Explanations
Skeptics believe the Jersey Devil to be nothing more than a creative manifestation of the English settlers, Bogeyman stories created and told by bored Pine Barren residents as a form of children's entertainment, and rumors arising from negative perceptions of the local population ("pineys"). According to Brian Dunning of Skeptoid, folk tales of the Jersey Devil prior to 1909 calling it the "Leeds Devil" may have been created to discredit local politician Daniel Leeds who served as deputy to the colonial governor of New York and New Jersey in the 1700s. Folklorist Jan Harold Brunvand wrote that the spread of contemporary pop culture has overtaken traditional Jersey Devil legends. Jeff Brunner of the Humane Society of New Jersey thinks the Sandhill Crane is the basis of the Jersey Devil stories, adding, "There are no photographs, no bones, no hard evidence whatsoever, and worst of all, no explanation of its origins that doesn't require belief in the supernatural." Outdoorsman and author Tom Brown, Jr. spent several seasons living in the wilderness of the Pine Barrens. He recounts occasions when terrified hikers mistook him for the Jersey Devil, after he covered his whole body with mud to repel mosquitoes.
Cryptozoologists believe that the Jersey Devil could possibly be a very rare, unclassified species which instinctively fears, and attempts to avoid, humans; saying that support for their hypothesis includes the overall similarities of the creature's appearance (horse-like head, long neck and tail, leathery wings, cloven hooves, blood-curdling scream), with the only variables being the height and color, and that it is more likely that a species could endure over a span of several hundred years, rather than the existence of a single creature living for over 500 years. Cryptozoologists also say the creature is a species of pterosaur such as a dimorphodon.
One New Jersey group called the "Devil Hunters" refer to themselves as “official researchers of the Jersey Devil", and devote time to collecting reports, visiting historic sites, and going on nocturnal hunts in the Pine Barrens in order to "find proof that the Jersey Devil does in fact exist."
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—Ruth Formanek (20th century)
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“We operate exclusively with things that do not exist, with lines, surfaces, bodies, atoms, divisible time spans, divisible spaces—how could explanations be possible at all when we initially turn everything into images, into our images!”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)