ANDREW GABLE: The Beast of Bowman's Hill

A few days ago, I received a message from Johnathan Lackey describing a sighting, which took place in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, of something that seems similar to many of the descriptions of the famous Jersey Devil. It's interesting that several reports of the Jersey Devil made during the infamously active week of January 16-23, 1909 were made in Bucks County (in Bristol, Wycombe and Morrisville).

The actual sighting took place in 1977, when Lackey was a resident of Levittown. While driving south of Bowman's Tower (a landmark on the border of Upper Makefield and Solebury Townships) a creature leapt from the right side of the road. The creature was about the color of a deer and roughly the size of a medium-sized dog. It had a body similar in build to a greyhound, a monkey-like face (which seemed to have a sheen to it), a long tail with a black tip, and rather long legs. It seemed to have a pair of owl-like wings, which were kept motionless as it moved across the road, leapt, and glided down the hillside opposite where it had emerged.

The area where this was seen has its own share of weirdness. Although the derivation of the Bowman name is unclear, one of the theories is that it is named for a Dr. John Bowman, a crewman of the notorious Captain Kidd who was believed to have settled in eastern Pennsylvania and supposed in legend to have buried a treasure on the hill the tower is on (there is a longstanding folkloric correspondence between buried treasure and phantom doglike creatures). There was also a copper mine of unknown provenance, but believed to be of German construction, found on the hill by accident in 1854.