The Devil's Footprints
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The Devil's Footprints was the name given to a peculiar phenomenon that occurred in Devon, England on 8 February 1855. After a light snowfall, during the night, a series of hoof-like marks appeared in the snow. These "footprints", measuring 1.5 to 2.5 inches wide and eight inches apart, continued throughout the countryside for a total of over 100 miles, and, although veering at various points, for the greater part of their course followed straight lines. Houses, rivers, haystacks and other obstacles were travelled straight over, and footprints appeared on the tops of snow-covered roofs and high walls which lay in the footprints' path, as well as leading up to and exiting various drain pipes of as small as a four inch diameter.
The area the prints appeared in extended from Exmouth, up to Topsham, and across the river Exe to Dawlish and Teignmouth (The Times 16-2-1855). R.H. Busk, in "Phenomenal footprints in snow, S. Devon" Notes and Queries, s.7, 9 (January 25, 1890) page 70 states that the footprints also appeared further afield, as far south as Totnes and Torquay; and that there were other reports of the prints in Weymouth (Dorset) and Lincolnshire. In each case, the prints would go on for miles and miles before abruptly stopping.[citation needed]
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[edit] Theories
[edit] Hopping Mice
In Australia however similar incidents may now be attributed to Hopping mice. The print left behind after a mouse leaps resembles that of a cloven animal, due to the motions of its limbs when it jumps.
[edit] Kangaroo
In a letter to the Illustrated London News Rev. G.M. Musgrave wrote: "In the course of a few days a report was circulated that a couple of kangaroos had got loose from a private menagerie (Mr. Fische's, I believe) at Sidmouth." It seems, though, that nobody ascertained whether the kangaroos had escaped, nor how they could have crossed the Exe estuary. ("Professor Owen on the foot-marks in the snow in Devon." Illustrated London News, 26 (March 3, 1855): 214.)
[edit] Other explanations
Many different animals have been suggested as a cause, but none would have been capable of covering so large a distance overnight. Some contend it remains a mystery to this day, although it has been suggested that some bizarre meteorological phenomenon was at work. Others have connected the footprints with the contemporaneous sightings of Spring Heeled Jack, a mysterious figure known for his extraordinary jumps.
It is also often suggested that the footprints were merely a case of mass hysteria.[citation needed] The most common argument for this theory is the improbability that someone would be able to track the course of the lines for over 100 miles in the course of a single day, while throughout the night and even during the day many animals roam about creating new tracks and disrupting old ones.
[edit] Other occurrences
Reports of similar anomalous, obstacle-unheeded footprints exist from other parts of the world, although none is of such a scale as that of the case of the Devil's Footprints.
London Times, March 14, 1840:
"Among the high mountains of that elevated district where Glenorchy, Glenlyon and Glenochay are contiguous, there have been met with several times, during this and also the former winter, upon the snow, the tracks of an animal seemingly unknown at present in Scotland. 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. It has been observed also that its walk is not like that of the generality of quadrupeds, but that it is more like the bounding or leaping of a horse when scared or pursued. It is not in one locality that its tracks have been met with, but through a range of at least twelve miles."
In the Illustrated London News, March 17, 1855, a correspondent from Heidelberg writes, "upon the authority of a Polish Doctor in Medicine," that on the Piaskowa-góra (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."(17) [298]
[edit] Sources
Charles Fort, The Book of the Damned, chapter 28.