THE AKRON DAILY DEMOCRAT — AUGUST 5, 1899
JERSEY SEES A DEVIL. ☆ Leeds’ Monster Reappears Among the Pines. ☆ ATTRIBUTES OF A BLACK WITCH. ☆ A Strange Combination of Serpentine Body, Horse Head, Cloven Hoofs and Forked Tail — Banished For Many Years.
Leeds’ devil has reappeared in New Jersey for the first time since it warned the pioneers of the approach of the civil war. Back in the middle colonial days, says the New York Herald, there lived in Burlington, on the Delaware, the pioneer Quaker settlement of the county, a woman known as “Mother Leeds,” accused of amateur witchcraft, and witchcraft was at its height thereabouts at that time. In 1733 Mother Leeds gave birth to a male child, whose father was later said to have been none other than the prince of darkness.
The child was normal at birth, but before the termination of the tempestuous night of its arrival horrified several old crones gathered about the bedside of Mother Leeds by assuming an elongated, serpentlike body, cloven hoofs, the head of a horse, the wings of a bat and the forked tail of a dragon. The coloring of the horrible creature turned to a dusky brown, and after bepummeling its mother and her terrified companions it flew up the chimney, uttering loud, raucous cries.
Circling about from village to village during this eventful night, the fiend devoured several babies, assaulted women and made for the forest. For some years afterward belated travelers, while crossing the pines, heard and saw it. The pine folks, whose experiences were even more terrible, attributed to it supernatural powers such as possessed by the black witches of English folklore.
