The Devil Hunters - Official Researchers of the Jersey Devil

The Soldier's Second Sighting

Location: Fort Dix, NJ

Date: July 16th, 1992

I have previously reported seeing the Jersey Devil while on a training assignment at Ft. Dix in May 1990. I should relay that I did see the creature twice. I had not believed my eyes the first time I had seen the creature. I swore that in 1990 it was just my eyes playing tricks on me. This time I confirmed my own worst fears.

On July 16th of 1992 I went back to Ft. Dix on another training assignment. I had gotten off of active duty and was now in the reserves. We took our annual leave to go to Ft. Dix to train. I had told the guys of my previous encounter in 1990. Of course, no one believed me. At least, until they saw it with me. We were doing recon duty one night. Actually we were wearing night vision goggles and plotting courses through the terrain in the extreme wooded area south of the post. We were walking what we called the wedge formation in patrol. I was the second man with a point man in the front. There were seven of us all together. We all had the goggles on. We were doing the training in stealth mode being as quiet as we could be. Each of us had an M-16 as well as ground burst simulator explosives and also flares.

While walking down into a creek bed, I heard what I had previously heard in 1990. The same shrill sound of the creature. We all froze in our tracks. We could see everything around us because of the night vision goggles. All of a sudden, I saw movement to our left just inside the woods. We were in a clearing at the time. Just at that moment, the pointman swung around and backed up suddenly towards me. I saw why he had backed up so suddenly. Some big, dark shape had jumped into the creekbed about 70 ft in front of us. The guys behind me came up and we spread to either side of the creekbed to watch. Everyone was in a crouched ready position. We thought it was human because of the way it moved. We knew, however, that no one was supposed to be in the area except us. I told everyone what it was. Everyone was believing me now. The creature started to take a few steps in our direction. We knew now that it was not human, and one of the guys yelled at it. There was a strange quiet, and then we heard the scariest sound I think I have ever heard. The shriek was so loud and eerie that I knew everyone was freaked out by it. The pointman then said that he wasn't fooling around anymore and took out one of the ground burst simulators he had. He then proceeded to pull the fuse and throw it towards the creature before we could stop him. Those simulators pack a real punch to them - about a 1/4 stick of dynamite. He had forgotten that we were all still wearing the night vision goggles also. The blast was so loud and was so blinding that we had to shield our goggles with our arms. We were all cursing and our ears were ringing. We all looked to see where the creature had gone - some of us expected it to be right on top of us. We looked for it but couldn't see anything. We thought that it had vanished, but then we heard it in the trees to our right. We gave chase, but the creature seemed to run very fast and it soon lost us.

I believe to this day that there is a creature running through the woods of New Jersey. I got a good look at it with the night vision goggles. It stands about 5'6" and is very slender. Its head is shaped like a dog with a long snout like a pig. It does have what I think were red or green eyes - hard to tell through the goggles. It had tusks or something jutting from its mouth. Its legs were like ostrich legs with what looked like deer hooves on the ends. The hooves seemed to have some type of claws coming out from them. The creature has arms but to my surprise, it looked like folded bird wings. I have never even seen anything close to resembling this creature. I now believe that demons might exist. There is one in the woods of New Jersey - please lock your doors!!!