Ep.78: What Happens When Your Ancestor Is The Jersey Devil?

What if your family tree points straight to one of America’s most enduring legends? We sit down with Kim, whose lineage traces back to the Leeds family at the heart of the Jersey Devil myth, and follow a story that weaves personal history with colonial rivalries, eerie Pine Barrens nights, and modern media spin.

Kim shares how a casual comment from her grandmother cracked open a hidden chapter of her identity. From there, she chased records through lockdown research, connecting branches back to Daniel and John Leeds and learning why her mother refused to stop in the Pine Barrens after dark. Along the way, we question the bloodier origin variants—do they even make sense given the surviving line?—and explore a more grounded core: a 13th child, a curse, a creature in the trees, and generations of locals who still hear hoofbeats and unplaceable cries at night.

We also dig into the almanac wars: Titan Leeds vs Benjamin Franklin. It’s a tale of early American branding and barbs, where Franklin’s jabs about a “devil of Jersey” helped cement a name that outlived the feud. Add in carnival hoaxes, TV dramatizations, and the internet’s appetite for doom-prophecy, and you get a legend both resilient and distorted. Kim pushes back on attack narratives, suggests the Devil is more watcher than wrecker, and opens the door to a provocative idea: belief itself has power. Maybe the Jersey Devil is part creature, part egregore, shaped by centuries of attention.

Ready to rethink what makes a monster? Listen, share your Pine Barrens stories, and tell us where you land: flesh-and-blood cryptid, collective thoughtform, or a brilliant product of rumor and rivalry. If you enjoy the show, follow, rate, and leave a review so more curious minds can find us.

Have you had an encounter with the paranormal? Have you seen Bigfoot!? Call our Hotline 

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Transcript

Meet Kim And The Bold Claim

SPEAKER_02 0:00

You can start. Okay, I'll start. What's going on, everybody, and welcome back to another episode of Exploring the Unknown. My name is Dustin. I'm Ook. And today we have on Kim, who is you're related to the Jersey Devil, is that right?

SPEAKER_05 0:18

I am.

SPEAKER_02 0:20

So tell tell us a little bit about that. How did you how did you learn about that?

SPEAKER_05 0:25

So a little background. The Jersey Devil would be my fourth and fifth great uncle. Because I'm technically the granddaughter of two of the brothers.

SPEAKER_02 0:43

Okay.

SPEAKER_05 0:45

Yeah, so it's Daniel and John, who I'm related to. They both had kids, and then it kind of trickled down, and then two of the kids got married. Like two of the grandkids got married, and then from there ended up with me. And I I found out, oddly enough, on accident.

SPEAKER_03 1:10

Oh.

unknown 1:13

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 1:15

Um, I want to say I was about 10 or 11 when I went to go visit my grandmother, my dad's mom, who had just moved down here to Florida. And she was going through family history that she thought we needed to know. And she just happened to spill out, it's not like you didn't know you were related to the Jersey Devil. And my sister and I looked at her like she had about seven heads because we had not heard of the Jersey Devil, no idea what it was. When our mom came to pick us up, we kind of thought my grandmother was joking. And we kind of told her, like, hey, I don't know what like Mimi is on. But she's telling us we're related to the jersey devil. And so my mom had a like on the car ride home, be like, you are, and this is what it is. This is I don't have much information, but I do know you're you are.

SPEAKER_02 2:27

That's that's wild. So like what was your what was your thoughts of like what was what was your mother's explanation of it? Was it something that was like that's out there, or was it like the the Ben Franklin story with the almanacs?

Childhood Reveal Of A Haunted Lineage

SPEAKER_05 2:43

So she I have to give her credit because I don't know how I would have explained it to two little kids who were like 11 and 9. But she's like, well, it was it's the 13th child of this woman named Mother Elite, and you know, she was just going through a very hard time, and things happened, and then you know, the child is like this creature thing in the woods, and that's how she kind of explains it that would terrify me at that age.

SPEAKER_00 3:27

I would be so worried about something being in the woods.

SPEAKER_05 3:30

Now, can you give us the actual like what's this about this being in the woods? So we actually got the whole, you know, it's a 13th mother uh child of mother leads, and she gave birth to this child and then cursed it and said, you know, I can't let's give this child back to the devil. It turned into this creature, killed the midwife, flew out the roof, tormented the pine barons. To this day, people are still seeing it. And we kind of sat there and were like, Uh oh.

SPEAKER_04 4:13

Yep.

SPEAKER_02 4:16

Kim, you still there? I don't know. I don't know what happened.

SPEAKER_05 4:28

Yeah. So yeah, so I my mom was very nice about how she explained it, and then as we got older, as I was saying, she told us like the whole story, and we sort of understood why she left out the fact that it terrorized people and was out for family blood. Yeah, it made sense in the long run though, because she when we used to go up to visit New Jersey, she wouldn't stop when we were driving through the pine barrens. And as a kid, we were like, Do you just not like the woods? We get it now.

SPEAKER_02 5:15

Yeah, I imagine. So did you ever ask her if that was the reason why that you guys never stopped in the pine barrens?

SPEAKER_05 5:24

Was like the recently I did because I was curious, and she goes, Well, that was part of it, but it was also being a single parent with two kids driving through the woods at night. So she's like, Yeah, it was a little iffy. But the main reason was she's like, I believe in it, and I didn't want to want to stop and take that chance. And I was like, Okay, like it makes sense.

SPEAKER_02 5:53

Yeah. So what does what does other family members think about it? Have they have you talked to them about it at all?

Mother Leeds And The Classic Legend

SPEAKER_05 6:00

Not many. So I've talked to like my dad about it, obviously, because it's from his side of the family, and he believes in it. He's like, oh, 100%, like we're we're related to it, and he thinks it's a fun little story to pull out for people. My sister is it's not something she shares a lot, but she'll be like, yeah, occasionally I'll say stuff. But she's she watches the same like paranormal shows and stuff I do. So we do kind of like fangirl over the Jersey Double episode to see who gets it right and who doesn't.

SPEAKER_02 6:44

That's awesome. Um I no, go ahead, Luke. Sorry. No, I just say, yeah, that's awesome. Yeah, I would I would own it for sure, 100%. Has anyone and there are a lot of us. I'm sorry, you say there's a lot of you?

SPEAKER_05 7:08

Yeah. Because if you think about it, there were 12 children. And each child has two to three children themselves at least. So, but like my mom has friends that are also related to the Jersey Devil that we found out when we started posting about it. She had a few friends that were like, Oh, I'm related to that family too. And we're like, Oh wow. Then we're related.

SPEAKER_02 7:37

That's really interesting. So he was able to find other family by tracing this down. So you've like found like documentation that lead back to that.

SPEAKER_05 7:49

Yes. During COVID, when we were all in lockdown, I had nothing to do. So I basically traced our family tree back as far as it could go, like both my mom and my dad's sides. And that's how I found Clara Blackman, who married Enoch Jeffries, and then both of them, or Clara Blackman, her mom was Anna Leeds. Anna Leeds' parents go back to both sides of the two brothers.

SPEAKER_02 8:26

Oh, okay. Wow, that's really interesting. We just recently started like chasing our family back, and it's it's interesting like how big it can get and like how much history is there that you just didn't even know about. Has anybody in your family ever talked about maybe seeing or having an encounter with with the Jersey Devil?

SPEAKER_05 8:50

So nobody in my family that I'm aware of has, but I did once have a co-worker who lived in the pine marines during their college years. And they were talking to my sister and I, because I should say before they were a coworker, they were actually my sister and I's teacher, and then my sister's best friend's dad. So we've known this guy for a while. But we just happened to bring up like we were from New Jersey, and then both of us started getting on stories about living there. And he's like, Yeah, I used to live in the pine barrens, and you just you didn't go out at night. But there was one time I was coming home from college and it was really late at night, and he goes, I swear to you, I saw the Jersey Devil, like, swear to you. And I was like, No, I believe it. Like, and that's when I told him, I was like, I'm related to that. So yeah, I believe you. You don't have to like try and convince me that you saw the Jersey Devil. But he's one, and then my I have like a I I'm still meeting family, sort of, because my family's so big. But I did have a cousin recently that was telling me that they live lived in the pine, like in the pine barrens, pine bearing and Jason currently, and they've heard sounds at night, and they're like, you can't write them off as anything but being paranormal, like it does not sound like an animal I've ever come across. I'm like, I want to go so bad, but I'm also so scared.

SPEAKER_02 10:41

I was I was just asking Luke the other day. I said, You do would you camp out in the in the pine barrens? Would you camp out in the pine barrens?

SPEAKER_04 10:50

Oh yeah.

SPEAKER_05 10:52

Uh person me?

SPEAKER_02 10:53

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 10:54

I don't know, I don't camp. Um, and I think a lot of it has to do with this. But I I don't know if I would camp. I might spend like an hour or two out there, all like Jennifer Love Hewitt in like what is that? I know what you did last summer. Like, here I am. What are you waiting for? And then see what shows up.

SPEAKER_02 11:20

Oh, that could be interesting.

SPEAKER_03 11:24

Hmm.

SPEAKER_02 11:25

So uh a minute ago, you had mentioned I I I may I may have heard you wrong because it does seem like there's a connection issue, but it sounded like you said that the Jersey Devil is out for family blood or something along those lines. Did I hear you right?

SPEAKER_05 12:24

So that is the story I grew up hearing. Because one of the Jersey Devil legends was that he was born, and it goes along the same lines of like he killed all the midwives and then flew out the chimney. But it was that he killed all of like the midwives and his mom and then flew out the chimney. And then some of his like siblings. I don't like I haven't been able to verify that story, but that was the one that we were raised on before I was able to actually research all the different variations that people have come across.

SPEAKER_04 13:08

See, that story's hard for me to believe because like not saying I don't believe it, but if that's the case, half of you guys might not even be here if we killed half the family. So if that's the case, then the you guys obviously wouldn't be here, but I could see him just escaping out through the roof. Or maybe, maybe he injured some people but killed people. That doesn't knowing you are related to him doesn't make sense to me because you wouldn't be here if you killed everybody in the house.

SPEAKER_05 13:48

And that's why I'm like right, and that's that's why I'm like when you think about it, then you're like there's holes in that one, like there's holes in that story, which makes sense.

SPEAKER_02 14:01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 14:01

Now, do I think he might have killed somebody? Sure, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 14:06

So what do you what would you say the Jersey Devil is?

SPEAKER_05 14:14

So I like to believe the mythical creature version of him. I like to believe that there's something like that out there, but I do believe that the more thought people give to an idea of something, like your thoughts have power and it can create that thing. And I think the fact that people have been seeing this since the 1800s, they're still seeing it, they're still hearing hoof prints and growls and unexplainable noises. Yeah, I think you know, there might be a winged serpent-like, horse-like creature thing flying around the pine.

SPEAKER_00 15:02

That's terrifying.

SPEAKER_02 15:08

Do you what do you think, if there's any like the biggest misconception about the legend is? Although I think there's what four different versions of the story, right? Something like that, yeah.

SPEAKER_05 15:21

Something like that. There's quite a few, and then you have books and movies that have kind of like exaggerated the story itself. The biggest misconception, and it's one that actually I heard on a video you all posted. Oh, and I think I even commented on it. But you guys had posted on your TikTok page about hearing a story about a mom who said her kid was like attacked by the Jersey Devil and it was on a TV show.

SPEAKER_04 15:59

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 16:00

I can't remember what you said, the TV trailer.

SPEAKER_04 16:02

Mark's request.

SPEAKER_05 16:03

There you go. And that was the first time I'd ever heard anything like that. And I'm like, out of all of the stories I've ever heard in all of the years this cryptid has been around, never have I heard of him attacking anyone but the midwives in the house. Like, I don't think it would attack anybody personally. Maybe I could be wrong, but that's the biggest misconception I think I've heard. And it was like recently, yeah, because I just don't see it. Because if he was gonna believe he would have already everyone goes into those woods calling it out.

Genealogy Deep Dive And Documentation

SPEAKER_04 16:51

Yep. Now, with that story, I might have said it wrong. It's been so long since I seen that episode. I was back in like the two early 2000s when it egg on TV. So I might have got the story wrong. Well, I might have not remember it right. So that might not actually be the case. I have to go back and re-watch that episode to see what they say.

SPEAKER_02 17:19

Another thing about that though, and I mean this is no you know, issue towards anybody, but it's like media and stuff like that are going to paint the narrative in a way that is most entertaining for somebody to continue to watch. You know, it might not be true, or it could be such a thing as whatever that story was, is the people, whatever those people encountered, misidentified whatever it was that they encountered. And then that that story's gonna carry on as this was this. It's interesting, it's like the telephone game.

SPEAKER_05 17:56

I mean, it all kind of is like the telephone game, though, because we don't really have pictures or anything of it, so it's just going by word of mouth of well, I saw this and all that.

SPEAKER_02 18:12

So something that kind of enlightened me whenever we seen you on the on the previous podcast was the the information about Ben Franklin and the almanacs. Could you enlighten us a little bit more on that?

SPEAKER_05 18:26

Of course. So Daniel Leeds, which is the son of Deborah Leeds, who is the mother leads in the Jersey Devil tale, he had a publishing company. And his son, Titan Leeds, had decided to create an almanac. The almanac got pretty popular back when, you know, they were using them constantly because they didn't have Google or all the fancy stuff we do now. And then Ben Franklin decided he was gonna make his almanac, which is the one people still use today, he didn't like the competition that came with Titan's almanac because it was already popular, it was in circulation at the time. So he accused Titan of doing witchcraft and being this uncouth character of sorts, and he, in some magazine print article thing, had accused Titan Leeds of being the Jersey devil, he was the devil of Jersey, and from my understanding, that name stuck. People ran with it, and the narrative got turned into what it is today.

SPEAKER_02 19:56

That's wild. That's the telephone game at its finest.

SPEAKER_05 20:02

So our family had quite the dispute with the founding father Benjamin Franklin.

SPEAKER_04 20:10

That's interesting. Another crazy thing is you guys got a hockey team named after you guys. The Jersey Devils.

SPEAKER_05 20:23

The Jersey Devils. Have I been to a game? Nope. Have I called them out?

unknown 20:27

Nope.

SPEAKER_02 20:31

Now, you had mentioned earlier a little while ago about the like and this is something that me and him talk about a lot, is like a collective group of people having such strong emotion or belief towards something that it actually creates something. Is that what you were referring to?

SPEAKER_05 20:52

Yes. And it has an actual name, but I don't remember the name of it.

SPEAKER_02 20:57

Is that the egregor? I hear him talk about it on like some paranormal shows sometimes. I'm not sure either. We've talked we talked about so many different kinds of like spirits and entities, and they all do some of them do things that are similar. So I this is why we do what we do, because I'm curious.

SPEAKER_05 21:31

How can you not believe that? Oh, it's okay. But I mean, like, how can you not believe that? If you think about like little kids who get really afraid of dark, and then like they believe that something's in their bedroom, and then all of a sudden mom's like, well, the door is shut, and it's like by itself? Could it be the thing the kid manifested out of fear?

SPEAKER_02 21:52

For right, or is it something that we can't see because we've been programmed to shut it out?

SPEAKER_03 22:02

Exactly.

SPEAKER_02 22:05

So here's an interesting question. Do you think that in the future the the legend and the stories will continue to evolve, or do you think that they'll stay consistent?

Sightings, Sounds, And Camping Debates

SPEAKER_05 22:24

I uh want to say that they'll stay pretty consistent. I did recently see that people are I like to call mothmanning it, where they're like, oh well I saw the Jersey Devil, so something bad is going to happen. Where is it like when bad things happen, people have some major event happening? Um so I think I wanna I can't say I think I'm that I wanna I wanna say it'll be pretty consistent, but I think it might here vary just a tinge to becoming like this doomsday prophecy type being where it's like, oh no.

SPEAKER_02 23:15

We've seen the Jersey Devil.

SPEAKER_04 23:20

Well, I actually believe it or not. They believe the Mothman is uh if you see the Jersey Devil and Mothman together. Oh no. You have issues. Yeah, they believe um the uh Mothman is a parfum drive doom, but like when the silver bridge collapsed, the Mothman was not even near it. So they that's what they're putting it towards. So they really didn't cause that bridge to collapse, but that's what media plug of gas.

SPEAKER_02 24:02

Cool. Well, are there any maybe pieces of the story that maybe we're not aware of or maybe have never really been shared that you'd like to to share with our listeners?

SPEAKER_05 24:14

So there's one story that I haven't heard a lot. I just happened upon it basic a movie called The Thirteenth Child from like early 2000s, and at the end of this DVD-ish movie thing, there's like this behind the scenes story that my sister and I had stumbled upon, and it's one that I hadn't heard yet, but it was about this guy named Norman Jeffries, which yes, we have the same last name, but I don't know if we are related, I haven't been able to connect back to him. But he supposedly supposedly used the Jersey Devil tail to climb to fame. So he had like a little carnival thing where people could come and you could spend like a dollar to come see the Jersey Devil, but it was like a goat he dressed up. And then yeah, so he was like pretty much called the Jersey Devil a hoax and was pretty much run out of town for it. But that was one of the stories that I haven't heard recently, or at all, really, besides on this DVD, and I had to look it up. But Norman Jeffries was just stealing the story and trying to become famous off of it, and I was like, great, that's my last name, like yeah. Oh my goodness, people people do anything to try to make money, they will, and I mean this is back in like 1930s, 1940s, I want to say. So he's trying to do a sidekick, I guess, and didn't work out in his favor. But that's also why I've been like iffy about talking about it publicly, because I'm like, people are gonna then relate it to this man, and I'm not that I know of, but also I'm not trying to scam people out of money, right? Or scam people at all.

SPEAKER_02 26:45

Yeah, that's don't want don't want to be associated with all that.

SPEAKER_05 26:51

No, not at all.

SPEAKER_02 26:54

Well, awesome. I think I ran through all my questions. Luke, did you have anything that you wanted to?

SPEAKER_04 27:00

No, I appreciate you coming on and talking to us about it. It was awesome. Absolutely very grateful.

SPEAKER_02 27:06

Thank you so much.

SPEAKER_05 27:07

You're welcome.

SPEAKER_02 27:11

Did you have any questions for us? Yeah, no problem. You're welcome on any time.

Is The Devil After Family Blood

SPEAKER_05 27:18

I don't, I just keep watching all of your little TikTok videos and watching the YouTube clips. So I was catching up.

SPEAKER_02 27:31

Well, that's awesome. Thank you so much for for supporting our podcast, and and we're glad that you enjoy the content. I think our internet connection is is unstable.

SPEAKER_00 27:51

Everybody keeps freezing, and maybe it's me. I don't know. There's a there's I have the problem with the internet. That's the that's my running thing. Okay.

SPEAKER_05 28:02

I'm like, we're all kind of lagging a little bit here.

SPEAKER_02 28:06

Yeah, a little bit. All right, Kim. Well, thank you so much again for coming on. We really appreciate it. And like I said, you're welcome back on anytime.

SPEAKER_05 28:19

Thank you. Thank you for having me. I'll come back anytime you guys want me on.

SPEAKER_02 28:23

All right, sounds good. We'll see you later. So the Jersey Devil. I want to go looking. I want to go looking for the Jersey Devil.

SPEAKER_04 29:04

Me too.

SPEAKER_02 29:05

Let's get to the Pine Barrens. You camp out? We do a whole video.

SPEAKER_01 29:09

You know what? Here it is, right here. A hundred and fifty thousand likes, and Luke and I'll go camp out in the pine barrens.

SPEAKER_04 29:17

And do it live. All right.

SPEAKER_01 29:19

If we have service.

SPEAKER_00 29:22

I'm telling you, we put this on TikTok. TikTok. You can make this happen.

SPEAKER_02 29:31

But yeah. Do you have anything else that you want to add where we can run through the stuff real quick?

SPEAKER_04 29:39

Okay, you wanna you want to run it down? Yeah. Thank you everybody for listening to this episode. It was awesome talking to Kim about the Josie Devil and how she is related to it. And if you have an encounter, email us at exponently unknownpod at outlook.com. Go to our website, exponently unknownpod.com. And we have a phone number if you like to send out a voice memo. And we will have that on a future episode. But phone numbers 412 533 3483. And we have Christmas merch. Save up to 10% on all exponent unknown merch on exponent.com.

SPEAKER_02 30:35

Yeah. Heck yeah. I'm so excited. We got a TikTok shop now. We got all of our smirch on there. And guys, listen, starting Monday, Luke and I have a Black Friday sale going on. 25% off all of our shirts, except for our limited Christmas edition shirts, where you get 30% off. They are on our TikTok shop, so make sure you guys go check that out and get yours while they're here.

SPEAKER_04 31:02

Yes.

SPEAKER_02 31:03

Let's do that. Yes. Alright. I got a I got a would you rather? You ready?

What Is The Jersey Devil Really

SPEAKER_04 31:08

I am for the would you are question?

SPEAKER_02 31:10

Okay, here we go. Would you rather be able to ask Mother Leeds one single question?

SPEAKER_04 31:20

Hold on, hold on. August cutting out. It's acting weird. Is it better now? How's this?

SPEAKER_03 31:28

Is this good?

SPEAKER_02 31:31

Yeah, it's good now. Alright, would you rather be able to ask Mother Leeds one single question and get a completely honest answer? And what would that question be? Or spend one minute face to face with the Jersey Devil, but you're not allowed to speak.

SPEAKER_03 31:55

Do you like it?

SPEAKER_00 31:56

Really?

SPEAKER_03 32:01

What did you do that for?

SPEAKER_02 32:07

Okay. Well, there's a dark twist now because you chose the second one. So because you chose the second one, whatever emotion you feel in that moment, whether it be fear, rage, curiosity, it stays with you permanently. You can never get rid of it.

SPEAKER_04 32:32

Oh that's interesting.

SPEAKER_02 32:36

Sucks sucks to suck. I would ask, see, I would like to ask Mother Leeds a qu a question. Hmm. What's the true story? What's the truth? That's what we're here to do. Find the truth.

SPEAKER_04 33:10

But Mexico's the question. That is a good question.

SPEAKER_01 33:14

Alright, that's all I got.

SPEAKER_04 33:17

Yeah. Until next time. Keep strong.