The Devil Hunters

Retired former vice president Mike McLeer came up with a possible theory on how the legend originated. His tie-in combines the undiscovered theory and aspects of the legend. Take, for example, the time period of 1735. Perhaps a Mother Leeds did in fact exist who had 12 or 13 children (which was not uncommon for that time). Given her age after bearing so many children, she had probably reached a point close to menopause where birth defects occurred at a greater rate and pregnancies were more high risk. Her last child very well could have been deformed. In that time, deformed children were thought to be "of the devil" and were often times locked away in small rooms to avoid public scorn. (Mothers could have even been accused of witchcraft and would have faced trial.) Perhaps right around this time, someone sees a strange creature in the area, possibly our undiscovered Jersey Devil. The secret of the deformed child may have been exposed at some point, and the townspeople instantly assume, "Oh, it must have been that Leeds devil." The legend is born, and the child is confused as being the Jersey Devil. Throughout the years, the story becomes corrupted to include the actual birth of the creature. The deformed child probably died at an early age (possibly 2 years old, and as we have found there were a lot of Leeds children dying within that age) yet the legend continued on due to sightings and grew into the modern version that we have today.

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