The Pine Barrens are the lair of the Jersey Devil, originally called the Leeds Devil. According to a legend from the 1730s, Deborah Leeds, also known as “Mother Leeds” in the lore, said after a dozen children that if she had a thirteenth, the Devil could take it. Inevitably, she got pregnant again. But when she gave birth to the baby, it transformed into a chimerical creature with a horse’s head, bat wings, kangaroo-like body, goat legs, and a serpent’s tail. The hideous beast escaped up the chimney and began a reign of terror in the Pine Barrens, mutilating livestock and setting crops ablaze with its fiery breath.
My research trip also included a family obligation: my mother had asked me to place seven stones at the grave of my grandmother, Imogene Leeds Schuler—one for my mom and each of her brothers and sisters. My grandma Imogene had a hard life. An ugly divorce left her with five kids to tend. She had her struggles, but she was a wonderful grandmother, and I named my daughter after her.
After a swim, I made camp at a backcountry site at Godfrey Bridge and drove to Leeds Point, birthplace of the Jersey Devil. I had stolen seven pretty landscaping stones from a nearby touristy town and pulled into Leeds Point Community Church, where Leeds family headstones dated back to the 1800s. Leeds is my middle name. I couldn’t have been a mile from the birthplace of the Jersey Devil, and I was standing in a cemetery full of my ancestors. This couldn’t have been a coincidence.
I called my aunt Dorothy, who had recently shipped me some of her history books on New Jersey. “Hi, Aunt Dorothy. I’m in Leeds Point.”
“Your mother told me.”
I looked around again at the headstones. “I’m at the cemetery, near the birthplace of the Jersey Devil, and there are a lot of us here.”
“Oh, yeah,” she said. “We are the Devil family.”
Keep in mind, I’d been researching cryptids for years without this pertinent information. My mom had told me the story of the Jersey Devil when I was a kid. I never understood why she had apparently named me after it, but I still thought it was cool. When I was in my teens, I finally figured out that Leeds was a family name. But even after all that time researching a novel about cryptozoology, I never suspected that we were the actual Devil family.
After I got off the phone with my aunt, I called my mom.
“How did you not know?” she asked.
“Because nobody told me.”