Tracks in the snow. A thing on the roofs. A devil with a family name.

On Sunday morning, January 17, 1909, people in towns along the Delaware walked out into fresh snow and found tracks they could not explain. Small and hoof-like, they crossed yards and rooftops and stopped in the middle of open fields. By the end of the week schools had closed, posses were out with shotguns and dogs, and the Philadelphia Inquirer had a headline for it: "WHAT-IS-IT VISITS ALL SOUTH JERSEY."

In the Pine Barrens the thing already had a name. The story said it was the thirteenth child of a woman called Mother Leeds, born in 1735, and that it flew up the chimney and never left.

The Leeds Devil sets the two stories side by side, the birth that gets retold and the week that can be documented, from Benjamin Franklin's almanac feud to the hoaxers of 1909.

Strange Shorts No. 4.