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January 16, 1909, Bristol, Pennsylvania, USA, John Mcowen:

Brief summary of the event and follow-up:

In Bristol, Pennsylvania, USA, on Sunday, January 17, 1909, at two o'clock in the morning, John McOwen, liquor dealer, awakened from a sound sleep by the crying of his baby daughter.

He went to her bedroom to calm her down, and heard strange sounds coming from outside his house on Bath Street, from the Delaware Division Canal.

The noises, he said, "sounded like the scratching of a phonograph before the music begins, and yet it also had something of a whistle to it. You know how the factory whistle sounds? Well, it was something like that."

He went on to say, "I looked from the window and was astonished to see a large creature standing on the banks of the canal. It looked something like an eagle... and it hopped along the tow-path."

This story is related to the "Jersey Devil" and cited as such in several sources; it seems it came from some local newspaper of that time.

Basic information table:

Narratives:

[Ref. mm1:] JAMES MCCLOY AND RAY MILLER:

The authors say that at two a.m., on January 17, 1909, in Bristol, different people saw the Jersey Devil.

Behind John McOwen's house on Bath Street was the Delaware Division Canal. He was awakened from a sound sleep at two in the morning by the crying of his baby daughter. He went to her room to calm her, when he heard odd noises outside, near the canal. The noises "sounded like the scratching of a phonograph before the music begins, and yet it also had something of a whistle to it. You know how the factory whistle sounds? Well, it was something like that." McOwen went on to say, "I looked from the window and was astonished to see a large creature standing on the banks of the canal. It looked something like an eagle... and it hopped along the tow-path."

[Ref. lc1:] LOREN COLEMAN:

The author says that at two a.m., on January 17, 1909, in Bristol, New Jersey, John McOwen heard his infant cry, went into her room to see what was wrong. A strange noise brought him to a window which overlooked the Delaware Division Canal at the back of his house. He told later:

"It sounded like the sound of a phonograph before the music begins, and yet it also had something of a whistle to it. You know how the factory whistle sounds? Well, it was something like that."

He went on to say, "I looked from the window and was astonished to see a large creature standing on the banks of the canal. It looked something like an eagle... and it hopped along the tow-path."

[Ref. mw1:] MICHAEL D. WINKLE:

Michael D. Winkle says that at about 2:00 a.m., Sunday, January 17, 1909, John McOwen, of Bristol, Pennsylvania, was awakened by the bawling of his baby daughter. He went to her room and heard strange sounds from outside, near the Delaware Division Canal, which ran behind the house. The noise "sounded like the scratching of a phonograph before the music begins, and yet it also had something of a whistle to it." McOwen later said: "I looked out the window and was astonished to see a large creature standing on the banks of the canal. It looked something like an eagle... and it hopped along the tow-path."

[Ref. dh1:] "NEW JERSEY DEVILS HUNTERS":

The website indicates that on January 16 or 17, 1909, in Bristol, Pennsylvania, a man named John McOwen was awakened at 2 a.m. by the screams of his baby. He began hearing odd noises out in the backyard that "sounded like the scratching of a phonograph before the music begins and yet it also had something of a whistle to it. You know how the factory whistle sounds? Well, it was something like that."

[Ref. dj1:] DAVE JULIANO:

Dave Juliano indicates that early Sunday morning, January 16, 1909, in Bristol, Pennsylvania, John McOwen heard and saw the "Jersey Devil" on the banks of the canal. When daylight came, the residents of Bristol found hoof prints in the snow. Two local trappers said they had never seen tracks like those before.

The author mentions many other encounters and discusses various theories on the "Jersey Devil". Please refer to his article for a complete read and references cited.

He says Mrs. Cassidy of Clayton thought it was an invasion of scrowfoot ducks, but this bird is much too small to fit [I certainly agree.] He says others believe the devil "is really a sand hill crane, a bird that used to live in South Jersey until it was pushed out by man. The sand hill crane weighs about 12 lbs., is 4 foot high, and has a wingspan of 80 inches. It avoids man but if confronted it will fight. It has a loud scream whooping voice that can be heard at a distance. This could account for the screams heard by witnesses. The crane also eats potatoes and corn. This could account for the raids on crops." [This is in my opinion the correct explanation for many of the Jersey devil sightings]. The author notes that this theory doesn't explain the killing of livestock or why people described the devil as having a horse's head, bat wings and tail, all of which the crane doesn't have.

One Professor Bralhopf said that "the tracks were made by some prehistoric animal form the Jurassic period" that survived underground in a cavern. An expert from the Smithsonian Institute had a theory about ancient creatures surviving underground and said the Jersey Devil was a Pterodactyl. The Academy of Natural Sciences could find no record of any creature, living or extinct, that resembles the Jersey Devil.

Jack E. Boucher, author of Absagami Yesteryear, has a theory in which he believes the devil was a deformed child. He thinks a Mrs. Leeds had a disfigured child and kept it locked away in the house. She grew sick and couldn't feed the child anymore, so it escaped out of hunger and raided local farms for food, but this doesn't take into account the incredible life span of the devil; the child would have been 174 years old in 1909. It also doesn't account for the sightings of the devil flying.

Only a small amount of the sightings and footprints could be hoaxes [Said because cryptozoologist Ivan Sanderson showed some of the footprints were part of some real estate scan]. The Jersey Devil has been seen by reliable people such as police, government officials, postmasters, businessman, and other people whose "integrity is beyond question." Some of the hoof prints may have been hoaxes but most of the tracks are unexplained, especially the ones on roof tops and tracks that ended abruptly as if the creature took wing [Not hoaxes but evidence of a bird like the sandhill crane.].

Another theory is that the Jersey Devil was "the very essence of evil, embodied", that appears before any great conflict. The Jersey devil was sighted before the start of the Civil War. It was also seen right before the Spanish American War and WW I. In 1939, before the start of WW II, Mount Holly citizens were awakened by the noise of hooves on their roof tops. The Devil was seen on December 7, 1941, right before Pearl Harbor was bombed. He was also seen right before the Vietnam War.

Another theory said that Mother Leeds was a witch and the devil was a result of a witches curse. When Commodore Decatur fired a cannon ball at the devil, it went through him and he was unaffected.

The author concludes that whether the Jersey devil is a bird or a demon is still left to speculation.

Points to consider:

Before discussing this particular case, I must make some general remarks about what was called the "Jersey Devil".

In Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Maryland, New Jersey, for nearly two centuries at least, some people give reports of encounters with a "creature" whose descriptions suggested that it was some sort of "devil", though in my opinion it was often merely a large bird in migration there, the sandhill crane.

Ufologically, these stories are mostly not considered as related in any way with UFOs or UFO occupants, in my opinion too they should not be part of a catalog of "close encounters of the third kind".

However, some ufologists included such stories in such catalogs, thinking for some reason it does have something to do with the UFO question. Most of the time, they do not include all the Jersey Devil reports, but only a few of them, maybe due to lack of documentation or maybe for some other reason I do not understand.

So I have to include all these stories, because if some source considers, rightly or wrongly, that this a UFO-related, then it is within my scope, not to immediately and arbitrarily disregard their idea, but to evaluate it, and thus to collect the documentation and the comments about it. And therefore, I have to check and document all reported, not just those selected arbitrarily by these ufologists who believed this is UFO material. This is why you cans see I have a file for each Jersey Devil reports, even those that were never included in the ufology literature.

I should note that most stories are fragmentary, often because the sources write about several observations, and what is said about one report is supposed to be implicitly true for the others. I do not do it that way; I publish case files individually and discuss each on its own merits or issues, and offer a specific assessment for each case. But of course, generalities can be said on these reports. As I do not want to disconnect individual reports from these generalities, I make the following notes.

I want to first list the various explanations offered for the "Jersey Devil" - they could apply its late equivalent the West Virginia "Mothman" which was introduced in UFO books the 1960s:

• "Devil" per se, a creature from hell, the one that Christian traditions talks about. It is not far from the explanations that claimed "witches" made this Devil appear using witchcraft.
• "Devil" in the sense that there would be some sort of "parallel world" that shelters evil creatures who occasionally pop in "our" world. It is further argued that UFOs and their occupants are of the same nature, in an attempt to support a "theory of everything" claiming the existence of some "other worlds" or "parallel worlds or "other dimensions".
• UFO occupants, aliens; some rare ufologists seem to consider that any unusual creature must come down from some spacecraft, whether it is a "Bigfoot", "Chupacabras", "Devil" ou whatever else. A variant thereof proposes that all these creatures are "engineered" by more "classic" extraterrestrial beings.
• Some cryptozoologists put forth that the "Jersey Devil" is some ordinary earthly animal hitherto undiscovered by mainstream science. Most cryptozoologist do not vehemently claim this as if it was a proven fact, but merely suggest it is a possibility amon other possibilities.
• Some cryptozoologists felt that the Jersey Devil may be a "Bigfoot". This generally does not fit well with the descriptions, whereas a known bird fits better. Yes, some reports mention a four-legged creature, but generally with wings too.
• It was suggested the Jersey Devil is a Pterodactyl, the prehistoric dinosaur-bird, allegedly still living nowadays. Or some other survivor of the distant prehistoric times.
• An investigation by cryptozoologist Ivan Sanderson made him explain that there was a real estate scam in 1909 there in which people had created false traces of the "Jersey Devil." Most debaters admit this, but consider, rightly in my opinion, it could not be the single explanation for all the reports. This does not mean that other reports could not be hoaxes too, and some definitely were, as the "Hyman" case or the case of the dead kangaroo fitted with wings.
• Some offer a pure "folklore" explanation. There would never have been any true observation, everything would be purely invented nonsense. It can obviously be suggested that some, if not all, of the stories are of this nature. It is clear that a Jersey Devil folklore has emerged, but it cannot be used as evidence that all reports were entirely imaginary from the start.
• At the time, a "malformed" and abandoned child ("the baby of Mrs. Leeds") was said to be the explanation. But it turned out that the descriptions, the geographical and temporal span, leave little credence to this explanation if it was supposed to be the only one.
• Various birds were named as an explanation for the Jersey Devil. Some are completely unsuitable, too small or too different from the descriptions. However, one bird seems to be an excellent candidate, the sandhill crane. In each of my "Jersey Devil" case file, I obviously check this explanation out. I am neither the first nor the only one to propose it, however, many authors made no mention of the sandhill crane, preferring to highlight the ridiculous "explanation" explanations to support their favorite one. For example they would ridicule the "Mrs. Leeds' baby" explanation to try to convince the Jersey Devil must have been "supernatural".

Now let's see this report.

The witness did not seem to say much, there is no precise description of the "creature". His interpretation and feeling are also undisclosed, we do not know exactly what he thought he saw.

However, he did says it looked as something like an eagle. So, a large bird with a grayish color.

Let's note that this happened at 2 in the morning, thus in the night, in conditions of visibility that we do not know much about, but could have been terribly poor: the night, maybe a great distance, maybe even fog.

It is the sound that seemed to intrigue him mostly. But the sound of the sandhill crane is indeed very strange, maybe even scary.

A bird, big, hopping, grey, with a strange cry, then. No UFO, no aliens, nothing evil, nothing "paranormal" whatsoever. Nothing that can kill the idea that this man may have seen from a distance, in poor conditions, a sandhill crane, whose sound intrigued or even scared him a bit. Who knows if the man, just awakened in the middle of the night, had good eyesight or otherwise put his glasses on?

There is not enough information to make this explanation a certainty, but there is not a single piece of information that would support he saw a real devil, or an alien, or a pterodactyl, "Bigfoot" or anything extraordinary.

"Sandhill Crane" (Grus canadensis) - pictures above - is a species of big crane living in North America, Canada, and in the extreme northeast of Siberia. Some are resident, some are migratory, passing sometimes indeed by the states where the "Jersey Devil" was reported.

Its sound is described as having to do with a French "r" sound, a frog's squawk and a trumpet tone. Male and female sometimes engage in duets of complex cries.

Its wingspan can reach more than 2 meters.

List of issues:

Evaluation:

Probable bird, sandhill crane. Not UFO-related.

Sources references:

* = Source I checked.
? = Source I am told about but could not check yet. Help appreciated.

• [mm1] * "The Jersey Devil", book by James F. McCloy, Ray Miller, Jr., Middle Atlantic Press publishers, USA, 1976.
• [mm1] * "The Jersey Devil", book by James F. McCloy, Ray Miller, Jr., BB&A publishers, USA, page 40, 1987.
• [lc1] * "Mysterious America", book by Loren Coleman, USA, Paraview publishers, USA, page 234, 2001.
• [mw1] * "The Jersey Devil", article by Michael D. Winkle, USA, in The New, Improved Eyrie, Volume 2, #2, Spring 2002, on the web at www.geocities.ws/laxaria/jerseydevil.html
• [dh1] * "Phenomenal Week", web page by Laura K. Leuter, the New Jersey Devils Hunters, USA, 2004, at www.njdevilhunters.com/1909.html
• [dj1] * "The Jersey Devil", article by Dave Juliano at the Shadowlands website, USA, circa 2004, at theshadowlands.net/jd.htm

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This page was last updated on April 3, 2013.