The early risers were the first to find them, strange hoof-shaped prints in straight lines, passing over rooftops, through walls and covering huge areas of land. A set of the prints were even supposed to have bridged a two mile span of the river Exe, continuing on the other side as if the creature had walked over the water. a feeling of unease had spread through some of the population, who watched carefully to see if the strange footprints would return...
...It soon became clear that the phenomenon was widespread, and some of the more scientifically minded examined the prints in detail. One naturalist sketched some of the marks, and measured the distance between them, it was found to be eight and a half inches. This spacing seemed to be consistant wherever the tracks were measured. It was also noted that the way in which they were set out, one in front of the other, suggested a biped rather than a creature walking on four legs.
One of the most celebrated British supernatural creature stories has to be the tale of the Devil’s Footprints, which comes from Devon. The story dates from 1855 and relates to a geographic area that spans over 100 miles, starting in Exmouth and continuing to Dawlish. The tale was said to begin on the night of 8 – 9th February 1855. The night had been particularly dark. Heavy snow clouds blocked out the moon and its light and there were no stars to be seen in the sky. In a rural area in a pre-electrical age, this resulted in a deep, unrelenting darkness, a shroud of black, in which human vision was rendered useless. The night was accompanied by a light snowfall, perhaps a couple of inches deep, which was still laying on the ground the following morning.
When villagers in the area of Exmouth awoke on the morning of 9th February, they discovered strange cloven-hoofed footprints running through their neighbours. The tracks were first witnessed by a young farmhand, who mistakenly believed an animal had escaped from his master’s barns. However, when he made some older residents aware of the tracks, they were shocked to see that the prints were those of a bi-ped and not a four legged farm animal. The creature that had made these tracks walked like a man, striding and upright. Terror gripped the village and rumours spread quickly that the area had been visited by some diabolical creature during the night. A group of intrepid local residents took-up arms and decided to pursue the creature that had made the tracks, following the footprints from where they seemed to begin (near some local woodlands).
The tracks weaved and winded through the local village. On occasions they would lead right-up to the doors or windows of local houses, then turn away again. More terrifying was the fact that whatever made the tracks appeared to be totally unimpeded by any physical obstacle. The tracks would lead to brick walls and buildings that were many metres tall. Inexplicably, they’d continue on the opposite side of the obstacle, as if their maker had leapt over whatever had confronted it with one enormous hop. The tracks left the village and continued for many tens of miles through open countryside, until they reached the River Exe, which is a major British river. Astonishingly, the tracks appeared to continue on the other side of the river, extending for many more miles.
No one really knows how far the tracks went. The villagers are thought to have given up pursuing their prey when they reached the Exe. The discovery of the tracks on the other side had been made by a separate party on the hunt for the same creature. According to some, the tracks extended all the way to Torquay, or even Weymouth (in the county of Dorset). Understandably, the incident sparked panic throughout Devon and the surrounding area. Religious leaders were quick to advise their flocks that the evil was walking the earth, urging people to be vigilant to the tricks and temptations of the Devil.
The Devil’s footprints became big news at the time. The story is 156 years old. Many of us have learned recently that the now departed News of the World was 168 years old when closed down. Even back in the early Victorian times, ambitious newspaper proprietors were not beyond reporting sensational stories in order to shift their copies. The public interest in the case led to a flood of similar stories being brought to light, as well as claims from several reasonably credible witnesses that they had actually seen the Devil roaming the countryside on the night the tracks were made. One report from Scotland claimed that residents of the highland area of Glenorchy had repeatedly witnessed such tracks. The Times described the Scottish tracks as being made by an animal which was “unknown at present in Scotland” and not like those of any other quadruped, being closer in pattern to those of a biped.
Interestingly, this story emerged again in 2009, when, on the morning of 12th March, residents of Exmouth were again met by mysterious and unidentifiable tracks, which had been made overnight by some unknown creature. On this occasion, the panic was less and was confined to the local area. Nonetheless, the 2009 incident left many questioning whether Devon was playing host to some diabolical creature. It’s at this point that I should confess a personal interest in this story. I am not local to the Devon area, but recently I heard a related story, coming from an area near Brighton, which was based on an account given by two very credible witnesses.
In November 2007, a middle-aged couple from Shoreham-by-Sea, West Sussex, were driving home from a restaurant in the near-by village of Bramber. It was about 10.00pm and the night was particularly dark. The couple are both respected local residents. The husband owns a local successful business and the wife is a school mistress at a local prestigious public school. The road they were travelling on mainly runs through farmland and countryside, passing only an abandoned cement works and one row of Victorian houses as it follows the contours of the near-by River Adur. As the couple’s car approached an area of woodland, they noticed some movement in the undergrowth some distance in front of them. They had initially thought they’d spotted a deer. However, they soon realised that it was no deer, when the creature burst from the trees into the full glare of their headlights. They described seeing a cloven-hoofed, incredibly thin, bearded being, resembling Pan (or Mr Tumnus), who trotted into the centre of the road, stopped, turned and looked straight at the approaching car. They claimed the creature let out a bone-chilling cry, “halfway between a tyre’s screech and a cow’s moo”. It then disappeared back into the undergrowth. Particularly terrifying was the couple’s description of the creature’s movement. They stressed just how thin and stick-like the entity was, with movement like that of a stop motion figure from an old claymation movie, being both disjointed and angular.
I can’t overstate just how well respected this couple are. They are known personally to me and they are definitely not the kind of people to indulge in fantasies and then make them known. They were convinced by what they saw and will accept no challenge to their account.
Interestingly, their sighting was only a couple of miles from Brighton’s famous Devil’s Dyke. Reputably in local folklore, the Dyke, which is a glacial gorge formed at the end of the last ice age, was dug by the Devil, who wanted to flood Christian Sussex by creating a deep channel to the sea. Obviously, the science of geology mortally wounds this supernatural explanation of the Dyke’s presence, but scratch the surface of the myth and things become more interesting. For many centuries, the Dyke has been the location of Devil sightings. The sightings are thought to be the origin of the Devil’s Dyke myth and not vice versa. Sometime between the late night hours of Feb. 8, 1855, and six o’clock the next morning, something extremely strange took a walk through the southern villages of Devon in England. When the residents awoke, they discovered a trail of hoof-like prints in the freshly fallen snow.
The prints appeared in two lines eight and a half inches apart, one slightly ahead of the other, as though they had been made by a creature walking on two legs. The tracks went in a nearly straight line and were apparently unhindered by obstacles, approaching the walls of houses, narrow pipes, even a river, and reappearing on the other side. In some places, the tracks went over obstacles instead of through them, climbing up walls and over roofs and haystacks. According to eyewitness accounts, the tracks extended for a hundred miles, vanishing as abruptly as they had appeared. Once this strange occurrence was picked up by the newspapers, more and more prints in the area of Devon were reported.
Scientists and intellectuals of the time were unable to explain the cause of these prints. It has since been suggested that they were the result of an unusual pattern of freezing and thawing, but that explanation can’t be sufficiently proven until the phenomenon occurs again. Several members of the clergy, however, suggested that the prints had been made by Satan, as the Devil was said to have cloven hooves. It also definitely explained how the creature that made the prints was able to navigate obstacles the way it did. The clergy’s explanation stuck in the popular imagination and the phenomenon was dubbed “The Devil’s Footprints.” Apparently Satan gets around a bit, as these tracks have been reported in other parts of the world as well, though none recently. Should they show up again, perhaps scientists will be able to come up with a non-supernatural explanation for the prints. Then again, maybe they won’t.
My most vivid recollection of the matter is in connexion with the home of friends living at Exmouth. Here the footprints came up the front garden to within a few feet of the house, stopped abruptly, and began again in the garden at the back within a few feet of the building, just as if the animal, bird, or, adopting the popular idea, demon had made a gigantic leap.
They were in single file, the mysterious creature. One track especially attracted attention, which went direct from the Vicarage to the Vestry door [7]; other tracks were found leading straight up to dead walls, and again found on the other side, many were found on the roofs of houses;
In the centre of the shoe the snow remained intact, and only the outer edge was clearly marked. A Dawlish correspondent corroborates that the mark was rumoured to be cloven....... presumably it disappeared into the sea.
My Dog barked that night and so did the dogs of my neighbours where marks were seen.
There is scarcely a field or an orchard or Garden where they were not - all in a single line - under hedges ... doubled: but afterwards, single. "The same was observed more or less in all the adjoining parishes. "At Exmouth (distant 5 miles) I have been informed by those who saw them there were marks in the middle of a field, insulated without any apparent approach or retreat and all in one direction - & so they were in many gardens closed with high walls - in one the marks appeared under a wall to the end of a garden - & then turned round & returned half the length.
At a house at Marley near Exmouth, marks were seen on the Cill of a window two stories high. From all these and much more information which I have gathered from credible eye witnesses, one would suppose that some winged creatures alighted from above - traversed a certain space .....
Mr Ellacombe said that the trail led up to a garden door, which was closed, then appeared the other side of it and ran all round the garden.
From Theo Brown, 'A Further Note on the Great Devon Mystery' (Document 23). a straight line as in Mr D'Urban's drawing in the Illustrated London News of 24th February, 1855.
"...a track of blurred, formless, but distinct footprints in new-fallen snow that trailed along the garden and ended abruptly.
They could not have been made by human being [sic] or by any other known form of life, and they stopped in a way that defied explanation." Montague Summers, in The Vampire in Europe (1929), mentions an odd case in his introduction.
In June, 1918, a lady took a small house "at Penlee, South Devon, not far from Dartmouth" (there is no Penlee that I know of in South Devon; either Penlee is not the name, or Cornwall must be intended). The house seems to have inspired awful nightmares, and one morning, the mark of a single cloven hoof was found in the middle of the parquet flooring; there being no means of entrance for anything so large.
Two interesting cases should be quoted from the correspondence which followed the Great Devon Mystery, in ILN of 10th and 17th March, 1855 [19]. Near the Galician border of Russian Poland there is a hill, called Piashowar gora, which is said to mean Sandhill. Every year, footprints similar to those in Devon are found, running round the side of the hill. And even where there is no snow, the marks are seen on the sand!
Labrador is the scene of yet another phenomenon. When Biorn Heriolfson, from Iceland, discovered Labrador in AD 1001, he is supposed to have found there a bird with only one foot which was shaped like a hoof, slightly divided. He named this strange object a "Uniped".
It appeared suddenly in the middle of fields around Exmouth.
The print varied considerably in size Exmouth,
The next morning when the honest Devonians looked out of their houses they were amazed to find a seemingly endless track of what looked like donkey's hoof marks, zig-zagging across gardens and fields. Some of the more curious followed the tracks a little way. Apparently every mark was exactly the same, and they proceeded in a dead straight line keeping the exact distance of 8 V* inches apart.
What was even odder was that no obstacle made the slightest difference. The creature (whatever it was) on coming to walls simply continued the other side as though it had walked straight through.
A shed would be entered at the back wall and the footsteps emerge again the other side.
Houses were walked over - you could see the marks going over the roof-tops.
Low bushes were walked under, and a six-inch drain pipe passed through.
I think that the tracks were not all laid on one night but, first appearing on the night of 8 February, were found over a period of some days or even weeks.
Of course at that time - and ever since people have discussed this mystery, and all the great naturalists have been consulted. However, it can safely be said that no one has ever propounded a solution that covers all the points.
Neither of these could have jumped a fourteen-foot wall or squeezed through a six-inch drain pipe, let alone have left clear marks on the sill of a second-story window!
In any case the mysterious creature that hopped on one leg the best part of a hundred miles in one night was the basis for a favourite yarn.
Here opinions differed sharply. Had it one leg or two? If two they were not directly in front of each other.
He made careful drawings of the tracks and had found that the marks were not continuous, but appeared sporadically, e.g. suddenly in the middle of a field, with flurry surrounding them, as though made by a large ice-laden bird struggling to take off.
Some were certainly made by a stray donkey (donkeys are the only animals that plant their feet in an almost perfect single line).
Other mysterious tracks are reported from all over the world, and England is full of its share.
About the time of our 'visitation' it was said that another track was laid from Dorset right across England into Lincolnshire; attempts have been made to link up the two, but not convincingly. Furthermore, a Dartmoor man has told me that there is a tradition of another track coming down from North Devon across Dartmoor to the southern side. In 1955, I was talking to a group at Ipplepen and mentioned our famous mystery, and they at once told me there had been footprints seen that February at a house in the village. So I looked in. It is a very old house, said to have been a meeting house for Orange supporters. It is L-shaped and thatched. One day in February, the lady of the house saw it was snowing very heavily; she was a little anxious, as the roof timbers were none too strong, so she went out to see how thick the snow was lying. It was about four inches thick, and across the roof appeared a steady single track exactly like that made by a woman's shoe, going up to the ridge and over. She went indoors, not wishing to get wet, and to her astonishment found her two dogs, a Golden Labrador and Staffordshire Boxer, were looking frightened and refusing to enter the kitchen. After two hours the dogs relaxed and all was peace.
Two other people saw the footprints. A hundred years, almost to the day... Finally, one last mystery. After I had written two papers for the Devonshire Association, and quoted the careful reports of the Reverend H.T. Ellacombe, I was told that the dear old chap had been seen in the vicarage drive. I asked, rather sceptically, how in the world he could be recognised a hundred years later and was assured that the percipient had his portrait and knew just what he looked like! I have not heard that he has been seen around since.
Document 26 Daily Mirror. 17 Jan 1983 OLD CODGERS [Letter column] R.C. Hope, Avenue Mansions, Blackheath Grove, London SE23, writes: The other day you re-published the old story of the "Devil's Hoofprints" - the single line of hoofprints which appeared in the snow in South Devon in 1855 - and commented that it is one of your favourite mysteries. But there is no mystery. It never happened. It was merely a story in a newspaper, that is, a pack of lies.
Standards of journalistic integrity were not as high then as they are, I hasten to add, now. Who could possibly have followed such a trail in the snow over a hundred miles? It would have been obliterated within three hours by traffic of people and animals. Oh, certainly there was a single line of prints - on the front lawn of a town-bred parson.
A naturalist identified one of the prints as that of the hind foot of a badger - and that is what it was. Other "reports" from other townies in the circulation area of the paper were probably of other animals. The explanation is that most animals when walking on a yielding surface such as snow instinctively place each foot in line with their nose, carefully testing each step. They then place the rear paw in the print of the opposite forepaw as it is raised. It is beautiful to watch. .
The Illustrated London News devoted a long description and an engraving to the foot-prints. Those seen in this neighbourhood were traced for a considerable way across the fields, and at the Longman [1], and again at the Crown, near the house of Abertarff [2]. Many of our townsmen went to see the phenomenon, and one brought home a lump of the snow in which the footprints were strongly impressed, exhibiting it as a very curious and mysterious occurrence. The cloven hoof had an ominous and by no means prepossessing look!
Fortunately, however, an observant naturalist had already examined the foot-prints and decided the point. Some animal, probably a hare or a polecat, had traversed the field at a gallop •with its feet close together. The paws had become slightly filled with snow, so that only the round form was impressed, and the open space between them left a slightly-raised and pointed mark like the centre of a cloven hoof. This gentleman followed a track till on an ascending slope the animal appeared to have slackened its pace to a trot, and then left upon the snow distinct impressions of its four feet. Further on, the animal seems to have sat down on the snow, and again its four feet were distinctly traced.
Document 33 The Illustrated London News. 17 March 1855 FOOT-PRINTS IN THE SNOW (To the editor of the Illustrated London News) I beg the favour of you to insert in your newspaper the following fact, upon the authority of a Polish Doctor in Medicine living in the neighbourhood:- On the Piashowa-gora (or Sand-hill) - a small hill on the borders of Gallicia, but in Russian Poland every year are to be seen in the snow the same foot-prints as those seen in Devonshire, in a single line round the hill, at a few inches and regular distance from each other; no mark of a beginning or end being distinguished.
It is universally attributed by the inhabitants to supernatural influence. The same foot-prints are occasionally visible in the soft sand with which this bare hill is covered.
C.C.C. Heidelberg, March 12th, 1855 Document 31 Doubt [4] No. 15, Summer 1946 Our Cover The "devil's hoofmarks" on our cover come from HFFS Russell ... He observed them at first-hand, and this is the way he tells about it, in his letter of 2-9-16 FS: [5] "Wonderfully, they were first seen by me, and I could hardly believe my own eyes. They were spotted on a snow-covered hill behind the Chateau de Morveau, near Everberg, which is partway between Brussels and Louvain, Belgium, at 10pm on January 10th, 1945.
The snow varied from two to four feet in depth [6], and I traced the prints for half a mile in a north-westerly direction until they entered a tiny wood, or copse, where abruptly they disappeared.
A thorough search of the site of the copse revealed no hole, lair or tree where anything might have concealed itself without leaving some evidence in the snow. I Daily Mail. 13 December 1922 A TEST FOR ELDERLY READERS To the Editor of the Daily Mail. Sir -1 was living in the Cotswolds with my father during the years 1852-3. A prolonged frost and very deep snow occurred in one of those years and strange tracks were seen in the snow, passing over the roofs of houses. I remember seeing the weird spoor. Various opinions were given, as the marks then traced the prints in the opposite direction, south-easterly, for nearly two miles, grossing several fields and a small stream, [until they faded out on a hillside thick with windblown snow which had drifted over the prints for an unknown distance. But the footprints didn't reappear on the crest of this hill, nor was there any sign of them on the opposite sheltered side. "The prints measured about 2 V2" in length by IV2" wide, were spaced in pairs directly one behind the other (see sketch), the distance between prints of one pair being about nine inches, and between two pairs twelve to fifteen inches.
They ran in a dead straight line, one print immediately behind another, without slightest misplacement to left or right. Judging by their depth, whatever made them was at least the weight of an Airedale dog, a good medium-sized creature of some sort.
[7] "Due to frost, and lack of further snow, the prints remained visible for two days, during which time I drew the attention of several people to them, including one Arthur Davies, of Sheffield, Victor Beha, of London, and some local Belgians. Unfortunately, all were singularly lacking in curiosity, Beha suggesting that they'd been made by a gyroscopic rat - which is probably as good a guess as that of any dogmatic scientist. Local Belgians couldn't think what they might be, never having seen the like before.
Three cameras were available, but not a film to be got for love or money, otherwise I could have got several good photographs of this phenomenon. (Films were hell on the continent - the number of useless cameras being toted about would break your heart.)
"Looked to me somewhat like the prints of a goat, and there were odd goats in that part of Belgium - but goats don't step leaving single-line spoor.
Unfortunately, the prints weren't as dramatic as Gould's - they didn't run for miles over several counties, and they didn't hop across rooftops. I remain firmly convinced that to me has been vouchsafed a sight of a typical piece of Forteana and that I've seen the inexplicable. But I wish I'd been able to photograph them as Smythe did those prints of the Abominable Snowman in the Himalayas.
Sir, During the hard frost at the beginning of February, publicity was given to reports of giant footprints, some 20 inches long [8], found crossing deep snow in various parts of the Isle of Wight.
At the Needles they were said to lead to the edge of the 200-foot cliff with no sign of any return tracks, while at Bembridge they appeared to come from the direction of the sea and disappear inland.
[9] Reference was also made to one of the world's most baffling mysteries, recorded in February 1855, from South Devon, where similar, though much smaller, footprints said by some to be those of Satan himself, were observed covering a large area and crossing inaccessible places like the tops of houses and narrow walls as well as in open country.
These, be it noted, were described as occurring in straight lines, unlike the tracks of a four-footed animal.
It was then that she observed the strange behaviour of the dogs, who normally hang around the kitchen when she is cooking. They are: a Golden Labrador and a Staffordshire Boxer. On this occasion they refused to enter the kitchen and hung about the threshold in a frightened manner for two hours, nor would they enter by the door on the other side. After two hours the spell suddenly lifted. There is no tradition of a ghost at Penrae, although the Labrador has been seen to mark a corner of Mrs Hall's bedroom with acute apprehension, some years ago, hackles up, and so forth.
Besides Mrs Hall, two other witnesses saw the footprints. Document 36 Tomorrow. Volume 5 Number 3, Spring 1957 Did The Devil Walk Again? by Eric J Dingwall Of all the strange stories to which I have listened for so many years, that told by Mr Wilson was one of the oddest and the most inexplicable. Indeed, Mr Wilson himself was so completely bewildered by his extraordinary experience that he had only confided it to three highly trusted friends, a canon of the Church, a doctor and a customs officer. The thing was impossible. It could not have happened. And yet Mr Wilson knew that it had happened and that it had happened to him. One day when Mr Wilson was quietly reading his newspaper by the fire his heart began to beat more quickly. So he had not been the only one! Others had had the same strange experience and could no more explain it than he could. Now at least people could not say that he was lying, mad or suffering from delusions. So it happened that he wrote off to me, since my name was mentioned in the article he had read, and in careful, soberly-phrased terms he told me his story.
I confess that my own interest in it almost exceeded his own and so at the first opportunity I hastened At Ipplepen, during a fall of snow in February, a trail of footprints was seen on the thatched roof of Penrae. This is a very old house, formerly a farm, and, traditionally, said to have been a meeting-place of Orange supporters. It is L-shaped, the short arm running back contains the kitchen, and, over it, a bedroom, with plaster-work round a bricked-up fireplace. The moulding includes the legend W M 1704 R, but the 7 and the 4 are of later date than the 1 and the 0. This is called the William and Mary Room.
One day in February, Mrs Hall went out of the house and looked up to the roof to see how thick the snow was lying on it, as the timbers were not too strong. Up the slope, over the William and Mary Room, was a track, as of a woman's shoe, about size five, heel and sole quite distinct, each print a step apart, leading up to the top of the ridge. Unfortunately, Mrs Hall did not go round to see what happened down to the little village where Mr Wilson carries on his business. I found him in a little office. He was a tall, well-built man with a kindly smile and an assured manner, obviously no imaginative dreamer of tall stories.
When we had made ourselves comfortable Mr Wilson began to tell me something about himself and his history. He had not always lived in a village, where he had now built up for himself a neat little business. Years before he had been the proprietor of a flourishing concern in New York, but after the Wall Street crash he had lost a good deal of money and decided to return to England. At first he found himself working for others but, being a man of sturdy independence, he finally set up on his own. And it was when taking a short holiday at a West coast watering place where he had spent his childhood that it happened.
It was in 1950, Mr Wilson said, that he went down to the West country to stay in the Devonshire coast town where he had spent so many happy days of his youth. Never could he forget that holiday as long as he lived, for it was on the last day of his stay that he decided on impulse to go and look at his old home and walk again on the beach where he had played in his childhood years. This little beach is entirely enclosed by rocks and steep cliffs and is invisible from above. The only trace is by a passage through the cliffs which is closed by a tall iron gate. This gate is used as a pay gate in summer and is locked up in winter. On that October afternoon the gate was locked, but Mr Wilson's old home was almost opposite the gate and he remembered that it was possible to get round the gate by going through the garden of the house. So he did this, and was soon on the sands of the beach, which was deserted and gloomy on that autumn day [11]. The sea had been to the top of the beach but now the tide had gone out, leaving the sand as smooth as glass.
Mr Wilson looked at the sand and could hardly believe his eyes. For starting at the top of the beach and just below the perpendicular cliff was a long single line of marks, apparently hoof-marks of some biped, which were clearly impressed upon the wet sand almost as if cut out by some sharp instrument. The marks were about six feet apart and led from the cliff in a straight line down the centre of the narrow beach [12] and into the sea.
[13] Mr Wilson's first reaction seems to have been intense curiosity. He approached the prints and examined them with the most careful attention. He tried to jump from one mark to another and then, removing his shoes and socks, tried to see if he could match them with his own stride. But they were so far apart that he could not reach from one to the next, although he was a tall man with long legs.
The hoof-marks which were not cloven, resembled those which might have been made by a large, unshod pony, and the impressions were deeper than those which he himself made with his shoes on, even though he weighed some sixteen stone. What he particularly noticed at the time was that no sand was splashed up at the edges: it looked as if each mark had been cut out of the sand with a flat iron. [14] Totally Inexplicable After Mr. Wilson had told me his story and had seen that I treated it seriously, as the three others had, and showed no inclination to disbelieve him, he went on to tell me how, after examining the footprints, he had realized how totally inexplicable they were.
For here was a biped with a track shaped like a hoof, starting immediately beneath a perpendicular cliff on a closed beach and ending in the sea. There was no returning track. I asked if it were possible that the animal, or whatever it might have been, could have turned right or left in the sea and regained the land at some other point. But Mr. Wilson produced photographs which showed that the beach was a comparatively narrow space completely enclosed by rocky headlands on either side.
What possible creature, from land or water, could have made such footprints as these? And what size could it have been to have so long a stride? What kind of hoof could make so clear-cut an impression? As Mr. Wilson said, what might he have seen if he had arrived a little earlier, for the receding tide was only just beyond the last print of the line? After asking himself questions such as these, Mr. Wilson wondered if perhaps there was something uncanny about the footprints. For were it a sea animal why should it be provided with hard hoofs? If it were a land animal why should it walk into the sea and where did it go when it got there?
Or did it have wings? In any case, what known animal could make such a track? Questions very like these had been asked before, and it was just because Mr. Wilson had accidentally come across a reference to another case of mysterious tracks that he had written to me.
Each mark was about eight inches ahead of the next and the prints were so widely distributed over a large area that it seemed that more than one creature must have been involved.
But what was still more mysterious was the route taken by this animal. The prints were not only on the ground but also on the roofs of houses, on the tops of walls and even on enclosed areas like courtyards. The prints caused the utmost concern and consternation and discussion about them raged in the press for several weeks.
Gradually the excitement died down and the villagers were no longer frightened to come out of their cottages for fear that Satan himself would again be walking. And so the devil's hoofmarks remained an unsolved mystery. It was not till 1908 that the strange footprints were seen again, this time in the United States, from Newark to Cape May in New Jersey [15]. Here again were reports of marks like the hoofs of a pony in the thick snow, and again we have the story of how the tracks led up to wire fences and then continued on the other side, even when the uprights were only a few inches apart.
No solution seems to have been reached and eventually the New Jersey Devil was forgotten, just like his predecessor in the Devon country-side. What are we to make of these stories and what was it that made the strange prints that so astonished Mr. Wilson on that October afternoon? The more questions one asks the more baffling does the case become. There may be a simple explanation for this experience, just as there may be for the two or three previous cases reported, of which Mr. Wilson knew nothing.
So far no one has thought of one. If anyone does, no one will be more happy than my friend Mr. Wilson, and those who hear his story will not be tempted to think that, on a Devon beach in 1950, he had all but seen the Devil walking again. Document 37 Daily Mirror. 7 Feb 1983 OLD CODGERS [Letter column] Chilling Mrs L[ynda]. Hanson, Desmond Avenue, High Road, Hull, Humberside, writes: The theories about the mystery footprints in the snow in 1855 have been of great interest to me because similar footprints appeared in our garden when I was a child, in the 1950s.
The prints were some 4 inches across, shaped as a cloven hoof, and appeared 12 inches apart in a single line - stopping in the middle of the garden [16]. No snow had been disturbed anywhere. What was also interesting was that at the bottom of the print, dry concrete could be seen, not compressed snow as is normal when a person or animal treads on snow. [17] This has intrigued our family for years. * We're not surprised, ma'am - reckon we'd 'ave made tracks ourselves next day. [Responding to a personal letter from Bob Rickard, editor of Fortean Times, Mrs Hanson added:] "The hoof-marks appeared in my parents' garden in January or February 1957.
It had snowed about 1" deep during the night and in the morning the marks were discovered. "They were shaped as a cloven hoof, 4" across, approx 12" apart in a straight line and stopping in the middle of the garden... At that time we had a very good house dog, but he never even barked."
Alternating at huge but regular intervals with what seemed to be the impression of the point of a stick - but the scattering of the prints - amazing expanse of territory covered - obstacles, such as hedges, walls, houses, seemingly surmounted Intense excitement - that the track had been followed by huntsmen and hounds, until they had come to a forest - from which the hounds had retreated, baying and terrified...
I recognize this as a well-adapted thing to say, to divert attention from a discorrelate. All phenomena are "explained" in the terms of the Dominant of their era. This is why we give up trying really to explain, and content ourselves with expressing. Devils that might print marks in snow are correlates to the third Dominant back from this era. So it was an adjustment by nineteenth-century correlates, or human tropisms, to say that the marks in the snow were clawed. Hoof-like marks are not only horsey but devilish..... as if a biped would place one foot precisely ahead of another - unless it hopped - but then we have to think of a thousand, or of thousands....
It is said that the marks were "generally 8 inches in advance of each other."
"The impression of the foot closely resembles that of a donkey's shoe, and measured from an inch and a half, in some instances, to two and a half inches across.
But they're in a single line.
It is said that the marks from which the sketch was made were 8 inches apart, and that this spacing was regular and invariable "in every parish."
Also other towns besides those named in the Times are mentioned. The writer, who had spent a winter in Canada, and was familiar with tracks in snow, says that he had never seen "a more clearly defined track." Also he brings out the point that was so persistently disregarded by Prof. Owen and the other correlators - that "no known animal walks in a line of single footsteps, not even man."
Illustrated London News March 3, 1855-214: Prof. Owen, to whom a friend had sent drawings of the prints, writes that there were claw-marks. He says that the "track" was made by "a" badger. Six other witnesses sent letters to this number of the News. One mentioned, but not published, is a notion of a strayed swan. Always this homogeneous-seeing - "a" badger - "a" swan - "a" track. I should have listed the other towns as well as those mentioned in the Times. A letter from Mr. Musgrave is published. He, too, sends a sketch of the prints. It, too, shows a single line.
There's "a" jumping-rat solution and "a" hopping-toad inspiration, and then someone came out strong with an idea of "a" hare that had galloped with pairs of feet held close together, so as to make impressions in a single line.
The print, in every respect, is an exact resemblance to that of a foal of considerable size, with this small difference, perhaps, that the sole seems a little longer, or not so round; but as no one has had the good fortune as yet to have obtained a glimpse of this creature, nothing more can be said of its shape or dimensions; only it has been remarked, from the depth to which the feet sank in the snow, that it must be a beast of considerable size.
"We have here", he is reported to have said - "we have here, my brethren, two very remarkable signs and portents distinctly vouchsafed to us. The first shall be, that a creature which (like Leviathan himself) was created to dwell and abide in the sea shall make its way to the land, and be seen in the markets and dwelling-places of men; and the second shall be, that a creature hitherto denied the gift of speech shall lift up its voice in the praise of its Maker."
A visitation of a somewhat similar and hardly less startling kind occurred in Devonshire on February 8, 1855. The following account of it was published in The Times of February 16th. [See Document 2] Times. The Illustrated London News, however, So far and, unfortunately, no further - The In the Illustrated London News, March 17, 1855, a correspondent from Heidelberg writes, "upon the authority of a Polish Doctor of Medicine," that, on the Piashowa-gora (Sand Hill) a small elevation on the border of Galicia, but in Russian Poland, such marks are to be seen in the snow every year, and sometimes in the sand of this hill, and "are attributed by the inhabitants to supernatural influences.
A natural explanation of the facts seemed impossible to find, and difficult even to suggest; while any explanation certainly postulated the visit of something very uncanny - something which walked upon small hooved feet with a very short, mincing stride, which sought darkness and solitude, which had never rested, which had crossed a river two miles wide, which had hung round human habitations without daring to enter them, and which had on some occasions walked up walls and along roofs, while at other times it had passed through such obstructions as if they did not exist.
"South Devon" nowhere stated, as Owen asserts, that man is the only creature which makes single foot-prints in snow - he said that no creature, not even man, makes a single line of prints: and this is generally true.
Allowing this fourteen hours of darkness in which to make a 40-mile line of hoof-marks 8 inches apart, it must have kept up an average of more than six steps per second from start to finish!
[16] It is scarcely a far-fetched conjecture to suppose that the creature which made the "singular foot-steps" seen by Ross was akin to those whose tracks were observed in Devonshire.
The explanation for these tracks/ hitherto unknown to science/one of these solutions/ they are of supernatural origin.
I came across tracks every bit as mysterious as those observed almost a hundred years before in Devon.
They were running across a stretch of snow-covered moorland. Each print was 19 inches long, by about 14 inches wide, bilobal in shape, and there must have been all of seven feet between each 'stride'.
There was, however, no differentiation between a right and left foot, and they proceeded in more or less a single line.
I followed the tracks for about half-a-mile, until they terminated at the foot of a pine, for all the world as though the strange creature making them had climbed up into the foliage of the tree.
Yet they did not end here, for about 20 yards further on, in the adjoining patch of arable, I picked them up again.
What a perfect point of vanishment for an Abominable Snowman! The sun was dipping low towards the horizon, and I took to my heels and ran, not, I am almost ashamed to admit, from any superstition, but because I wanted to get a camera and take a picture of those tracks before the light went.
In this, I am glad to say, I was successful, and as soon as the pictures were printed I showed them to several local people, including gamekeepers and ghillies. I noted the light of uneasiness in the eyes of some as they studied the photographs, and the puzzlement in others.
I could not make any guess as to their origin. I will confess that I should have been equally baffled but for a rather unique experience that came my way about thirty years ago. In 1924 I was working with an exploration party in Northern Canada. One day, when snowshoeing across a frozen lake, I came across tracks in the snow which mystified me and reduced my companion, a French-Canadian dog-skinner, to a state of gibbering terror.
The tracks, somewhat oval in shape, looked at first glance as though they had been made by snowshoes of the 'bear-paw' type, except that they had two toe-like impressions sticking out from the main print, and ran in an almost straight single line.
Their most unusual feature, however, apart from their great size, was the distance between each imprint - more than the length of a tall man.
[20] Document 43 16 March 1955 MISCELLANY "The Devil's Footprints" The story of "The Devil's Footprints" is still current in these parts (writes an Exmouth reader), although no one has mentioned it to me personally during the last 10 years or so. No one ever produced a rational explanation of these marks, which were of a cloven hoof and which went up and over the roofs of houses where these lay in the path of the line [19].
They were reported to have started somewhere in Dawlish, whence they went over the sandy peninsula known as the Warren, crossed the river to Exmouth, and ended up somewhere in the region of East Budleigh. I have heard tell of a man who tried to frighten his neighbours some time after this happening by climbing to the skylight of his house after a snowfall with a goat's foot on the end of a long pole.
In spite of this quasi-poetic start, it is my purpose to deal prosaically with animal 22 March 1955 MISCELLANY The Devil's Footprints In "Miscellany's" notes about the mysterious footmarks which appeared in the snow one night in the region of the River Exe a tracks, in the snow or mud, as the case may be.
Before doing so, it is fitting to recall briefly the Devon affair. In the past few months I have asked a number of people for details, but whereas all knew the story, all were very uncertain on its finer points. The first report was in The Times for February, 1855. Heavy snow had fallen on the preceding Thursday night in the Exeter area. In the morning a vast number of prints, as of donkey shoes, were found in the snow, with a mound in the centre where the frog should be.
Each print was directly in advance of the other, at regular intervals of 8 ins.
They ended abruptly on one side of the estuary of the Exe and started again on the Exmouth side, two miles across water from where they had left off. They went across fields and gardens, along the tops of flat walls, over roofs, over haystacks.
They were seen in courtyards surrounded by high walls or high fences.
They would go up to a 14 ft. wall, and start again on the other side, as if whatever had made them had gone straight through the wall.
In places, they went up to the door of a house and backed away again, but for the rest the line of advance was straight.
According to The Times, each print measured 1% by 2Vi ins. According to The Illustrated London News of February 24 of the same year, they measured 4 by 2 3/4 ins.
The line of tracks started suddenly and ended abruptly.
I have no intention of attempting an explanation, for two very good reasons: that I have none to offer, and that I should be sorry to see the mystery solved, just as I would prefer not to analyse too closely Hoist's "Music of the Planets", or any other of the things I have mentioned.
Why did this only occur in Devon and why only on that one occasion? Firstly, snowfall is an uncommon event in South Devon,
This true tale originated in Devon and was vouched for by the people in Lympstone, Exmouth, Dawlish and Teignmouth - not forgetting Topsham and lesser-known villages. Most people in agricultural areas rise with the sun and, on one particular snowbound morning - February 9th, 1855 - the early risers were baffled to see what appeared to be footprints in the snow: all in a straight line, going up the sides of houses and farms, over the roofs and down the other sides of the buildings.
These odd tracks appeared in several towns, and baffled their occupants greatly because two-footed creatures don't normally place their feet exactly in a straight line; neither, of course, do they walk up the side of a house, across the roof and down the other side.
Come to that, quadrupeds don't walk in a straight line except for members of the cat family (including domestic ones).
However, there were no reports of missing lions or tigers with a penchant for longdistance walks - and house moggies don't travel in that fashion either!
Yet there was no denying the fact that odd footprints did appear in the snow over a distance of more than 100 miles. Each print was about four inches long and nearly three inches wide; the prints were approximately eight inches apart and shaped like hoof-prints.
This latter point was enough, of course, to get the tracks dubbed as 'the Devil's hoofprints' - though what the Lord of Evil was doing wandering about so aimlessly was never explained.
However, these mysterious tracks caused a sufficient sensation at the time for the London Times to print a report about them; laying much emphasis on the fact that the tracks did not swerve at all.
The famous naturalist Richard Owen suggested that the tracks were made by a badger. A swan with padded feet was also suggested. Other candidates included otters, leaping rats, a hare running with its legs held together, polecats, frogs, cranes, bustards, and the inevitable kangaroo. As Charles Fort says [34], "My own acceptance is that not less than a thousand one-legged kangaroos, each shod with a very small horseshoe, could have marked that snow of Devonshire".
A thoughtful review of the Devil's HoofMarks was provided by that talented and entertaining writer Rupert T. Gould [35]. He concludes his review by writing: "it is possible that there is some quite simple solution of the Devonshire hoof-marks to be found, if one knew where to look for it. But there is a caveat to be entered. If land-animals made the marks, the available data are probably sufficient to enable a competent zoologist, with an unbiased mind, to make a reasonable suggestion as to their identity. But no authority on earth ... can set limits to the number and variety of the creatures which, even though unknown to science, may yet live and move and have their being in the sea."
When we return to The Book of the Damned we find that Fort had been much more thorough in uncovering references to the occurrence, and some of these provide important clues that were missed or ignored by Gould. Thus, in Notes and Queries, 7-8-508: [See Document 46] Now this story is placed at an undefinable date in an area of Somerset. But surely this is exactly what happened that snowy night in Devonshire? Not one man on stilts but literally hundreds! We can well imagine the gypsy tribes planning this operation for several months, taking careful notes of the exact track they were to follow while engaged in selling clothes pins from door to door in the towns.
They would be certain to note the presence of dogs, ditches, haystacks, fences, and houses that could be easily surmounted. Perhaps they would have erected sighting marks in open country, or across the estuary of the River Exe, or perhaps they would have simply stationed men with lanterns as guides in the open countryside. But the most difficult aspect of the story is the measure stilts. And in Devon, the prints were not spaced three yards apart but 8% inches! A pair of step ladders attached to a wheel at the top with an 8 Vi inch stride, with one leg being swung over the other at every step would require incredible skill to operate. A unicycle would be child's play by comparison.
Whatever the construction of the stilts, some accessory means of balancing such as a pole would have been necessary. If the measure stilts used in Devonshire were simply normal stilts with a restricting linkage between the two legs, the treader would still have been required to walk in a straight line. However, we do know from the above story that they probably spent over a year in making the measure stilts, and a good part of this time was probably spent by the men of the tribe in becoming proficient in their use.
Naturally, each treader would have carried a spare hoof-mark to make the impressions on the roofs of houses, in culverts, under hedges, NOTES TO ESSAYS AND THEORIES 1 - Fort was unaware that claw marks were also mentioned by the Reverend Ellacombe in his papers [see Document 231. They were identified as "feathers" of snow, so - while it may well be that the marks were real - Fort was probably right to suggest etc. If we assume that 400 pairs of stilts were used in Devon, then each treader had to cover about % mile of ground. No-one had to swim across tbe estuary of the Exe, the line of prints was simply picked up by Romanies on the other side, commencing from a pre-arranged point [36]. It is conceivable that the entire operation was completed in a couple of hours, including brushing away the tracks of the treaders as they approached and left their line of prints.
This would possibly have been the job of the women and older men, who were probably also employed to keep the dogs quiet. The entire operation does not appear to be difficult for the determined yet secretive Romanies who had well over a year to prepare for it. Some credence can also be given to the measure stilt theory for the simple reason that gypsies are traditionally uncommunicative with non-gypsies and extremely close mouthed regarding their private affairs. If any word of the intended operation had got out either before or after the event, the element of superstitious fear that they planned to impart in the Didikais and Pikies would have been lost.
And by maintaining secrecy, they were free to use the same strategy another time in another place. No doubt the hundreds of sets of measure stilts were broken up for clothes line poles and clothes pegs and sold in the same towns and villages where the inhabitants firmly believed that they had been visited by the very Devil himself! As Gould said, "...it is possible that there is some quite simple solution of the Devonshire hoof-marks to be found, if one knew where to look for it."
The solution outlined above is certainly more credible than jumping wood mice or one-legged kangaroos! they were seized on by the superstitious. 2 - Lympstone. 3 -Exe. 4 - See Document 35 for a similar anomaly of snow displacement. 5 - Canticles ii.12 [Footnote by Gould] 6 - He signed himself 'G.M.M.' [Illustrated London News, 3.3.1855. [Gould] See section one, note 35.
[Ed]. 7 - Amazing to say. 8 - His letter to the ILN on the subject was considered (3.III.1885) but not printed. So he published a small pamphlet - The Swan with the Silver Collar (Wells, Journal Office, 1855, price 2d.) - of which I possess a copy. [Gould] 9 - Next in line. 10 - Mr Musgrave's letter, al ready quoted, indicates one or two exceptions. He might also have instanced the camel. [Gould] 11 - See Document 11. 12 - I am indebted to Mr. H.V. Garner for drawing my attention to this point. [Gould] The same objection, incidentally, does not appear to apply to the theory that Romany gypsy 'stilt treaders' were responsible for the trails.
Well over' 400 gypsies were said to have been involved, manipu lating clumsy 'measure stilts'; assuming 500 Romanies were present, their rate of progress would have had to be from 43-56 steps per hour, depending upon whether the trail was a mere 40 miles long or, as Gould postu lates, 30% longer. If the trail was 100 miles long, the progress would have had to be a more impressive 108 steps per hour, or 1.8 steps per minute. All these calculations, of course, assume a more-or-less continuous trail, whereas there may well have been very considerable gaps.
[Ed.] 13 - But see the section "Other Mystery Footprints", the evidence in which suggests that the phe nomenon may not be as rare as Gould thought. 14 - But for this, and the fact that the hoof- marks were found on walls and roofs, a candidate whose qualifications were not put forward at any time - the common rabbit - would seem as good a claimant as any. In snow of a certain depth, a leaping rabbit does leave a track not unlike a series of hoof-marks. But it is clear, from "South Devon's" letter, that he saw, and examined, rabbit tracks made at the same time as the hoof-marks, and did not associate the two.
[Gould] 15 - These ships were later themselves the subject of a fa mous mystery, written up by Gould in the same volume as his essay on the Devil's Hoofmarks. Having been made available to Sir John Franklin's disastrous naval expedition in search of the North-West Passage, and having apparently vanished along with both their crews, they were re portedly seen stranded upon a giant iceberg spotted off the Canadian coast. See "The Ships Seen on the Ice" in Oddities.
16 - Dr. R. M'Cormick, R.N., who was supposed to be the official zoologist (and geologist) of Ross's expedition, does not refer to these marks in the account of the voyage given in his Voyages of Discovery in the Arctic and Antarc tic Seas, and Round the World (London, 1884). It is probable, however, that he never saw them himself (his journal at Kerguelen is mostly devoted to a trivial and querulous account of his tealshooting expeditions): and he was not the man to give promi nence to the work of others. His book, also, was published forty years after the voyage.
[Gould] 17 - It was not, obviously, a common denizen either of the British Isles or of Kerguelen; localities whose climates are re spectively temperate and subPolar. [Gould] 18 - Better known to Forteans as the Big Grey Man of Ben MacDhui. See Affleck Grey, The Big Grey Man of Ben MacDhui (Aberd een, 1970). 19 - It is interesting to note how the passage of time has changed the original meandering wander of the tracks to a more singlemindedly diabolical single line. 20 - The "balloon theory" is hard put to explain the reported tiny distance between the "hoof marks" as well as the extreme regularity which most observers found the most puzzling thing about them.
In addition, one might have expected to find drag marks left by a rope, particularly when the distance from balloon to ground was effectively shortened as the craft passed over a house. 21 - This sounds very like the conditions in Devon on the night and morning of 8-9 February. 22 - This does not appear to have been definitively established. 23 - This reference is incorrect. The correct date is 16 February. See Document 2. 24 - This is a very loose 'quota tion' from Document 7. 25 - See the introductory essay for comments on the character and expertise of 'South Devon'. 26 - Nevertheless, the presence of tracks on rooftops would still appear more than a little myster ious. 27 - See Journal of Zoology vol.148 (1966) p.383 for a reference to this meeting.
Leutscher's paper was not reprinted in the Journal of Zoology. 28 - Pagan travelling tribes. 29 - Area of influence. 30 - Note the considerable dis crepancies between the Romany tradition and the events reported in 1855: the 'walk' took place in Devon and Dorset, not Somerset; the prints were of small hoofs rather than giant boots; and the length of stride was generally well under a foot rather than 9 feet. Incidentally, the idea that even the most practised stiltoperator could balance on the two narrow feet of one ladder while swinging another over his head, at one point with that whole ladder at 908 to the vertical, and presumably extending more than six feet ahead of him, seems improbable.
31 - While suitably diabolical, the idea of a straight march across a county does not accord with the remarkable meanderings actually noted in Devon. See note 19. 32 - This, and the previous description of 'joggling7, suggests there is no Romany tradition that the trail was laid in snow. 33 - This is incorrect. See Docu ment 2. 34 - See Document 38. 35 - See Document 39. 36 - There is in fact no contem porary evidence that anyone es tablished that the prints went up to one shore of the Exe, and began anew on the opposite shore. A PRELIMINARY BIBLIOGRAPHY [This is only a partial listing of the material published on the subject of the Devil's Hoofmarks.
It does not include the documents cited in the main text, nor has any definitive effort been made to track down all references in the Fortean literature.] Anon - 'Devil's Hoofmark By a Mouse?', The Times 16 January 1968 [An article on leutscher's woodmouse theory] Anon - 'Devil's hoof prints', Western Morning News 15 February 1982 [A brief summary of the mystery and the main theories] Anon - 'Devon Case of 'Devil's' Footprints', Western Morning News 4 January 1940 [Summary of the 1855 case prompted by a heavy fall of snow in the area.]
Anon - 'Footprints in the Snow', Western Morning News 14 August 1937 [Compares the Devil's Hoofmarks to some recently-discovered alleged Yeti prints in the Himalayas.] Anon - 'The Mysterious Footprints', Reynolds' Miscellany 28 April 1855 p216 [A sceptical note based on the Illustrated London News' accounts.] Anon - ^Mystery of the Devil's Hoofprints', National Enquirer 1 April 1986 [An article alleging similar marks had been found in the US and UK. Includes a distorted account of Mr Wilson's 1950 Devon report and several American stories linking hoofmarks to the occult, based on an interview with Brad Steiger.]
Anon - 'Mystery that Made its Mark', Express & Echo (Exeter) 27 February 1986 [Brief newspaper comment on the mystery] Anon - The Reverend H.T. Ellacombe, Devon nd [An 8-page Gestetnered biographical pamphlet available at the parish church of Clyst St George. It includes a section on the Devil's Hoofmarks] Anon - 'The Riddle of Satan's Spoor', Black Country Bugle no 67 (October 1977) [An article about the appearance of hoofmarks in Rowley Regis, near Birmingham, in January 1855]
Anon - 'The Riddle of Satan's Spoor', Black Country Bugle no 108 (March 1981) [An article about Elizabeth Brown, landlady of the Lion pub, who saw marks similar to the Devon prints on the wall of her tavern. Refers to another article on the same subject, published by the Bugle in 1978, which may be a mistaken reference to the article noted above] Anon - 'Still They Puzzle Over This Mystery', Express & Echo (Exeter) 28 November 1968 [A brief editorial comment] Anon - Article in Wide Awake, 1855 [While searching an index of Devon oddments, Peter Christie came across a reference to the above article {personal communication).
It has not proved possible to locate a copy of the publication] Anon - 'A Wonder at Wolverhampton', Punch vol 28-29 (1855) pll2 [Mentions the Devil's Hoofmarks in the context of a number of recent wonders, including the apparition of a ghost and a sea serpent sighting] Arnold, Larry - 'Has the Dover Devil visited South-Central Pennsylvania in March 1978' in Pursuit vol 11 No. 3 pl21 (1978). [A Fortean investigator photographs a curious track of 'prints', rendered unidentifieable by melting, that cross a snow-covered roof in a rural area.] Bailey, Steve - Was it the Devil Who Left His Calling Card?
' Sunday Independent 26 February 1978 [Short account based on Michell and Rickard's Phenomena.] Beadnell, Charles - 'The 'Marks of Satan", The Times 5 August 1937 [A letter, from a Surgeon Rear Admiral, comparing the Devon mystery to 'Yeti' footprints found in the Himalayas] Brown, Theo - 'Strange Footprints in the Snow Which Baffled South Devon', Western Morning News 15 January 1951 [An article summarising the mystery, based on Brown's early research.] Brown, Theo - 'Devil's Footprints', Western Morning News 8 July 1963 [A letter criticising simplistic versions of the mystery and pointing out the lack of evidence for a uniform and unbroken trail.]
Buckland, Frank - Logbook of a Fisherman and Zoologist, London nd, cl870 [Includes an account of the Devon mystery asserting that the tracks were made by a racoon. Sometimes referred to as Logbook of a Naturalist in the literature.] Burton, Maurice - 'Nature Notes', Daily Telegraph 2 January 1965 [Discusses Leutscher's wood mouse theory.] Country Essays [A nineteenth century work which supposedly contains an account of the mystery. It has not been possible to locate a copy.] Coxhead, J.R.W - Legends of Devon, London nd [Includes a chapter on the Devil's Hoofmarks reprinting some contemporary press reports.]
Fate - Article on the Devil's Hoofmarks in August 1952 edition [It has not proved possible to locate a copy of this issue of the magazine.] Fort, Charles - Notes, Doubt vol 25 p391 [Reprints Fort's note of the Cotswold prints.] Fort, Charles - Notes, Doubt vol 27 p421 [Reprints Fort's original notes on the Devil's Hoofmarks.] Gaddis, Vincent - 'The Devil Walks Again', INFO Journal vol 1 no 2 [Draws attention to the Wilson case (document 36)] Godwin, John - This Baffling World, London 1971 [Includes a good chapter on 'The Devil in Devonshire' giving facsimiles of a number of contemporary press reports.] Household, G.A. (ed) - The Devil's Footprints - the Great Devon Mystery of 1855, Devon Books, Exeter, 1985 [A booklet reprinting contemporary press reports with a brief commentary and some illustrations.]
Kemblc, John - The Saxons in England, 2 vols London 1849 [Includes mention of a Saxon tale of a miraculous footprint found on Dartmoor.] Koopman, M. - 'Meteorological Cause', Prediction ?July 1981 [Letter commenting on Madeline Montalban's article (Document 47) and mentioning some other printed sources, including Rennie's meteorological hypothesis.] Lyall, George - 'Did a Laser Create the Devil's Footprints?', Flying Saucer Review vol 18 no 1, January/February 1972. [An article suggesting the marks were made by a laser mounted in a UFO.] McLeod, Penny - 'Did the Devil Walk Again?', Titbits 9 February 1980 [Mentions the sea monster theory and alleges that small hoofed sea creatures were washed up on Canvey Island, Essex, in 1953 and ■ 1954.]
Michell, John, & Rickard, R.J.M. - 'Unreasonable Footprints' in Phenomena, London 1977 pp.76-7. [An essay linking the Devil's Hoofmarks to other mysterious footprints.] O'Donnell, Elliott - Strange Sea Mysteries, London 1926 [Includes a chapter on the hoofmarks, noting their proximity to the sea.] Price, Harry - Poltergeist Over England: three centuries of mischievous ghosts, London 1945 [Suggests the hoofmarks may have been the result of poltergeist activity.] Reader's Digest - 'When the Devil Walked in Devon', in Strange Stories, Amazing Facts, London 1979 p.377 [A short standard retelling.]
Rickard, R.J.M. - 'If You Go Down To The Woods Today in INFO Journal No. 13 (May 1974). [Although about British mystery cat reports, it mentions in passing the overnight appearance of large "bearlike" tracks in snow in a garden in Farnborough, Hampshire, on New Year's Eve 1970, with photographs. Among explanations proposed were gull prints enlarged and distorted by melting edges.] Shoemaker, Michael - 'Devil's Footprints', Fate April 1986 [A letter written in response to Gordon Stein's article (below), correcting some errors and adding material to support the meteorological hypothesis.]
Smith, Caron - 'Devilish Deeds Down at Eerie Bridge', Middlesbrough Evening Gazette, 26 March 1992 [Notes a tradition that a line of 'Devil's Hoofprints' once passed under Newham Bridge, known locally as 'Devil's Bridge'.] Stein, Gordon - 'The Devil's Footprints', Fate August 1985 [A summary, in a leading American Fortean magazine, of the events of 1855, based on the usual sources.] Willis, Paul - 'The Devil's Hoofmarks: an unsolved enigma', INFO Journal vol 1 no 1 [A summary, with bibliography, drawing attention to Charles Fort's contribution to the mystery.]
THE DEVIL'S HOOFMARKS Mike Dash Since the publication of my paper "The Devil's Hoofmarks: source material on the Great Devon Mystery of 1855" in Fortean Studies 1,1 have accumulated a small quantity of additional material adding to the information already published without really helping to solve the mystery. This is presented here. I would encourage any reader who has additional leads, or who knows of references to the Hoofmarks in the secondary literature which did not feature in my preliminary bibliography, to send it to me, care of Fortean Times, for incorporation into any further updates.
Frank Edwards' potboiler Stranger Than Science, and that the magazine had also appealed for more information on the case in issue 9 (1996), p.38. The description of the creatures Animals & Men had found was strange indeed. They did not sound like fish, having deformed heads, pink or reddish skin like a healthy pig', and, oddest of all, two 'short legs' with 'U-shaped soles'. It was also alleged that at least one of the carcasses had been deliberately burned by scientists who were unable to identify it. (I hasten to add that neither the descriptions nor the allegations were endorsed by the magazine.)
A few days later, and before I had had time to check back to the original sources myself, a new issue arrived (Animals & Men No.10, August 1996), featuring a letter by Michael Goss, based on his own researches in the local newspaper archives, which effectively demolished both cases. Citing the Southend Standard of 3 Dec and Canvey News and Benfleet Recorder 4 Dec 1953, THE HOOFED SEA-BEASTS OF CANVEY ISLAND Several authorities, including Rupert Gould, have drawn attention over the years to the possibility that the Devil's Hoofmarks were made by a creature that emerged from the sea. The main reason for suggesting such a theory seems to be disbelief that any known land animal could have produced a trail as strange as that found in Devon on 8 February 1855.
As I attempted to show in my original paper, it is in fact plausible that most of the hoofmarks were made by commonplace animals, including donkeys, cats and woodmice. Nevertheless, it does seem to be true that all the locations where hoofmarks were reported are within half a mile of either a stream or the sea, and two reports of supposed hoofed sea monsters do exist.
Mention of these reports in the original paper was confined to a comment in the preliminary bibliography, which noted the publication of a story in Titbits (9 February 1980) to the effect that small hoofed sea creatures had been washed ashore at Canvey Island in 1953 and 1954. Given the vagueness of the date, and the general unreliabiltiy of the source, I was unwilling at the time to spend many hours searching local newspapers for further details of these supposed reports.
Some time after the publication of the volume, however, I discovered that issue 4 of Jon Downes' cryptozoological journal Animals & Men (January 1995, p.25) had 1 included a brief notice on the subject citing Goss suggested that in the first case "the strange aquatic creature referred to was almost certainly the angler fish washed ashore at Canvey Island on 29 November 1953."
The fish made it onto the front page of the Recorder, which noted it was first reported as "a fish with teeth and toes" when it was found by 12-year-old Jacqueline Ward. It weighed 301bs and was more than 2ft long and 15 inches wide. There were two "feet complete with toes" in the middle of its back, which were presumably the rather odd dorsal fins that angler fish have. The second Canvey monster seems to have been another specimen of the same species.
A story about the discovery appeared in the Canvey & Benfleet Recorder of 13 Aug 1954. It related that the 'monster' was found by the Reverend Joseph Overs on 10 August. It was described as "four feet long with staring eyes and a large mouth ... on its stomach it had two feet each with five toes". These too appear to have been descriptions of decomposing fins, and the identification of the body as that of an angler fish was confirmed by photographs of the carcasses accompanying the stories.
The general effect of these discoveries is to render it still less likely that a solution to the mystery of the Devil's Hoofmarks may be found at sea. Ulrich Magin, FT's German correspondent, wrote shortly after the publication of the paper to suggest a possible link between the Hoofmarks and a creature from Scottish folklore known as the Barriesdale Monster, which also allegedly left hoofprints in the snow.
This winged and hoofed monster, which is mentioned in McDonald Robertson's Selected Highland Folktales (Edinburgh 1961) and Carey Miller's Dictionary of Monsters and Mysterious THE BARRIESDALE MONSTER Beasts (London 1974), was said to have three legs - two at the front and one at the rear - to live both on land and in the water, and, when on the former, to hop over fences, streams and walls.
It haunted the Barriesdale area of the rugged west coast of the Highlands, near Loch Hourn, and was last seen by a crofter c.1880. The Scots: Magazine of September 1975 also featured a piece on the Barriesdale mystery, describing the beast as "a weird, pterodactyllike monster" and a formidable predator which had its lair in the hills of Knoydart. In April 1976 the same magazine ran a follow-up which described the monster's footprints as "not unlike the bottom of a bottle" (i.e., circular) although it noted that an earlier correspondent had described them as 'cloven'. The footprints in question appeared imprinted in snow. There seems to be no suggestion of what the trail left by such a creature might look like, though' presumably each stride would be marked by three footprints, a pair and a single, in line'abreast. Nevertheless, Magin concludes: "