JERSEY DEVIL (National Parks Campfire Stories Collab)
“JERSEY DEVIL (National Parks Campfire Stories Collab)”
REQUEST FOR WRITERS: Take a look at the direction below and rewrite this story (in 400 words or less) for our National Parks’ Campfire Stories collaboration.
You can check out the collaboration HERE.
To see all the other Campfire Stories we’re working on check out this album HERE.
Contribute your versions HERE, or make suggestions in the comments below this record.
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DIRECTION
Check out the story below as a reference. We’ve also been looking at contributions from RodonnaCarter + CKills + yours truly.
We’re thinking that, although we have a lot of good stuff in the contributions that have come in, we haven’t yet landed on the right structure.
So, check out our proposed structure and some notes below - let us know what you think, and show us how you think this one should play out!
- Let’s start with the story/scene of Deborah Leeds and the birth of the Jersey Devil. We think we’re looking for a gothic literature, candle-light flickering + suspense type scene, rather than graphic horror + gore + descriptions of baby-eating. “It was a dark and stormy night” sort of thing. What can we do to make this really atmospheric?
- Perhaps we don’t include a direct description of the Jersey Devil here in this first scene. Maybe we just allude to it: “nobody knows for sure what happened that night, but when neighbors came running with their pitchforks + torches and found the Leeds family, there was barely anything left of them… They found scratch marks on the walls and chimney, through which the beast had escaped… etc.” - really build up the legend.
- Then the second half could open things up a bit - with reported sightings in the years since then - reports of a beast roaming around, children disappearing. Through these sightings we could describe it and build a picture: “forked tail, hooved feet, goats head etc.”
- And then we could end on a cautionary note - “it still roams the forests of Pinelands National Park so keep an eye out”
Feel free to rewrite the whole thing from scratch, or combine elements from the reference records, or just comment with your suggestions and feedback.
Be sure to resource this record so everyone can find your work - and contribute it to the collaboration as well! CONTRIBUTE HERE
Thanks!
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STORY - JERSEY DEVIL
Childbirth in the 18th Century was an often dangerous affair as devout Quaker Deborah Leeds could testify to, having already given birth twelve times. The occasion of the birth of her thirteenth child one stormy night in 1735 in New Jersey however was dangerous, not just for the mother, but for the community at large.
Nobody knows for sure what happened that night in the area now known as Pinelands National Reserve but the screams and frenzied activity were heard far and wide and when neighbors - brandishing both torches and pitchforks - discovered the Leeds family there was barely anything left of them.
Bloody scratch marks across the walls and up the chimney suggested that whatever evil had visited here - or was born here - had now escaped.
Panic reigned. Sightings of the alleged beast that had caused such brutality were numerous. Some said it had cloven hooves, other that it flew with giant bat wings. A goat’s head and a forked tail were common factors in the sightings. Reports of mutilated livestock were a daily occurrence.
And then the children started to go missing.
Over the years there has been numerous confirmed sightings of this Jersey Devil, including by Napoleon’s older brother Joseph, the deposed King of Spain who was living in exile in Bordentown and came face-to-face with the beast and lived to tell the tale, although he did decide to return to Europe soon after.
Others have not been so lucky, especially on the Batona Trail in the New Jersey Pinelands National Reserve where most sightings of the Jersey Devil is most often sighted. Or heard. If you listen really carefully you may be lucky enough - or unlucky enough - to hear its distinctive wail. Although sightings are relatively frequent, reports of human abductions are now thankfully rare, occurring at regular intervals of 66 years, the last confirmed case being in 1950.
