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In 1855, in new-fallen snow in Devonshire, a trail of small hooflike footprints led for miles. Similar footprints have been found on several occasions, most notably during the 1909 Jersey Devil sightings. But what are these mysterious footprints? Podcast Site: https://forgottendarkness.podbean.com/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/PodcastDarkness Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/agable_fd/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/787544518302500/ Part of the Straight Up Strange Network: https://www.straightupstrange.com/ Opening music from https://filmmusic.io. "Dark Child" by Kevin MacLeod (https://incompetech.com). License: CC BY (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) Closing music by Soma. SOURCES “Footprints in the Snow.” Barrow’s Worcester Journal, March 21, 1891. “Mysterious Footmarks.” Nottinghamshire Guardian, March 1, 1855. “Singular Animal.” London Times, March 14, 1840. Busk, R.H. “Phenomenal Footprints in Snow, S. Devon.” Notes and Queries 7:8 (December 28, 1889). –. “Phenomenal Footprints in the Snow, S. Devon.” Notes and Queries 7:9 (January 25, 1890). Dash, Mike. “The Devil’s Hoofmarks: Source Material on the Great Devon Mystery of 1855.” Fortean Studies 1:1 (1994). Freeman, Richard. “Other Historical Accounts of the Devil’s Footprints.” https://torridgeside.blogspot.com/2009/03/richard-freeman-other-historical.html Gould, Rupert T. Oddities: A Book of Unexplained Facts. University Books: New Hyde Park, NY, 1965 ed. https://issuu.com/landmarkpress/docs/welcome_to_perthshire_bedroom_folde https://www.wideopenspaces.com/tell-difference-squirrel-rabbit-tracks/
This week we travel back in time to the mid 1800s and Brandon tells John about a bizarre event. The theories on this one get pretty wild. --- Produced By: Brandon Boyer Art: Tom Hill Website: cryptopediacast.com Patreon --- The Devils Hoofmarks Source Material on the Great Devon Mystery of 1855 Missed in History Article Skeptoid 31 Wikipedia Australian Newspaper Article Peter Moore's Blog
In this companion piece to my episode on the devilish Spring-Heeled Jack, I follow the trail of the Great Devon Mystery, looking to uncover the truth behind the so-called Devil's Hoofmarks. In February of 1855, mysterious tracks appeared overnight all across the county of Devon in England. In this final Halloween episode and the last episode before the show's hiatus, I consider what might have left its mark in the snow that night. Find the blog post for this episode at historicalblindness.com to see imagery and follow links to further reading. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
In the winter of 1855, after a heavy fall of snow, residents across a large area of the county of Devon, in the South West of the UK, awoke to find a mysterious trail of prints in the snow. Looking like an hoof, the single-file line of prints allegedly covered a distance of some 100 miles, ignoring obstructions in their path and continuing over high walls hayricks and even the roofs of houses. No satisfactory explanation has ever been given for the event, which became known as the Great Devon Mystery. Although the case has been widely reported, interestingly it is not the only time that this has happened. Very similar lines of marks have been found in different parts of the world over the last 175 years or so. It's just that the other cases are much more obscure. In this episode of The Folklore Podcast, creator and host Mark Norman compares and contrasts cases from 1840 through to 2009.
Happy Halloween, everyone! This week’s episode is about a spooky occurrence in 1855, where people in Devon woke to find small hoofprints all over the place, even on roofs. Join us in an attempt to figure out just what animal might have made the devil’s footprints! The footprints as drawn by the Rev. Ellacombe from newspaper accounts: The h*ckin adorable wood mouse: Link to lots of pictures of jumping wood mice omg Wood mouse prints from jumping, from Leutscher via Dash (see further reading, below): Mystery print from 2009: Further reading: The Devil’s Hoofmarks: Source Material on the Great Devon Mystery of 1855 edited by Mike Dash HALLOWEEN BONUS AW YISS! I've unlocked the following Patreon bonus episodes so everyone can listen. You should be able to open them in your browser without needing a Patreon login: Animals That Glow The Beast of Busco Weird Teeth Carnivorous Plants Also thank you for buying a lot of copies of my book Skytown: Amazon USA Amazon UK Show transcript: Welcome to Strange Animals Podcast Halloween episode for 2017. I’m your host, Kate Shaw. This is the best time of the year if you like candy, ghost stories, monsters, wearing spooky costumes, and buying all the bat decorations in Target. I have so many bat decorations. I’ve stopped taking them down after Halloween and my room looks like a bat cave. Before we get started, a quick heads-up that I’ve unlocked a few of the older Patreon bonus episodes so that anyone can listen to them. They won’t show up in your feed but I have links to the specific episodes in this week’s show notes so you can go listen to them in your browser if you’re interested. You don’t even need a Patreon login. I hope you enjoy them as an extra Halloween treat. Another reminder that I have a novel available through Fox Spirit Books. It’s called Skytown and it’s a fun steampunk adventure story. I’ll put a link in the shownotes if you want to learn more. Oh, and if you want a Strange Animals Podcast sticker, just send me your mailing address at strangeanimalspodcast@gmail.com and I’ll mail you one! Now, on with the spooky Halloween episode! This week’s episode is something that has baffled me since I read about it as a kid. It’s baffled everyone for more than 150 years. I’ll tell you now that while I make one suggestion that seems plausible to me, it’s by no means a perfect match for the creature that made…the devil’s footprints. /reverb reverb reverb The winter of 1855 was especially bitter in England. Around Devon, the rivers froze solid and temperatures stayed below freezing almost every day and night from January to March. On the night of February 8 it snowed, but towards dawn a brief thaw turned the falling snow to rain before the temperature dropped again and a frost fell. When residents of Devon woke on the morning of February 9, they found some 4” of snow on the ground, or 10 cm. They also found small hoofprints everywhere. These weren’t ordinary hoofprints. A donkey or pony hadn’t gotten loose during the night and wandered around. Some of the prints did look like a donkey’s, but some appeared cloven, more like a large goat’s hoof. And the stride was short, only about 8” between most prints, or a little over 20 cm, sometimes about double that. Besides, the prints appeared in places where a donkey couldn’t possibly have left prints: on rooftops, inside gardens with tall walls and locked gates. Even a nimble goat couldn’t have managed that without someone hearing a goat bounding around. Sometimes a line of prints would walk right up to an obstacle, like a haystack or hedge, and continue on the other side as though the obstacle didn’t exist. Tracks began or ended abruptly as though the animal had dropped from or flown into the sky. And there were untold thousands of the prints. Some villages had prints in almost every yard. They appeared in churchyards among gravestones,
On Feb. 9, 1855, the residents of Devon in southern England awoke to find a bewildering set of footprints in the newfallen snow. "These are to be found in fields, gardens, roads, house-tops, & other likely and unlikely places, deeply embedded in snow," ran one contemporary account. "The shape was a hoof." In this episode of the Futility Closet podcast we'll examine the surviving descriptions of the odd marks and consider the various explanations that have been offered. We'll also revisit the compassionate Nazi fighter pilot Franz Stigler and puzzle over how to sneak into Switzerland across a guarded footbridge. Our segment on the "devil's hoofmarks" is drawn from Mike Dash's excellent article "The Devil's Hoofmarks: Source Material on the Great Devon Mystery of 1855," which appeared in Fortean Studies 1:1 in 1994. The full text (2MB PDF) is here. The Restricted Data Blog's post on John W. Campbell and his 1941 article “Is Death Dust America’s Secret Weapon?” appeared on March 7, 2014. The comments include an extensive discussion about Campbell's exchanges with Robert A. Heinlein. You can listen using the player above, or subscribe on iTunes or via the RSS feed at http://feedpress.me/futilitycloset. Many thanks to Doug Ross for the music in this episode. If you have any questions or comments you can reach us at podcast@futilitycloset.com. Thanks for listening!