Devon and Cornwall's Oddest Historical Tales by John Fisher

Author:John Fisher [Fisher, John]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: history, Europe, Great Britain, General
ISBN: 9780750996884
Google: hc4QEAAAQBAJ
Publisher: History Press
Published: 2021-03-12T00:14:36.657523+00:00

A chilling account of the West Country’s greatest unsolved mystery.

THE DEVIL’S HOOF-PRINTS

Someone or something ‘with cloven hooves’ travelled silently across south and east Devon on a bitterly cold February night in 1855 and left its prints in the snow in a hundred-mile trail.

Who or what it was remains a mystery to this day but theories abound: these include suggestions that the tracks were made by a donkey, a kangaroo, an ape, various small animals including badgers, rabbits, hares, birds (with cloven hooves?), a team of practical jokers, some kind of natural electrical phenomena (as yet unknown), a meteorological balloon trailing a weighted lanyard, mass hysteria, a sea monster, a laser measuring device beamed down from a UFO, 400 Romanies on stilts – not to mention Old Nick himself.

But before getting totally side-tracked, perhaps it might be best to start with The Times of London, which printed this first account of this great mystery in its issue of 16 February 1855:

Considerable sensation has been evoked in the towns of Topsham, Lympstone, Exmouth, Teignmouth, and Dawlish, in the south of Devon, in consequence of the discovery of a vast number of foot tracks of a most strange and mysterious description. The superstitious go so far as to believe that they are the marks of Satan himself; and that great excitement has been produced among all classes may be judged from the fact that the subject has been descanted on from the pulpit. It appears that on Thursday night last there was a very heavy fall of snow in the neighbourhoods of Exeter and the south of Devon. On the following morning, the inhabitants of the above towns were surprised at discovering the tracks of some strange and mysterious animal, endowed with the power of ubiquity, as the foot prints were to be seen in all kinds of inaccessible places – on the tops of houses and narrow walls, in gardens and courtyards enclosed by high walls and palings, as well as in open fields. There was hardly a garden in Lympstone where the footprints were not observed.

The creature seems to have approached the doors of several houses and then to have retreated, but no one has been able to discover the standing or resting point of this mysterious visitor. On Sunday last the Rev. Mr. (G.M.) Musgrave (the vicar of Withycombe Raleigh) alluded to the subject in his sermon, and suggested the possibility of the footprints being those of a kangaroo,; but this could scarcely have been the case, as they were found on both sides of the estuary of the Exe. At present it remains a mystery, and many superstitious people in the above towns are actually afraid to go outside their doors after night.

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