Jersey Devil: Photographed

In the 90s, many business owners began putting video-surveillance in their establishments. The security footage would be put onto to VHS tapes that could be stored or rerecorded on the next day.

There was a young man who owned a slaughterhouse in southern Jersey. (To spare readers from the uncomfortable feelings that come with this sad fact of life, we will not say what was killed there.)

The family was invested in a few different ventures, but the slaughter house brought home the bacon, so to speak. The owner never stepped foot on the kill-room floor when they were in production.

After the business owner found some “non-production related” injuries on the meat, he installed a camera in the “Last Walk Room”.

There were two possible suspected workers; one veteran employee who had been in prison for a totally violent crime, and one young newcomer. Since the owner did not want to escalate people who kill things for a living, he watched the tapes first.

Turns out, it was the young newcomer. It wasn’t too shocking. The young man was mentally very slow, and usually a pretty nice and quiet guy. The owner of the company had recorded a couple videos. He kept noticing a dark smudge appearing whenever the young handler was working the Last Walk Room.

The owner took the recorded videos to a friend who was in the film industry. The friend directed him to get a higher speed film. The smudge was distinctive, but did not look like anything but dust.

The owner recorded on a higher quality tape, then brought it to his friend. The smudges looked like smoke, that would appear then disappear. This is frame stuck out.

The friend developed a screenshot of the video frame for the slaughterhouse owner.

When the owner questioned the young man as to why he was being cruel to the animals, the young man told him that it was what he was told to do. The young man said whoever would assist him in the Last Walk Room would tell him to do it. Since the Last Walk Room was a one person job, and the young man had only ever been seen on camera alone, the owner was rightfully unnerved by the conversation and decided to drop the issue with his employee.

After the owner's friend gave him the screenshot, the owner made lots of copies and hung them up around his establishment. The smudges and cruelty incidents with the young man stopped.

The business owner’s theory is that the Jersey Devil was trying to bring this young man to have a mental break, by conditioning him to be cruel to things before they died.

The slaughterhouse still exists today.