The Pine Barrens’ Devil

The Pine Barrens’ Devil is a collection of campfire stories about the Jersey Devil that take place in different time periods of American history. Each story tells the tale of a traveler who disappeared in New Jersey’s Pine Barrens after encountering the Jersey Devil. 

This is not the Mother Leeds’ 13th child story. That one isn’t real. 

My recurring nightmare is pretty real to me, though. Children believe in monsters. Monsters reveal things. These stories come from a child’s imagination. 

A Childhood With The Pine Barrens 

Children growing up in South Jersey grew up hearing the haunting tales of the Jersey Devil. Almost every kid heard the stories from their parents or grandparents. My father would even bring my brother and I on Jersey Devil “hunts” to try to find him or any evidence of him. 

The Pine Barrens, alone, is a very mysterious place. Despite the population of New Jersey, the Pine Barrens remains relatively untouched and will absorb you quickly, spirit you away from the outside world. The local Native American tribes – the Lenni-Lenape – even referred to the area as Popuessing, or “place of the dragon.” 

When I was eleven years old, my parents sold our house without having another one to move into right away. We spent seven months in my uncle’s summer home in Mystic Islands, Ocean County. 

With no friends and not much to do after the long commute from our school in Hammonton, my brother and I would spend our free time hiking the trails of the Pine Barrens and reading at a small library in Tuckerton. 

I found several books in the Tuckerton library that mentioned the legend of the Jersey Devil. Most were just chapters or short stories on sightings of the Jersey Devil within books about the Pine Barrens or American folklore, but I devoured them all. 

I felt this strange connection with the Jersey Devil related to a recurring nightmare that I had for years…

The Night Terror

Beginning from when I was seven, I had a frequent nightmare. It was always exactly the same – a giant man cloaked in darkness, playing chess in my bedroom. The sound of a heart beat was deafening and would speed up the longer he stared at the chessboard. 

I could not move or scream. I do not think he noticed me there in the room. 

Looking back, I think I always thought of the Nightmare Man as the Jersey Devil. 

Despite my childhood research into the Jersey Devil, I never bought into the idea of him as a goat-like creature. He was always more human to me.

My Nightmare Man was a mysterious entity and to this day, I can’t figure out what he wants and why he is in my room.

Campfire Stories About the Jersey Devil

Back to the temporary stay in Mystic Islands… I started creating my own campfire stories about the Jersey Devil – influenced by my nightmares and experiences out on the deep trails of the Pine Barrens – to impress my younger brother, who loved to be scared.

We also only had each other as friends and not much to do during this time, so storytelling became a creative outlet and entertainment.  

“That’s a good one,” he’d say.

I always hoped for that reaction.

He loved to draw and I remember him drawing a scene from one of my stories on construction paper the next day, which made me feel especially proud. 

Chapter Four was the last story; created when I was in high school. 

The Promise

The Pine Barrens’ Devil was a promise to my brother. He was in his mid-20s when he asked me to write down these campfire stories about the Jersey Devil so that he could one day share them with his future children. 

He had a son in 2014. But my brother died just a week after his son was born. 

A Book About The Jersey Devil

The book took me two years to write, because transferring oral campfire stories to pages in a book required so much more of me. I was no longer writing the stories for my brother. He was the only person who heard me say them out loud and the only person I would trust with retelling them in the same voice and drama. 

Over the course of writing, now as an adult, the stories evolved in detail and dimension. Considerable amount of research went into making sure the stories were historically accurate. I developed the main characters’ identities from real people in the news. You may have heard of them…

After hiring a professional editor for an editorial assessment, I agreed to write a new story – one that my brother never heard – in order to help tie the time periods together. This is Chapter Three. It’s different from the others and is informed by a sadness. 

As we age, we try to forget the monsters we saw in our childhood. Maybe that’s a mistake. We probably could have learned something a long time ago.

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