WEBVTT - Season 08 Episode 36: The Devil Came Walking 0:00:00.200 --> 0:00:03.520 Hello, it's Richard mccleinsmith here with a quick update before 0:00:03.520 --> 0:00:06.920 we dive into today's episode. Unexplained is very excited to 0:00:06.960 --> 0:00:09.320 be a part of Crime Wave at Sea this November, 0:00:09.560 --> 0:00:12.720 joining forces with some of the eeriest voices in the 0:00:12.760 --> 0:00:15.920 world of true crime and the paranormal four nights in 0:00:15.960 --> 0:00:20.080 the Caribbean, with amazing podcasts like Last Podcast on the Left, 0:00:20.400 --> 0:00:24.520 Scared to Death and many more live shows, Meet and greets, 0:00:24.760 --> 0:00:28.080 creepy Stories under the Stars and you can be there too, 0:00:28.760 --> 0:00:32.080 but don't wait. Rooms are nearly sold out. Head to 0:00:32.159 --> 0:00:36.479 Crimewave Atsea dot com forward slash Unexplained to grab your 0:00:36.520 --> 0:00:39.519 fan coat and lock in your cabin. We'd love to 0:00:39.520 --> 0:00:54.360 see you on board. Great flurries of snow spiraled around 0:00:54.400 --> 0:00:57.240 the church spire and settled heavily on the roofs of 0:00:57.240 --> 0:01:01.920 the nearby cottages, like a scene from a Victorian Christmas card. 0:01:03.000 --> 0:01:06.080 It was the night of February eighth, eighteen fifty five 0:01:06.600 --> 0:01:09.480 in the parish of Withercombe Rawley in the County of 0:01:09.520 --> 0:01:13.640 Devon in the southwest of England. But while the residents 0:01:13.640 --> 0:01:16.800 of the village and those across the county shivered in 0:01:16.880 --> 0:01:22.039 their beds, something was abroad, silently scurrying from house to house, 0:01:22.520 --> 0:01:27.720 across fields and over fences. By dawn the following morning, 0:01:28.200 --> 0:01:31.440 all about the land was carpeted with a sharp frost. 0:01:32.520 --> 0:01:34.880 It was an hour or so after daybreak when the 0:01:34.920 --> 0:01:39.119 Reverend George Musgrave, wrapped up in a heavy coat, left 0:01:39.160 --> 0:01:42.160 the comfort of his rectory parlor and made the short 0:01:42.200 --> 0:01:46.399 walk across to the church. Moments later he caught sight 0:01:46.480 --> 0:01:50.800 of some peculiar prints on the frosty ground. Musgrave dropped 0:01:50.840 --> 0:01:54.520 to his knees to inspect them closer. Transfixed by how 0:01:54.560 --> 0:01:59.080 odd they were, Trembling with wonder and excitement, he jumped 0:01:59.160 --> 0:02:02.720 up and hurried back into the rectory. Then swiftly reappeared, 0:02:03.080 --> 0:02:07.360 carrying some sheets of paper and a fountain pen. With 0:02:07.440 --> 0:02:11.400 great care, he knelt down once more onto the frozen ground. 0:02:11.919 --> 0:02:14.360 Then he placed a sheet of paper over some of 0:02:14.400 --> 0:02:19.760 the tracks and began to trace their outlines. Whatever they were, 0:02:20.120 --> 0:02:23.799 they were clearly footprints, only not in the double line 0:02:23.919 --> 0:02:26.800 that a four footed animal would make, but in one 0:02:27.000 --> 0:02:31.440 single row, like something with only two legs, and they 0:02:31.480 --> 0:02:34.720 looked to have been made by an unknown creature with 0:02:34.880 --> 0:02:41.120 cloven Who you're listening to unexplained, and I am Richard 0:02:41.240 --> 0:02:52.360 McLean Smith. The winter of eighteen fifty five was a 0:02:52.400 --> 0:02:57.800 bleak one, even by England's chili standards. Temperatures remained at 0:02:57.919 --> 0:03:01.440 or below freezing for weeks, making it colder than anything 0:03:01.600 --> 0:03:06.720 in living memory. The southwestern coastal county of Devon, which 0:03:06.800 --> 0:03:10.680 usually saw slightly milder weather than northern England, did not 0:03:10.880 --> 0:03:14.880 escape the Great Frieze. Two of the region's largest rivers, 0:03:15.120 --> 0:03:19.399 the ex and the Teen, had frozen over entirely in places. 0:03:20.280 --> 0:03:24.680 Night after night, icy flakes fell relentlessly, piling up in 0:03:24.760 --> 0:03:30.240 great drifts and blanketing the countryside. However, residents across the 0:03:30.280 --> 0:03:33.240 southern part of the county woke up on that morning 0:03:33.320 --> 0:03:37.240 of February ninth to find something much more chilling than 0:03:37.360 --> 0:03:42.520 frost and snow. Across a remarkably wide swathe of countryside 0:03:42.720 --> 0:03:46.280 from the town of Exeter to the coast, mile after 0:03:46.440 --> 0:03:50.240 mile of what appeared to be strange footprints had appeared 0:03:50.920 --> 0:03:54.000 like something from the pages of a Sherlock Holmes mystery. 0:03:55.200 --> 0:03:59.680 Numerous tracks of what were colloquially called footmarks were reported 0:03:59.720 --> 0:04:04.240 from more than thirty locations across Devon. If the tracks 0:04:04.240 --> 0:04:07.440 had been left by a single creature. Its total travel 0:04:07.440 --> 0:04:11.160 distance that one night would have been somewhere between forty 0:04:11.320 --> 0:04:15.480 and one hundred miles. The size and shape of the footprints, 0:04:15.680 --> 0:04:18.560 as well as the roots they followed, seemed to defy 0:04:18.680 --> 0:04:23.360 the laws of nature and physics. Typically measuring four inches 0:04:23.440 --> 0:04:27.080 long by three inches wide, many of the prints, as 0:04:27.160 --> 0:04:31.000 Reverend Musgrave had noticed, at the shape of a cloven hoof, 0:04:31.640 --> 0:04:36.920 not unlike a donkey's, except just like Musgraves, they progressed 0:04:36.920 --> 0:04:41.320 in a straight, single line, one after another, spaced about 0:04:41.400 --> 0:04:46.200 eight and sixteen inches apart. In the shallow snow, they 0:04:46.200 --> 0:04:49.600 were between half an inch and four inches deep, often 0:04:49.680 --> 0:04:55.000 meandering across gardens and through villages eerily. In places, they 0:04:55.000 --> 0:04:59.240 were said to do impossible things. In the countryside, as 0:04:59.279 --> 0:05:03.000 well as leaving trails across frozen lakes and rivers, they 0:05:03.000 --> 0:05:06.200 would stop at one side of a haystack, leaving its 0:05:06.200 --> 0:05:10.440 sides and top undisturbed, then recommence abruptly on the other 0:05:10.560 --> 0:05:14.320 side and vanish through small holes in thickets and hedges, 0:05:14.760 --> 0:05:19.479 only to appear again, impossibly, it seemed, on the other side. 0:05:20.240 --> 0:05:23.919 But most unnervingly, they seemed to go from door to door, 0:05:24.600 --> 0:05:29.800 venturing up to front steps before seemingly backing away. In 0:05:29.880 --> 0:05:32.719 some places, it was said that there was hardly a 0:05:32.800 --> 0:05:36.919 home that had not been visited. Most of the people 0:05:37.000 --> 0:05:41.040 who saw the bizarre tracks were country folk familiar with 0:05:41.120 --> 0:05:44.640 all manner of animal trails, but none of them had 0:05:44.680 --> 0:05:54.960 seen anything like this before. To many of the god 0:05:55.000 --> 0:05:59.440 fearing Devonians, the strange marks brought to mind sinister echoes 0:05:59.560 --> 0:06:02.440 of a bit biblical story from the Book of Exodus, 0:06:02.600 --> 0:06:06.280 chapter twelve, known as the Plague on the first Born. 0:06:07.279 --> 0:06:10.600 In the story, God addresses Moses and tells him that 0:06:10.680 --> 0:06:14.040 on an appointed night, he will visit Egypt and strike 0:06:14.120 --> 0:06:19.039 down every firstborn, be it human or other animal. But 0:06:19.160 --> 0:06:22.760 to others, the fact the prince were seemingly created by 0:06:22.800 --> 0:06:26.920 something with a cloven hoof they brought to mind something else, 0:06:27.160 --> 0:06:33.440 entirely the devil. Either way, whatever it was so unsettled 0:06:33.520 --> 0:06:37.080 one group of local tradesmen from the coastal town of Dawlish. 0:06:37.440 --> 0:06:41.200 They conspired to hunt it down and kill it. Seemingly 0:06:41.279 --> 0:06:45.080 undaunted by the prospect of it being Lucifer himself, the 0:06:45.160 --> 0:06:48.200 men took up guns and bludgeons and made their way 0:06:48.279 --> 0:06:52.240 to a local churchyard to begin their search, finding the 0:06:52.279 --> 0:06:55.440 tail end of some prince. There, they promptly began to 0:06:55.520 --> 0:06:59.320 follow them through the snow, while all about sparkled white 0:06:59.640 --> 0:07:04.120 under the mid morning sun. The prince first led them 0:07:04.160 --> 0:07:07.640 to the town of Luscombe and then Oakland, a total 0:07:07.720 --> 0:07:11.360 distance of around five miles, but the men found no 0:07:11.520 --> 0:07:15.120 sign of a culprit. At Cliffs Saint George, on the 0:07:15.160 --> 0:07:18.560 other side of the River ex two villagers were following 0:07:18.560 --> 0:07:21.679 a different set of tracks when they discovered what appeared 0:07:21.720 --> 0:07:26.640 to be a strange whitish excrement among the marks. Others 0:07:26.680 --> 0:07:29.600 from the same area followed a further set of tracks 0:07:29.640 --> 0:07:32.440 to the edge of a field, where they stopped abruptly, 0:07:32.880 --> 0:07:35.720 only to reappear again in the middle of the field, 0:07:36.200 --> 0:07:40.000 suggesting the perpetrator may have taken to the air before 0:07:40.080 --> 0:07:45.000 coming back down to continue its meandering. One man told 0:07:45.000 --> 0:07:47.600 a tale of a local fox hunt that attracted the 0:07:47.600 --> 0:07:51.000 prince down to a wood where whatever the thing was 0:07:51.400 --> 0:07:54.920 appeared to have been cornered, but when the hunt dogs 0:07:55.000 --> 0:07:57.920 rushed in to flush it out, they turned around and 0:07:58.040 --> 0:08:02.800 reappeared suddenly. Why in terror, too frightened to go back, 0:08:04.040 --> 0:08:07.680 not one person or group managed to track the mysterious 0:08:07.720 --> 0:08:11.280 prince for more than a few miles for a while. 0:08:11.520 --> 0:08:14.280 The belief that Satan had been among them drove some 0:08:14.480 --> 0:08:18.200 locals across the county to implement a self imposed curfew, 0:08:18.600 --> 0:08:33.080 refusing to venture outdoors after nightfall. On that strange night 0:08:33.160 --> 0:08:36.760 in February, also at the parish of Cliss Saint George, 0:08:37.120 --> 0:08:40.080 Reverend Henry Elcom had been woken in the middle of 0:08:40.120 --> 0:08:43.440 the night by his dog. The animal had clearly been 0:08:43.480 --> 0:08:47.040 spooped and was barking loudly and pouring at the back door. 0:08:48.559 --> 0:08:51.720 Having looked out into the night and seen nothing outside, 0:08:52.120 --> 0:08:55.280 the reverend finally managed to calm the dog down before 0:08:55.320 --> 0:09:00.240 returning to bed. The next morning, the reverend awoke, much 0:09:00.400 --> 0:09:03.760 like many others that day, to find the strange prince 0:09:04.040 --> 0:09:08.199 dotted about the grounds of his rectory. He later described 0:09:08.200 --> 0:09:12.040 the marks as being similar in shape, albeit varying a 0:09:12.080 --> 0:09:16.040 little in size, and constituted what to his eye was 0:09:16.080 --> 0:09:21.240 some kind of claw print. Elacum also interviewed people who 0:09:21.280 --> 0:09:24.800 attempted to track the creature and obtained samples of the 0:09:24.840 --> 0:09:29.600 excrement found alongside the trails. He forwarded the samples to 0:09:29.679 --> 0:09:34.440 renowned naturalist Richard Owen, a controversial figure in the world 0:09:34.520 --> 0:09:38.360 of naturalism. Owen is perhaps best known for coining the 0:09:38.440 --> 0:09:43.120 term dinosauria, from which we get the word dinosaur, meaning 0:09:43.280 --> 0:09:48.600 terrible reptile. His thoughts on the matter remain unknown. Perhaps 0:09:48.679 --> 0:09:53.280 less than impressed at receiving Reverend Elcom's scatological samples in 0:09:53.360 --> 0:09:57.640 the post, he neglected to send a reply. A few 0:09:57.720 --> 0:10:01.840 days later. Ellacum did receive a, however, from his colleague 0:10:01.880 --> 0:10:05.600 George Musgrave, who'd been so animated by his discovery of 0:10:05.640 --> 0:10:08.440 the prince he'd made the effort to preserve a record 0:10:08.480 --> 0:10:13.040 of them. Musgrave included a sample of one of his drawings, 0:10:13.320 --> 0:10:16.080 along with his own explanation for what it could be. 0:10:17.200 --> 0:10:20.439 Unlike many of his parishioners, who feared the devil might 0:10:20.520 --> 0:10:23.960 be among them, it was Musgrave's theory that the creature 0:10:24.240 --> 0:10:27.560 was in fact a kangaroo that had perhaps escaped from 0:10:27.600 --> 0:10:32.640 a zoo or some kind of traveling show. Within a fortnight, 0:10:32.960 --> 0:10:36.480 the story of the mysterious footprints was being reported in 0:10:36.520 --> 0:10:41.640 the national press, including the Illustrated London News and enormously 0:10:41.720 --> 0:10:45.600 popular Weekly It broadcasted the story to a wide audience 0:10:45.880 --> 0:10:50.360 and included images of the apparent footprints. This was the 0:10:50.360 --> 0:10:54.800 great age of the Victorian gentleman naturalist, typically a man 0:10:54.880 --> 0:10:58.200 from the upper or middle class with the financial means 0:10:58.240 --> 0:11:01.960 and social standing to pursue a passion for natural history, 0:11:02.760 --> 0:11:05.760 and so the floodgates were opened, and a host of 0:11:05.880 --> 0:11:10.320 unusual theories were proposed, ranging from the rational to the bazaar. 0:11:11.440 --> 0:11:14.520 At the more rational end were that the footprints belonged 0:11:14.520 --> 0:11:19.720 to mice, rats, squirrels or otters, and had been enlarged 0:11:19.760 --> 0:11:23.280 in size by a freeze thor action, in much the 0:11:23.320 --> 0:11:26.600 same way that bare footprints in the Himalayas can become 0:11:26.640 --> 0:11:30.680 distorted and enlarged, only to be mistaken for yety tracts, 0:11:31.080 --> 0:11:36.960 as discussed in Unexplained, Season seven, episode eight, Walking on Snow. 0:11:37.600 --> 0:11:43.000 Other suggestions verged increasingly toward the ridiculous, including the suggestion 0:11:43.360 --> 0:11:45.960 that the tracks had been made by the hindfoot of 0:11:46.000 --> 0:11:50.120 a badger that had somehow hopped its way across large 0:11:50.160 --> 0:12:00.320 parts of South Devon. In the weeks that follow the 0:12:00.360 --> 0:12:04.040 appearance of the unusual markings in the snow, an intriguing 0:12:04.160 --> 0:12:07.839 series of letters was published in the Illustrated London News 0:12:08.160 --> 0:12:14.000 by a correspondent signing himself enigmatically as South Devon. The 0:12:14.040 --> 0:12:17.880 so called South Devon started by listing the primary places 0:12:18.080 --> 0:12:21.680 in which the footmarks were discovered, then made a series 0:12:21.720 --> 0:12:26.040 of assertive claims. One such claim was that the marks 0:12:26.080 --> 0:12:30.040 in every parish were in fact exactly the same size 0:12:30.360 --> 0:12:33.880 and the step distance the same length, contrary to what 0:12:33.960 --> 0:12:38.320 had previously been reported. The writer also noted that the 0:12:38.360 --> 0:12:41.640 Prince at one point appeared to have vaulted a fourteen 0:12:41.679 --> 0:12:45.520 foot war and appeared on the roofs of houses. They 0:12:45.559 --> 0:12:49.520 also dismissed the idea that thawing and refreezing could have 0:12:49.600 --> 0:12:53.360 distorted the marks, noting that other animal prints made the 0:12:53.400 --> 0:12:59.080 same night remained perfectly recognizable. In total, he claimed that 0:12:59.120 --> 0:13:02.280 the marks formed a trail at least one hundred miles 0:13:02.320 --> 0:13:05.200 in length, and were all in a straight line, and 0:13:05.360 --> 0:13:08.720 had even at one point crossed the two mile wide river. 0:13:08.840 --> 0:13:13.560 Ex South Devon claimed to be an experienced countryman with 0:13:13.679 --> 0:13:17.040 a great deal of experience in tracking wild animals and 0:13:17.160 --> 0:13:20.760 birds upon the snow, who had once spent five months 0:13:20.880 --> 0:13:25.080 hunting in the Canadian wilderness. The prints, they said, were 0:13:25.200 --> 0:13:30.040 like nothing on Earth they'd ever seen, and from there 0:13:30.400 --> 0:13:33.760 the theories of what had made the devil's footprints, as 0:13:33.800 --> 0:13:38.439 they had by then become known, became even wilder. A 0:13:38.559 --> 0:13:42.479 former naval officer named Rupert Gould, who had a particular 0:13:42.559 --> 0:13:45.800 interest in the mysteries of the sea, noted with alarm 0:13:46.120 --> 0:13:49.360 how the so called devil's hoof marks had appeared on 0:13:49.480 --> 0:13:53.680 land close to the coast. He saw a parallel with 0:13:53.760 --> 0:13:57.360 a strange report that emerged from the Cagoulin Islands, also 0:13:57.440 --> 0:14:02.040 known as the Desolation Islands, located around eighteen hundred nautical 0:14:02.080 --> 0:14:07.240 miles south of Madagascar. Back in eighteen forty. A member 0:14:07.280 --> 0:14:11.319 of the crew of the James Ross Antarctica expedition exploring 0:14:11.360 --> 0:14:14.560 the islands that year claimed to discover a series of 0:14:14.600 --> 0:14:18.120 small horse or donkey like tracks in the snow on 0:14:18.120 --> 0:14:22.760 one of the islands, made by some unidentified creature that, 0:14:23.320 --> 0:14:27.560 like something disturbing from the Lovecraft mythos, appeared to have 0:14:27.640 --> 0:14:33.240 come out of the sea. Some decades later, Edwardian ghost 0:14:33.320 --> 0:14:37.040 hunter Eliot O'Donnell claimed that he had once been told 0:14:37.080 --> 0:14:41.480 a peculiar story by a man named mister Wilson. The 0:14:41.560 --> 0:14:45.760 man supposedly detailed a boyhood visit to the Devon seaside 0:14:45.800 --> 0:14:48.680 in the early nineteen hundred z when he discovered a 0:14:48.720 --> 0:14:52.400 single line of hoofmarks one morning on a deserted beach 0:14:53.000 --> 0:14:58.160 which also led directly into the sea. On this occasion, 0:14:58.320 --> 0:15:02.680 the marks were of whole cloven hoofs six feet apart, 0:15:03.200 --> 0:15:06.120 and were so deeply impressed in the sand that they 0:15:06.160 --> 0:15:10.320 were significantly deeper than the footprints left by Wilson himself, 0:15:10.800 --> 0:15:21.760 who weighed sixteen stone. One of the more unusual attributions 0:15:21.800 --> 0:15:25.040 for the footprints was that they had secretly been made 0:15:25.200 --> 0:15:29.600 by Romany travelers. The main advocate of this theory was 0:15:29.640 --> 0:15:33.800 a man named Manfrey Wood, as described in his autobiography 0:15:34.240 --> 0:15:37.480 in the Life of a Romany Gypsy, published in nineteen 0:15:37.520 --> 0:15:42.120 seventy three. According to Wood, the Devil's footprints were the 0:15:42.160 --> 0:15:45.760 result of at least eighteen months of careful planning by 0:15:45.880 --> 0:15:50.800 seven Romany tribes. Together, they had supposedly used more than 0:15:50.920 --> 0:15:54.520 four hundred pairs of specially made stilts in the shape 0:15:54.520 --> 0:15:58.520 of cloven hoofs fashioned from old step ladders to create 0:15:58.560 --> 0:16:03.080 the devilish marks. The aim of this elaborate plan was 0:16:03.120 --> 0:16:06.560 to ultimately scare away two rival groups of the Romanes, 0:16:06.920 --> 0:16:11.160 who were Pagans and fervent believers in the occult. A 0:16:11.280 --> 0:16:15.119 nineteen eighty three article in the UK's Daily Mirror newspaper, 0:16:15.360 --> 0:16:19.560 written by a so called traveling gentleman, Danny Smith, backed 0:16:19.640 --> 0:16:24.640 up the theory. However, neither proponent could explain how between 0:16:24.760 --> 0:16:28.359 four hundred and five hundred travelers had managed to coordinate 0:16:28.400 --> 0:16:31.040 a long distance stilt walk in the dead of a 0:16:31.080 --> 0:16:36.520 snowy winter's night, traversing gardens and routots without once being spotted. 0:16:38.080 --> 0:16:41.400 Perhaps the most bizarre culprit of all was proposed by 0:16:41.520 --> 0:16:46.240 one s ke off North Street in Brighton in a 0:16:46.320 --> 0:16:49.520 letter published in the Brighton Guardian paper on the twenty 0:16:49.560 --> 0:16:54.600 eighth of February eighteen fifty five. The writer asserted that 0:16:54.640 --> 0:16:58.200 the footprints were made by a strange creature known as 0:16:58.200 --> 0:17:04.240 a unipede, first identified by the Norse Icelandic navigator Bjarni 0:17:04.400 --> 0:17:07.879 Herelson during a visit to the coasts of Labrador in 0:17:07.960 --> 0:17:11.560 what is present day Canada in one thousand one. See 0:17:12.960 --> 0:17:15.960 Herelson is believed by some to be the first known 0:17:16.040 --> 0:17:19.120 European to set eyes on the mainland of the North 0:17:19.160 --> 0:17:23.120 American continent, having apparently done so as far back as 0:17:23.200 --> 0:17:28.000 nine hundred eighty six. See in the Saga of the Greenlanders, 0:17:28.280 --> 0:17:33.080 which recounts the apparent Norse colonization of North America. Theres 0:17:33.119 --> 0:17:36.879 an account of Harelson setting sail from Norway to Iceland 0:17:37.040 --> 0:17:40.200 to visit his parents, only to find that his father 0:17:40.400 --> 0:17:44.000 had left to go to Greenland. Attempting to find his 0:17:44.040 --> 0:17:47.560 father with no map or compass, Hereolson and his crew 0:17:47.840 --> 0:17:51.240 were blown off course by a storm before glimpsing a 0:17:51.320 --> 0:17:56.159 land with tree covered mountains that was most definitely not Greenland. 0:17:57.800 --> 0:18:01.600 It looked hospitable, but Byani was eager to see his parents, 0:18:02.160 --> 0:18:05.320 and so despite the entreaties of his crew, who wanted 0:18:05.359 --> 0:18:08.760 to go ashore, he turned the ship around and eventually 0:18:08.920 --> 0:18:14.520 arrived in Greenland. However, it seems that the adventurous Icelander 0:18:14.760 --> 0:18:18.880 went back to have another look. On a supposed later 0:18:18.960 --> 0:18:23.400 trip to the Labrador coast, Herelson described seeing a bizarre 0:18:23.440 --> 0:18:27.600 animal that had one leg and wings which appeared to 0:18:27.720 --> 0:18:30.639 radiate from the middle of its back and spread out 0:18:30.680 --> 0:18:36.000 like a peacock's tail. When this fantastical creature was alarmed 0:18:36.080 --> 0:18:39.720 or excited, it erected a single crest of feathers above 0:18:39.760 --> 0:18:43.400 its head in such a way that Harelson believed previous 0:18:43.440 --> 0:18:57.359 observers had mistaken it for a unicorn. Bianni Herelson is 0:18:57.400 --> 0:19:01.719 said to have named the peculiar creature the unipede. It 0:19:01.800 --> 0:19:04.840 was said to emit a hideous cry, unlike that of 0:19:04.920 --> 0:19:08.119 any other creature, and was also said to be able 0:19:08.200 --> 0:19:12.840 to part run, part fly incredibly fast, touching the ground 0:19:12.880 --> 0:19:18.639 frequently at equal distances, leaving footprints in a single line. Crucially, 0:19:18.880 --> 0:19:22.760 the icelander claimed that the one legged creature's single limb 0:19:23.080 --> 0:19:26.639 resembled that of a quadruped rather than a bird with 0:19:26.760 --> 0:19:31.919 a hoof like foot, a description which greatly resembled pictures 0:19:31.960 --> 0:19:35.160 of the so called devil's footprints that had been published 0:19:35.200 --> 0:19:38.880 in the papers, and thus the correspondent to the Brighton 0:19:38.960 --> 0:19:43.000 Guardian concluded the Devon tracts were almost certainly that of 0:19:43.080 --> 0:19:48.480 the mythical unipede. In nineteen fifty two, a collection of 0:19:48.560 --> 0:19:52.159 manuscripts and letters were found by a local historian named 0:19:52.280 --> 0:19:56.120 Major Anthony Gibbs in the parish church of Cliss Saint George. 0:19:56.920 --> 0:19:59.639 They were the papers of the Reverend Elcum, which had 0:19:59.720 --> 0:20:02.720 lain preserved in the parish box at the church for 0:20:02.800 --> 0:20:08.200 all that time. When folk historian Theo Brown gained access 0:20:08.280 --> 0:20:11.760 to the Elegent papers that same year, she uncovered the 0:20:11.800 --> 0:20:15.560 true identity of the mysterious South Devon, who had so 0:20:15.680 --> 0:20:20.000 caused a stir with his controversial proclamations about the apparent 0:20:20.119 --> 0:20:24.199 creator of the Prince. As it turned out, South Devon 0:20:24.560 --> 0:20:27.760 was a nineteen year old named William Durban who had 0:20:27.800 --> 0:20:32.680 simply made up his accounts. All in all, there are 0:20:32.720 --> 0:20:35.800 three candidates most firmly in the frame for making the 0:20:35.840 --> 0:20:40.479 Devil's footprints that wintry night in eighteen fifty five. Perhaps 0:20:40.560 --> 0:20:44.080 the most intriguing is the balloon theory, which was not 0:20:44.160 --> 0:20:47.240 considered at the time, but has been proposed more recently. 0:20:48.359 --> 0:20:51.800 The suggestion is that the hoofmarks were in fact made 0:20:51.840 --> 0:20:55.160 by a rope with a horseshoe shaped weight that had 0:20:55.200 --> 0:20:59.960 been left dangling from an errant balloon, perhaps explaining how 0:21:00.119 --> 0:21:02.920 the marks were left in straight lines for mile after 0:21:03.000 --> 0:21:07.879 mile as the balloon drifted across the countryside. But if so, 0:21:08.440 --> 0:21:11.600 why were no scuff marks from other trailing portions of 0:21:11.640 --> 0:21:15.120 the rope found, and who would be so suicidal as 0:21:15.119 --> 0:21:17.880 to be aloft in a balloon on such a freezing night. 0:21:19.920 --> 0:21:22.639 The most common mammals that might have been out on 0:21:22.680 --> 0:21:27.399 that winter's night are rats, mice, and squirrels, which are 0:21:27.440 --> 0:21:30.560 all known to leave hopping tracks in which all four 0:21:30.600 --> 0:21:34.040 feet held together can form a pattern similar to a 0:21:34.040 --> 0:21:38.159 hoof mark and appear on a singular line, an effect 0:21:38.240 --> 0:21:41.080 that will be enhanced if the snow in which there 0:21:41.160 --> 0:21:45.680 left melts and then refreezes, as it did that February night. 0:21:47.080 --> 0:21:50.760 But it's highly unlikely that so many such creatures that 0:21:50.880 --> 0:21:54.160 would be required to make all the markings would each 0:21:54.240 --> 0:21:58.560 have hopped for such long distances, sometimes up to five miles, 0:21:59.320 --> 0:22:09.959 something that would be unusual if only one had done it. 0:22:09.960 --> 0:22:12.159 It would seem then that if we were looking for 0:22:12.240 --> 0:22:15.879 a material culprit, birds would seem to be the most 0:22:15.960 --> 0:22:22.000 likely capable of covering long distances and landing on high walls, rooftops, 0:22:22.040 --> 0:22:26.040 and haystacks. But how would a bird's foot, webbed or 0:22:26.119 --> 0:22:30.880 clawed come to resemble a cloven hoof. There is one candidate, 0:22:31.200 --> 0:22:35.440 remarked on by one astute observer back in eighteen fifty five, 0:22:35.960 --> 0:22:40.359 known as the Great Bustard. Weighing anywhere between thirteen and 0:22:40.480 --> 0:22:44.720 forty pounds, it is one of the heaviest living flying animals, 0:22:45.400 --> 0:22:48.120 looking a bit like a cross between a wild turkey 0:22:48.320 --> 0:22:51.719 and a large grouse. Bustard ceased to breed in Britain 0:22:51.840 --> 0:22:55.080 in eighteen thirty two, when they were hunted to extinction, 0:22:55.600 --> 0:22:58.600 but they were still seen in the countryside until around 0:22:58.680 --> 0:23:03.600 eighteen seventy three. Bustard's feet make a heel mark and 0:23:03.800 --> 0:23:07.520 three distinct toe marks, so it's possible that the donkey 0:23:07.720 --> 0:23:11.000 like cloven hoof prints were in fact the imprints of 0:23:11.040 --> 0:23:15.600 these birds. It would certainly explain why the footprints appeared 0:23:15.600 --> 0:23:19.080 across a relatively large area in a short space of time, 0:23:19.800 --> 0:23:26.359 including in places that could only be reached by flight. Inexplicable, 0:23:26.600 --> 0:23:30.560 diabolical looking hoof marks are by no means an exclusively 0:23:30.880 --> 0:23:36.320 nineteenth century phenomenon. In nineteen fifty seven, a missus Linda Hansen, 0:23:36.600 --> 0:23:40.040 saw footprints of what appeared to be cloven hoofs in 0:23:40.119 --> 0:23:45.320 her back garden in Humberside, Northeast England. The cloven prints, 0:23:45.600 --> 0:23:50.160 four inches across and spaced twelve inches apart, were sharply 0:23:50.240 --> 0:23:53.520 defined and stopped suddenly in the middle of the garden. 0:23:54.840 --> 0:23:59.280 More recently, in two thousand nine, Jilled Wade, a resident 0:23:59.359 --> 0:24:03.159 of North day woke up to find that overnight, a 0:24:03.359 --> 0:24:07.800 snow covered back garden had been inexplicably imprinted by single 0:24:07.880 --> 0:24:11.399 hoof prints which ran for almost seventy feet in a 0:24:11.440 --> 0:24:16.480 single linear direction. Their shape and size were eerily similar 0:24:16.600 --> 0:24:19.880 to the Prince in Devon one hundred and seventy years earlier. 0:24:20.840 --> 0:24:24.600 Graham Ingalls from the Center for forty in Zoology went 0:24:24.640 --> 0:24:28.960 to investigate. He concurred that the footprints were a match 0:24:29.080 --> 0:24:32.959 to those from eighteen fifty five, and although he surmised 0:24:32.960 --> 0:24:36.280 the most likely cause to be a mouse, he admitted 0:24:36.359 --> 0:24:41.000 that he had never seen anything like it before. Perhaps 0:24:41.040 --> 0:24:47.600 instead the devil had simply returned. Either way, whatever it 0:24:47.760 --> 0:24:51.159 was that caused the Prince in Jill Wade's garden, and 0:24:51.320 --> 0:24:55.440 indeed those that appeared across southern Devon on that wintry 0:24:55.560 --> 0:25:01.160 February night of eighteen fifty five, remains to this day unexplained. 0:25:08.840 --> 0:25:12.359 This episode was written by Diane Hope and produced by 0:25:12.480 --> 0:25:17.120 Richard mclin smith. Diane is an audio producer and sound 0:25:17.160 --> 0:25:19.880 recordist in her own right. You can find out more 0:25:19.880 --> 0:25:23.959 about her work at Dianehope dot com and on Instagram 0:25:24.000 --> 0:25:28.399 at in the sound Field. Thank You as ever for listening. 0:25:28.800 --> 0:25:32.159 Unexplained is an Avy Club production. The podcast created by 0:25:32.280 --> 0:25:36.160 Richard mclin smith. All other elements of the podcast, including 0:25:36.200 --> 0:25:40.119 the music, are also produced by me Richard mc clan smith. 0:25:40.680 --> 0:25:44.920 Unexplained the book and audiobook is now available to buy worldwide. 0:25:45.359 --> 0:25:49.159 You can purchase from Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Waterstones and 0:25:49.240 --> 0:25:53.119 other bookstores. Please subscribe to and rate the show wherever 0:25:53.160 --> 0:25:55.760 you get your podcasts, and feel free to get in 0:25:55.840 --> 0:25:59.000 touch with any thoughts or ideas regarding the stories you've 0:25:59.040 --> 0:26:02.040 heard on the show. 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