The Devil's Footprints

I'm thinking its a hoax only because footprints remaining in the snow for 100 miles seems a tad far fetched wouldnt the majority have been destroyed just by natural means in a matter of hours. The hoax could have easily been done by a group of ppl in stilts who then exagerated the extent of the tracts. The conditions just seem far to perfect to be actual.

It is a pretty wild story. I can only imagine how people freaked out back then about it. As like some other people have noted, the story was probably blown out of proportion over the years.

here's some additional "theories & variations" I dug up:

- some have speculated that the prints were made by a pack of unknown animals traveling together, maybe "badgers"...

- Large area covered thanks to the nearby river that was frozen over during the winter period (allowing whatever to cross over) ..

- theory of a connection between this event and the discovery of some unusual corpses of strange U-shaped toed monsters on Canvey Island a hundred years later. (likely an urban legend tho.....no pix - some were allegedly taken)

Canvey Island Monster

- It's said that an amateur naturalist suggested that the trail had been caused by a kangaroo that might have escaped from a traveling menagerie and later returned with no one noticing.

- Rev. Henry Fudsen, is credited with a sermon that squarely placed the blame on the paw marks of cats.




[edit on 21-6-2004 by quadricle]

Ah, the footprints of the devil in Devon, I know the story well. My grandfather first told me the story when I was a young boy.

To add to the story found on the website the prints began in the middle of a garden in the Parish of Totnes and ended as mysteriously as they had started in a field at Littleham.

In some places the marks seemed to have been made by fiery hooves in the hard frozen snow or , as at Woodbury, by a hot iron outside the door of the church.

Near the village of Dawlish the trail led into dense bracken and undergrowth. When dogs were brought in to flush out the thicket, they are said to have retreated, howling dismally.

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Map showing trek from Totnes to Littleham