The Time The Jersey Devil Came To Bristol

An 1909 sketch of the Jersey Devil. Credit: Philadelphia Bulletin

The enduring lore of the Jersey Devil, which is also known as the Leeds Devil, saw some of its most important alleged encounters in Bristol Borough during a week of widespread panic in January 1909.

Hundreds of alleged sightings were reported in both Pennsylvania and New Jersey during that week, which fueled widespread fear.

A Bristolian named John Mcowen reported seeing the creature on the banks of the water on Jan. 16, 1909.

The following morning, around 2 a.m., Patrolman James Sackville, who later became the borough’s police chief, encountered what he described as a “peculiar animal” while patrolling Buckley Street.

Officer Sackville outside Bristol Borough’s old town hall in 1918. Credit: Grundy Archive

According to historical news accounts and books on the lore, Sackville said the creature hopped like a bird but was winged and let out a “terrible scream.”

Startled, Sackville fired his service revolver, and the creature fled into the dark early morning in haste.

“The thing was winged, and it hopped like a bird. Its voice was a horrible scream,” “shaken observers” in Bristol Borough were quoted as saying at the time.

The riverfront borough’s postmaster, E.W. Minster, also claimed to have seen the creature flying across the Delaware River toward New Jersey.

The next morning, Bristolians reported finding strange hoof prints in the snow. Two trappers who examined the prints remarked they had not seen any like them prior to that morning.

Around the same time, families in nearby Burlington, New Jersey, awoke to discover strange hoof prints and evidence of rummaging through garbage.

Dogs were used to trace the hoof prints, which were also reportedly found in other towns, including Columbus and Rancocas.

The Philadelphia Inquirer reported on January 21, 1909, that steel traps were set out in Burlington in what was a “state bordering on panic,” and farmers in the Pine Barrens were out hunting for the creature when the hoof prints disappeared.

The newspaper reported it was suspected, if the creature was real, there might be a “whole troupe of them.”

The sightings, which included an alleged attack on a trolley in New Jersey, continued for days across the region before quieting down.

Reports from the time called the animal a “strange freak from the nether regions.”

Descriptions of the cryptid vary, but common characteristics include a kangaroo-like body, a head similar to a goat or horse, leathery, bat-like wings, horns, and cloven hooves.

The Evening Star-Ledger, of Newark, New Jersey, reported in January 1909 that the creature had “two hind legs like a horse, a body like a crane, a neck like a boa constructor’s body, and head like a dragon,” citing “old and reliable citizen” William Cronk, of Mt. Holly, New Jersey.

A Tennessee newspaper reported at the time called the animal a “flying kangaroo, a cross-eyed humblepuppy, and a winged devil.”

The legend’s most popular version claims the creature was born in 1735 to an Atlantic County woman known as Mother Leeds. The creature was her 13th child.

Mother Leeds purportedly cursed the unborn child, which was born normal but then transformed into a monster and flew up the chimney and into the woods.

The creature has been blamed for years for livestock killings and unexplained tracks in New Jersey.

After the 1909 sightings, a Philadelphia museum owner started a hoax by marketing a kangaroo fitted with fake claws and wings as a captured Jersey Devil.

In the decades since, numerous sightings have continued, mostly centered in South Jersey. However, there have been scattered reports in Bucks County, including one in 2012 along the Delaware River in Falls Township.

Despite a $10,000 reward offered for its capture by Camden-area merchants in 1960, there has been no conclusive evidence of the creature’s existence.

Some have tried to explain the sightings away as large sandhill cranes that live in New Jersey, but the lore remains.

Accounts in this article come from historical newspaper archives, “Spooky Pennsylvania Tales Of Hauntings, Strange Happenings, And Other Local Lore” by S. E. Schlosser, “Strange Creatures (The Creatures of Cryptozoology)” by Dino Brancato, “Just Around the Corner, in New Jersey” by Edward Brown, NJPineBarrens.com, Carol Johnson and David Munn at the Atlantic County Library, Weird N.J., and AllThatsInteresting.com.

A map of 1909 sightings:

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