Speaker 1: Welcome to Brainstuff, the production of I Heart Radio. Hey
Speaker 1: brain Stuff, Lauren bobebam Here in the National Hockey League
Speaker 1: landed in New Jersey. A Denver based team, the hopless
Speaker 1: Colorado Rockies, had been purchased by new ownership and relocated
Speaker 1: to the Garden State at a cost of roughly thirty
Speaker 1: two million dollars, which is more than ninety six million
Speaker 1: in today's money. The Rockies were named after the Rocky
Speaker 1: Mountains Range, which lies more than one eight hundred miles
Speaker 1: some three thousand kilometers west of New Jersey. Obviously, a
Speaker 1: rename was in order. A statewide named the team contest
Speaker 1: drew more than ten thousand votes. Some of the more
Speaker 1: popular names included the New Jersey Goals and the New
Speaker 1: Jersey meadow Landers, But in the end, fans chose a
Speaker 1: name that sounds way more sinister, at least to the uninitiated.
Speaker 1: The New Jersey Devil's Hockey Buffs didn't pick this at random.
Speaker 1: Unlike the Colorado Rockies, the new name had a distinctly
Speaker 1: local flavor. It pays tribute to regional folklore. With more
Speaker 1: than one thousand, one nine residents per square mile, New
Speaker 1: Jersey is the most densely populated state in the United States,
Speaker 1: and yet of its total land area, representing a huge
Speaker 1: chunk of South Jersey, is covered by an expanse of
Speaker 1: sandy swampy forests known as the Pine Barrens. This place
Speaker 1: is an outdoorsman's paradise with winding trails, campgrounds of plenty,
Speaker 1: rustic blueberry farms, and its own answer to Bigfoot. Legend
Speaker 1: says that there's a winged creature that stalks the Barons
Speaker 1: by night. The Hellish Beast is an all American cryptid, though,
Speaker 1: which is a word for an animal the existence of
Speaker 1: which remains unproven by science. I think sasquatch or the
Speaker 1: locknest monster. Believers call this one the Jersey Devil. Skeptics
Speaker 1: call it a snare campaign. More precisely, some scholars see
Speaker 1: the Jersey Devil as a folkloric offspring of an old
Speaker 1: political feud, one that involved Benjamin Franklin of all people. Today,
Speaker 1: there's a friendly North South rivalry inside New Jersey's borders, see,
Speaker 1: for example, the Great Taylor Ham Park Roll debate. But
Speaker 1: during the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries things were different.
Speaker 1: The British held colony that became the modern state of
Speaker 1: New Jersey was split somewhat vertically into East Jersey and
Speaker 1: West Jersey. West Jersey was the adopted home of Daniel Leeds.
Speaker 1: Born in England in sixteen fifty one. He was a
Speaker 1: Quaker and a pamphlet writer who emigrated to the town
Speaker 1: of Burlington in what's now southwestern New Jersey. In seven
Speaker 1: Leeds published the first edition of his very own Almanac,
Speaker 1: and this became a lightning rod for controversy. Many Quakers
Speaker 1: who read the text objected to its use of astrology Heathen,
Speaker 1: Greco Roman planet names. When Quaker leadership turned against Leeds,
Speaker 1: he went on the offensive. The pamphleteer befriended Antiquaker politicians
Speaker 1: and wrote sixte manifesto denouncing Quaker theology, titled A Trumpet
Speaker 1: Sounded out of the Wilderness of America. Bridges were burned.
Speaker 1: One prominent Quaker took aim at Leads by writing a
Speaker 1: pamphlet that called him Satan's Harbinger. It wouldn't be the
Speaker 1: last time someone associated Leads or his family with the devil.
Speaker 1: Daniel Leeds died in seventeen twenty, but despite all the notoriety,
Speaker 1: his almanac lived on later editions were overseen by his son,
Speaker 1: Titan Leads, and this is where Benjamin Franklin comes in.
Speaker 1: He owned a rival publication, Poor Richard's Almanac, which jokingly predicted,
Speaker 1: by way of astrology, that Titan Leads would die on
Speaker 1: October seventeenth of seventeen thirty three. He didn't. Leads punched
Speaker 1: back by calling Franklin a fool and a liar in print.
Speaker 1: Then tongue planted firmly in cheek, Franklin suggested the Titan
Speaker 1: Leads must surely be dead, and that his ghost was
Speaker 1: writing nasty things about him from beyond the grave. The
Speaker 1: eighteenth century trolling at its finest. Details of the feud
Speaker 1: are explored in Brian Regal and Frank j Esposito's book
Speaker 1: Secret History of the Jersey Devil, How Quakers, Hucksters and
Speaker 1: Benjamin Franklin created a Monster. In it, the authors wrote
Speaker 1: Franklin's clever statements about Leeds were in reality an attempt
Speaker 1: to discredit his almanac competitor by blinking him to Satan.
Speaker 1: In that age, it was not unusual to paint one's
Speaker 1: enemies as stargazing agents of the devil. The fact that
Speaker 1: Leads promoted a belief in astrology in his popular almanac,
Speaker 1: made perfect fodder for the clever Franklin. By clashing with
Speaker 1: Franklin Titan, Leeds, who died for real in sevent thirty eight,
Speaker 1: hurt his family's public reputation. That Daniel Leeds had been
Speaker 1: a counselor of an unpopular governor of New York and
Speaker 1: New Jersey worsened the family's public relations troubles during the
Speaker 1: American Revolution. Over the years, insinuations the Leads were somehow
Speaker 1: linked with Satan morphed into an East Coast horror story.
Speaker 1: An eighteen fifty nine Atlantic Monthly article contains the first
Speaker 1: unambiguous written reference to the character that we now call
Speaker 1: the Jersey Devil. It's author, W. F. Mayor, had been
Speaker 1: exploring the Pine barrens where he met a resident who
Speaker 1: told him that she had once seen the Leads Devil.
Speaker 1: Mayor's guide informed him that this was part of an
Speaker 1: old superstition. Supposedly, a woman known as Mother Leeds had
Speaker 1: long ago given birth to a deformed monster still at
Speaker 1: large in the barons. After Mayor's peace ran in Atlantic Monthly,
Speaker 1: more retellings were published, when some of them added gory
Speaker 1: details in content. Emporary versions of the narrative. Mother Leads
Speaker 1: is usually cited as an eighteenth century which who gave
Speaker 1: birth to a dozen perfectly normal children, but her thirteenth
Speaker 1: pregnancy ended in disaster, writhing in agony. During the painful childbirth,
Speaker 1: poor Leads hollered, Oh, make it a devil or something
Speaker 1: like that. The rumor was that Mother Leads bore a
Speaker 1: hideous beast who stood upright like a man. But this
Speaker 1: was no man. Her offspring had a goat's head or
Speaker 1: a horse's snakelike tail, hoofed legs, and the wings of
Speaker 1: a great bat. And there's a high body count. In
Speaker 1: some iterations of the tail. The newborn creature may or
Speaker 1: may not have killed Mother Leads, her midwife, and or
Speaker 1: its own siblings before flying up the chimney and escaping
Speaker 1: into the wilderness. Reported Jersey devil sightings made great headline
Speaker 1: fodder in the first decade of the twentieth century. Several
Speaker 1: Philadelphia newspapers ran stories about curious hoofprints dotting snowy corners
Speaker 1: of the pine barrens. A few of these prints had
Speaker 1: supposedly turned up on rooftops. Other accounts sounded more harrowing.
Speaker 1: One taxi driver in Salem City, New Jersey, said the
Speaker 1: Devil attacked his vehicle across state lines. Publicity hound Norman
Speaker 1: Jeffreys caused quite a stir in nineteen o nine when
Speaker 1: he announced that the Leads Devil had been captured alive
Speaker 1: after a terrific struggle and would be displayed at a
Speaker 1: Philadelphia museum. The Jeffreys monster turned out to be a
Speaker 1: live kangaroo wearing painted stripes and a set of artificial wings.
Speaker 1: When it comes to dramatizing the Jersey Devil, nobody can
Speaker 1: talk the Garden States one and only Bruce Springsteen. As
Speaker 1: a tribute to the state's favorite cryptid, the rock star
Speaker 1: penned of bluesy ballad called a Night with the Jersey
Speaker 1: Devil back in two thousand seven. He wrote at the time,
Speaker 1: Dear friends and fans, if you grew up in Central
Speaker 1: or South Jersey, you grew up the Jersey Devil. Here's
Speaker 1: a little musical Halloween treat. Have fun. Today's episode is
Speaker 1: based on the article how Bed and Franklin helped ignite
Speaker 1: the Jersey Devil Hysteria on how Stuff Works dot com,
Speaker 1: written by Mark Mancini and Brain Stuff is production by
Speaker 1: Heart Radio in partnership with how stuff Works. Dot Com
Speaker 1: is produced by Tyler Clang. The four more podcasts from
Speaker 1: my heart Radio visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.