While attempting to foil a corrupt construction magnate's plans, a cynical reporter encounters The Jersey Devil; the centuries old demon who has returned with some heinous plans of its own.

SYNOPSIS:

Coverage by Michael Haddad available upon request.

Seasoned and cynical, reporter Nick Wood is experienced in the unscrupulous way developer Vincent Denesino conducts business. Knowing that first-hand and making the little burg of Leedstowne; nestled deep in New Jersey’s Pine Barrens, aware of it will no doubt, put a target on his back. The catch is, someone’s making Denesino the target this time and by the accumulating body count, they’re having a bloody good time doing it.

Everyone is sheepish about the sordid history of this place. George McFarlan the chief of police won’t admit he knows the ugly truth, but he’s convinced that the old Piney, Rudy Shourds, the former owner of Denesino’s property, although missing, is responsible for the recent mayhem. Susan Garrison; the local ecologist is hiding the dark answers inside, and the closer Nick gets to her and her lineage, the more it becomes apparent that things genuinely are not what they seem. So, what is the ugly truth?

Shortly after the American Revolution, a British soldier had fallen in love with a colonialist woman. Labeling her a witch, they were banished to live for years away from the settlement, deep in the woods. Desperate for provisions, Jonathan Leeds dared to venture into town; but the superstitious townsfolk stitched him into the belly of his horse and left him for dead. His wife Jane had followed him, hoping for a mid-wife to aid in the birth of her thirteenth child, but was run out of town and nearly stoned to death. Folklore has it, she damned the child that very night and for two hundred plus years the Leedstowne descendants have been tormented by a malevolent shape-shifting creature.

When Denesino himself is brutally dismembered, Nick uncovers the evidence that Vincent was not only about to carve out a Jersey Devil theme park on government protected land but harvest the Shourds bogs for the purpose of building a massive distillery to manufacture a lethal cranberry brandy from a cursed recipe that Susan’s uncle Rudy (yes, uncle) had been brewing in a backyard still for years.

While McFarlan enlists Susan for a manhunt through the barrens, Nick comes face to snout with her unholy relative and finds himself on a terrifying ride through the pines that ends with a violent crash. Staggering to the cabin of a strange old coot that he assumes to be Rudy, Nick soon finds the old man knows that digging into the sins of others can leave you in a hole filled with your own. Hearing the crash, Susan leaves the chief and arrives at Rudy’s cabin to find Nick unconscious. He quickly comes to. Their trip to Rudy's vast cranberry bog coupled with the reappearance of a terrified McFarlan brings out the whole truth, McFarlan’s gun and Rudy's sodden corpse.

But it's Nick who takes a bullet and sinks below the surface but what explodes from the berries is the Jersey Devil to take his gruesome revenge on the chief.

Susan soon realizes she's been had and upon returning to the cabin, is delighted to find Nick sound asleep in a back room and totally witless to the events that just unfolded. Finally putting an end to the Jersey Devil's unrest, they smash open Rudy's still and exhume the bones of Jane Leeds.