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Hey there, my name is Bri.
And I'm Suze.
We're the hosts of Crime and Spirits, a true crime and cocktail podcast.
Do you love spooky stories and all things true crime?
How about themed cocktails?
Do you love those too?
Well, that's perfect, because so do we.
Yeah, in fact, we love them so much we made an entire podcast all about it.
Every week we bring you a new episode that covers a different case or topic of interest.
But first, we'll need drinks.
Don't you worry, we've got you covered there.
Every week we'll teach you how to make a handcrafted cocktail that ties into the theme
or topic in some way.
So you can find us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and pretty much every other platform available.
New episodes roll out every Sunday.
So buckle up and sip tight.
We can't wait to talk some true crime with you.
Bye.
Hey, everybody.
Welcome back to the long awaited return of the cryptic cocktail party show where we have
a few drinks, share a few laughs, take a dive into the unknown.
My name is Dave and I am joined once again by the handsome bespectacled, bespectacled
quaffed hair.
Every time.
Take a speech therapy class.
It's not even a big word, bespectacled.
It's not a big word, but it is.
You just have to imagine you're a British man with a mustache and just say bespectacled.
Oh, I need my bespectacled so I can take a propaganda descript here.
Yeah.
But yeah, welcome back, everyone.
I know we were gone for a while.
I did Squawka Palooza and then I took a couple of weeks off to go home to New Hampshire slash
Maine so we didn't really get a chance to record anything.
But your patience has been rewarded.
Even though he was right down the street.
Dude, it was a dude.
All right.
So all right.
So it wasn't really vacation.
I had to go to take care of my mother in law's dog while my wife and her mom went to Greece,
like a Mediterranean cruise.
And within the first week, we had the better time.
No, she actually had a fucking terrible time.
But the press got luck within within the first week of being there.
My dog shit straight blood.
And I don't mean just like blood in its poop.
I mean, like just like blood clots.
And so that was in the first week of being there.
And then my mother in law's credit card that was tied to her Internet account because she's
a recurring billing declined while I was there.
So I didn't have Internet for like a week and a half.
And then and then like the hurricane came through.
The power went out and it was all bad.
Dude, the last day I was there, I went out with Craig and Colby, got blackout and then
just had like a mental break and just sobbed for like three hours, like ugly cried in front
of Colby and Craig.
It was not a fun experience.
Man, but I'm glad to be back.
Let's talk about possibly imaginary things.
Well, how are you doing, bud?
I'm sure the people want to know.
I'm good.
I held it down during the hurricane.
I can't believe you even lost power.
Well, dude, it's funny.
It wasn't when the hurricane came.
It was like the week before.
It was like the week before when it was like windy and rainy.
Oh, yeah.
And like, no, that wind shattered one of my windows.
It was already cracked, but I was just sitting there on the couch and all of a sudden a piece
of glass just falls next to me like really, really happy.
I like to sit on the left side of the couch, not the right.
Oh, you're a left sider, too.
Oh, left side.
I'm a left sider, too.
So it's whatever's not near the wall.
OK, so in my bed, I'm on my right because the left side goes up to the wall.
Oh, see, if a bed's against a wall, I'm a wall sleeper for sure.
OK, no, we differ in that.
No, the demons can't get you.
No, the demons can get you.
They're coming in through the front door, like your bedroom door.
And now I'm closer to the bedroom door.
So you're so you're faster to get eaten.
I can get to my feet, start throwing fucking hands.
True.
I also meant personal demons, but you know, whatever.
Well, the personal demons have no.
There's no weaknesses except these bad boys.
Yeah.
All right, Luke.
I thought that I thought that drink would shake better.
So I'm going to consider this this episode the kickoff to season two.
In season two, I think we're going to do things a little bit bigger, probably do more multi
partners, I think, because I think the multi partners are good.
It's fun.
I enjoy doing them because apparently what we learned last time is that it leads to a
lot of surprises.
And it's kind of but what is your rule?
Always read the full story before writing a script.
I'm fine with cryptids, but if it's conspiracy theory, we need to know ahead of time if we're
delving into the alt right territory.
Yeah.
If at any point it mentions anything that involves blood libel, I'll be sure to just
cut it off real quick and we won't even talk about it ever again.
All right, man.
Well, so yeah, so to kick off season two, I wanted to do a big one right out the bat.
And Luke, you don't know what we're going to talk about.
I do not.
OK.
Luke, on today's episode, I'm going to take you on a journey to a magical land, one filled
with adventure, wonder and excitement, where the smell of bronzer and stole and red bulls
fills the air like the smell of leaves on a cool, crisp bottom day.
We're going to the gym and doing laundry isn't so much a chore, but a way of life, a place
where you can buy a cannoli, a gun and cash a check all within a single block.
A land where you don't have to.
You see the New Jersey Devil.
Let me finish this.
Hold on.
A land where you don't have to pay to get in, but you sure as shit got to pay to leave
this whimsical and dare I say beautiful place is known to many as the Garden State, but
to the rest of the world, it is known as New Jersey.
Dead dog states.
But we're not going to talk about New Jersey.
We're going to talk about the Pine Barrens and Luke.
Yeah.
All right.
We're going to be talking about the Jersey Devil, baby, but we're not going to talk about
the Jersey Devil sightings.
What I wanted to focus on today is more the origin story of the Jersey Devil because I
feel like a lot of people don't know it and I'll get into it in the script.
But yeah, we're going to talk about the Pine Barrens.
The Pine Barrens are simply the pines.
If you're like on a first name basis or whatever.
Yeah.
Real casual at the ends is one of the largest remaining Atlantic coastal pine barrens in
the northeast, along with the Long Island Central Pine Barrens and the Massachusetts
Coastal Pine Barrens.
Not going to lie, didn't realize Long Island was big enough to even hold the forest, but
I know nothing of New York.
So I just assumed it was all just like, have you ever been to the Pine Barrens in Jersey?
Yeah, I've driven through them.
Well, near him.
I'm not like I didn't go into them.
Nick goes a lot.
It's fucked.
But so it's on.
I hiked the Appalachian Trail and some of that is through the Pine Barrens.
Yeah.
When you enter that, it can go from not a cloud in the sky, bright as day to nighttime.
I believe it.
It is obnoxiously dense.
And terrifying.
I thought it was metal as shit.
Well, yeah, I was stoked.
So I can see where some lore might pop out of that.
Yeah.
So I always wanted to know why it was called the Pine Barrens, because to me, barrens means
barren.
So I looked into it and it gets the name Pine Barrens because, well, it can sustain pines,
obviously, in other fauna lakes.
It's too dark.
Rare pygmy pitch pines, lady slippers.
And it is home to 850 different species of plants with 92 of those being threatened or
endangered.
But it can't really grow much of anything else.
It's just like crops.
So when European settlers arrived, they realized they couldn't grow shit there because the
soil I found out is mostly sand and it's super acidic.
So they dubbed it the Barrens because, well, it can grow stuff.
It's not the soil that we would use to do crops.
So there's like, fuck it, this land is cursed.
It's the Barrens.
That's pretty much what it came down to.
But for what I gathered, it's a pretty beautiful area.
There are rivers and lakes and camping and trails.
Like you said, you hiked through it.
But it's not to say it isn't without its dangers.
You see things lurk in these forests, Luke.
I saw the biggest rattlesnake I've ever seen in my life there.
Really?
Oh my God.
I've seen a lot of rattlesnakes and they usually just like, oh shit, okay.
This thing was massive.
I didn't know they could get that big.
I didn't know that they were in New Jersey.
Dude, they're hiking their way up to Maine.
That's disgusting.
Climate change is fucking shit.
I hate that.
I don't like that.
Oh, we got black widows now too.
Cool.
Well, yeah, well, we need something to take care of the brown recluses that we have.
So maybe they'll battle it out for supremacy.
Oh, but yeah, but there are strange tales that have come out of the Jersey pine barrens
in like first centuries.
The ghost of Captain Kidd is said to haunt the barrens as well as the black dog, which
is like a demonic hell hound that's unnaturally large with yellow glowing eyes.
There's also something called the blue hole, which I guess has legends surrounding it.
It's like a bottomless pool of water that's like blue compared to the brown water that's
all around it.
I don't know.
I know it's fucking stupid, but but there's one thing above all of these that has terrified
locals and outsiders alike for nearly 300 years.
A beast said to be a product of hell itself, a nightmarish chimera with the head of a horse,
the cloven hooves of a goat, the leathery wings of a bat and the cry so haunting, it'll
send shivers down the spine of even the most hardened mountain men.
And as Luke already ruined it, that beast is known as the Jersey Devil.
Now, the Jersey Devil is one of the most recognizable cryptids in the world.
Definitely top five alongside like Nessie, Bigfoot, Chupacabra and the Mothman.
You know what I mean?
Like he's got a hockey team named after him.
Yeah.
And there have been hundreds, if not thousands of sightings over the past 300 ish years,
some credible and some not so much.
But the situation say you saw it.
Yeah, dude.
Everyone says they saw it, dude.
Like it's fucking.
Oh, I really wish I didn't make that up.
I guess that would have been that would have been the best episode of Jersey Shore.
Dude, he just goes back to whatever boardwalk t shirt shop.
He's like, God, you never fucking believed.
I fucking saw the Jersey Devil.
I got a tan from its red glowing eyes, dude.
It's like a fucking heat.
I can't seem to go though.
I got pink eye now, but that's not from the devil.
That's from eating ass.
Well, one fun fact about the Jersey Devil is that it was designated the state's official
demon in 1938, which leads me to believe that there are other demons there.
Or am I making that up?
I'm not.
You're not going to be able to see me for a second.
I'm going to go in the shit out of that.
Philadelphia actually had does say that the Jersey Devil is theirs, too.
Really?
Yeah.
Shit.
I don't like that.
All right.
So I know what I'm going to be a real bitch about at the next town hall meeting.
Like I said, while many people know the name, not many people know of this like fucked up
devil spawns origin story.
So I want you to think of this episode as the Jersey Devil version of like solo or X-Men
origins Wolverine, but better not cheers to Frazier.
Yes.
But just think of it not as a complete waste of time and energy.
Maybe this episode could suck and you could hate it.
I really don't know.
We'll see.
But you want to dive into this thing?
Oh, fuck yeah, buddy.
All right.
So the Jersey Devil's origin story is a bit murky, just like with any folkloric beasts
throughout history, with different sources citing similar events, but with a few details
changed and I'm going to do my best to go over all of them with you.
So let's start with probably the most popular version of the story.
This is the one I'm most familiar with.
I'm sure you're probably familiar with it, too.
And I'm sure those listening as well.
And that story goes that in 1735, a resident of the Pine Barrens, a young woman known,
I say young, I don't really know how old she is, but a young woman.
This was she's already.
She's old bullshit.
She's not old.
A lady.
Well, this is also 1735.
An old lady for the time.
She's twenty seven.
She's twenty nine.
But this woman is known as Mother Leeds, who by now was already a mother of twelve.
She had found out that she was expecting her thirteenth child, which I got to say, that
is fucking too many kids.
Now it's important to note that Mother Leeds and her family, while being related to some
of the earliest settlers of New Jersey, they weren't really living like the lap of luxury.
Her husband was a drunk with a weak work ethic and an even weaker pull out game.
So really quick, I just Googled it.
Hopefully she started having kids at a respectable, like good age.
Probably not for the time.
But if you pumped him out one after another, got pregnant right after the baby came out,
that's nine and a half years to have 13 kids.
That's too many kids in too short amount of time.
So I'm hoping she's at least mid thirties.
But first of all, that just means that that's like half of those kids are still toddlers.
I hate that.
Oh, no, that that that home must be a hellscape.
Oh, it's a nightmare.
But so like I said, her husband was a drunk and he didn't do shit for them.
So when she found out that she was pregnant again, it's safe to say that she wasn't super
stoked on the idea.
So one source I used, which was weird, New Jersey, dot com said that she was, quote,
reaching the point of absolute, absolute exacerbation upon learning about learning upon her 13th
child.
And like, yeah, dude, I would be too.
That is too many fucking kids.
I get to that level when there's a kid screaming in a restaurant.
So like, yeah, that's your whole life times 13.
It was it was at this point that she raised her arms and cursed the heaven shouting, let
this one be a devil, essentially cursing her unborn child, her family and inadvertently
the Pine Barrens for centuries to come.
Now, only a few short months later, on a violently stormy night, Mother Leeds, at this point
completely forgetting that she may or may not have doomed this child with a hex, went
into labor, which is which in the early 70s must be fucking terrifying giving birth.
I can't imagine.
You got to roll a nat 20 to get through that like every single time.
So with her husband and small child army hanging out in one room, Mother Leeds was in another
surrounded by some local midwives who were there to help deliver the baby.
Now, according to legend, the birth went without a hitch and Mother and Father Leeds were the
proud parents of a bouncing, beautiful baby boy.
Were they proud, though?
I don't know.
I don't.
I think they seem more like remorseful parents.
Probably just indifferent.
Yeah, just dead inside already.
Yeah.
She wasn't stoked to begin with.
She did curse this child.
Yeah.
No, I don't know much about giving birth, obviously, or a woman's anatomy, but I got
to assume.
I'll go ahead and say I'm an expert.
I'm a man.
I'm a white man with a microphone.
Let's get into it.
I got to assume that by kid 13, they just got to kind of like fall out of you at that
point, right?
Like you're I can't imagine you're doing much to get this fucking kid out.
100% sure it still sucks every time.
Oh, sure.
It doesn't feel good.
But I mean, like you're you're you're a pro with it.
First of all, to have that many kids by that age in that time period, you have to be a
pro at it.
The midwives have to be a pro at it.
I guess.
I don't know.
But anyways, but but their joy or lack thereof of becoming a parent for the 13th time was
short lived because the forgotten curse mother leads placed upon her child all those months
ago was now taking hold.
The once beautiful and healthy child was now transforming into a nightmarish hell spawn.
A demon made real basically.
So first the baby started toddler.
First the baby started growing at an incredibly rapid rate.
Talons ripped through and replaced its fingers.
Horn shot out of its head.
Its back split open and leathery bat wings unfurled from within hair and feathers now
covering all over the once human body.
And his eyes grew larger and is now terrifying and horrific head and became a began to glow
a bright and dreadful red.
It was then that the beast turned on its mother, just absolutely fucking shredding her to pieces.
And then once it was finished with her, it turns attention to the midwives flying at
them and just ripping them apart limb from limb, all while producing an unearthly and
demonic scream from its gnarled and deformed face.
Now after making quick work of a group of terrified old women, it decided to need a
bit of a challenge and it wanted to take on a more formidable opponent.
And that came in the form of a drunk and 12 terrified children.
So it bust down the door to the next room where its father and siblings were and just
slaughtered as many of them as it could.
Those lucky enough to have survived the encounter just kind of watched on in horror as it mauled,
maimed and mutilated the rest of the family.
And then once it's lust for blood or whatever was satisfied, the Jersey Devil sprinted across
the room, shot up the chimney like a fucked up Santa Claus, destroying it in the process
and leaving behind just a pile of corpses and rubble.
And it escaped into the Pine Barrens, basically claiming the territory for himself.
Obviously, the Jersey Devil is said to still reside in the Pine Barrens to this day, terrorizing
anyone who has the misfortune of coming across it.
And yeah, and that's that's one of the origin stories of the Jersey Devil, aka the Leeds
Devil.
How you feeling, Luke?
I mean, at least it's not like an Oedipus complex.
Like, yeah, he killed his dad, but at least like he just killed his mom, too.
Didn't give her number 14.
True.
Yeah.
That took you a second.
Oh, that bummed me out.
Yeah, so I said didn't I know I know.
But then I in my head, I pictured it like a split second and it was all like a weird
fan art, Deviant Art thing in my head going for a second.
Like I, I yeah.
So yeah, so is that exists?
Is that the story that you're familiar with?
I mean, that's what I was familiar with.
Oh, I don't remember.
I'm not familiar with him killing the kids, too.
Yeah.
I've heard the one where he just fucks up his mom and then bails.
Yeah.
So like I said, that was that's just one of the origin stories, or at least like the most
like metal and awesome version of it.
Like I said, there's a few variations of it.
One version is realistically at this point right now, the only credible witnesses are
toddlers.
Yeah.
Well, I was dead.
Mom's dead.
Midwives dead.
Well, I assume that anyone who lived would have been above the age of seven.
I feel like the older kids would have.
So technically with my math, about 10 years old is the minimum for a surviving child.
Yeah, it would have to be.
Which until you're 18, I don't believe a word that comes out of your mouth.
And that's actually a lie.
Twenty four.
One version states that instead of it instantly turning and killing its mother once it transformed,
once it was born and transformed, mother leads kept it inside and hidden from the outside
world before one day the devil snapped and then killed her before taking off into the
pines.
Another one is pretty much the same.
Instead of transforming, she just birthed like a full on Jersey devil, like fully grown
with horns and wings and shit.
Just fucking right out of there.
Oh, dad's not getting sloppy toppy for at least a couple of months.
Nothing.
Just shut down down there, bud.
Another road closed for maintenance.
Another version that I couldn't find the full story of claims that mother leads was a witch
and that the father of the child was just Satan himself, which is pretty fucking cool.
The last variation of the story and arguably the saddest of them is one of the young woman
from Leeds Point, New Jersey, who fell in love with a British soldier.
And since this was like right around the time of the Revolutionary War, the townsfolk didn't
really take too kindly to their affair and cursed the girl.
And when she got pregnant, she then birthed the soldier's child, which was the Jersey
devil, which is kind of sad.
Do you think when they hooked up, it was called the tea bag party?
We're full grown men in our thirties.
Well, yeah, so so there you have it.
The Jersey Devil's many origin stories.
Hope you all enjoyed it.
I think what I want to do is next week I want to go over some of the sightings and then
also I want to go into some of the theories about who mother leads is, because there's
a few theories about who she was because no one really knows.
There are some that are pretty credible, and there's the one where she says she's a witch.
I don't fucking know about that, but we can do that next week if you want.
You can't be a witch back then.
I mean, you could.
Rumors hasn't come out yet.
Ah, good.
Fleetwood Mac is still centuries away.
That's when it starts.
Yes.
Stevie Nicks really brought witchcraft to the forefront of American society.
Oh, shit.
All right, Luke.
Well, Jersey Devil, what do you think?
Are you a believer?
You are a believer in the Jersey Devil?
Something's got to be fucked up there.
After hearing this story, you're going to be like, yeah, no, this tracks.
Yeah.
Have you seen Childbirth?
It's awful.
Like, I can't imagine in all of recorded history one time it just wasn't worse.
I feel like this is just a cautionary tale that got taken, like, way out of hand.
What's the cautionary tale?
Be better at pulling out?
Yeah.
Or like, I don't know.
OK.
They had little Dickie doing the Trojan ads a couple of years ago.
I guess that's our modern day version.
But no, you've hiked through there.
Listen, I don't talk about it a lot, but I saw some weird shit on the Appalachian Trail
that I can't explain.
So and most of it was right around there.
Really?
You want me to tell the story?
Kind of, yeah.
All right.
So I'm not in New Jersey.
I just crossed over the state line.
Through New York now?
So yeah, I was in New York right over the New Jersey line.
Yeah.
And I'm completely alone.
So set up camp on like the one flat spot that I can find.
And I keep hearing footsteps directly outside my tent.
So my tent at that point didn't have the fly on it.
So I can if I get up and look, I can see around.
It's just mesh.
Yeah.
So I'm like, OK, that's super not chill.
Well, were you were you alone?
Because you don't hike it alone, right?
You got to be.
I'm sure there's a guy party.
No, at this point, I was alone.
OK.
Like no one could be seen for as far as I could see.
Yeah.
So this technically wasn't Pine Barren, but I could see the dark spots that still would
have constituted as a Pine Barren.
Yeah.
I keep hearing that all night.
So the sky goes dark.
So I end up putting my tent fly on, which I can pretty much do from just right in front
of my tent.
Yeah.
The way my tent set up and I wasn't too worried about it like really raining.
And if it really rained, I'd get out.
I'd fix it, which is an important detail.
I didn't really walk around my tent to fix it up.
So I I'm up the whole fucking night hearing random sounds.
And at this point, I'm over 1500 miles through the wilderness.
Yeah, I know what it sounds like.
And I keep hearing stuff that just sounds like it's right next to my tent.
I keep poking my head out and flashing my flashlight around and nothing.
One sleepless night later, the sun comes up.
I get out of my tent and I look and there's footprints that it just looked like they were
circling my tent.
Oh, God, dude.
Over and over.
And I was like, I didn't walk around this site that much.
I put my foot down to where it was.
It was bigger than mine.
I don't like that.
I don't like that one bit.
That was not my feets.
Dude, I hiked so fast.
Yeah, dude, I would have broken down.
I would have left my shit.
I didn't know.
I didn't eat breakfast.
I didn't have anything.
I just fucking shoved my tent in my bag and booked it out.
Yeah, dude.
Fuck that.
But it wasn't cloven.
So that means it wasn't.
It was not cloven.
So that's good.
But what if it's like like canthrope rules where?
Oh, maybe.
Nighttime devil.
Or what if it was the ghost of what was it?
Captain Fast?
Captain Kid or whatever.
That dude was the man.
Oh, wait, no, the ghost Christmas present was the man.
The ghost of Christmas past gave me nightmares.
Yeah, he was a terrifying motherfucker.
It was also the future one, wasn't it?
The one that was like basically deaf.
No, he's just yeah, whatever Grim Reaper.
And I'm talking about the real Dickens with the Muppets.
I thought you were going to say Scrooged with Bill Murray.
The second best retelling.
That's fair enough.
A Muppets Christmas Carol.
And then the ghost of Christmas past, that little redhead chick.
Yeah, they're terrifying.
And then right after her, you get the biggest bro on earth.
The bit is like, let's get drunk and eat food.
And it was like this dude rocks.
All right.
So thank you very much for ever listening, everyone.
Luke, don't ever go camping alone by yourself again, or else you will get eaten by a monster.
I know you will.
You'll do it.
What kind of eating?
What?
Huh?
I said what kind of eating?
You're going to get eaten.
Like from behind?
God damn it.
I love jokes that take you a second.
All right.
Well, before we sign off, I just want to share one quick thing.
My buddy, John Manning, AKA Ging, he just had a massive brain bleed.
He had an aneurysm basically, and he's now in the ICU at Mass General.
His family set up a GoFundMe to help with some of his medical needs.
So if you want, I'm going to put the episode, the GoFundMe link in the episode description.
It'll also be in our Instagram, so if you just want to go and donate, they're about
halfway to their goal.
The goal is 10,000.
They're at 530.
They're at 5.5300.
Jesus Christ, why can I not talk?
So yeah, it's almost like you set up a podcast about drinking.
I know, dude.
All right.
But yeah, just it's it's been pretty hard for them.
So if you want, just head to the link in the episode description.
Also head to the link in our Instagram profile.
And if you want to just donate a buck or two, that'd be really cool.
Like I said, they're about halfway to their goal.
So yeah, I'll put that in there.
Luke, there's also going to be another link, just kofi.com slash Luke, just to buy me a
I just want like a really good sandwich from this one place.
Yeah, it's it's like forty dollars.
So instead of that one, if you could just put it in to the other one.
No, don't do that.
I'd be really mad.
All the proceeds from Luke's sandwich fund will also go to helping out gang in his time
everything that goes into my sandwich fund.
I will double and go into the other one.
All right.
Well, thanks.
The link is a four oh four.
Thanks for everyone.
Make sure you follow us on Instagram and Crypto Cocktail.
Follow us on Twitter, X Twitter.
What is it now?
It's always going to be Twitter.
I don't care at all about fucking muskies, little goddamn fetish for X.
Yeah.
Follow us on Twitter at Crypto Cocktail, Tick Tock, Crypto Cocktail Party.
With that, I don't think I got anything else to plug.
You can follow Luke on Instagram at Spring Heeled Luke and I think the wicked folk and
the wicked folk.
So to go do that.
And with that, Luke, do you want to say bye to everyone?
Sorry.