Real-Life X-Files: Investigating the Paranormal

2. The Devil's Footprints

~ Chapter 2 T112 D2"1Jil'S Footpri;1ts The case of"The Devil's Footprints" is a classic of the "unsolved" genre, having been featured in Rupert T. Gould's Oddities:A Book ofUnexplained Facts (1928, 1964); Frank Edwards's Stranger than Science (1959); c.B. Colby's Strangely Enough (1971); Rupert Furneaux's The World's Most Intriguing True Mysteries (1977); Martin Ebon's The World's Greatest Unsolved Mysteries (1981); and many other anthologies and compendia ofthe unexplained. The fullest account, complete with the original source material, is given by Mike Dash in Fortean Studies (1994). Colby tells the story in concise form: There was no denying the footprints in the snow on the morning of February 9, 1855. The odd tracks appeared in several towns in South Devon, England. Residents ofLympstone, Exmouth, Topsham, Dawlish, and Teignmouth all reported the same thing. During the night some weird and uncanny creature had raced in a straight line through these towns, covering a hundred miles and more and leaving behind the tracks nobody could identify. Each track, about 4 inches in length and 23/4in width, was exactly 8 inches apart. They were roughly shaped like a hoofprint and were promptly christened "The Devil's Footprints" by all who saw them. Even the conservative London Times printed a report of the footprints in the snow.... Going straight across country, the tracks never swerved. They were found upon the top of 14-foot walls and they crossed the roofs ofbarns and houses, went up and over snow-covered piles of hay and even appeared on the tops of wagons which had been left out all night. It was as ifthe creature had leaped up or down, for the tracks showed no apparent change of pace or speed. In many places it was reported The Devil's Footprints Jl)EV{)N§HIR 1. 13~:"t;o;;-·! E.8UOLCI6H,~ NEW .... ..... ..... TorNES Figure 2.1. Map showing the Devonshire, England, localities in which the "Devil's Footprints" were observed in early February 1855. Contrary to some reports, the trail did not extend in a straight line but zigzagged as shown. that the snow had been "branded" away or melted from the ground where the "feet" had touched.... Over the hundred-mile course, the distance between the tracks never varied from the regular 8 inches, yet how could anyone or anything travel that far in a single night without varying its stride? Too many people saw the tracks for it to have been a joke or a local phenomenon. In some instances the prints vanished at the edge of unfrozen ponds or rivers, and appeared again exactly in line on the opposite side, to race away in that straight and mysterious flight across 11 If' 12 I't' Real-Life X-Files the sleeping countryside. And in all that distance, no one saw it, no one heard it. Only the tracks remained as evidence of the creature's passing.[See figure 2.1.] Some sources, like Edwards (1959), incorrectly give the date as February 7,1855, the confusion resulting from early reports mentioning the night ofthe eighth. By the seventeenth, the storyhad reached the national newspapers , which published correspondents' accounts through mid-March. Experts from the Zoological Gardens in Regent's Park and from the British Museum were silent, but others offered theories that postulated everything from an escaped kangaroo to birds, rats, cats, foxes, and other creatures. No kangaroo was on the loose, but the naturalist Sir Richard Owen (1855) claimed the solution to the mystery was a badger, based on his interpretation ofpublished drawings and descriptions ofsome ofthe tracks. But like those of others, Owen's solution failed to account for all of the reported factors. As one writer noted, a badger could not have "jumped a fourteen-foot wall or squeezed through a six-inch drain pipe, let alone have left clear marks on the sill of a second-storey window!" (Brown 1982) So what is the solution? It begins with the acknowledgment that "no one explanation will cover all the reported factors" (Brown 1982). But that statement is meant to imply some further, unknown source-perhaps , as many of the mid-nineteenth-century rural South Devon folk thought, the Devil himself. Suppose, however, we postulate that the various reports are manifestations of what psychologists call contagion-a term I like to define by an example: in 1978, in Holland...