The Jersey Devil v. The Gray Man of Pawleys Island

Bluffton Today column, February 23, 2007

So, earlier this week while grabbing my java at the Bluffton Coffee House, our conversation turned to the topic of the Jersey Devil. (Perhaps that is what they call me behind my back and there was a slip of the tongue?)

So, allow me to revisit my roots and recall the story that was commonplace at many a slumber party. The legend of the Jersey Devil has a number of versions – all shared as a right of passage growing up in the Garden State.

According to New Jersey history, most tellers of the legend of the Jersey Devil trace the devil back to Deborah Smith who emigrated from England in the 1700s to marry a Mr. Leeds. The Leeds family lived in the area of the New Jersey Pine Barrens in Southern New Jersey.

Apparently Mr. Leeds was insistent about having heirs. Mrs. Leeds had already given birth to twelve children, when she became pregnant again. The story goes that Mrs. Leeds invoked the devil during a very difficult and painful labor and that when her thirteenth child was born, it either immediately, or very soon afterwards, (depending on the version of the story), grew into a full-grown devil and escaped from the house.

From that day on the Jersey Devil is said to have haunted New Jersey and even parts of Delaware and Pennsylvania. The most recent account of an encounter with the Jersey Devil was in Freehold, NJ (we used to live there) in 2002.

All this talk of the Jersey Devil got me thinking.

Surely, South Carolina has similar legends. James Brown was the first legend to come to mind, but he is getting plenty of press on his own. So, a little research turned up the story of “The Gray Man of Pawleys Island”.

Here is an excerpt from the state’s website written by Patrick McCawley.
Historical ghost stories abound in South Carolina, but one of the oldest and most famous is the story of the Gray Man of Pawleys Island, a coastal community in Georgetown County. Several versions of this story exist, but all say the apparition appears before major storms to warn the island’s inhabitants of approaching danger.

The oldest version begins with a young woman from Colonial Charleston, the daughter of a prominent family. She had many suitors, but would not choose among them because she was in love with her wild and reckless cousin. Both sets of parents objected to the match and discouraged it by sending the young man to Europe. News soon arrived from France of his death in a duel. Brokenhearted, the young woman went into mourning, refusing to see suitors or other callers.

A year later, a young wealthy rice planter from the Waccamaw area visited the family. A recent widower, he fell in love at first sight with the still grief-stricken girl and sought her father’s permission to court her. The father agreed, but told the young man the sad story of her previous romance. Eventually, the young planter won her hand and the couple married. The newlyweds wintered on a large estate on Waccamaw Neck and summered on Pawleys Island.
During the Revolution the planter served as a captain under Francis Marion. While away fighting the British in the summer of 1778, his family moved to the summer home on Pawleys Island. One evening, a violent storm foundered a ship off shore. The slaves saw one survivor stumble out of the surf. The slaves told him their master was away, but that the mistress would provide him with shelter until the end of the storm. They took him to the summer house and gave the stranger food and dry clothes. When the mistress of the house came to greet him, she fainted. The mysterious stranger cried out and ran from the house, disappearing into the storm. He was her lost love thought dead many years before. It was later learned he died of yellow fever and exposure while trying to find his way south to Charleston. It is said he still haunts the island in the vicinity of this old house, a shadowy "Gray Man" warning islanders of storms and the perils they bring.

One hundred years from now as people travel the Lowcountry in their Jetson-esque flying machines, they will tell the legend of “The Big Mouth of Bluffton”. Who do you think it will be?