James F. McCloy

Co-authors James F. McCloy and Ray Miller, Jr. explore the legend of the Jersey Devil in this immensely engaging folkloric study. Opening with a description of the Devil's native habitat - the Pine Barrens of southern New Jersey - they move on to a discussion of the various legends surrounding the Devil's first appearance in the world. The most common of these is that he was a deformed, demonic thirteenth child, born to one Mrs. Leeds in the 1730s, but the authors give other, less well-known origin stories as well. Considerable attention is paid to the week in 1909, when there were dozens of Devil sitings across New Jersey and Pennsylvania, leading to widespread public panic, and subsequent sitings are also discussed. The book closes with some speculations about what the Jersey Devil really is - everything from a Sand Hill Crane, to the product of mass hysteria - as well as a bibliography and index.

I currently live in New Jersey, but I did not grow up here, and I was not aware of the legend of the Jersey Devil until my adulthood. I mourn that loss, as I loved folklore and mythology of all kinds as a girl (and as a woman), and would have been fascinated by this story. Too often, in my opinion, American children are given the folklore of every nationality and group except their own, and this seems a great shame. In any case, I recently did discover this cryptid from the Euro-American tradition, and have enjoyed a few books on the subject, most notably the picture-book retelling from Trinka Hakes Noble, The Legend of the Jersey Devil. I found The Jersey Devil, first published in 1976, to be immensely informative, giving far more information about the subject than the brief Noble retelling. I also found it engaging and well-written, and plan to track down James F. McCloy and Ray Miller Jr.'s subsequent Phantom of the Pines: More Tales of the Jersey Devil, as well as many of the books listed in the bibliography here. It is fascinating to me, that this creature has been seen by so many people over the years, some of them very prominent citizens - Joseph Bonaparte, Commodore Stephen Decatur, numerous police officers, mayors, other prominent citizens - and that is was seen by large groups of people during the incidents in 1909. I appreciated the inclusion of various illustrations of the Devil, over the years, as well as the detailed maps chronicling his sitings.

Highly recommend to all readers interested in the creatures of folklore and myth in general, or in the folklore of New Jersey and the Middle Atlantic in particular.… (más)