Footprints of the devil

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Drawing published in 1855

The Devil's Footprints ( English : Devil's Footprints ) were a phenomenon that in the English county of Devon was observed in the 1855th After heavy snowfalls, tracks appeared in the form of split hooves in the snow, which supposedly ran straight as a dead bolt over long stretches. The prints got their name because superstitions spread that they were caused by Satan . There are many theories about this occurrence, also known as the Devonshire Enigma . However, the veracity of individual facts is questioned.

Descriptions

It snowed heavily in Devon on the night of February 8th to 9th, 1855, and for a few days after that. In the morning, residents found tracks in the snow that resembled split hoof prints. These tracks were 1.5 to 2.5 inches (between 3.8 and 6.3 cm) wide and repeated eight inches (20.3 cm) apart. They extended in the landscape (added up) over an estimated 100 miles (160.9 kilometers) and, apart from changing direction at various points, followed a dead straight course. The traces, omnipresent in the region, led over gardens, houses in the way, walls, a haystack and other obstacles. They could be seen on snow-covered roofs. Traces are also said to have passed through a small drain pipe about four inches (10.2 cm) in diameter.

The area in which the tracks were found ranged from Exmouth to Topsham and across the River Exe to Dawlish and Teignmouth . In 30 villages people puzzled over the unusual prints in the snow. Reports later surfaced that they were also found in fields further south at Totnes and Torquay and that hoof prints were also found at Weymouth in Dorset and even in Lincolnshire . Rumors surfaced of watching a devil-like figure in the Devon district during the horror. A group of people armed themselves and tried unsuccessfully to track down the suspected creator of an animal.

Circumstances of the time

Devon is a county in south-west England. The event touched the part of the country facing the English Channel . The tracks led from the east to the west. Around 1855, rural cottages and one- or two-story buildings in cities were found on houses. Many people in the country were still prone to superstition . Evil forces or the incarnate were suspected to be behind some unusual events, which eluded the understanding of the as yet poorly educated population or gave them negative effects.

Attempts to explain

All sorts of explanations exist about the event. Some researchers are skeptical that the tracks really lined up for over a hundred miles, arguing that no one would have been able to cover the entire distance during the night. Another reason for skepticism is the eyewitness accounts of the prints themselves, which fluctuated in various details. Less likely theories about what happened include:

  • It was a trick of (a) stranger who had made the tracks in the snow with a hot metal object.
  • In an attack of mass hysteria , various animal tracks were merged into one by the troubled population.
  • The tracks were assigned to a variety of animals. Otters , badgers , dogs , cats , donkeys and albatrosses were suspected of being the originators.
  • In 1855, the tracks were also linked to a kangaroo allegedly escaped from a menagerie . But there was no such report of loss, and the fact that the animal was unable to cross the wide river Exe speaks against this explanation.
  • Someone speculated that a weather balloon broke loose, was blown over the area by the snow storm and a horseshoe hanging on a rope had left its mark.

In contrast, it seems more likely that jerboa or other rodents caused the traces. This assumption was also made a few days after the event.

A more recent presentation wins the sympathy. Wood mice may have invaded homesteads and settlements in search of food because of the unusually cold weather. They jumped on snow, created a straight line and left traces in the snow that were reminiscent of hoof prints. The distance is almost the same, but the pattern of the print varies slightly and it could well give the impression of an open hoof. The fact that some of the observed tracks stop abruptly could be due to the attack of birds of prey such as owls , whose prey was the mice that were easily recognizable in the snow. As experienced climbers, the rodents would get over walls and roofs and would be able to get through pipes, cracks and small openings.

The rodent theory is most convincing in its argumentation, but whether the event actually happened like this cannot be said with certainty after the time that has now passed.

Comparable cases

  • The London daily newspaper " The Times " reported on March 14, 1840 that in the Scottish district around Glenorchy, Glenlyon and Glenochay traces of an unknown animal were noticed several times after snowfall. They resembled those of a large foal and were sunk deep in the snow. In this report, however, there is no mention of the devil as a possible originator.
  • On the occasion of his Antarctic expedition 1839–1843, James Clark Ross reported that in May 1840 horseshoe-shaped prints were found in the snow on Kerguelen Island, which were then lost on a slab of rock without snow. They were comparable to those of a pony or a donkey. The expedition did not see land animals.
  • On March 17, 1855, “ The Illustrated London News ” printed a letter to the editor from Heidelberg about allegedly comparable, annually recurring traces on the Piaskowagóra, a sand hill in Galicia .
  • There are also reports from the years 1950 (suddenly beginning and ending horseshoe-shaped - but not split - tracks in the sand on a beach in Devon) and 1957 (suddenly ending tracks in the snow in a garden).
  • Similar tracks were discovered in a yard in Devon on March 12, 2009. No explanation was found. Hoof marks from 2013 in Girvan , Scotland , which formed strange lines, were attributed to an April Fool's joke .

Finally, the Canvey Island Monster is also used speculatively on the Internet . According to experts, the remains of an unknown species found on the beach there in 1954 and 1955 come from curious-looking armfinches .

Lessons learned from Mike Dash

The British author Mike Dash , longtime editor of the magazine "Fortean Times", collected information and traced sources about the mysterious event over a long period of time. The following facts are based on the report he wrote.

Weather anomaly

The winter in Great Britain was unusually severe at the time. The Exe and Teign Rivers were frozen over part of their length. There was heavy, stormy snowfall on February 8th until around midnight. Then the temperature rose and the snow turned to rain. Towards morning the temperature fell again, and at dawn frost again covered the land.

Early search for a rational explanation

The first verifiable account of the mysterious event appeared on February 13, 1855 and already mentions the belief of residents that the devil had paid a visit to Devon. However, it already contained the presumption that no supernatural power was at work; a monkey escaped from a menagerie could possibly be the cause of the traces. Little by little, great bustards, herons, badgers, mice, rats, otters, swans, kangaroos, donkeys, cats, wolves, rabbits, herds and birds came under suspicion. Within hours of being found, there were countless attempts by groups of people to find out what had happened. From Dawlish , an armed force followed the trail for a distance of five miles without discovering anything useful. Others found that tracks stopped in the middle of fields, as if something had flown away.

swell

There are few primary sources for the incident, but many secondary sources. The only known written records of an eyewitness are the papers of the Reverend HT Ellacombe, a vicar who lived at Clyst St. George from 1850 until his death in 1885 . They were discovered in a parish box in 1952. There are also some letters to the “Illustrated London News” about the event, which were also published by the magazine.

The first is from a correspondent who called himself "South Devon" and who shaped many elements of the recorded facts. It contains a list of all the places in which the tracks were sighted. It also claims that the tracks were exactly the same size and step length everywhere, two statements that are not true. Here the clerk or his informant also spreads the trace on a 14 foot high wall and on roofs. The writer rejects the idea that thawing and re-freezing could have deformed the tracks and asserts that animal tracks have remained recognizable. He gives the length of the track a hundred miles, that its course was dead straight and that it crossed the Exe at one point. After finding the Ellacombe papers, his identity could be revealed. It was a 19-year-old who later made a career as a museum curator in Exeter .

Another contemporary witness was Reverend GM Musgrave with his letters to the "Illustrated London News". He contributed to the discovery of the trail leading over a haystack and provided the explanation of a kangaroo as the cause of the track. Finally, there is a letter from an anonymous author who suspected an otter's claw marks because they also led through a pipe but was unsure of himself. Only these four sources provided first-hand impressions.

The Exeter-based newspaper "Western Luminary" printed its first press article in 1855. Articles then appeared in the Illustrated London News and the Times. It was not until 1890 that there was correspondence with eyewitnesses who remembered in "Notes & Queries". Finally reports were published again in 1922. However, this information, documented decades later, should be viewed with great caution.

traces

Mike Dash shows in a table that there were deviating statements from the locations in the sources about the size and stride length of the trail. There must have been different tracks and not a single one that stretched across the country.

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Karl PN Shuker: World Atlas of puzzling phenomena. ISBN 3811214918
  2. ↑ Kryptozoologie.net: The devilish mouse tracks of Devon , queried on February 16, 2009
  3. ↑ James Clark Ross: A voyage of discovery and research in the Southern and Antarctic regions during the years 1839-1843. London 1847. , (English), accessed on March 24, 2009
  4. ↑ "The Devil's Hoofmarks" ( Memento from February 9, 2015 in the Internet Archive ), (English) with sources, requested on March 24, 2009

Web links