Crypt016D - New Jersey Devil

Title: New Jersey Devil, aka The Leeds Devil, Pine Devil.
Range: focal point of occurances: New Jersey, USA; rare accounts as far as New York and Maryland
Type: Chimera, shapeshifter
Diet: unconfirmed reports of woodland creatures and small pets
Temperment: Mostly nonconfrontational.

"...and when Mother Leeds, already with twelve children, learned that she was with child, she cursed it, saying, "Let this one be a devil." In due time the child arrived, of normal appearance, but no sooner had it come into the world when a hideous transformation took place; the infant's body began to twist into a serpentine shape, its face elongating into an equine form as hooves and wings formed and sprouted from its body as a twisting, scaly tail then proceeding to whip about the room, badly beating both mother and nursemaids. The newly born creature then gave a shrill whistle and clamored up the chimney and into the the dark night of the forest...

So goes one of the most infamous accounts of how the immortal legend that is the New Jersey Devil came to be, although there are tales which go further back in time that speak of an unnatural creature which stalks the Pine Barrens of Southern New Jersey. The Lenni Lenape tribes called that area "Popuessing", or "place of the dragon", and told of a creature that haunted the sun-starved depths of the thick pines and bogs. People, ranging from policemen and hikers, locals and investigators, Revolutionary War captains and soldiers, and even Joseph Bonaparte, the brother of the infamous Napoleon, have reported encounters with the Jersey Devil.

The reports continue to this day...

I myself am a firm believer in the New Jersey Devil, not only out of an interest in the unusual but also because of my lifelong bond to my home state, a place where the strange is ever present; we've got Devils and Thunderbirds as team mascots, for Pete's sake !

A page from The Cryptid Files: [link]