The homeless woman who was confused for the Jersey Devil
A sketch of the Jersey Devil.
The Jersey Devil is a legendary creature said to inhabit the woods of New Jersey. Descriptions can vary widely, but its less common depiction as a hairy, primitive quasi-human being is often thought of as being akin to an "East Coast Bigfoot", both playing into the cross-cultural "wild man" myth of a closely related, yet savage off-shot of contemporary mankind.
The label "Jersey Devil" was attributed to the attackers in the case of two separate maulings in eastern New Jersey, which had really been perpetrated by different generations of feral people living in the depths of the local forests, uncontacted by modern civilisation. Although genetically and physiologically identical to H. sapiens sapiens, they could be seen as Neanderthal-like, being stuck on a roughly Stone Age level of progress, having a basic tribal structure and making use of tools whittled from bones, but seemed incapable of speech and had dietary habits limited to raw foods. The feral people did differentiate themselves majorly from current humans through a display of athleticism, brute strength, great agility, heightened sense of smell, and an above-average tolerance for pain, presumably naturally manifested through necessity in their physically-demanding lifestyle.
1947 attack[]
In 1947, a man named Paul and his family were travelling on a road on the outskirts of Paterson at night when their station wagon blew a tire and while distracted with surverying the damage, the father was pulled into the nearby treelines by an unseen attacker. His wife called the police, who enter the forest by dawn and locate Paul's partially dismembered body outside of a cave. Upon finding a large, hairy figure inside, the officers point their guns at it and open fire when the figure, really a burly naked man, charges them. An autopsy of the so-called "beast man" reveals that his stomach contained human flesh and bones. The case file was kept in the archives, but the original autopsy report later disappeared under unknown circumstances, with only the pathologist's statement remaining available.
Sighting in 1993[]
Another deadly attack occured just outside of Atlantic City in 1993, within the confines of a state park, when Roger Crockett, a homeless man, was found partially eaten with human teeth marks over him. The parker ranger who found the body, Peter Brullet, later stated that some four years prior, he had once seen an unshaved naked man emerge from a treeline in the distance, sniffing at the air before catching sight of the observer and fleeing deeper into the woods.
Although the X-Files unit was initially dispatched, Detective Tomson refused to allow the FBI to get involved, leading to Special Agent Fox Mulder initiating his own, unsanctioned investigation into what he first believed to be a genuine Jersey Devil attack being covered up. Hoping to gain more information by finding out about the victim, he went to a quarter of town which is home to a high population of homeless, and after being given a sketch of the supposed Jersey Devil by a vagrant named Jack, who had found it in a jacket pocket, and told him that he had personally seen the creature lurking around, Mulder traded in his hotel room for Jack's make-shift alleyway bed to verify the claim. That night, Mulder sees the "Jersey Devil" for himself, looking through some nearby trash bags and attempts to go after it when it climbs a fence and scales a building during its search, but is arrested instead by a police patrol for trespassing. Detective Tomson threatens to get the D.A.'s office to indict Mulder for obstruction of an investigation, but undeterred, Mulder continues his endeavor in secret.
A groundbreaking lead comes in when Ranger Brullet calls Mulder about a naked body of a roughly 40-year old male being discovered in the woods, matching the description of the man he had seen four years ago, as well as missing a tooth he had found in a half-eaten rabbit at the time. Considering that this "Jersey Devil" had been dead for around eight months and being reminded of the other "Jersey Devil"'s light-footed acrobatics, Mulder concluded that he was wrong about his initial Jersey Devil theory and that they were dealing with a very human, though murderously feral woman, who was now, driven by desperation due to food scarcity on account of the loss of her mate, scavenging the bordering city's outskirts for something edible. Crockett had likely seen her rummaging through the garbage and followed her as she returned to the forests, subsequently being killed after being seen as a threat in her territory. Further examination of the body is prevented, however, as Detective Tomson was pulling all his connections to avoid a scandal through FBI involvement, and had the transport to the morgue intercepted.
Mulder, aided by Special Agent Scully, Brullet and anthropologist Dr. Diamond, attempts to find and capture the feral woman while she is searching one of the abandoned buildings for food, but the group is forced to split up as Tomson, having been alerted by his officers of another instance of trespassing in the same place and correctly assumed that this was Mulder's handiwork, personally saw to arriving at the building in question with a SWAT unit. Mulder soon tracks the target down inside, but is pinned down after a chase, briefly coming face-to-face with the feral woman, who, to Mulder's surprise, is much younger than he initially thought and does not immediately kill him, actually exhibiting a lot more humanity than he had previously given her credit for, before she is scared away by Scully.
The woman is able to escape back into the state park, where she proves resistant to a powerful tranquilizer dart, but is later shot and killed by the police as she attacked one of the officers when they surrounded her. Although Mulder was angry at Tomson for carelessly causing the woman's death, the latter likens it to an act of euthenasia for a rabid animal. A medical examination not only shows that the woman was in fact a modern-day human, but that she had given birth at some point in her life, which Mulder believes must mean that she had been trying to feed and protect her offspring all this time. This is proven correctly when its revealed that a young girl, the daughter of the feral woman, is seen peeking through a hole in the ground inside the New Jersey woods. (TXF: "The Jersey Devil")