Her 13th Child Flew Up the Chimney | The Jersey Devil

In 1735, a woman at the edge of the New Jersey Pines cursed her thirteenth child. The story says it was born with wings and went up the chimney. In 1909, for one week, an entire city believed it had come back. What really happened in the Leeds cabin on the night of the storm? Why did schools close and men take shotguns into the woods in January 1909? And why does the oldest name for the creature belong to a real family, and not to a monster? This is the full story of the Jersey Devil, told as one story: the tale of Mother Leeds and the thirteenth child, the week in 1909 when hoofprints appeared on rooftops from Trenton to the Delaware Bay and a railway man watched something walk along his fence for ten minutes, and the strange true history underneath both, which begins with a Quaker almanac, a family crest, and a printer in Philadelphia called Benjamin Franklin. Chapters 00:00 The Thirteenth Child 03:12 Chapter One: The Twelve 08:06 Chapter Two: The Thirteenth 12:42 Chapter Three: The Storm Night 19:08 Chapter Four: The Chimney 25:01 Chapter Five: The Years 31:12 Chapter Six: Prints in the Snow 34:54 Chapter Seven: The Window 39:12 Chapter Eight: The City Shuts 42:19 Chapter Nine: Ninth and Arch 45:55 Chapter Ten: The Capture 49:33 Chapter Eleven: Satan's Harbinger 52:59 Chapter Twelve: The Crest and the Ghost 58:48 Outro Watch next The Mothman: https://youtu.be/p_Sank-nBqk Spring-heeled Jack: https://youtu.be/Ntei5-8jG9w The names of the Leeds household in the first act (Absalom, Tabitha, Ezra, Mercy, and the midwife Goody Sooy) were invented for this telling. Mother Leeds is the name the legend itself gives her. The 1909 events, Norman Jeffries and Jacob Hope, Daniel and Titan Leeds, the 1700 tract Satan's Harbinger Encountered, the 1728 almanac crest and the Poor Richard's Almanack prediction are all from the historical record. The Decatur and Bonaparte sightings are folklore and are told as such. Sources include the Philadelphia Inquirer, January 1909; Brian Regal and Frank J. Esposito, The Secret History of the Jersey Devil (2018); the Library of Congress copy of Titan's Almanack for 1729. #JerseyDevil #DarkHistory #Folklore