My Encounter With the Jersey Devil
Every Spring, since 1984, the New Jersey Audubon Society hosts the World Series of Birding (WSB). Much in the vein of fundraising walks and runs, the WSB is a marathon aimed at raising money and awareness towards a specific cause (bird and nature conservation). Competitors in the WSB are tasked with identifying, by either sight or sound, as many bird species as they can in a 24 hour period. While there are multiple ways to compete, the top level teams, which often include career birders, collect pledges through their own dedicated website, travel all over New Jersey in that 24 hour period to identify birds, and must be present at the finish line at Cape May Point State Park at midnight at the end of the competition.
Around 2005, a friend of mine (weāll call her Robin) was enthusiastically getting me into birding and proposed we compete in the WSB. She had another birding friend from the West Coast (weāll call him Jay) who wanted to come visit and the WSB was the perfect excuse. We competed under the second level, which allowed for a more casual competition, essentially treating the weekend like an excuse for an intensive birding holiday, without the fundraising and finish line requirements. This was at least in part because of my own inexperience; but I was excited and eager and, equally important, had a car and the ability and willingness to chauffeur the three of us around Cape May County for the weekend.
Robin and Jay spent the days leading up to the WSB mapping and scheduling out the birding spots we would hit, while I spent them studying up on my visual and audio IDās (a harder task back before there were easily accessed videos and archives of bird call recordings online). The morning of the competition, we piled into my little Pontiac Sunfire and headed south.
The original plan was that weād arrive at our hotel in Cape May in the afternoon, eat, get some sleep, and then head out to hit our first spot at midnight. Unfortunately, late in the night, Robin wasnāt feeling well. So we pivoted. Robin would stay at the hotel to get some more rest while Jay and I headed out to the first spot. After we were done, we would swing back by the hotel and, hopefully, Robin would feel better and weād all pile back into the car to continue competing.
Since the start of the WSB is at midnight, the first spot on our list was a prime location to identify the nocturnal birds on the species list ā owls, of course, but also water birds called rails. This brought us to one of the most rural spots we visited that weekend, the kind of rural spot that most people donāt believe exists in New Jersey. Jakeās Landing is an earthen boat launch in the middle of a wetlands creek, thatās accessed via Jakeās Landing Road, a 1.3 mile long dirt road that winds through a white pine forest. While you can see the light pollution from the surrounding towns in the distance, the area immediately around the landing is so dark the only light is from the moon and the vast expanse of stars.
ID-ing rails required parking at the Landing and listening for the birds out in the marshy waters. But since itās such a well-known spot for good birding, there were always other birders standing out there with you, also desperately listening for the rails. The owls, however, werenāt out in the wetlands, they were back in the woods. Which meant that to ID owls, we had to pull over to the side of the road, turn off the car, turn off the headlights, get out of the car, and stand there in the middle of the woods in the middle of the night in almost complete darkness to listen for owls. Now, I am a child of suburbia. I wasnāt used to that kind of darkness. I wasnāt used to just being outside in the middle of the night without a car between me and whatever might be lurking beyond what my eyes could see. I definitely wasnāt used to spending time that deep in the woods, and certainly not at night. Not to mention that just a few years before this, in 1999, The Blair Witch Project had come out to the kind of hype we hadnāt seen for a horror movie since Nightmare on Elm Street and wouldnāt see again until Saw. A found footage film about three college-aged film-makers camping out in the woods to investigate the local legend of the Blair Witch, only to become victims of the Witch themselves, I loved The Blair Witch Project, itās probably my favorite horror movie to this day. But part of that love came from the fact that it scared the crap out of me.
I was not looking forward to owl hunting.
Jay and I left Robin at the hotel to sleep and drove out to Jakeās Landing. We stood around listening to rails for a while; I donāt remember if we IDād any on that particular stop, but we did close out the weekend with at least one rail IDād on our list. Then we drove back into the woods, pulled over, turned off the car, and got out ā¦Ā
And everything was fine. Really. I mean, we didnāt hear any owls, which sucked (spoilers: I wouldnāt hear an owl in real life for another 5 years or so). But I actually wasnāt bothered at all. It was dark and quiet and I couldnāt see anything beyond about three or four rows of trees beyond the road, but it wasnāt even a little bit freaky. After a while we both agreed that we werenāt hearing anything and it was about time for us to go pick up Robin, so we got back in the car and headed back to civilization.
We spent the rest of the day traveling all over Cape May County, hiking around bird sanctuaries and nature preserves, tromping over farms, strolling along boardwalks. I got to see red-tailed hawks and bald eagles and egrets and a purple gallinule that had made its way up to New Jersey from Florida for some reason. We stopped for snacks and meals at the whatever the nearest Wawa was, caught naps in parking lots, saw other birders ranging from casual twenty-somethings like us, little kids on school field trips, and well-aged professionals with camera equipment that probably cost more than my used Sunfire.
Then, as night fell again and the diurnal birds tucked into their nests for the night, there was only one thing left to do: head back to Jakeās Landing to try again for the rails and owls. I wasnāt worried this time, since Iād gotten through the first time without getting even a tiny bit spooked. We drove out to the Landing, and listened for a while; again, I donāt remember which trip it was, but we were only able to ID one rail all weekend. Then we headed back into the woods, pulled over, turned off the car, and got out to listen.
But something was different. It was still just as dark, just as quiet, just as isolated, though this time we had another person in our group. By all rights, I shouldnāt have had any trouble standing out there and listening for owls. But the second I closed my car door, I could feel it. Something was wrong. I still couldnāt see anything past the third or fourth line of trees past the road, but it felt like I was being watched ā we were being watched. The longer we stood there, the more time my imagination had to run wild, the more certain I became that whoever ā or whatever ā was out there, intended us harm. We werenāt welcome. I couldnāt have focused on owls even if thereād been any to focus on, I could only think about the growing feeling in my gut that someone or something was out there in the dark seething at us, watching and waiting.
Finally, just as the feeling was becoming too much, just as I was about to suggest we go, Robin spoke up. We werenāt hearing anything, it was getting close to midnight anyway, we should just head back to the hotel and get some sleep before we had to drive home in the morning. I donāt think I even responded, I just remember snapping open my door, practically throwing myself inside, and turning the car and headlights back on before Jay and Robin had even sat down, so eager was I to be in the relative safety of my little Sunfire. We finished the drive along Jakeās Landing Road in silence. I was perhaps driving a little more quickly than I should have along a dirt road a little too narrow for two cars to comfortably pass, but I was beyond ready to get back to the main road with its asphalt and street lights and unblocked views of the surrounding area.
After having the uneasiness of the darkness washed away by blessed halogen, I finally told Robin that if she hadnāt said something when she had, Iād been ready pull the plug over how freaked out Iād felt. Which was when she admitted that the reason sheād spoken up was because sheād also felt freaked out and couldnāt stand out there any longer. We spent the drive back to the hotel comparing notes, Robin expressing a similar feeling about being watched, and me explaining how I hadnāt experienced anything close to that on my earlier owl hunt with Jay.
Robin and I had both been raised in New Jersey, had grown up surrounded by stories of the Jersey Devil, and knew when we set out on this trip that weād be spending much of the weekend hiking around areas within the Pine Barrens, the alleged territory of the Jersey Devil.
So what other conclusion could we come to than that weād just had an encounter with the Jersey Devil itself?
