A guest blog by Mark Krajnak
Double, double toil and trouble; Fire burn, and caldron bubble…
Those oft-repeated lines are a famous chant from the Witches in Shakespeare’s MacBeth.
Now, if Ol’ Bill lived in New Jersey, he’d not have invoked witches into his writing, but more likely our most famous macabre resident, the Jersey Devil. But since he didn’t live here in the Great State of New Jersey… Do you know who DID write some lines about that infamous offspring of Mother Leeds?
The Bard of New Jersey himself, Bruce Springsteen!
And since today is Halloween…. All Hallow’s Eve…. The Night HE came home… I thought we could take a look at Bruce’s 2008 Halloween offering, A Night with the Jersey Devil, but also how the paranormal has influenced some other aspects of both New Jersey and American music.
Back on October 31, 2008, Springsteen released A Night with the Jersey Devil as a download-only single, accompanied by a video, directed by his long-time friend Thom Zimny, with this prologue on his website:
Dear Friends and Fans,
If you grew up in Central or South Jersey, you grew up with the “Jersey Devil.”
Here’s a little musical Halloween treat. Have fun!
– Bruce Springsteen
(On a side note, here you’ll see that Bruce himself recognizes Central Jersey – a piece of the state of which there is great debate as to whether it even exists…but I digress.)
Of course, growing up in New Jersey, Springsteen would be intimately familiar with the legend of the Jersey Devil.
As the story goes, Mother Leeds, who lived in the Pine Barrens circa the 1700s, had 12 children. Overwhelmed when giving birth to her 13th, she cursed it as soon as it was born. The offspring was said to have wings, a horse-like head, glowing red eyes and hooves, and, once cursed, the cryptid flew up the Leeds’ chimney and out into the world.
The Pacific Northwest has Bigfoot, Point Pleasant, West Virginia, has The Mothman…we here in New Jersey have a winged creature with hooves flying around, causing havoc! Even our state hockey team is named after it!
And this legend is what gave backstory to Bruce’s Halloween song. His roughly-sang, haunting Halloween tale includes lyrics that directly reflect the Jersey Devil legend,
Hear me now!
I was born 13th child, neath the 13th moon
Spit out all hungry and born anew
But then the song takes a dark turn. Unlike the legend, which has the “child” flying up the Leeds’ house chimney and out into the night, Bruce’s tale injects infanticide into the mix.
Daddy drag me to the river tie me in rocks
Throw me in where it’s deep and wide
Later, Springsteen, like Shakespeare, includes a wicked witches element into the song:
They gonna know me wherever I go
16 witches, cast 16 spells
Make me a guitar outta skin and human skull
Here the song pivots into a grand idea of everlasting fame, with help from the occult. Like Robert Johnson, the great Delta bluesman who, as the story goes, met the Devil at a Mississippi crossroads and sold his soul in exchange for mastery of guitar and fame. Springsteen’s song lyrics, too, also hints at the occult as a way to attain fame that would outlive this mortal coil.
Later in the song, Springsteen’s tale pivots again, this time into a bit of an incorporeal love story. Bruce’s Halloween song ends using the same lyrics as found in the 1957 song Baby Blue, by another Rock and Roll (and Rockabilly) Hall of Famer, Gene Vincent:
Well I got a brand new lover
I love her yes I do
She’s my one and only and
Her name is Baby Blue
In fact, Bruce gives Vincent songwriting credits on his Jersey Devil tune. Whether Baby Blue is an actual lover, a wicked guitar, or something else is never clearly defined. But whatever it is, it’s something both songwriters feel strongly about.
Bruce wasn’t alone, or the first, to delve into the New Jersey Pine Barrens for musical inspiration. This past summer, in Director of Curatorial Affairs Melissa Ziobro’s Conversations with our Curator series, she spoke with historian Paulie Wenger. Wenger discussed how the Pine Barrens has a long New Jersey musical history. Wenger discussed life and lore of Sammy Giberson, aka Sammy Buck, a legendary fiddler from the 1800s-era Pine Barrens who, legend has it, got into a musical battle with Old Scratch himself.
As the story goes, the Devil said he was going to take Giberson to Hell unless he could play a tune that the Devil had never heard. Out of thin air, by Giberson’s account, a beautiful tune came to him – one the Devil had ever heard. The Devil let him go.
It can be argued that perhaps the Sammy Buck story was the inspiration, at least partially, for country star Charlie Daniels when he wrote his 1979 hit, The Devil Went Down to Georgia. In that song, a fiddler named Johnny defeats the Devil in a fiddle-off. Realizing he was defeated, Beelzebub lays a golden fiddle at Johnny’s feet. The song was a hit and in 2024, Rolling Stone ranked the song at #120 on its 200 Greatest Country Songs of All Time ranking.
As noted earlier, the Jersey Devil video was directed by Thom Zimny and was shot in Leeds Point, New Jersey, Atlantic County, a hotbed of Devil activity.
Shot mostly in grainy black & white, and washed-out color, and with Bruce clad in a white shirt, black vest and a chunky black cross worn like a tie around his open-collared shirt, the video leans heavily into one of Bruce’s favorite films, 1955’s horror/thriller Night of The Hunter. In the film, Robert Mitchum’s character, serial killer Henry Powell, is posing as a preacher, and is seen mostly in black pants, black jacket white shirt and a black tie. In the video, all that’s missing is a wide-brimmed black hat and Love/Hate tattooed on Bruce’s knuckles to complete the Preacher look.
Zimny’s video, which features shaky camera movement, Bruce rising like a specter from a lake, and horseback riding by Bruce, was included in the deluxe edition DVD of Springsteen’s Working on a Dream album, released in 2009.
A Night with the Jersey Devil seems to have been written just for fun and not for any intended, explicit commercial success. Interestingly, the song, with its stark, creepy lyrics and raspy singing almost sounds like it could have found a home on the Nebraska album, with all its dark, bleak themes.
Or perhaps it IS just a fun Halloween homage to the blues & rockabilly “ghosts” that Bruce talks about in Warren Zanes’ book, Deliver Me from Nowhere: The Making of Bruce Springsteen’s Nebraska, which is now a major motion picture.
While not quite a novelty song in the tradition of Bobby Pickett’s Monster Mash, and only played once in concert – on Halloween night 2012 in Rochester, NY – A Night with the Jersey Devil is again Bruce showing love for his home state….except this time he’s taking us far from sunny beaches of Asbury Park, and instead taking us into the dark history and lore of the New Jersey Pine Barrens.
Mark Krajnak, a proud resident of Central New Jersey and firm believer in the Jersey Devil, recently tired from a career in corporate and digital communications. He’s now focused on his freelance photography. Find his work at JerseyStylePhotography.com and follow him on Instagram @jerseystyle_photography
October 31, 2025