The Devil's Footprints of Devon
On the night of 8–9 February 1855, after heavy snow, lines of hoof-like prints appeared across the Exe estuary in Devon, crossing roofs, walls and haystacks for tens of miles.
1855 CE · 50.68, -3.46 · status: unexplained
The account
The prints, about 4 inches long, ran in single file from Exmouth and Topsham across to Dawlish and Teignmouth. The Illustrated London News and The Times carried letters for weeks. Clergy preached on the Devil; others blamed a kangaroo, badgers or balloons.
The sceptical view
Researchers suggest many tracks by different animals (mice, hares, birds) joined in the telling, a trailing rope from an experimental balloon, or exaggeration in the reports. The total length and route were never measured.
The researched reading
Hoof-like prints across a snowy Devon estuary. Many different animal tracks, joined together by rumour and the press, explain it.
| Explanation | Weight | Why |
|---|---|---|
| A known natural phenomenon | 40% | Mike Dash’s study of the original letters shows the tracks were reported from many separate places and differed in size and shape, not one continuous line; hopping wood mice, hares, birds and ponies, with thaw and refreezing distorting prints in snow, explain much of it. |
| A cultural story | 18% | Cloven prints after a winter night were read through the folk image of the Devil, and preachers used them in sermons. |
| Perception, memory or mind | 15% | Townspeople and newspapers linked unrelated tracks into a single supernatural trail “for a hundred miles”; the total route was never measured. |
| Something in the surroundings | 12% | One theory holds that an experimental balloon released from Devonport dockyard trailed shackles across the landscape, explaining tracks over roofs and walls; there is no record of such a release. |
| Undetermined | 8% | The share the reading had given to fabrication on doubt rather than evidence: the record does not settle it either way. |
| A hoax or fabrication | 5% | Some tracks may have been made deliberately once the excitement began. |
| Genuinely anomalous | 2% | Animal tracks, distorted snow and exaggeration explain it. |
Official position: No official investigation; the Illustrated London News and The Times printed letters offering many explanations.