What I Learned While Looking for the Jersey Devil

March 10, 2003

My last two weekends have been rendered mildly hideous by chauffeuring duties. I have driven to the Bronx Zoo on a gray winter’s day in an aborted search for the Sandhill crane. And I lost another day, which was at least sunny, though still cold, driving to what seemed like the ends of the earth in the Jersey Pine Barrens.

The purpose of these road trips was to help my teenaged daughter, Mallory, with a documentary she was working on as part of a school assignment to research unexplained biological phenomenon. Mallory borrowed her sister Jessica’s video camera to capture film for her project about the Jersey Devil.

The point of the Sandhill crane is that some people believe sightings of the bird, which has since disappeared from the Pine Barrens, were mistaken for sightings of the Jersey Devil. Unfortunately, Mallory didn’t perfectly understand the operation of the video camera, so, by the time we located Crane Walk at the Bronx Zoo, the battery power had been used up attempting to film cute, furry little animals.

But it was still an informative day. I saw buffalo in the snow for the first time in my life. We heard the lions roaring from a concealed place inside their winter enclosure, which was covered with supremely unconcerned peacocks. And we braved the potent odors of the World of Darkness, the Mouse House, the Giraffe House and the Monkey House to gaze at caged animals doing their best to overcome the boredom of life in captivity. We also saw a few animals that were equipped to survive the New York winter in outdoor enclosures – the grizzly bear, the snow leopard, the red panda and a particularly large and strident swan. Lastly, I learned that most of the people who are foolish enough to visit the zoo on a frigid March day are foreign visitors. Very few of the people around us were speaking English, and most seemed to be conversing in northern European dialects.

Between tolls and zoo admissions, we spent about $27 on our trip to the Bronx Zoo. Mallory got some in-depth instruction on the operation of the video camera before our trip to the Pine Barrens.

We headed down the Garden State Parkway ($1.40 in tolls, each way) on a gloriously sunny and cold day. Our destination was Leeds Point, home of the legendary birthplace of the Jersey Devil. We weren’t sure what we would find when we arrived in the town.

We got off the Parkway at Exit 44 and headed east on Alternate 561. We passed through historic Smithville, where there appeared to be an interesting collection of curiosity shops. But we continued on toward our destination. We passed the Leeds Point Community Church, with attached cemetery, and kept going toward the Edwin B. Forsythe National Wildlife Refuge. I thought the refuge might provide some good locations for filming. We passed an entrance to the refuge, after a sharp bend in the road, but we kept going to see if there was anything else of interest. I jokingly remarked that the road might just drop off the end of the earth. Little did I know. After a short space of driving through flatlands ringed with eerie winter vegetation, we came to Oyster Creek on the edge of the Atlantic Ocean and could go no farther.

We headed back to the wildlife refuge, and risked loosing important parts of the car’s undercarriage driving down a deeply rutted and snow-covered access road. The refuge turned out to be mostly swamp marsh, which we couldn’t explore without a boat. There were signs posted at the borders of the wooded areas, advising people that it is against the law to venture past the signs. After we’d scouted out these facts, Mallory and I got back in the car to return to “downtown” Leeds Point. As we came back around the sharp bend on 561, I noticed an ancient stone building with hand painted signs on its perimeter fence declaring that “Jesus is Love.” I noticed these things because I was busy rubber-necking for any signs of a Jersey Devil shrine or historic marker or anything.

We turned off 561 again at the Leeds Point Community Church, and Mallory wanted to continue down a street that was named Leeds Point Road. It made sense, so off we went. We drove the length of the narrow road, and glimpsed a couple of official signboards that we passed by too quickly to read. Mostly, we saw country homes, horse enclosures, and people out with their dogs. When we came to the spot where Leeds Point Road branched off of Route 9, we made a U-turn and drove back to read the signs.

The first one we came to was for a Leeds Point Wildlife Area, apparently part of some green project to preserve undeveloped lands. The second sign was another marker for the Forsythe wildlife refuge. We decided to scout the wildlife area for filming locations. But first, we had to figure out where to park the car. There was no access road (rutted or otherwise) at the entrance to the wildlife area. There were no public parking spaces anywhere in sight, only private driveways and “No Trespassing” warnings. After traversing the road twice more in search of a parking space, we finally left the vehicle a half mile up the road at a shopping center called The Shops at Leeds Point.

We walked back to the Leeds Point Wildlife Area, and trudged in through brush and brambles and patches of fairly deep snow. We came to a clearing whose snow-covered surface was criss-crossed with deer tracks. Mallory started her camera rolling, since she had read that the Devil was supposed to have cloven hooves like deer. She also found a strange track among the deer markings. The single track looked as though it could have been made by a dog’s paw, except that, instead of toe prints, the paw print was topped with two pointed indentations like ears - or horns.

Then we spent some time with Mallory standing in the woods filming the trees while she read the script she had prepared. Then I filmed her walking through the woods and talking about the Jersey Devil. Finally, I showed her an interesting phenomenon I had noticed. There was an oak leaf lying in the snow, and the snow had melted away around the leaf. When we removed the leaf, the impression left in the snow looked like an unexplained footprint! Mallory filmed that, too.

We felt that we now had enough film of the woods, and our feet were starting to freeze. We walked back to the shopping center where we had parked the car. Mallory said she could use a slice of pizza, and I was thinking fondly of a certain porcelain plumbing fixture. We decided to visit the center’s pizzeria before getting back in the car.

Next to the pizzeria was a thrift shop. We dropped in to see if there might be anything for sale about the Jersey Devil. We found nothing for sale, but the store clerk, when Mallory questioned her, admitted to being a Leeds Point native. She said that when she was in her teens she used to hang out with friends in front of a local residence that was supposed to be the birthplace of the Jersey Devil. She wouldn’t let Mallory videotape her, but she did give us directions to the “birthplace.”

After a short stop at the pizzeria to refresh ourselves, we got back in the car and followed the directions provided by the thrift shop clerk. The way took us past Emmaus United Methodist Church in Smithville. We stopped there and at the Leeds Point Community Church to film the headstones of various Leeds family members. Legend has it that a certain Deborah Leeds gave birth to the “devil” in 1735. Most of the Leeds headstones we found were from the 19th Century, but there were plenty of them. We looked and filmed until the sun began to get low on the horizon, at which point I told Mallory we had better get to the birthplace before we lost the light.

When we arrived at the house to which the store clerk had directed us, it turned out to be that same ancient stone building with Jesus signs on the fence that I had noticed earlier in the day. Mallory elected to approach the owners rather than film surreptitiously. We parked the car along the side of the road and walked up to the fenced yard. There were painted cutouts of snowmen and shamrocks decorating the lawn all around the house, and there were some dogs (or at least one dog) in a pen in the back.

A woman of indeterminate age, dressed in a heavy coat and knit hat, was standing in the yard doing something with shrubs. When we got close, I called out a greeting, and began explaining that my daughter was working on a documentary as a school project. I got no farther.

The woman shook her head in the negative. Her opening remarks were something like “Those things never turn out well.” Then she said she believed that everything good came from God, and God was love, and she didn’t want to discuss “the other.” She claimed that she was a teacher, and that they were not allowed to discuss “it” in the local schools. She concluded her rambling remarks by saying that she was not going to say anything about what I wanted to talk about.

The interesting thing is that I never got as far as naming the thing that the documentary was supposed to be about.

Well, I was struck dumb by the woman’s words. I wandered up to the front of the house, by the main road, and thought for a moment about how we could sneak some film of the outside of the house. Then I walked back to the car with Mallory beside me, calling out to the woman as we passed, to thank her for her time. She didn’t respond.

When we got in the car, Mallory immediately told me to turn the camera on her. While I filmed, she proceeded to describe our encounter with the woman. When she had finished, I asked her if she wanted to film the house through the open window as we drove away. Mallory said no, that that would be kind of rude (bless the child, maybe I have managed to teach her some manners).

We drove home, pondering what we had seen and heard. I was interested to view the film, but we encountered another technical snag. My older daughter had lost the “cord” which was needed to hook the camera up to the television monitor to playback the film.

I’m feeling extremely discouraged that the project in which I have been participating is not going to end in success. Mallory will have to present the results of her research in report form, illustrated with pictures downloaded from the Internet. And I’ll have to be satisfied with recording my experiences in this little essay.

Still, I’m glad I had the experiences. And I’m glad I had them with my bright young daughter. I have renewed faith in the next generation (even if they don’t understand technology any better than my generation).

P.S. The cord for the video camera was eventually located, and Mallory was able to produce her videotape for the class. She got an A. I shared this little diary of the trip with Mallory's teacher. I got an A, too.