The Origins of the Jersey Devil
The name, “Jersey Devil”, did not come into prominent use until the 1900s. Prior to that date, this monster was commonly referred to as the Leeds Devil, most likely as a connection to the Leeds family of New Jersey’s Pine Barrens. One popular legend states that upon discovering that she was pregnant with her 13th child, Mother Leeds cursed her unborn progeny stating that “it would be the devil.” Born upon a stormy night, the cursed child transformed into a hideous creature with hooves, a goat-like head, leathery wings, and a forked tail. Attacking its stunned family members, the child let out a howl, flew up into the chimney, and escaped into the Pines.
As fantastical as that story is, more sinister variations of this tale purport that Mother Leeds was actually a witch and that the child’s father was Satan himself!
Another version of the Jersey Devil’s origin centers around disputes between some of the area’s earliest settlers. Daniel Leeds and his family were prominent members of pre-Revolution colonial New Jersey. A Quaker who was loyal to the British crown, the Leeds’ political leanings caused them to run afoul of their neighbors, and the divide only increased when he began to publish almanacs containing astrological symbols and writings. These forbidden writings were seen as the work of dark forces and they caused problems in his Quaker community. Daniel Leeds was even publicly accused of working with the devil in a tract titled “Satan’s Harbinger Encountered…Being Something by Way of Answer to Daniel Leeds.”
As strange as the dispute between Daniel Leeds and his fellow Quakers may be, the story gets even more bizarre after the death of the Leeds’ patriarch. The family name already had an air of “evil” attached to it when Daniel Leeds’ almanac business passed to his son, Titan Leeds. Titan continued publishing the almanac and a dispute began to build with Benjamin Franklin and his rival Poor Richard’s Almanack. In 1733, Franklin jokingly predicted that Titan Leeds would perish in October of that year. When his rival publisher did not die as predicted, Benjamin Franklin doubled down on his taunts and suggested that Leeds was, in fact, dead and that the almanac was now being published by a ghost. These accusations, as ridiculous as they may have been, added to the rumors of the Leeds family being in concert with evil forces, and thus likely contributed to the stories of the Leeds Devil. Adding to this association was the family crest of the Leeds which depicted a wyvern – a crest that Titan Leeds began to use on his almanac in 1728. This bat-winged creature had a large head and stood upon two feet, matching the popular descriptions of the Jersey Devil. Many considered this a brazen admission of the Leeds family’s connection to the monster that lurked in the Pine Barrens, and that connection still exists today in the lore of this legendary creature.
Sightings of the Devil
There have been numerous sightings of the Jersey Devil over the centuries, with many well-known and prominent members of the community at the time giving accounts of this creature. Even Joseph Bonaparte, elder brother of Napoleon, claimed to have seen the Devil of Leeds while hunting on his estate in 1820.
The largest number of Jersey Devil sightings came in January of 1909 when newspapers published hundreds of supposed encounters with this mysterious creature. These sightings happened all over Southern New Jersey and into the Philadelphia area. In one story, the creature ambushed a trolley car before going on to later attack a social club. According to reports of the time, police officers who shot at the monster said their bullets had no effect and the creature escaped into the darkness.
During this wave of sightings, Jersey Devil hysteria spread as far as Delaware and western Maryland, even prompting the closure of schools in some communities. While footprints found in the snow were later admitted to have been faked, that hoax cannot account for all the sightings of this creature in 1909 or in the hundred plus years since. These sightings include a 1927 account from a taxi driver who said the beast was pounding on the roof of his car, 1960 reports from Mays Landing about horrifying screams in the night, and a 1980 report from Wharton State Forest where the Chief Ranger came upon a brutal scene of slaughtered pigs who had the backs of their heads eaten and their bodies scratched and torn apart. Rewards have been offered many times over the centuries for the capture of this Jersey Devil, including a $250k reward in 1960 (a sum which would be worth approximately $2.6 million today), yet this monster remains elusive and the reward monies offered have never been claimed.
While the Jersey Devil is certainly the most well-known creature to roam the remote Pine Barrens of New Jersey, he is not the only spirit said to haunt this area. Over the years The Pines have become home to many folk legends and ghost stories, including the spirit of the pirate Captain Kidd and the treasure he buried within the area.
Other ghosts said to roam the Pine Barrens include benevolent spirits said to help travelers lost in the area – the Black Dog, the Golden-Haired Girl, and the White Stag being a few of these benevolent apparitions, some of which can be seen on the packaging artwork for the Figura Obscura: Jersey Devil figure.
The Jersey Devil of Today
In more modern times, the Jersey Devil has become a cultural icon alongside other popular cryptids like Bigfoot, Mothman, the Lochness Monster, and others. One need only look to the professional hockey team of New Jersey to see the “New Jersey Devils” monikor in use (although that team uses a red-skinned devil as their mascot as opposed to the traditional depiction of this Garden State cryptid). The “Jersey Devil” is also the name of one of the world’s fastest single rail coasters located at Six Flags in New Jersey and that park even has an entire section named “The Pine Barrens”!
In popular media, especially television, the Jersey Devil has been a common fixture. This mythological monster had appeared on programs including the X-Files, Supernatural, Extreme Ghostbusters, What We Do In The Shadows, Gravity Falls, and many others.
Modern day explanations for the Jersey Devil range from migrating sandhill cranes, to a hammerhead bat that snuck aboard a ship from Africa, to mass hysteria driving sightings of the monster. Whatever the truth of the this creature may be, there is no denying the cultural impact of this monster that has broken free from the isolated Pine Barrens of Southern New Jersey to become one of the world’s most popular cryptids.
Capturing the Devil for Figura Obscura
Since the start of Figura Obscura, we knew that we wanted to explore the rich and varied world of cryptids for possible inclusion in the line. We just had to decide when to release our first cryptid and which one to start with. While multiple legendary creatures were discussed, the obvious choice for our first Figura Obscura cryptid was our hometown monster – the Jersey Devil.
Arguably the most famous depiction of the Jersey Devil is from a 1909 illustration from The Evening Bulletin Philadelphia (seen in the image at the start of this article). This illustration, along with descriptions of the beast, painted a picture of a large creature with bat-like wings, long limbs, hooved feet, and a forked tail. Some descriptions of the Jersey Devil suggest that it has a head like a horse, while others have described more of a goat-like head for this creature. The 1909 illustration is somewhat unclear in its depiction, and it looks like a blend between a horse and a goat, with a longish face and curled horns.
When Eric began working on his version of the Jersey Devil for Figura Obscura, he took these depictions into account, while also ensuring that the resulting figure would be a cool looking toy! In truth, the work on the Jersey Devil began long before this actual project started – back to last year’s Figura Obscura: Frankenstein’s Creature release.
The Frankenstein’s Creature figure that was released in Fall 2024 utilized what we called an “elongated 1.0 body.” The Creature’s limbs were longer and thinner than what would be normally found on a 1.0 Legions body, giving that monster some interesting proportions. Of course, the Frankenstein’s Creature’s body parts are covered in stitching and scars, which made them a bit harder to use on future projects, so while Eric was sculpting those parts he also made versions without all the scarring and stitch-work. These body parts were tooled at the same time as Frankenstein’s Creature and put into the vault for future use. Well, it would only take a year for us to come back to those pieces, because they proved to be the perfect parts to start with for the Jersey Devil and its unnatural body proportions!
Fast forward to late 2024 and Eric was working on parts for the Mythic Legions: Reign of the Beasts wave. By this point, we already knew that the Jersey Devil would be the Fall 2025 Figura Obscura release. As Eric began working on the “furry body” for the Mwindajii the Cackler figure from that wave, he also knew that these parts would be utilized, along with those aforementioned unstitched Frankenstein parts, for our Jersey Devil.
The Figura Obscura: The Jersey Devil figure is actually more in the spirit of earlier Figura releases like Krampus and the Headless Horsemen than some of the newer ones like Frankenstein’s Creature or Ganesha in that it makes smart use of existing pieces from our parts library with select new parts added as opposed to totally head-to-toe new figure builds. The Jersey Devil’s new parts are the fully furry lower legs, the cloven feet, the forked tail, the waist cover, and of course the neck fur and the pair of heads that the figure includes. In addition to those new parts, the Jersey Devil will be the first “in-hand” figure that uses the Legions Build System that includes double-jointed limbs, as the legs on this monster feature that new articulation. Those double joints allow for some very cool and dynamic posing on this monster, including dramatic crouched poses!
Art of the Jersey Devil
Like all Figura Obscura additions, the packaging artwork for this figure would be an important part of the release. What was new for the Jersey Devil art is that this would be the first Figura project that Nate Baertsch would not paint the bulk of the work for!
Juggling some other projects and deadlines, Nate provided concept sketches for the Jersey Devil’s box, along with the side illustration of the creature. The rest of the painting was done by Tom Tolman based on Nate’s sketches and art direction.
The artwork for this release includes a full-body illustration of the Jersey Devil on the front along with a backdrop showing the wooded landscape of the Pine Barrens. This landscape also includes the ruins of the Harrisville Paper Mill. Take a look at those ruins and you may even see some of the other apparitions said to haunt the Pines!
One of the coolest additions to this new packaging is the “Sightings of the Jersey Devil” map that acts as a backdrop for the figure inside the box (see below). Created to have a worn, vintage look, this map details some of the various locations where the Jersey Devil has been seen over the years.
The artwork from this release was also used to create pins, mugs, and t-shirts (the later offered by RetroRags Limited) as well as in the small booklet that came inside the figure’s box. You can see some of these items in the image below.
The Devil’s in the Details
With the release of the Jersey Devil, Figura Obscura’s ranks have grown even more diverse. The inclusion of the line's first, but definately not the last, cryptid adds more variety to what is already Four Horsemen Studio's most unexpected line and it begs the question – what is coming next for Figura Obscura?
