July 25, 2025 • 30 mins
In 1855, strange hoof-like prints appeared overnight in the snow across Devon in southwest England—stretching for over 100 miles, crossing rooftops, rivers, and walls as if no obstacle mattered.
Locals said only one being could leave such a trail.
It was the Devil himself...
Written by Diane Hope and produced by Richard MacLean Smith
Find us at youtube.com/@unexplainedpod, tiktok.com/@unexplainedpodcast, twitter @unexplainedpod, facebook.com/unexplainedpodcast or www.unexplainedpodcast.com for more info. Thank you for listening.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hello, it's Richard mccleinsmith here with a quick update before
we dive into today's episode. Unexplained is very excited to
be a part of Crime Wave at Sea this November,
joining forces with some of the eeriest voices in the
world of true crime and the paranormal four nights in
the Caribbean, with amazing podcasts like Last Podcast on the Left,
(00:20):
Scared to Death and many more live shows, Meet and greets,
creepy Stories under the Stars and you can be there too,
but don't wait. Rooms are nearly sold out. Head to
Crimewave Atsea dot com forward slash Unexplained to grab your
fan coat and lock in your cabin. We'd love to
see you on board. Great flurries of snow spiraled around
(00:54):
the church spire and settled heavily on the roofs of
the nearby cottages, like a scene from a Victorian Christmas card.
It was the night of February eighth, eighteen fifty five
in the parish of Withercombe Rawley in the County of
Devon in the southwest of England. But while the residents
of the village and those across the county shivered in
(01:16):
their beds, something was abroad, silently scurrying from house to house,
across fields and over fences. By dawn the following morning,
all about the land was carpeted with a sharp frost.
It was an hour or so after daybreak when the
Reverend George Musgrave, wrapped up in a heavy coat, left
(01:39):
the comfort of his rectory parlor and made the short
walk across to the church. Moments later he caught sight
of some peculiar prints on the frosty ground. Musgrave dropped
to his knees to inspect them closer. Transfixed by how
odd they were, Trembling with wonder and excitement, he jumped
up and hurried back into the rectory. Then swiftly reappeared,
(02:03):
carrying some sheets of paper and a fountain pen. With
great care, he knelt down once more onto the frozen ground.
Then he placed a sheet of paper over some of
the tracks and began to trace their outlines. Whatever they were,
they were clearly footprints, only not in the double line
(02:23):
that a four footed animal would make, but in one
single row, like something with only two legs, and they
looked to have been made by an unknown creature with
cloven Who you're listening to unexplained, and I am Richard
McLean Smith. The winter of eighteen fifty five was a
(02:52):
bleak one, even by England's chili standards. Temperatures remained at
or below freezing for weeks, making it colder than anything
in living memory. The southwestern coastal county of Devon, which
usually saw slightly milder weather than northern England, did not
escape the Great Frieze. Two of the region's largest rivers,
(03:15):
the ex and the Teen, had frozen over entirely in places.
Night after night, icy flakes fell relentlessly, piling up in
great drifts and blanketing the countryside. However, residents across the
southern part of the county woke up on that morning
of February ninth to find something much more chilling than
(03:37):
frost and snow. Across a remarkably wide swathe of countryside
from the town of Exeter to the coast, mile after
mile of what appeared to be strange footprints had appeared
like something from the pages of a Sherlock Holmes mystery.
Numerous tracks of what were colloquially called footmarks were reported
(03:59):
from more than thirty locations across Devon. If the tracks
had been left by a single creature. Its total travel
distance that one night would have been somewhere between forty
and one hundred miles. The size and shape of the footprints,
as well as the roots they followed, seemed to defy
the laws of nature and physics. Typically measuring four inches
(04:23):
long by three inches wide, many of the prints, as
Reverend Musgrave had noticed, at the shape of a cloven hoof,
not unlike a donkey's, except just like Musgraves, they progressed
in a straight, single line, one after another, spaced about
eight and sixteen inches apart. In the shallow snow, they
(04:46):
were between half an inch and four inches deep, often
meandering across gardens and through villages eerily. In places, they
were said to do impossible things. In the countryside, as
well as leaving trails across frozen lakes and rivers, they
would stop at one side of a haystack, leaving its
sides and top undisturbed, then recommence abruptly on the other
(05:10):
side and vanish through small holes in thickets and hedges,
only to appear again, impossibly, it seemed, on the other side.
But most unnervingly, they seemed to go from door to door,
venturing up to front steps before seemingly backing away. In
some places, it was said that there was hardly a
(05:32):
home that had not been visited. Most of the people
who saw the bizarre tracks were country folk familiar with
all manner of animal trails, but none of them had
seen anything like this before. To many of the god
(05:55):
fearing Devonians, the strange marks brought to mind sinister echoes
of a bit biblical story from the Book of Exodus,
chapter twelve, known as the Plague on the first Born.
In the story, God addresses Moses and tells him that
on an appointed night, he will visit Egypt and strike
down every firstborn, be it human or other animal. But
(06:19):
to others, the fact the prince were seemingly created by
something with a cloven hoof they brought to mind something else,
entirely the devil. Either way, whatever it was so unsettled
one group of local tradesmen from the coastal town of Dawlish.
They conspired to hunt it down and kill it. Seemingly
(06:41):
undaunted by the prospect of it being Lucifer himself, the
men took up guns and bludgeons and made their way
to a local churchyard to begin their search, finding the
tail end of some prince. There, they promptly began to
follow them through the snow, while all about sparkled white
under the mid morning sun. The prince first led them
(07:04):
to the town of Luscombe and then Oakland, a total
distance of around five miles, but the men found no
sign of a culprit. At Cliffs Saint George, on the
other side of the River ex two villagers were following
a different set of tracks when they discovered what appeared
to be a strange whitish excrement among the marks. Others
(07:26):
from the same area followed a further set of tracks
to the edge of a field, where they stopped abruptly,
only to reappear again in the middle of the field,
suggesting the perpetrator may have taken to the air before
coming back down to continue its meandering. One man told
a tale of a local fox hunt that attracted the
(07:47):
prince down to a wood where whatever the thing was
appeared to have been cornered, but when the hunt dogs
rushed in to flush it out, they turned around and
reappeared suddenly. Why in terror, too frightened to go back,
not one person or group managed to track the mysterious
(08:07):
prince for more than a few miles for a while.
The belief that Satan had been among them drove some
locals across the county to implement a self imposed curfew,
refusing to venture outdoors after nightfall. On that strange night
(08:33):
in February, also at the parish of Cliss Saint George,
Reverend Henry Elcom had been woken in the middle of
the night by his dog. The animal had clearly been
spooped and was barking loudly and pouring at the back door.
Having looked out into the night and seen nothing outside,
the reverend finally managed to calm the dog down before
(08:55):
returning to bed. The next morning, the reverend awoke, much
like many others that day, to find the strange prince
dotted about the grounds of his rectory. He later described
the marks as being similar in shape, albeit varying a
little in size, and constituted what to his eye was
(09:16):
some kind of claw print. Elacum also interviewed people who
attempted to track the creature and obtained samples of the
excrement found alongside the trails. He forwarded the samples to
renowned naturalist Richard Owen, a controversial figure in the world
of naturalism. Owen is perhaps best known for coining the
(09:38):
term dinosauria, from which we get the word dinosaur, meaning
terrible reptile. His thoughts on the matter remain unknown. Perhaps
less than impressed at receiving Reverend Elcom's scatological samples in
the post, he neglected to send a reply. A few
days later. Ellacum did receive a, however, from his colleague
(10:01):
George Musgrave, who'd been so animated by his discovery of
the prince he'd made the effort to preserve a record
of them. Musgrave included a sample of one of his drawings,
along with his own explanation for what it could be.
Unlike many of his parishioners, who feared the devil might
be among them, it was Musgrave's theory that the creature
(10:24):
was in fact a kangaroo that had perhaps escaped from
a zoo or some kind of traveling show. Within a fortnight,
the story of the mysterious footprints was being reported in
the national press, including the Illustrated London News and enormously
popular Weekly It broadcasted the story to a wide audience
(10:45):
and included images of the apparent footprints. This was the
great age of the Victorian gentleman naturalist, typically a man
from the upper or middle class with the financial means
and social standing to pursue a passion for natural history,
and so the floodgates were opened, and a host of
unusual theories were proposed, ranging from the rational to the bazaar.
(11:11):
At the more rational end were that the footprints belonged
to mice, rats, squirrels or otters, and had been enlarged
in size by a freeze thor action, in much the
same way that bare footprints in the Himalayas can become
distorted and enlarged, only to be mistaken for yety tracts,
as discussed in Unexplained, Season seven, episode eight, Walking on Snow.
(11:37):
Other suggestions verged increasingly toward the ridiculous, including the suggestion
that the tracks had been made by the hindfoot of
a badger that had somehow hopped its way across large
parts of South Devon. In the weeks that follow the
(12:00):
appearance of the unusual markings in the snow, an intriguing
series of letters was published in the Illustrated London News
by a correspondent signing himself enigmatically as South Devon. The
so called South Devon started by listing the primary places
in which the footmarks were discovered, then made a series
(12:21):
of assertive claims. One such claim was that the marks
in every parish were in fact exactly the same size
and the step distance the same length, contrary to what
had previously been reported. The writer also noted that the
Prince at one point appeared to have vaulted a fourteen
foot war and appeared on the roofs of houses. They
(12:45):
also dismissed the idea that thawing and refreezing could have
distorted the marks, noting that other animal prints made the
same night remained perfectly recognizable. In total, he claimed that
the marks formed a trail at least one hundred miles
in length, and were all in a straight line, and
had even at one point crossed the two mile wide river.
(13:08):
Ex South Devon claimed to be an experienced countryman with
a great deal of experience in tracking wild animals and
birds upon the snow, who had once spent five months
hunting in the Canadian wilderness. The prints, they said, were
like nothing on Earth they'd ever seen, and from there
(13:30):
the theories of what had made the devil's footprints, as
they had by then become known, became even wilder. A
former naval officer named Rupert Gould, who had a particular
interest in the mysteries of the sea, noted with alarm
how the so called devil's hoof marks had appeared on
land close to the coast. He saw a parallel with
(13:53):
a strange report that emerged from the Cagoulin Islands, also
known as the Desolation Islands, located around eighteen hundred nautical
miles south of Madagascar. Back in eighteen forty. A member
of the crew of the James Ross Antarctica expedition exploring
the islands that year claimed to discover a series of
(14:14):
small horse or donkey like tracks in the snow on
one of the islands, made by some unidentified creature that,
like something disturbing from the Lovecraft mythos, appeared to have
come out of the sea. Some decades later, Edwardian ghost
hunter Eliot O'Donnell claimed that he had once been told
(14:37):
a peculiar story by a man named mister Wilson. The
man supposedly detailed a boyhood visit to the Devon seaside
in the early nineteen hundred z when he discovered a
single line of hoofmarks one morning on a deserted beach
which also led directly into the sea. On this occasion,
(14:58):
the marks were of whole cloven hoofs six feet apart,
and were so deeply impressed in the sand that they
were significantly deeper than the footprints left by Wilson himself,
who weighed sixteen stone. One of the more unusual attributions
(15:21):
for the footprints was that they had secretly been made
by Romany travelers. The main advocate of this theory was
a man named Manfrey Wood, as described in his autobiography
in the Life of a Romany Gypsy, published in nineteen
seventy three. According to Wood, the Devil's footprints were the
(15:42):
result of at least eighteen months of careful planning by
seven Romany tribes. Together, they had supposedly used more than
four hundred pairs of specially made stilts in the shape
of cloven hoofs fashioned from old step ladders to create
the devilish marks. The aim of this elaborate plan was
(16:03):
to ultimately scare away two rival groups of the Romanes,
who were Pagans and fervent believers in the occult. A
nineteen eighty three article in the UK's Daily Mirror newspaper,
written by a so called traveling gentleman, Danny Smith, backed
up the theory. However, neither proponent could explain how between
(16:24):
four hundred and five hundred travelers had managed to coordinate
a long distance stilt walk in the dead of a
snowy winter's night, traversing gardens and routots without once being spotted.
Perhaps the most bizarre culprit of all was proposed by
one s ke off North Street in Brighton in a
(16:46):
letter published in the Brighton Guardian paper on the twenty
eighth of February eighteen fifty five. The writer asserted that
the footprints were made by a strange creature known as
a unipede, first identified by the Norse Icelandic navigator Bjarni
Herelson during a visit to the coasts of Labrador in
(17:07):
what is present day Canada in one thousand one. See
Herelson is believed by some to be the first known
European to set eyes on the mainland of the North
American continent, having apparently done so as far back as
nine hundred eighty six. See in the Saga of the Greenlanders,
(17:28):
which recounts the apparent Norse colonization of North America. Theres
an account of Harelson setting sail from Norway to Iceland
to visit his parents, only to find that his father
had left to go to Greenland. Attempting to find his
father with no map or compass, Hereolson and his crew
were blown off course by a storm before glimpsing a
(17:51):
land with tree covered mountains that was most definitely not Greenland.
It looked hospitable, but Byani was eager to see his parents,
and so despite the entreaties of his crew, who wanted
to go ashore, he turned the ship around and eventually
arrived in Greenland. However, it seems that the adventurous Icelander
(18:14):
went back to have another look. On a supposed later
trip to the Labrador coast, Herelson described seeing a bizarre
animal that had one leg and wings which appeared to
radiate from the middle of its back and spread out
like a peacock's tail. When this fantastical creature was alarmed
(18:36):
or excited, it erected a single crest of feathers above
its head in such a way that Harelson believed previous
observers had mistaken it for a unicorn. Bianni Herelson is
(18:57):
said to have named the peculiar creature the unipede. It
was said to emit a hideous cry, unlike that of
any other creature, and was also said to be able
to part run, part fly incredibly fast, touching the ground
frequently at equal distances, leaving footprints in a single line. Crucially,
(19:18):
the icelander claimed that the one legged creature's single limb
resembled that of a quadruped rather than a bird with
a hoof like foot, a description which greatly resembled pictures
of the so called devil's footprints that had been published
in the papers, and thus the correspondent to the Brighton
(19:38):
Guardian concluded the Devon tracts were almost certainly that of
the mythical unipede. In nineteen fifty two, a collection of
manuscripts and letters were found by a local historian named
Major Anthony Gibbs in the parish church of Cliss Saint George.
They were the papers of the Reverend Elcum, which had
(19:59):
lain preserved in the parish box at the church for
all that time. When folk historian Theo Brown gained access
to the Elegent papers that same year, she uncovered the
true identity of the mysterious South Devon, who had so
caused a stir with his controversial proclamations about the apparent
(20:20):
creator of the Prince. As it turned out, South Devon
was a nineteen year old named William Durban who had
simply made up his accounts. All in all, there are
three candidates most firmly in the frame for making the
Devil's footprints that wintry night in eighteen fifty five. Perhaps
(20:40):
the most intriguing is the balloon theory, which was not
considered at the time, but has been proposed more recently.
The suggestion is that the hoofmarks were in fact made
by a rope with a horseshoe shaped weight that had
been left dangling from an errant balloon, perhaps explaining how
the marks were left in straight lines for mile after
(21:03):
mile as the balloon drifted across the countryside. But if so,
why were no scuff marks from other trailing portions of
the rope found, and who would be so suicidal as
to be aloft in a balloon on such a freezing night.
The most common mammals that might have been out on
that winter's night are rats, mice, and squirrels, which are
(21:27):
all known to leave hopping tracks in which all four
feet held together can form a pattern similar to a
hoof mark and appear on a singular line, an effect
that will be enhanced if the snow in which there
left melts and then refreezes, as it did that February night.
But it's highly unlikely that so many such creatures that
(21:50):
would be required to make all the markings would each
have hopped for such long distances, sometimes up to five miles,
something that would be unusual if only one had done it.
It would seem then that if we were looking for
(22:12):
a material culprit, birds would seem to be the most
likely capable of covering long distances and landing on high walls, rooftops,
and haystacks. But how would a bird's foot, webbed or
clawed come to resemble a cloven hoof. There is one candidate,
remarked on by one astute observer back in eighteen fifty five,
(22:35):
known as the Great Bustard. Weighing anywhere between thirteen and
forty pounds, it is one of the heaviest living flying animals,
looking a bit like a cross between a wild turkey
and a large grouse. Bustard ceased to breed in Britain
in eighteen thirty two, when they were hunted to extinction,
but they were still seen in the countryside until around
(22:58):
eighteen seventy three. Bustard's feet make a heel mark and
three distinct toe marks, so it's possible that the donkey
like cloven hoof prints were in fact the imprints of
these birds. It would certainly explain why the footprints appeared
across a relatively large area in a short space of time,
(23:19):
including in places that could only be reached by flight. Inexplicable,
diabolical looking hoof marks are by no means an exclusively
nineteenth century phenomenon. In nineteen fifty seven, a missus Linda Hansen,
saw footprints of what appeared to be cloven hoofs in
(23:40):
her back garden in Humberside, Northeast England. The cloven prints,
four inches across and spaced twelve inches apart, were sharply
defined and stopped suddenly in the middle of the garden.
More recently, in two thousand nine, Jilled Wade, a resident
of North day woke up to find that overnight, a
(24:03):
snow covered back garden had been inexplicably imprinted by single
hoof prints which ran for almost seventy feet in a
single linear direction. Their shape and size were eerily similar
to the Prince in Devon one hundred and seventy years earlier.
Graham Ingalls from the Center for forty in Zoology went
(24:24):
to investigate. He concurred that the footprints were a match
to those from eighteen fifty five, and although he surmised
the most likely cause to be a mouse, he admitted
that he had never seen anything like it before. Perhaps
instead the devil had simply returned. Either way, whatever it
(24:47):
was that caused the Prince in Jill Wade's garden, and
indeed those that appeared across southern Devon on that wintry
February night of eighteen fifty five, remains to this day unexplained.
(25:08):
This episode was written by Diane Hope and produced by
Richard mclin smith. Diane is an audio producer and sound
recordist in her own right. You can find out more
about her work at Dianehope dot com and on Instagram
at in the sound Field. Thank You as ever for listening.
Unexplained is an Avy Club production. The podcast created by
(25:32):
Richard mclin smith. All other elements of the podcast, including
the music, are also produced by me Richard mc clan smith.
Unexplained the book and audiobook is now available to buy worldwide.
You can purchase from Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Waterstones and
other bookstores. Please subscribe to and rate the show wherever
(25:53):
you get your podcasts, and feel free to get in
touch with any thoughts or ideas regarding the stories you've
heard on the show. Perhaps you have an explanation or
a story of your own you'd like to share. You
can find out more at Unexplained podcast dot com and
reaches online through X and Blue Sky at Unexplained Pod
and Facebook at Facebook dot com, Forward Slash, Unexplained Podcast
(27:13):
and the l a A Now No Anything Than Bad
(28:09):
and th
Hello, it's Richard mccleinsmith here with a quick update before
we dive into today's episode. Unexplained is very excited to
be a part of Crime Wave at Sea this November,
joining forces with some of the eeriest voices in the
world of true crime and the paranormal four nights in
the Caribbean, with amazing podcasts like Last Podcast on the Left,
(00:20):
Scared to Death and many more live shows, Meet and greets,
creepy Stories under the Stars and you can be there too,
but don't wait. Rooms are nearly sold out. Head to
Crimewave Atsea dot com forward slash Unexplained to grab your
fan coat and lock in your cabin. We'd love to
see you on board. Great flurries of snow spiraled around
(00:54):
the church spire and settled heavily on the roofs of
the nearby cottages, like a scene from a Victorian Christmas card.
It was the night of February eighth, eighteen fifty five
in the parish of Withercombe Rawley in the County of
Devon in the southwest of England. But while the residents
of the village and those across the county shivered in
(01:16):
their beds, something was abroad, silently scurrying from house to house,
across fields and over fences. By dawn the following morning,
all about the land was carpeted with a sharp frost.
It was an hour or so after daybreak when the
Reverend George Musgrave, wrapped up in a heavy coat, left
(01:39):
the comfort of his rectory parlor and made the short
walk across to the church. Moments later he caught sight
of some peculiar prints on the frosty ground. Musgrave dropped
to his knees to inspect them closer. Transfixed by how
odd they were, Trembling with wonder and excitement, he jumped
up and hurried back into the rectory. Then swiftly reappeared,
(02:03):
carrying some sheets of paper and a fountain pen. With
great care, he knelt down once more onto the frozen ground.
Then he placed a sheet of paper over some of
the tracks and began to trace their outlines. Whatever they were,
they were clearly footprints, only not in the double line
(02:23):
that a four footed animal would make, but in one
single row, like something with only two legs, and they
looked to have been made by an unknown creature with
cloven Who you're listening to unexplained, and I am Richard
McLean Smith. The winter of eighteen fifty five was a
(02:52):
bleak one, even by England's chili standards. Temperatures remained at
or below freezing for weeks, making it colder than anything
in living memory. The southwestern coastal county of Devon, which
usually saw slightly milder weather than northern England, did not
escape the Great Frieze. Two of the region's largest rivers,
(03:15):
the ex and the Teen, had frozen over entirely in places.
Night after night, icy flakes fell relentlessly, piling up in
great drifts and blanketing the countryside. However, residents across the
southern part of the county woke up on that morning
of February ninth to find something much more chilling than
(03:37):
frost and snow. Across a remarkably wide swathe of countryside
from the town of Exeter to the coast, mile after
mile of what appeared to be strange footprints had appeared
like something from the pages of a Sherlock Holmes mystery.
Numerous tracks of what were colloquially called footmarks were reported
(03:59):
from more than thirty locations across Devon. If the tracks
had been left by a single creature. Its total travel
distance that one night would have been somewhere between forty
and one hundred miles. The size and shape of the footprints,
as well as the roots they followed, seemed to defy
the laws of nature and physics. Typically measuring four inches
(04:23):
long by three inches wide, many of the prints, as
Reverend Musgrave had noticed, at the shape of a cloven hoof,
not unlike a donkey's, except just like Musgraves, they progressed
in a straight, single line, one after another, spaced about
eight and sixteen inches apart. In the shallow snow, they
(04:46):
were between half an inch and four inches deep, often
meandering across gardens and through villages eerily. In places, they
were said to do impossible things. In the countryside, as
well as leaving trails across frozen lakes and rivers, they
would stop at one side of a haystack, leaving its
sides and top undisturbed, then recommence abruptly on the other
(05:10):
side and vanish through small holes in thickets and hedges,
only to appear again, impossibly, it seemed, on the other side.
But most unnervingly, they seemed to go from door to door,
venturing up to front steps before seemingly backing away. In
some places, it was said that there was hardly a
(05:32):
home that had not been visited. Most of the people
who saw the bizarre tracks were country folk familiar with
all manner of animal trails, but none of them had
seen anything like this before. To many of the god
(05:55):
fearing Devonians, the strange marks brought to mind sinister echoes
of a bit biblical story from the Book of Exodus,
chapter twelve, known as the Plague on the first Born.
In the story, God addresses Moses and tells him that
on an appointed night, he will visit Egypt and strike
down every firstborn, be it human or other animal. But
(06:19):
to others, the fact the prince were seemingly created by
something with a cloven hoof they brought to mind something else,
entirely the devil. Either way, whatever it was so unsettled
one group of local tradesmen from the coastal town of Dawlish.
They conspired to hunt it down and kill it. Seemingly
(06:41):
undaunted by the prospect of it being Lucifer himself, the
men took up guns and bludgeons and made their way
to a local churchyard to begin their search, finding the
tail end of some prince. There, they promptly began to
follow them through the snow, while all about sparkled white
under the mid morning sun. The prince first led them
(07:04):
to the town of Luscombe and then Oakland, a total
distance of around five miles, but the men found no
sign of a culprit. At Cliffs Saint George, on the
other side of the River ex two villagers were following
a different set of tracks when they discovered what appeared
to be a strange whitish excrement among the marks. Others
(07:26):
from the same area followed a further set of tracks
to the edge of a field, where they stopped abruptly,
only to reappear again in the middle of the field,
suggesting the perpetrator may have taken to the air before
coming back down to continue its meandering. One man told
a tale of a local fox hunt that attracted the
(07:47):
prince down to a wood where whatever the thing was
appeared to have been cornered, but when the hunt dogs
rushed in to flush it out, they turned around and
reappeared suddenly. Why in terror, too frightened to go back,
not one person or group managed to track the mysterious
(08:07):
prince for more than a few miles for a while.
The belief that Satan had been among them drove some
locals across the county to implement a self imposed curfew,
refusing to venture outdoors after nightfall. On that strange night
(08:33):
in February, also at the parish of Cliss Saint George,
Reverend Henry Elcom had been woken in the middle of
the night by his dog. The animal had clearly been
spooped and was barking loudly and pouring at the back door.
Having looked out into the night and seen nothing outside,
the reverend finally managed to calm the dog down before
(08:55):
returning to bed. The next morning, the reverend awoke, much
like many others that day, to find the strange prince
dotted about the grounds of his rectory. He later described
the marks as being similar in shape, albeit varying a
little in size, and constituted what to his eye was
(09:16):
some kind of claw print. Elacum also interviewed people who
attempted to track the creature and obtained samples of the
excrement found alongside the trails. He forwarded the samples to
renowned naturalist Richard Owen, a controversial figure in the world
of naturalism. Owen is perhaps best known for coining the
(09:38):
term dinosauria, from which we get the word dinosaur, meaning
terrible reptile. His thoughts on the matter remain unknown. Perhaps
less than impressed at receiving Reverend Elcom's scatological samples in
the post, he neglected to send a reply. A few
days later. Ellacum did receive a, however, from his colleague
(10:01):
George Musgrave, who'd been so animated by his discovery of
the prince he'd made the effort to preserve a record
of them. Musgrave included a sample of one of his drawings,
along with his own explanation for what it could be.
Unlike many of his parishioners, who feared the devil might
be among them, it was Musgrave's theory that the creature
(10:24):
was in fact a kangaroo that had perhaps escaped from
a zoo or some kind of traveling show. Within a fortnight,
the story of the mysterious footprints was being reported in
the national press, including the Illustrated London News and enormously
popular Weekly It broadcasted the story to a wide audience
(10:45):
and included images of the apparent footprints. This was the
great age of the Victorian gentleman naturalist, typically a man
from the upper or middle class with the financial means
and social standing to pursue a passion for natural history,
and so the floodgates were opened, and a host of
unusual theories were proposed, ranging from the rational to the bazaar.
(11:11):
At the more rational end were that the footprints belonged
to mice, rats, squirrels or otters, and had been enlarged
in size by a freeze thor action, in much the
same way that bare footprints in the Himalayas can become
distorted and enlarged, only to be mistaken for yety tracts,
as discussed in Unexplained, Season seven, episode eight, Walking on Snow.
(11:37):
Other suggestions verged increasingly toward the ridiculous, including the suggestion
that the tracks had been made by the hindfoot of
a badger that had somehow hopped its way across large
parts of South Devon. In the weeks that follow the
(12:00):
appearance of the unusual markings in the snow, an intriguing
series of letters was published in the Illustrated London News
by a correspondent signing himself enigmatically as South Devon. The
so called South Devon started by listing the primary places
in which the footmarks were discovered, then made a series
(12:21):
of assertive claims. One such claim was that the marks
in every parish were in fact exactly the same size
and the step distance the same length, contrary to what
had previously been reported. The writer also noted that the
Prince at one point appeared to have vaulted a fourteen
foot war and appeared on the roofs of houses. They
(12:45):
also dismissed the idea that thawing and refreezing could have
distorted the marks, noting that other animal prints made the
same night remained perfectly recognizable. In total, he claimed that
the marks formed a trail at least one hundred miles
in length, and were all in a straight line, and
had even at one point crossed the two mile wide river.
(13:08):
Ex South Devon claimed to be an experienced countryman with
a great deal of experience in tracking wild animals and
birds upon the snow, who had once spent five months
hunting in the Canadian wilderness. The prints, they said, were
like nothing on Earth they'd ever seen, and from there
(13:30):
the theories of what had made the devil's footprints, as
they had by then become known, became even wilder. A
former naval officer named Rupert Gould, who had a particular
interest in the mysteries of the sea, noted with alarm
how the so called devil's hoof marks had appeared on
land close to the coast. He saw a parallel with
(13:53):
a strange report that emerged from the Cagoulin Islands, also
known as the Desolation Islands, located around eighteen hundred nautical
miles south of Madagascar. Back in eighteen forty. A member
of the crew of the James Ross Antarctica expedition exploring
the islands that year claimed to discover a series of
(14:14):
small horse or donkey like tracks in the snow on
one of the islands, made by some unidentified creature that,
like something disturbing from the Lovecraft mythos, appeared to have
come out of the sea. Some decades later, Edwardian ghost
hunter Eliot O'Donnell claimed that he had once been told
(14:37):
a peculiar story by a man named mister Wilson. The
man supposedly detailed a boyhood visit to the Devon seaside
in the early nineteen hundred z when he discovered a
single line of hoofmarks one morning on a deserted beach
which also led directly into the sea. On this occasion,
(14:58):
the marks were of whole cloven hoofs six feet apart,
and were so deeply impressed in the sand that they
were significantly deeper than the footprints left by Wilson himself,
who weighed sixteen stone. One of the more unusual attributions
(15:21):
for the footprints was that they had secretly been made
by Romany travelers. The main advocate of this theory was
a man named Manfrey Wood, as described in his autobiography
in the Life of a Romany Gypsy, published in nineteen
seventy three. According to Wood, the Devil's footprints were the
(15:42):
result of at least eighteen months of careful planning by
seven Romany tribes. Together, they had supposedly used more than
four hundred pairs of specially made stilts in the shape
of cloven hoofs fashioned from old step ladders to create
the devilish marks. The aim of this elaborate plan was
(16:03):
to ultimately scare away two rival groups of the Romanes,
who were Pagans and fervent believers in the occult. A
nineteen eighty three article in the UK's Daily Mirror newspaper,
written by a so called traveling gentleman, Danny Smith, backed
up the theory. However, neither proponent could explain how between
(16:24):
four hundred and five hundred travelers had managed to coordinate
a long distance stilt walk in the dead of a
snowy winter's night, traversing gardens and routots without once being spotted.
Perhaps the most bizarre culprit of all was proposed by
one s ke off North Street in Brighton in a
(16:46):
letter published in the Brighton Guardian paper on the twenty
eighth of February eighteen fifty five. The writer asserted that
the footprints were made by a strange creature known as
a unipede, first identified by the Norse Icelandic navigator Bjarni
Herelson during a visit to the coasts of Labrador in
(17:07):
what is present day Canada in one thousand one. See
Herelson is believed by some to be the first known
European to set eyes on the mainland of the North
American continent, having apparently done so as far back as
nine hundred eighty six. See in the Saga of the Greenlanders,
(17:28):
which recounts the apparent Norse colonization of North America. Theres
an account of Harelson setting sail from Norway to Iceland
to visit his parents, only to find that his father
had left to go to Greenland. Attempting to find his
father with no map or compass, Hereolson and his crew
were blown off course by a storm before glimpsing a
(17:51):
land with tree covered mountains that was most definitely not Greenland.
It looked hospitable, but Byani was eager to see his parents,
and so despite the entreaties of his crew, who wanted
to go ashore, he turned the ship around and eventually
arrived in Greenland. However, it seems that the adventurous Icelander
(18:14):
went back to have another look. On a supposed later
trip to the Labrador coast, Herelson described seeing a bizarre
animal that had one leg and wings which appeared to
radiate from the middle of its back and spread out
like a peacock's tail. When this fantastical creature was alarmed
(18:36):
or excited, it erected a single crest of feathers above
its head in such a way that Harelson believed previous
observers had mistaken it for a unicorn. Bianni Herelson is
(18:57):
said to have named the peculiar creature the unipede. It
was said to emit a hideous cry, unlike that of
any other creature, and was also said to be able
to part run, part fly incredibly fast, touching the ground
frequently at equal distances, leaving footprints in a single line. Crucially,
(19:18):
the icelander claimed that the one legged creature's single limb
resembled that of a quadruped rather than a bird with
a hoof like foot, a description which greatly resembled pictures
of the so called devil's footprints that had been published
in the papers, and thus the correspondent to the Brighton
(19:38):
Guardian concluded the Devon tracts were almost certainly that of
the mythical unipede. In nineteen fifty two, a collection of
manuscripts and letters were found by a local historian named
Major Anthony Gibbs in the parish church of Cliss Saint George.
They were the papers of the Reverend Elcum, which had
(19:59):
lain preserved in the parish box at the church for
all that time. When folk historian Theo Brown gained access
to the Elegent papers that same year, she uncovered the
true identity of the mysterious South Devon, who had so
caused a stir with his controversial proclamations about the apparent
(20:20):
creator of the Prince. As it turned out, South Devon
was a nineteen year old named William Durban who had
simply made up his accounts. All in all, there are
three candidates most firmly in the frame for making the
Devil's footprints that wintry night in eighteen fifty five. Perhaps
(20:40):
the most intriguing is the balloon theory, which was not
considered at the time, but has been proposed more recently.
The suggestion is that the hoofmarks were in fact made
by a rope with a horseshoe shaped weight that had
been left dangling from an errant balloon, perhaps explaining how
the marks were left in straight lines for mile after
(21:03):
mile as the balloon drifted across the countryside. But if so,
why were no scuff marks from other trailing portions of
the rope found, and who would be so suicidal as
to be aloft in a balloon on such a freezing night.
The most common mammals that might have been out on
that winter's night are rats, mice, and squirrels, which are
(21:27):
all known to leave hopping tracks in which all four
feet held together can form a pattern similar to a
hoof mark and appear on a singular line, an effect
that will be enhanced if the snow in which there
left melts and then refreezes, as it did that February night.
But it's highly unlikely that so many such creatures that
(21:50):
would be required to make all the markings would each
have hopped for such long distances, sometimes up to five miles,
something that would be unusual if only one had done it.
It would seem then that if we were looking for
(22:12):
a material culprit, birds would seem to be the most
likely capable of covering long distances and landing on high walls, rooftops,
and haystacks. But how would a bird's foot, webbed or
clawed come to resemble a cloven hoof. There is one candidate,
remarked on by one astute observer back in eighteen fifty five,
(22:35):
known as the Great Bustard. Weighing anywhere between thirteen and
forty pounds, it is one of the heaviest living flying animals,
looking a bit like a cross between a wild turkey
and a large grouse. Bustard ceased to breed in Britain
in eighteen thirty two, when they were hunted to extinction,
but they were still seen in the countryside until around
(22:58):
eighteen seventy three. Bustard's feet make a heel mark and
three distinct toe marks, so it's possible that the donkey
like cloven hoof prints were in fact the imprints of
these birds. It would certainly explain why the footprints appeared
across a relatively large area in a short space of time,
(23:19):
including in places that could only be reached by flight. Inexplicable,
diabolical looking hoof marks are by no means an exclusively
nineteenth century phenomenon. In nineteen fifty seven, a missus Linda Hansen,
saw footprints of what appeared to be cloven hoofs in
(23:40):
her back garden in Humberside, Northeast England. The cloven prints,
four inches across and spaced twelve inches apart, were sharply
defined and stopped suddenly in the middle of the garden.
More recently, in two thousand nine, Jilled Wade, a resident
of North day woke up to find that overnight, a
(24:03):
snow covered back garden had been inexplicably imprinted by single
hoof prints which ran for almost seventy feet in a
single linear direction. Their shape and size were eerily similar
to the Prince in Devon one hundred and seventy years earlier.
Graham Ingalls from the Center for forty in Zoology went
(24:24):
to investigate. He concurred that the footprints were a match
to those from eighteen fifty five, and although he surmised
the most likely cause to be a mouse, he admitted
that he had never seen anything like it before. Perhaps
instead the devil had simply returned. Either way, whatever it
(24:47):
was that caused the Prince in Jill Wade's garden, and
indeed those that appeared across southern Devon on that wintry
February night of eighteen fifty five, remains to this day unexplained.
(25:08):
This episode was written by Diane Hope and produced by
Richard mclin smith. Diane is an audio producer and sound
recordist in her own right. You can find out more
about her work at Dianehope dot com and on Instagram
at in the sound Field. Thank You as ever for listening.
Unexplained is an Avy Club production. The podcast created by
(25:32):
Richard mclin smith. All other elements of the podcast, including
the music, are also produced by me Richard mc clan smith.
Unexplained the book and audiobook is now available to buy worldwide.
You can purchase from Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Waterstones and
other bookstores. Please subscribe to and rate the show wherever
(25:53):
you get your podcasts, and feel free to get in
touch with any thoughts or ideas regarding the stories you've
heard on the show. Perhaps you have an explanation or
a story of your own you'd like to share. You
can find out more at Unexplained podcast dot com and
reaches online through X and Blue Sky at Unexplained Pod
and Facebook at Facebook dot com, Forward Slash, Unexplained Podcast
(27:13):
and the l a A Now No Anything Than Bad
(28:09):
and th
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