The hooves, legend has it, cut right through the snow and nearly to the ground below—almost as if they had been burned there. People were spooked, particularly by the prints that appeared to stop right at the threshold of their homes. Many refused to leave their houses, convinced that the devil himself was roaming Devon looking for sinners.
Devil's Footprints
The footprints remain unexplained to this day, but cooler heads have offered more reasonable explanations. Here are a few of the theories:. Perhaps, people reasoned, a kangaroo had escaped from a nearby private zoo. It would explain the bipedal tracks, and kangaroo footprints do make an odd shape. Possible suspects included birds and badgers and rabbits. None of these could have covered that much territory, however, and prints from those animals are quite different from those that were spread across Devonshire. One theory claimed that escaped kangaroos from a nearby private zoo had caused the phenomenon.
The "Devil's Footprints" mystery in Devon, England
Some ministers warned their congregations that the footprints were made by the devil himself. Alternately, some scientists wrote the whole thing off as some kind of mass hysteria.
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Doug MacGowan lives on the San Francisco peninsula with his wife, a dog, and far too many cats. He has published five books on the topic of historic true crime.
The 1855 “Devil’s Footprints” mystery in Devon, England
In his free time he enjoys reading. Many theories have been made to explain the incident, and some aspects of its veracity have also been questioned.
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On the night of 8—9 February and one or two later nights, [1] after a heavy snowfall, a series of hoof -like marks appeared in the snow. These footprints , most of which measured about four inches long, three inches across, between eight and sixteen inches apart and mostly in a single file, were reported from more than thirty locations across Devon and a couple in Dorset. On the following morning the inhabitants of the above towns were surprised at discovering the footmarks of some strange and mysterious animal endowed with the power of ubiquity, as the footprints were to be seen in all kinds of unaccountable places — on the tops of houses and narrow walls, in gardens and court-yards, enclosed by high walls and pailings, as well in open fields.
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The area in which the prints appeared extended from Exmouth , up to Topsham , and across the Exe Estuary to Dawlish and Teignmouth. Busk, in an article published in Notes and Queries during , stated that footprints also appeared further afield, as far south as Totnes and Torquay , and that there were other reports of the prints as far away as Weymouth Dorset and even Lincolnshire. There is little direct evidence of the phenomenon.
The only known documents were found after the publication during of an article in the Transactions of the Devonshire Association asking for further information about the event. Ellacombe , the vicar of Clyst St George during the s. These papers included letters addressed to the vicar from his friends, among them the Reverend G.
Musgrove, the vicar of Withycombe Raleigh , the draft of a letter to The Illustrated London News marked 'not for publication' and several apparent tracings of the footprints. During many years the noted researcher Mike Dash collated all the available primary and secondary source material into a paper entitled The Devil's Hoofmarks: Many explanations have been made for the incident.
Some investigators are sceptical that the tracks really extended for more than a hundred miles, arguing that no-one would have been able to follow their entire course in a single day. Another reason for scepticism, as Joe Nickell indicates, is that the eye-witness descriptions of the footprints varied from person to person.