The New Jersey Devil And The Mothman

By Author: Robert Bruce Baird
Total Articles: 190
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Joseph Bonaparte and The New Jersey Devil:

Commodore Stephen Decatur was an American naval hero in the early nineteenth century. According to legend, he visited the Hanover Mill Works to inspect his cannonballs being forged. While there, he visited a firing range and sighted a flying creature flapping its wings. He fired a cannonball directly upon it. It had no effect and the creature flew away.

Joseph Bonaparte, the brother of Napoleon Bonaparte and former King of Spain, was reported to have seen the Devil. The incident took place in Bordentown, New Jersey while he was game hunting in the nearby woods.

The infamous Captain Kidd is reputed to have buried treasure in Barnegat Bay. Legend has it he beheaded one of his men to guard forever his buried treasure. Accounts claim the headless pirate and the Jersey Devil became friends and were seen in the evenings walking along the Atlantic and in nearby marshlands.

In Clayton, New Jersey, the Devil was chased by a posse to the edge of a wooded area. The Devil fled into the wood. The posse, afraid to pursue him, halted and declared ...
... ‘if you're the Devil, rattle your chains.'

The Devil's taste varies. He was seen cavorting at sea with a mermaid in 1870. And he is reputed to have had a ham and egg breakfast with a Republican - Judge French. But the Devil is not known to have specific political leanings.

The Devil's sightings have covered great geographic distances. - from Bridgeton to Haddonfield in 1859; to the New York border in 1899; and from Gloucester City to Trenton in 1909. Until this time, tales of the Devil were passed by word-of-mouth. However, published police and newspaper accounts during a famous week in January of 1909 took the story of the Devil from folk belief to authentic folk legend. Thirty different sightings in a one-week period told of the Devil sailing across the Delaware River to Maryland, Pennsylvania and Delaware. Newspaper articles created a near panic in the region.

Theory and the Devil

After the 1909 appearances, the scientific community was asked for possible explanations. Reportedly, science professors from Philadelphia and experts from the Smithsonian Institution thought the Devil to be a prehistoric creature from the Jurassic period. Had the creature survived in nearby limestone caves? Was it a pterodactyl or a peleosaurus? New York scientists thought it to be a marsupial carnivore. Was it an extinct fissiped? However, the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia could not locate any record of a living of dead species resembling the Jersey Devil. (2)

There is a remote ‘possibility' that the Hapsburgs and Randolphs or other Merovingian sorcerers who live in the upper Chesapeake area have something to do with this Devil. Some of their rituals definitely involve the invocation of Asmodeus or other elementals that some call demons. They also claim to be able to shape-shift but I suspect they are involved in projecting hallucinations or what is called mind-fogging. In any event it is interesting to find Napoleon's brother living in these parts of America. But let us consider another origin of this entity. The supposed birthplace of this Devil is with a Ms. Leeds who had many children and one of them mutated. From the same source as referenced above we have - On a stormy night in 1735, a Quaker woman gave birth to a child during a thunderstorm. The room flickered with candlelight. The wind howled. Some believed her to be a sorceress. The impoverished woman, known as Mother Leeds, was believed to have many other children - as many as twelve. Some say the child was born deformed. Some say she cursed the child because of her dire straits. Other accounts say the child was born normal and took on odd characteristics later.

Characteristics such as an elongated body, winged shoulders, a large horse-like head, cloven feet and a thick tail. According to legend, the child was confined until it made its escape either out the cellar door or up the chimney. The Jersey Devil had been born.

Sir Laurence Gardner tells us his Rosicrucian alchemical wanna-bes had developed cloning and Elixirs to address the telomeres at the end of genetic strands. There is archaeological evidence such as the Portuguese half Neanderthal baby dated to 24,000 years ago and the Bonobos as well as the recent Hobbits. There is a helical structure to DNA and Harmonic energy patterns affecting forces such as time. Amazing things can be produced in other dimensions for a certainty. No I dare not disregard the possibility that some of our founding fathers were doing more than mere miscegenation (Jefferson) and animal husbandry (George Washington). There was indeed a time when Jefferson believed that Negroes were a human crossed with an orangutan. Once the creature had lived and developed a soul I can imagine it was not a happy camper. Maybe this relates to the Mothman too. The soul of such a creature would not be likely to leave this event horizon or plane of existence.

About the Author
Author of many books available at World-Mysteries,com and elsewhere. Columnist for SpiritQuest and The ES Press.