A Devilish Visit

Fairly often unaccountable things happen, and from time immemorial many people belived the occured to be either the work of the Devil or God. In the English Devon, where superstition still are very widespread, the Devil is blamed for most of the things that can not be explained, and that is exactly what happened in January 1855. Even though many years passed since then what happened are still a mystery.

January and February this year were the coldest months in almost one hundred years. Everywhere the snow were one metre deep. In Torquay no food supplies had been delivered for several weeks and everywhere the people had a hard time. The climate got milder in February. But when the inhabitants of Devon got up on the morning of February 9th they were met by a remarkable sight that made them convinced that their suffering were yet to be over. Everything seemed to indicate that they had been visited by the Devil himself...

Everywhere in Devon the ground were covered of footprints. The tracks looked like they had been made by a cloven hoof, but marks of claws were clearly seen in within the prints. Because of the snow that covered the ground they could see how the mystical visitor had walked, and there were not any possibility that one single person during one night would be able to walk that long distance. But the tracks of hooves continued in an unbroken line.

Through walls
The tracks ended at walls and continued on the other side, like if someone had gone right through stone and bricks. They continued across the roof-top and in some places it looked like if someone had walked straight up on the walls of the houses. The tracks were everywhere!

In Dawlish, one of Devons' larger coast cities, the vicar got visits by more than one hundred worried parishioners, who wanted to know how they could protect themselves from the unknown beast. Several years later the vicar's daughter, Henrietta Fursdon, wrote down her memories of the event, that many years later were unchangeable clear and sharp. She wrote:

The footprints occured during the night, and since my father were a vicar he were immediatly called for by currates, churchwardens and parishioners. Everyone wondered what he thought about the footprints, that were all over Dawlish. They were made of a cloven hoof and were seen in a long row that seemed to never end. I remember it clearly how I, myself, saw the footprints and how I, like a child, were filled of fear for this unkown beast that roamed the place. But it wasn't just us children that were afraid: the servants refused to go out after nightfall, even if it were just to close the gates.

The rumours about the event were, of course, spread throughout the country, and along with the increased publicity more reports came in about new tracks. Something that were incredible confusing were the footprints by the river Exes broad mouth, which, because of the tide, were so treacherous, that ferries could not travel on it.

The only way to go from Dawlish to Exmouth were to take the road around a tounge of land several kilometres from the mouth of the river. But despite that the footprints ended by the seashore in Dawlish and continued on the beach in Exmouth!

In Marley, a town in Exmouth, a person had seen footprints on a window pane on the second floor, and another person in Withycombe Raleigh, two kilometres from Marley, had followed the prints in his garden, in under a bush and discovered they had disappeared down in a sewage pipe who were only fifteen centimetres in diameter. And of course they continued on the other end...

Footprints of the Devil
In seventeen different villages and cities the footprints had been seen, and very close investigations were made at each place. The investigations took time, but on February 24th 1855 the results they had collected was published in an English magazine. It was showed that the tracks had not followed the same pattern as ordinary footprints.

When two rows of footprints occured next to each other both lines were dead straight. The tracks were like a donkey's, both to the form and the size. They were ten centimetres long and six centimetres wide.

The footprints in all villages and cities had exact the same size and the distance between every step were always the same. Almost every household had been visited by the mysterious stranger, and in every case the footprints always walked to one direction and did not even stop if there were something in its way. The visitor seemed to have been wandered straight through or across high walls, roofs and even haystacks. The whole distance were 160 kilometres.

More than 10,000 people had seen the footprints, either at their own place or at friends' places. All sorts of theories about what now was called the Devil's Footprints were discussed, but none of them were really trustworthy. Different sorts of animals got the blame: for example badgers and birds with frost-bitten feet. Some people thought it was a boyish prank, and other blamed it on the weather. But none of the theories were one hundred procent correct.

The legend lives on
Birds can, for example, very well walk over the ridge of the roof and through sewage pipes, but the same sort of birds can not have crossed the river Exes and leaved tracks in the water's edge on both sides. Besides, birds walk, as many other creatures, and put one foot after the other with a certain with between the right and the left foot. The mystical prints were made in a straight line. Birds also fly some parts of the distance, but here the prints continued without any pause, mile after mile. Any reliable explanation were never made, and with the snow the footprints disappeared.

Of the people who's seen them with their own eyes it is not many of them that are still alive today. But the legend still lives on, and among the inhabitants in Devonshire the story is still told about how the Devil came for a visit a cold February morning more then one hundred and forty years ago...