at $100,000. As always, neither reward was ever collected.
April 1966: The Jersey Devil apparently went on a killing spree at Steven Silkotch’s farm on the Mullica River, leaving behind the corpses of 31 ducks, three geese, four cats, and two dogs in its wake (one of which was a German Shepherd that had its throat torn out). The only sign of the perpetrator’s identity was a set of tracks larger than a human hand. Police officers attempted to make plaster casts of the footprints, but were thwarted by the wet ground.
December 1993: John Irwin, working a summer job as a park ranger in Wharton State Forest, claims to have seen a strange creature while doing a night patrol. He described it as a six-foot-tall humanoid covered in black hair with a head shaped like a deer (antlers and all) with glowing red eyes.
1995: Sue Dupree claims to have been driving near Pompton Lakes when a creature with a face resembling an armadillo hopped across the road in front of her.
There’s plenty more sightings where that came from. Monsters of New Jersey even has a 22-page appendix of all the Jersey Devil sightings the authors could find records of, with some being as recent as 2009 (the book was published in 2010).
Regardless as to the veracity of the many tales told about him, it’s clear that New Jersey has embraced the Jersey Devil as a mascot of sorts, and not just for their professional NHL hockey team. He’s also shown up in TV shows as diverse as The X-Files, What We Do in the Shadows, American Dragon Jake Long, Cake Boss, Extreme Ghostbusters, Legend Quest, and the Gravity Falls tie-in comic Lost Legends. He’s also appeared in several horror films, including 13th Child, The Barrens, the Sci-Fi Channel original Carny, and 1998’s The Last Broadcast, an early found footage horror flick released one year before The Blair Witch Project (and shot on an even smaller budget of just $900).
Even Bruce Springsteen got in on the act with his novelty single “A Night With the Jersey Devil,” released on Halloween, 2008. Suffice it to say, if New Jersey’s biggest celebrity is writing his own original song about the legend, then it’s probably not going away any time soon.
Mantis Man
Image credit: Art-of-Akrosh on DeviantArt
We’ve all heard of lizardman cryptids, of which Jersey has had a few. According to Warren County folklore, however, an even stranger wetland-dwelling human-animal hybrid lurks along the Musconetcong River’s shores, especially the stretch near Hackettstown: the Mantis Man.
This monster seems to have been popularized by a 2014 episode of the TV show Monsters and Mysteries in America, which described accounts from two fishermen who claimed to have seen a 6-7 foot creature wading through the waters. The first described the creature as fading out of existence as it moved upriver, almost as if camouflaging itself. The second said that the creature looked at him and caused him to feel a tingling hum, which placed him in a trance until the giant insect suddenly vanished into the fog. Both noted the creature’s fearsome mandibles and piercing black eyes.
A third report from “Mr. Stickler” describes a similar creature he saw while crossing a bridge in his car. Stickler described it as a pale brown humanoid creature with long, thin arms that was partially transparent.
Theories as to what the Mantis Man is are many and varied. One is that the creature is an undiscovered species of amphibian (it being an insect is considered unlikely as our atmosphere does not have enough oxygen to sustain an arthropod of that size). Others say that it is the result of a genetic experiment gone wrong. Still others say it’s an alien. It’s also just as likely to be a mere hoax.
Whatever one thinks of the Musconetcong River Mantis Man, though, it’s hard to deny that it’s an interesting cryptid.
The Sandy Hook Sea Serpent
Image credit: Ryan Doan’s illustration of the Serpent for Weird NJ #43
This watery demon, sometimes called the Shrewsbury Serpent, was spotted several times in Sandy Hook Bay, especially near the estuaries of the Shrewsbury and Navesink Rivers, during the late 1800s. It was first encountered in November 1879 by members of the Sandy Hook Life Saving Service, whose credibility was enough for scientists to investigate. They concluded that the rescue service had seen nothing more than a giant squid, a finding they published in the December 27, 1887 edition of the Scientific American.
As more sightings were reported, however, doubts began to emerge about whether this was an animal known to science. Two years after the SA article on the Serpent, the most well-described encounter was reported in the Red Bank Register. Marcus P. Sherman was on a late evening outing on his yacht, the Tillie S., alongside his friends Lloyd Eglinton, Stephen Allen, and William Tinton, returning to his home at Red Bank after a picnic at Highlands Beach. As Eglinton kept watch for oncoming debris at 10 P.M., he suddenly yelled at Sherman to steer “hard-a-port.” The reason was to avoid colliding with a serpentine creature 50 feet long that reared out of the water and roared at the boat. The small head was bulldog-shaped, with short and rounded horns above its silver dollar-sized eyes, an upper lip covered in cat or seal-like whiskers, large flattened nostrils, and a snakelike torso that tapered to a swordlike pointed tail. The monster quickly left the frightened sailors and swam toward Hartshorne’s Cove.
There would be other sightings of the Serpent over the next few years, with many witnesses giving descriptions similar to that of the Tillie S. crew. The editors of Weird NJ have noted that the creature these witnesses described seems strikingly similar to the oarfish, a common suspect behind many sea serpent sightings. The only problem is that the largest confirmed oarfish specimen was only 26 feet long, with many larger estimates being considered unlikely.
In any case, the Serpent seems to have long since grown tired of being gawked at by Sandy Hook sailors and beachgoers and silently slid away into deeper, much quieter waters.
The Spook Rabbit
We’ve all met our share of killer rabbits in fiction, from the Dread Killer Rabbit of Caerbannog in Monty Python and the Holy Grail to General Woundwort from Watership Down. If the residents of Warren County’s Harmony Township are to be believed, however, there is a whole colony of flesh-eating rabbits living in the surrounding woods who are fond of taking bites out of the local hunting dogs as vengeance for the deaths of their cotton-tailed brethren.
The legend of the spook rabbit, also known as the ogre rabbit, was first popularized in 1891 when local hunters called in a hunting columnist from New York to investigate strange injuries inflicted on their dogs. The columnist blamed their injuries on the thick undergrowth. The locals blamed the spook rabbits. They also claimed that the bloodthirsty lagomorphs were extremely hard to shoot, either because they moved too fast or because they were literally bulletproof. They also noted that their dogs had grown to fear the patch where these animals made their lair.
Perhaps the best information source I could find on these fearsome critters was artist Sam Kalensky’s stickers of the beast. The first mention he could find of the rabbits was in an 1890 Boston Evening Transcript article, which places them across the Delaware River in Pennsylvania. The last mention of them before modern times was in a 1907 article from Owensboro, Kentucky’s Messenger-Inquirer, which mentions a blacksmith/ghost hunter who investigated a claim of a rabbit that tormented a local watchman by appearing before him every night and making weird noises. The blacksmith would soon discover that the “spook rabbit” was nothing more than a local boy’s pet.
After that, the legend goes dormant until a brief passage in the 1968 book Gilly Galoos and Gollywhoppers, which claims that “the ogre rabbit runs the dogs till they are out of breath, then jumps at them from behind a tree and scares them half to death.” Nowadays, they are a mainstay of most “Top 10 Cryptids of New Jersey” type lists, including, of course, the one made by yours truly.
The White Stag of Shamong
This strange creature is said to roam the Pine Barrens of Burlington County. Unlike the Jersey Devil, though, this albino buck is said to be a benevolent spirit that watches over hunters and travelers, guiding them when they are lost and warning them of impending disaster.
The most famous story involving the White Stag involves the Quaker Bridge, which spans the Batsto River on the road to Tuckerton. The bridge was built in 1772 when a group of travelers trying to ford the river drowned. One stormy night in 1809, however, a stagecoach was approaching the bridge when the driver saw a light up ahead, which he mistook for the lights of Thompson’s Tavern on the other side of the river, where he was planning to stop for the night. But as he drew closer to the river, he realized the light was coming from his side, radiating from a large white stag standing in the middle of the road, pawing at the ground.
Just as soon as the driver saw it, the deer vanished. He stepped down from the coach to investigate, and as he walked up to Quaker Bridge, he made a harrowing discovery: the bridge had been swept away by the swollen river. Had the ghostly buck not stopped the coach in its tracks, it likely would have fallen over the wreckage of the bridge and sent its occupants to a watery grave.
Since then, deer hunters in the Pine Barrens have traditionally elected to spare any white deer they come across out of reverence for the Good Samaritan ungulate. I’ve also read that the Lenape natives considered white stags to be a sign of good luck (although I haven’t found any Indigenous sources to back that up, so interpret that how you will).
Miscellaneous Cryptids
This section is for the cryptids that I either couldn’t find much information about or felt like what information was out there wasn’t enough to justify an entire entry all to itself. Such cryptids include:
The Dark Figures of Marlboro: These are but one of the many spirits said to be haunting the Marlboro Psychiatric Hospital in Monmouth County until its demolition was completed in 2015. These shadow people were said to congregate around the hospital’s slaughterhouse, where a murderous farmer is reputed to have lured two hospital guards to their deaths.
The Delaware River Monster: The closest reference to a Loch Ness Monster-type creature in the longest free-flowing river in the Eastern US that I could find comes from this post on r/BucksCountyPA, where user ShouldaStayedSingle1 swears that he and a friend “just saw the Loch Ness Monster near Bristol.” He goes on in the comments section to say that it “popped its head out of the water 20 feet away from us, swam for like 10 seconds, then went under and didn’t come back up.” Other users suggested everything from a sturgeon to an otter to a double-crested cormorant as an alternate explanation. Indeed, the Delaware River has seen many interesting oceanic specimens swim up its length, including beluga whales, right whales, bull sharks, seals, and sea lampreys.
The Essex Phantom: The closest I came to finding anything remotely similar to the creature on Monica Gallagher’s print was this article on Weird NJ’s website on the various spirits haunting the Essex and Sussex Hotel in Spring Lake. The article doesn’t mention anything resembling the human-faced rat on the print, which somewhat resembles Brown Jenkin, the human-faced rat that serves as the familiar to the Azathoth-worshipping witch Keziah Mason in H.P. Lovecraft’s “The Dreams in the Witch House.” Let’s hope no witches in New Jersey are trying to open portals to the madness-inducing realm of the Outer Gods.
The Faceless Creature of Morristown: Reports of this strange creature, which haunted Morris County in the mid-60s, were first brought to national attention by Loren Coleman in his 1983 book Mysterious America, where he used the story as a case study of how virtually any cryptid in New Jersey gets labeled a “Jersey Devil” regardless of its outward appearance. Coleman also published his retelling of the event in this July 2006 post on his Cryptomundo blog.
The Faceless Creature first showed its face…er…self in the Morristown National Historical Park on May 21, 1966, when it walked across a road in front of a parked car with four terrified witnesses. It was similar to Bigfoot in many respects, being seven feet tall and covered in black hair, except for two unusual features: it had scaly skin and no face. The witnesses were so frightened by the incident that they drove to the park’s entrance and tried to stop approaching cars from entering the park. One of the witnesses, Raymond Todd, later learned that a female friend of his had also seen the creature a year before when it walked up to the back of her car and thumped on the truck, scaring her and her friends.
Coleman notes the interesting similarities between the Faceless Creature and The X-Files’ take on the Jersey Devil, which portrays it as a group of missing link-type feral humans living as hunter-gatherers in the Pine Barrens. He also notes that the show’s creator, Chris Carter, owned a copy of Mysterious America. Coincidence?
The Great Swamp Devil: I couldn’t find much information about this creature, said to lurk in the Great Swamp National Wildlife Refuge in Morris County. All of the sources I consulted basically said the same thing: that the Swamp Devil has glowing red eyes, can take the form of a tall, hairy man or a winged beast, and has been stalking the swamp for over a century. I found some accounts from people who claim to have heard strange noises from the swamp, but nothing else presented itself in my research.
Lizardmen: Monica Gallager and Strange Morris illustrated lizardmen from Great Meadows and Wayne, respectively, but I couldn’t find any information about either of these creatures on the Web. The only account I could find of any lizardman sightings in New Jersey was in Loren Coleman and Bruce Hallenbeck’s book Monsters of New Jersey, which told of a “giant, manlike alligator” spotted in the Newton-Lafayette region of Sussex County in the summer of 1973. Later, in 1977, according to a report from New York naturalist Alfred Hulstruck, South Jersey was haunted by “a scaled, manlike creature [that] appears at dusk from the red algae-ridden waters to forage among the fern and moss-covered uplands.” However, great Meadows and Wayne are located in the northern highlands, so this can’t be the lizardman Gallagher or Morris are talking about.
The South Jersey Dragons: I couldn’t find anything about actual dragons, but I did learn about plenty of soccer teams, boating clubs, and Dungeons and Dragons campaigns in South Jersey.
Wemateguins: I didn’t find much about these fair folk of indigenous Lenape legend beyond what native-languages.org told me: “Wemategunis are little people like sprites or dwarves, said to be about as tall as a man’s waist. They are mischievous but generally benevolent forest spirits, though they can be dangerous if they are disrespected. Wemategunis have immense strength for their size, and in some folklore, they have magical powers such as the ability to become invisible. They may help people who are kind to them or tolerate their tricks with good humor. In some legends, the Wematekan’is even serve as messengers of the Great Spirit.”
Winged Humanoids: The flying creatures Strange Morris is talking about come from two accounts posted on the Phantoms and Monsters blog in July 2015. The first account, from an anonymous mother from Cherry Hill, tells of how she and her daughter were visiting with a female friend two years before when a 7-8 foot tall winged humanoid that she compared to the villain from Jeepers Creepers appeared in the sky. She described it as hovering against the full moon for several seconds before disappearing into the clouds.
A similar report came from Sean S. of Buena Vista Township, who claims to have been out on an evening drive with his best friend when he saw “a lanky-humanoid-looking creature with huge black wings” soaring across a pylon tower clearing.
Maybe Mothman was in the Pine Barrens having a tea party with the Jersey Devil.
The Worthington State Forest Dogman: I found references to a Dogman Trail in his Warren County state forest but nothing about any werewolf-type creatures lurking in its glades.
And that’s everything I know about the cryptozoological marvels of the Garden State. This will likely be the last “Cryptids” article of 2024, as I have other articles I want to complete before the end of this year. I think the 2023 animation retrospectives will be my biggest priority for the rest of this holiday season, as I feel it’s essential to finish those lists before 2024 turns into 2025. I know I said in my last update post that I’d decapitate myself with a fossil T. rex skull if I was still working on the Jurassic Park retrospective in December, but I think that can wait until after New Year’s. I’d rather talk about something I love as much as animation during the holidays rather than pick apart the various ways Jurassic World Dominion’s story doesn’t work. God knows we all need some positivity now that we’re gearing up for Trump Round Two.
Anyway, expect “Cryptids of North America” to return sometime in January or February with an entry on Delaware. I hope you all have a lovely Thanksgiving!
