The Jersey Devil Bass River Township, New Jersey May 16, 2007 "You okay, new guy?" Mack asked as he felt inside his backpack to make sure his fire shelter was there. The sky looked dark and smoky, and Mack was already sweating in his protective gear. Blake swallowed hard and surveyed his own equipment. "Yep, all good." It was the first time Blake had been called in for a forest fire, but after hundreds of hours of training, he felt prepared for this moment. An F-16 fighter jet from the 177th Fighter Wing division had deployed a flare during a bombing exercise at the Warren Grove Bombing Range in Ocean County. Thousands of acres of pine trees and brush from the remote Pine Barrens forest had already burned, causing thousands of residents to flee and highways to close. Warm temperatures, dry air, low humidity, and gusts of wind were the perfect mix to create one of the largest fires the area had seen in years.
Evacuations had been mandated in Stafford, Woodland, and Little Egg Harbor townships. Hundreds of people had spent the night in shelters at a middle school in Barnegat and at the Southern Regional High School in Manahawkin. At least 1,000 firefighters from the surrounding communities had been called in to help battle the blaze. Blake heaved his 45-pound backpack over his shoulder with ease and straightened up. Something else entirely was on his mind. "Were you around for the 1999 fire?" he asked Mack. "Yeah," said Mack. "Damn thing started the exact same way as this one, at the bombing range.
" "Did you know that, after the ''99 fire, there was an increase in Jersey Devil sightings?" he asked. "Really?" said Mack. "I guess I don''t know much about that stuff." He slung his own pack of gear over his shoulder and turned to join the group. Blake thought back to the first time he''d heard the story. One of his more memorable and overly dramatic babysitters--probably at her wit''s end with two naughty boys--sat him and his brother down to tell them about the Jersey Devil. He remembered the scene vividly, only now realizing the probable trauma it had imprinted. * * * The babysitter''s voice was a whisper, forcing the two boys to lean in closer to hear.
"In the year 1753, Mother Leeds lived in a tiny cabin, just inside the Pines, with her evil husband and 12 children. They had very little food and were starving. When Mother Leeds became pregnant for a 13th time, she cursed the poor baby that hadn''t even been born yet. She wished for it to be a devil!" Blake and his brother gasped appropriately. "When the baby was born, it was ugly and mutated, with a giant set of wings!" "Whoa," Blake''s younger brother whispered, his eyes wide. "Like a dragon?" Ignoring his question, the sitter gained momentum from their reactions. "Some say the creature attacked and ate the other 12 children before it escaped." "Ate them?" Blake''s brother asked.
"Ate them," she confirmed, "then flew right out the chimney and into the dark night sky. Others say the poor woman cared for the mutated creature, until she died and it could escape into the woods. Either way, the monster was free to lurk and roam." Blake''s brother gulped. "That was a long time ago, right?" he whispered. "It doesn''t matter," the babysitter declared. "For almost 300 years, that creature has chased naughty little boys who don''t listen to their babysitters. It especially likes to eat them for dessert.
" Blake''s brother promptly went to bed without a fuss. But Blake was old enough to see through his babysitter''s attempted manipulation tactics. He begged for that babysitter every chance he got. While his younger brother refused to listen to any more of her campfire stories, Blake convinced her to tell him more about the Jersey Devil every time she came. It became the thing that got his brother to bed--and Blake''s special treat to stay up and listen. A favorite story involved the famous pirate Captain Kidd. He was said to have buried a special treasure in Barnegat Bay, where he beheaded one of his men. That way, the poor soul would be trapped for all eternity as an involuntary guard, protecting the pirate''s treasure.
Becoming lonely in its ghostly duties, the headless spirit befriended the devil child. The two became unlikely comrades, often seen walking the Atlantic Coast together in the evenings. While unlikely in its truthfulness, Blake loved imagining the two outcasts, finding themselves in an unlikely friendship. Those babysitter stories, intended to intimidate, lit a spark and created a thirst for knowledge in him about anything paranormal, with the Jersey Devil remaining a solid favorite. Over the years, he researched the Jersey Devil and found as many of its story variations and reported sightings as he could. Another of his favorite accounts pertained to Commodore Stephen Decatur, a decorated naval officer in the 1800s. On a visit to inspect and sample cannonballs being made at Hanover Mill Works, Commodore Decatur spotted a creature flying through the sky and flapping its massive wings. Setting the cannon''s sights on it, he fired.
The cannonball did no damage, and the creature flew away. * * * Blake ventured into the woods--the very ones alleged to be home to the devilish creature--to do the job that he''d been trained to do. He couldn''t help but think that, if the devil did live in these woods, it must be feeling right at home in the fiery inferno. Maybe that''s why there were so many sightings after a fire. Blake had read that the sightings of the creature reached 30 in the first two years after the fire in 1999. There hadn''t been as many sightings in the five previous years combined. In 2001, when a forest fire burned 1,600 acres, Jersey Devil sightings increased again. Only time would tell if this new fire would have the same effect.
It was surely on its way to becoming more destructive. Perhaps the intensity would set a fire under the Devil himself.