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JANUARY 21, 1909, CHESTER, PENNSYLVANIA, USA, SOMEONE, AND POLICEMEN:

Brief summary of the event and follow-up:

The authors of a reference book about the "Jersey Devil" sightings say that on January 21, 1909, around 10:30 p.m. in Chester, Delaware County, Pennsylvania, USA, a respected citizen heard strange noises on the shed roofs of Robinson's Brickyard.

The clatter quickly changed to a scuffling sound in the middle of Eagle Street and suddenly out of the fog "there arose a strange-looking animal - half beast and half bird - with wings like a bat and a long tail the end of which looked like the point of an arrow."

By the glare of the electric lights, the man observed the creature flying low through the fog along Eagle Street.

As it neared the elevated railroad, "it seemed to rise like a big airship" and soared across the tracks just as the northbound express train was passing, causing the engineer to blast repeatedly on his whistle.

The "Jersey Devil" was then seen fluttering over City Hall, and it landed near the school at 3rd Street and Jeffrey Street.

Several policemen then chased it up to Commerce Street, where it disappeared into the fog in the backyard of Thomas Marshall's funeral parlor.

While the policemen chased it, they found numerous footprints, and neighbors reported hearing the flapping of large wings and the racket of strange feet.

Basic information table:

Narratives:

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

The authors say that on January 21, 1909, around 10:30 p.m. in Chester, Delaware County, a respected citizen heard strange noises on the shed roofs of Robinson's Brickyard. The clatter quickly changed to a scuffling sound in the middle of Eagle Street and suddenly out of the fog "there arose a strange-looking animal - half beast and half bird - with wings like a bat and a long tail the end of which looked like the point of an arrow."

By the glare of the electric lights, the man observed the creature flying low through the fog along Eagle Street.

As it neared the elevated railroad, "it seemed to rise like a big airship" and soared across the tracks just as the northbound express was passing, causing the engineer to blast repeatedly on his whistle.

The Jersey Devil was then seen fluttering over City Hall, and it landed near the school at 3rd and Jeffrey Street.

Several policemen then chased it up to Commerce Street, where it disappeared into the fog in the backyard of Thomas Marshall's funeral parlor.

While the policemen chased it they found numerous footprints, and neighbors reported hearing the flapping of large wings and the racket of strange feet.

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" or 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 among 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 case has multiple witness - none is named - but as there is no established there is the possibility that the "half animal half bird" creature was in fact several creatures of the same or a different species.

A key point is that there is no indication of sighting distance, but we do know that it was in the night and in the fog, thus, poor observation conditions.

The description is poor, reminiscent of a large bird, only the tail "the end of which looked like the point of an arrow" is strange. The qualification "half animal half bird" does not mean much: a bird is an animal, so were are left with just a bird.

These people may have spotted, like many others then and there, a sandhill crane,

We have no UFO, no aliens, nothing evil, nothing "paranormal" whatsoever. Nothing that could kill the idea that the men may have briefly and poorly seen the scary-looking sandhill at a time when everyone talked about the "Jersey Devil".

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

Finally, I need to note that another story has the detail of the tail ending in an arrow point, at the same date and curiously also in "Chester" but in Maryland instead of Pennsylvania. I suspect that this other case is the same as this one but wrongly located.

"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 wingspan can reach more than 2 meters.

List of issues:

Evaluation:

Probable confusion, bird, sandhill crane.

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 90, 1987.

Document history:

Authoring

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This page was last updated on July 16, 2013