REVEAL: New Jersey Pine Barrens & Jersey Devil As you all - TopicsExpress



          

REVEAL: New Jersey Pine Barrens & Jersey Devil As you all already know.....and I am quickly discovering its becoming more and more difficult to stump you all. (There is a lot of reading here but if you read anything at all please check out the eyewitness account of Purgatory Road. Anyway this huge area has dozens of ghost towns and ruins scattered across the region. They are the remains and traces of a series of industries – principally bog iron, forestry, charcoal, paper and glass – that arose with the coming of European colonists and faded as richer sources of raw materials were found to the west. Batsto Village is the site of a former bog iron and glass making industrial center (1766 - 1867). This Pine Barrens village consists of thirty-three historic buildings and structures including the Batsto Mansion, gristmill, sawmill, general store, workers homes and post office. Watch the video Batsto Stories in the Pines hwcdn.net/a5h8p3i4/cds/dep/batsto_no_sub.mp4 Isolated deep in the Pinelands, Harrisville is a genuine ghost town from the late 1800’s. Once a flourishing village, it was abandoned in 1891 after the driving force of the community, the great paper mill, went out of business. Today the evocative ruins of the paper mill can be seen but are fenced off for safety and preservation reasons. Once a successful iron works, then a paper mill community, Weymouth Furnace was abandoned in 1887. The Great Egg Harbor River runs by grand stone arches, a towering chimney stack, and moss-covered foundations from the old mill – all that now remain of this historical landmark. It is a popular site for picnicking or for starting your kayak or canoe trip on the Great Egg Harbor River. Ghosts of pine barrens njvid.net/showvideo.php?pid=njcore:16572&retc=njcore00000000028 The New Jersey Ghost Society has much to share on the topic. paranormalghostsociety.org/adventure15.asp To the Native Americans, The Jersey Devil is among the lesser-known cryptids said to inhabit North America, but its story is perhaps the most bone-chilling. It makes its home in the dense woodlands of the Southern New Jersey Pine Barrens, a foreboding forest where few are brave enough to venture too deeply. Through the years it has killed livestock, other animals and, by some accounts, even people. It has menaced humans to the point of madness, driven workmen from the woods and stupefied law enforcement officials. Yet despite thousands of sightings spanning back almost three centuries, the Devil has never been captured. Long before European settlers encountered the Devil, the local Native American tribes referred to the Pine Barrens as “the place of the dragon”. Accounts vary, but many witnesses say it walks upright on two legs with cloven hooves, has a head like a horse, nasty claws, a forked tail and leathery, bat-like wing. Could this creature be what the Native Americans were describing as a dragon? The Jersey Devil is most often spotted in the Pine Barrens, but witnesses claim to have seen it as far away as Pennsylvania, and even along the New Jersey coast. In some cases, although the Devil is not actually sighted, there are reports of horrible screams in the night, then the discovery of strange tracks alongside dead livestock or pets the next morning. It has the ability to fly, and, even though there are some accounts of it harming humans, in most cases it flees when confronted. What is the Jersey Devil? Why is it here, where did it come from and what danger does it pose to people? These are questions that have gone unanswered for nearly three hundred years. As the population of New Jersey continues to grow, and the Pine Barrens, like all wild places, experience more pressure from development and exploitation of resources, encounters with the Jersey Devil will no doubt increase. Even though I have been to New Jersey I unfortunately did not have time to visit. But I found the several articles and personal experiences that certainly draws me back; The Legendary Pine Barrens: New Tales From Old Haunts Posted by Ben Ruset Manufacturing stories and tall-tales is an industry linked to South Jersey as much as iron making or growing cranberries has been. For centuries, the folks of Down Jersey have spun fantastic yarns; take, for example, the legend of the Jersey Devil, the White Stag of Shamong, and Peggy Clevenger’s mysterious boiling well to just name just a few. Just like the Pine Barrens furnaces were obsoleted by new technology, you might think that the Internet and cable TV have supplanted the South Jersey storytellers. Everyone’s heard the same tales over and over, and nobody ever seems to have a new story to share – until now. Paul Evan Pedersen, Jr.’s new book, The Legendary Pine Barrens: New Tales from Old Haunts, changes all of that. The subtitle of the book is a succinct description of what lays in between the covers. As John Bryans, author of the foreword of the book points out, these aren’t your grandfather’s (or grandfather’s grandfather’s) Pine Barrens yarns. From the jump, Pederson wastes no time getting down to business. Leading off with a tale of a mad pirate; a beautiful strawberry-blonde woman; a magical Lenape Indian well; and a night of passion, Peterson weaves a splendid, if not somewhat racy, reboot of the famous Jersey . Out on Purgatory Road, which has always been a perennial favorite for teenagers looking to scare themselves. I felt as if I might be reading an early Stephen King novella in my favorite story, The Secret of Salamander Pond. Pederson is at his best here, weaving a tale of the friendship of four boys who discover a secret hidden in a pond deep in the Pines. Somebody, or something, isn’t pleased and makes an effort to pursues the boys to ensure that what was taken gets returned. I feel that there’s enough potential in the story that that it could be expanded into a standalone novella, which would please me to no end to read. As usual. Good job everyone. Each and every one of you hit. Mishka much more on the subject. As you read you will find that ALL OF YOU WERE SPOT ON!!! ----------------------- More reading I found on the subject if you are so inclined... First I want to share a story from Dan (great read)... An Eyewitness Account -The Purgatory House Good morning everyone! As I was brainstorming last night about a decent post, this story came to mind, because I still remember the feelings I got as I listened to the chilling account of this location. I wanted to share it with you, and hopefully hear some stories of yours! I was talking to one of the new delivery drivers at work and he told me some pretty interesting paranomal stories. I brought up a story about how my friends and I were checking out a closed-down school that was said to be haunted, and he seemed interested in the topic. He had a story of his own to tell, and this is coming from his point of view: About two years ago my buddies called me at work and somehow talked me into checking out this supernatural road (Purgatory Road) just past Marlton, in Burlington County, New Jersey. It was a sunday, and I was planning on going after work at about 6 PM. Then my boss tells me i have to close, so I didnt get out until close to 11:30. I called my friends and tell them that we have to reschedule for tomorrow. The next day, we all met up my house around 10:30 and drove out to the location, which is 45 minutes from where I live. There were two cars, both filled, so we had about 8 people going. We stopped at Wawa to grab a bite to eat, and the woman working there was confused. She must have been wondering, Why are there eight kids in Wawa at almost midnight in a slow-paced town? We explained to her that we were going to check out an old, desolate road named Purgatory Road. She stopped everything she was doing and looked at us with a frightened face and asked us not to go there. She knew exactly which road we were talking about, and told us that she had been there a few times. She had enough bad experiences to make her stay far away from the road. We told her we came a far way to see this place and are set on doing so. Suprisingly, she simply made us promise to not enter the a certain house along the road. We agreed and left. As we approached the road, two cops passed, and we noticed one was turning around. I guess it was because not many people travel down that road at that time of night. So, we both pull over and the cop pulled up behind us. He walked up to the car, realized what we were up to and told us not to go there because a woman in her early twenties had been found dead there that morning. We agreed, and drove back up the road until the cop left. Quickly, we turned around to go back to the road, and immediately you can tell it was old and barren. Two miles, all we could see was an old iron fence. It was pretty long, so we parked at the end of the fence, right in front of a very, very long driveway. The grass was high, and the property looked like it was from the eighteen-hundreds. We knew we had the right place. Everyone got out of the car, and I turned on my LED head lamp to lead the way for my seven fellow explorers. After about 3 minutes of walking down the driveway, I turned around to tell my friends that this driveway was so long that we wouldnt be able to hear anyone pull up, and to ask if anyone knew how far away the house was. They were all looking above my head, with a zombie-like expression on each of their faces. I turned around to see what I was missing, and a three-story, really spooky-looking house isnt even five feet in front of us. Everyone was pretty freaked out by how creepy this place was, and some wanted to go back. It took about twenty minutes to convince them to even walk around the place. The house was creepy as hell, graffiti all over the first floor. You could just tell that it was abandoned. We all wound up walking around the outside of the house. A few of us just wanted to take a peek inside, but somehow we all managed to actually go in. The first room was basically a kitchen, and you could see down the hall. There were holes in the floor and ceiling of the hallway; you could see the basement and part of the second floor. Four of us, including me, decided we were going to wait outside while the other four checked it out. We were all outside, standing back to back so we would know if anything was approaching us. I heard a loud, inhale-like sound coming from the top of the house and was really freaked out. The other four came out of the house, and we all figured it was time to get out of there. We ran out to the cars and hopped in them. On the way home, we stopped at Wawa once again to get food. You could hear everyone talking about the shit that they saw. The lady we spoke to earlier in the night asked us how it went. We responded with some really interesting stories and talked for a bit. She asked us, Did you actually go into the house? We told her some made-up reason as to why we didnt go in and left. Everybody went home. I was a little creeped out by the stuff I had seen and heard. The next morning, at about 9 am, my friend called me. She sounded panicked, and repeatedly asked me to come over immediately. I thought it must be something serious and important, and agreed to take a trip to her house. When i got there, we talked about what the cop had said to us the night before about a stabbing. It turns out that woman was one of her friends from work, and that she had been found in the front yard of the house. She went there a few nights before we did with her friends and didnt want to be inside anymore. She went outside to get away from the group and whatever is in that place, and I believe she was indeed the girl the cop told us about. I was so shocked, thinking that if we had gone only a day earlier, I would have been leading the pack that night, and any of us couldve been stabbed out there. He told me he would never go back there, even though hes a big paranormal enthusiast. He had never been so scared in his life. I hope that I can somehow talk him into going there one more time so we can perform an investigation there. Dont forget to follow us on twitter, like us on facebook, and subscribe! Facebook/SJUnusual - Dan ------------------------- The Jersey Devil: The Real Story Article Brian Regal Volume 37.6, November/December 2013 The story of the Jersey Devil has become layered with myths and variations, obscuring the original events that gave rise to it. Not surprising considering the story comes from colonial-era political intrigue, Quaker religious infighting, and a future Founding Father. Most skeptics and students of the outré know the story of the Jersey Devil. Sometime in the early part of the eighteenth century in the New Jersey forest called the Pine Barrens, a woman known as Mother Leeds gave birth to her thirteenth child and cried out, “Oh, let this one be a devil!” The “child” arrived with horse-like head and bat-like wings. It yelped menacingly and flew up and out of the chimney, disappearing into the dark to spend the centuries accosting anyone unfortunate enough to encounter it. The commonly held story of the Jersey Devil bears no resemblance to any sort of reality, however. The story is one born not of a blaspheming mother, but of colonial era political intrigues, Quaker religious in-fighting, almanac publishing, a cross-dressing royal governor, family reputations, and Benjamin Franklin. There are legions of books and websites devoted to the Jersey Devil, but they rehash material or copy other websites without any attempt to verify sources or check original materials. If you looked to the historical record with the keyword of Jersey Devil, you would find little factual or reliable evidence. Reviews of newspapers, pamphlets, and broadsides from colonial New Jersey show no references to a Leeds Devil (see below) or anything like it. Reports of children killed by the creature or an attempt by a local clergyman to “exorcise” the Leeds Devil in the eighteenth century have no supporting documentation (also the central protagonists, the Quakers, did not perform exorcisms). As a result, the story of the Jersey Devil’s origin has been shrouded in monster tales that obscure the far more interesting historical events. Here is a reassessment of the mythos. Daniel Leeds The European settlement of New Jer­sey, originally named Nova-Caesaria, began in the 1620s. Settlers came predominantly from England. They were mostly members of the religious order the Society of Friends, commonly called Quakers. They were delighted to discover large tracts of land all but empty of people nestled between Manhattan and Philadelphia. The first royal governor of New Jersey, Edward Hyde, Lord Cornbury (1661–1723), is remembered as one of the most vilified and hated governors of colonial America. He also stands accused of being a cross-dresser. A portrait believed to be Cornbury hangs in the New York Historical Society and shows him dressed as his aunt, Queen Anne. However, a recent reappraisal of his gubernatorial career shows there is little but slander and innuendo concerning Cornbury’s cross-dressing. Regardless of whether Cornbury was a fiscal scoundrel or a cross-dresser, his connection to the Jersey Devil story is tangential but important. When Lord Cornbury received his orders to take charge of New Jersey in 1702, the document included a list of his councilors, one of whom was Daniel Leeds (1651–1720). Born in Leeds, England, Daniel Leeds arrived in Burlington in 1677. A devout Quaker, he claimed to have had ecstatic visions as a young man. His first wife died while in England, so he married a second time in 1681. This wife, Ann Stacy, gave birth to a daughter, though neither survived the birth. He then married Dorothy Young, who also died, though not before producing eight children by 1699. He married a final time to Jane Abbot-Smout. In 1682, Daniel Leeds joined the local assembly. He also held the title of surveyor general. In the 1690s he surveyed and acquired land in the Great Egg Harbor near the Atlantic coast. He handed this property down to his sons as a family seat, and it came to be known as Leeds Point: the location most associated with the Jersey Devil legend. The Leeds Almanac Daniel Leeds began publishing an almanac in 1687. It was printed by the Englishman William Bradford (1663–1752), one of colonial America’s first printers. Leeds’s astrological data did not please all his readers. Several members of the Quaker Meeting complained that Leeds had used inappropriate language and astrological symbols and names that were a little too “pagan.” The notion of predicting the movements of the heavens did not sit well with Quaker theology. He went to the next meeting and publically apologized. To his surprise an order was sent out to collect up all the copies of the almanac not in circulation and destroy them. Daniel Leeds determined privately to break with the Friends and continue his almanac. Daniel Leeds first published his almanac in 1687. His astrological material so outraged his Quaker neighbors they tried to have it burned. Brimming with the need to get his ideas out and a growing resentment of his fellow Quakers, Leeds put together a book called The Temple of Wisdom (1688). Leeds paraphrased and outright copied large sections of other authors to cobble together a personal cosmology. He included sections on angels, natural magic, astrology, and the behavior of devils. The source he drew upon most was the work of the German mystic Jacob Boehme (1575–1624) whose first book, Aurora (1612), was considered heretical. Boehme’s writings focused upon the nature of sin and redemption. Leeds saw Boehme as a kindred spirit: a self-taught man who, like himself, had experienced ecstatic visions, been called before religious authorities for his work, and rebelled against the establishment. Defending his astrological writings using Boehme’s words, Leeds said, “Everyone that will speak or teach of divine mysteries, that we have the spirit of God.” Taken in the aggregate the published work of Daniel Leeds shows him to be a Christian occultist. He was no dark magician though. He used astrology to gain deeper insight into the workings of God and the meaning of Christianity. The readers of his work would have been unfamiliar with the esoteric nature of his writings, so they saw more occultist than Christian in him. The Quaker Philadelphia Meeting immediately suppressed the Leeds book. Now at odds with the Friends, Leeds produced the first in a line of outright anti-Quaker tracts, The Trumpet Sounded Out of the Wilderness of America (1699). Leeds argued that Quaker theology denied the divinity of Christ, and he accused Quakers of being antimonarchists. He left the Quakers in part because, he said, “They formerly exclaimed against the government of England.” Having taken over from his father to publish the almanac, Titan Leeds added the family crest which contained a creature not unlike later descriptions of the Jersey Devil. Leeds was heavily invested in local politics, leaning toward royal authority. In one instance Leeds advised Lord Cornbury to not swear in several members appointed to the assembly by local election. The rest of the assembly complained to Cornbury about these “groundless accusations” but to no avail. 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. When Daniel Leeds, as one of their own, sided with Cornbury the Quakers saw him as a turncoat. Leeds also backed other anti-Quakers such as George Keith (1638–1716), an early member of the Society of Friends who knew founder George Fox and William Penn and who soured on the Friends and began preaching that the Quakers had strayed too far for proper Christianity. Keith was disowned by the London Friends and eventually converted to Anglicanism, as did Daniel Leeds. After a series of Leeds’s anti-Quaker pamphlets such as The Innocent Vindicated from the Falsehoods and Slanders of Certain Certificates (1695), George Fox, the founder of Quakerism, responded to Leeds’s accusations with The Case Put and Decided (1699) in which he argued that Quakerism stood unjustly accused of any theological wrongdoing. Leeds was also accused by the Burlington Meeting of being “evil.” Another defense of Quakerism appeared as Satan’s Harbinger Encoun­tered … Being Something by Way of Answer to Daniel Leeds (1700). With this pamphlet Leeds stood publically accused of working for the devil. Images of creatures similar to the Jersey Devil were already being published in political and satirical pamphlets in the 1640s. This one from England was startling and well known. Daniel Leeds continued to publish his almanac and quarrel with the Quakers until 1716 when he retired and turned the business over to his son Titan Leeds (1699–1738). In 1728, Titan redesigned the masthead to include the Leeds family crest, which contained three figures on a shield. Dragon-like with a fearsome face, clawed feet, and bat-like wings, the figures, known as Wyverns, are suspiciously reminiscent of the later descriptions of the Jersey Devil. Titan Leeds then found himself in one of the most notorious almanac feuds of them all. The up and coming Philadelphia printer—and soon-to-be Founding Father—Benjamin Franklin entered the almanac game in 1732 with Poor Richard’s Almanac. As competitors in a lucrative market, the upstart Franklin decided to go after his established rival to boost sales. In the 1733 edition of Poor Richard’s Almanac, Franklin used astrological techniques to predict that Titan Leeds would die on October 17 of that year. Franklin approached this “feud” in a humorous vein while Leeds took it seriously. He retaliated in the Leeds Almanac by saying that Franklin “has manifest himself a fool and a lyar [sic]” for his antics. Franklin replied with mock outrage and hurt, saying Leeds was “too well bred to use any man so indecently and so scurrilously,” therefore the person saying these things must not be Titan Leeds but a creature from the spirit world. He went on to say that he had “receiv’d much abuse from the ghost of Titan Leeds.” Even after Titan Leeds finally died in 1738, Franklin 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 publically cast his rival almanac publisher as a ghost, brought back from the great beyond to haunt his enemies. It is interesting to note that the traditionally believed period of the “birth” of the Jersey Devil (the mid-1730s) coincides with the death of Titan Leeds. The Jersey Devil The Pine Barrens, that area of New Jersey with its thick and seemingly impenetrable forests, dark and forbidding in the heat of summer, mysterious yet beautiful in the snows of winter, so unlike the industrial, urban blight most associated with the state, make a fine place for the birth of a monster. During the pre-Revolutionary period, the Leeds family, who called the Pine Barrens home, soured its relationship with the Quaker majority. The Leeds almanac was seen as inappropriate while his Temple of Wisdom bordered on the heretical, and he was publically accused of being Satan’s harbinger. His other writings such as The Trumpet Sounded attacked Quakerism and its founder George Fox directly. The Quakers saw no hurry to give their former fellow religionist an easy time in circles of gossip. His wives had all died, as had several children. His son Titan stood accused by Benjamin Franklin of being a ghost, and of having been resurrected from the grave. The family crest had winged dragons on it. In a time when thoughts of independence were being born, these issues made the Leeds family political and religious monsters. From all this over time the legend of the Leeds Devil was born. References to the Jersey Devil do not appear in newspapers or other printed material until the twentieth century. The first major flap came in 1909. It is from these sightings that the popular image of the creature—batlike wings, horse head, claws, and general air of a dragon—became standardized. The elements that led to the creation of the Jersey Devil are by and large un­known to even monster aficionados. The Quaker rivalries, the almanac wars, Daniel Leeds and his son Titan, as well as their monstrous family crest drifted into the mists of time, leaving only the vague notion of a frightening denizen of the Pine Barrens. Even the Leeds Devil was all but forgotten, its fragile memory remodeled into the cartoonish “Jersey Devil” while Mother Leeds, as much a phantom as her supposed offspring, materialized out of the forests of Leeds Point.
Posted on: Thu, 22 May 2014 06:47:49 +0000

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