OLL LEWIS: Yesterday's News Today

http://cryptozoologynews.blogspot.com/

On this day in 1855 the Devil's footprints appeared in Devon.
And now, the news:

Salisbury man thinks Bigfoot is N.C. native
Croc sighted in flood waters
Russia Poised To Breach Mysterious Antarctic Lake
North Dakota wrestling team forced to withdraw fro...
Animal Planet joins Bigfoot search

Sasquatch, eh?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8_6yzteqPt0

CFZ IN THE PRESS

Fortean zoologists on snow footprint trail
This is North Devon

THE 150-YEAR-OLD mystery of what caused a long trail of hoof-like marks could be solved — thanks to the latest batch of snow.

In February 1855, after a fall of snow, footprints were discovered in Devon, stretching 100 miles from Exmouth to Teignmouth.

For the greater part of their course they followed straight lines. Houses, rivers, haystacks and other obstacles were travelled straight over, and footprints appeared on the tops of snow-covered roofs and high walls.

The prints were dubbed The Devil's Footprints. Then in March last year, similar footprints appeared in a Woolsery garden after a fall of snow.

Read On

TIM MATTHEWS: Where have all the stories gone?

Tim Matthews is one of my best friends, and also - coincidentally - one of the most controversial figures in contemporary Forteana. He has been involved with the CFZ for nearly a decade now, raising eyebrows wherever he goes.

Last week saw unprecedented media interest in the CFZ to the extent that when my friend Fleur logged on to MSN midweek a story about the Devil’s Fooprint in a Woolsery back garden was sitting there in cyberspace. It doesn’t get much bigger than MSN in the Internet age and our website and associated blogs spiked when the story hit.

The strange thing is that, in many ways, this is a non story. Whatever made those footprints, it was certainly not the devil but the lucrative combination of a winter’s scene, strange markings and a history of such folkloric goings on in Devon certainly made this a story worthy of the title “Weird in the South West”...

What we discover is that the mass media is run by people more interested in a lot of entertainment and a little news for our many serious expeditons to all parts of the globe have afforded us only patchy coverage at best. Recently, there was all the hoohah about a supposed “UFO”, some said “alien craft” hitting a wind turbine in Wiltshire. The story turned out to be a whole lot of nothing – a problem with the turbine itself – but for 24 hours the whole world was agog at the “best proof ever of aliens” or whatever UFO researcher Russell Kellett called it.

Against the background of job losses more extreme than the bout of redundancies in the 1970s and 1980s that some of us can remember and at a time when the economy is, to quote my boss at work, “on its arse” the media prefers to indulge us with stories about Cheryl Cole of Girls Aloud reaching the summit of Mount Kilimanjaro and did she have an affair with Take That’s lead singer whilst trying to reach the peak and did her husband Ashley have one too many in a club the same night.

Where did all the serious stuff go?

What this tells us is the public, through the lens of a media dedicated to telling us as little as possible about the serious issues, is looking to feed us a diet of frippery, infotainment and total bullshit. The CFZ shall, it seems, have to live and learn and provide the media with stories of gooks, goblins and gay scandal whilst scientists and cryptozoologists seeks to answer the Big Questions about rare and undiscovered species.

Throughout history there is example after example of how small groups like ours have shaken the earth with the might of their ideas and the strength of their will in terms of having the guts to push themselves forward. We find Ourselves Alone in 2009. The media has decided that we have collectively witnessed “the end of history” and that there is nothing further to discover or to learn about ourselves and sceptics agree because they know best after all...

We shall, then, have to work the CFZ media machine even harder to provide our colleagues in the national and international newsrooms with stories about very little of substance and use their occasional grace and favour to bring the few decent and sentient beings into our orbit. As every day passes the best people are coming to the CFZ. Maybe only a few “active” converts each week or month but they are coming home to us. UFO Data magazine has just closed its doors as interest in that subject has plummeted in recent months probably because there is no meat in the subject.

But there is much detailed and depthy material to put out via cryptozoological news media and we shall continue to do this. In the space of three months we have witnessed a 1000% increase in visitors to our websites and if we need to talk about The Devil Incarnate to win the battle to make ours the most relevant, updated and dynamic website then we accept the challenge as we make the world a better place...just a little bit.

RICHARD FREEMAN: Other historical accounts of "The Devil's Fooptprints"

THE DEVIL’S OTHER FOOTPRINTS

Though the 1855 case in Devon is the best known phenomena akin to the Devil’s Foot prints are known from other places and times.

Ralph of Coggeshall, was a monk then abbot as well as proto-Fortean who recorded all manner of odd occurrences in the 13th century (including the Merman of Orford Ness). He tells us that on June 19th of 1205 a hoof print appeared in the earth after a violent electrical storm.

The Times of March 14th 1840 reports…

Among the high mountains of that elevated district where Glenorchy, Glenlyon and Glenochay are contiguous, there have been met with several times, during this and also the former winter, upon the snow, the tracks of an animal seemingly unknown at present in Scotland. The print, in every respect, is an exact resemblance to that of a foal of considerable size, with this small difference, perhaps, that the sole seems a little longer, or not so round; but as no one has had the good fortune as yet to have obtained a glimpse of this creature, nothing more can be said of its shape or dimensions; only it has been remarked, from the depth to which the feet sank in the snow, that it must be a beast of considerable size. It has been observed also that its walk is not like that of the generality of quadrupeds, but that it is more like the bounding or leaping of a horse when scared or pursued. It is not in one locality that its tracks have been met with, but through a range of at least twelve miles.

Commander Rupert T, Gould, another early Fortean who wrote books on the Loch Ness Monster and sea serpents also unearthed an account from Kerguelen Island in the sub-Antartic. The original account was written up in May 1840, by Captain Sir James Clarke Ross, when his ships, the Erebus and Terror, were lying off Kerguelen.

'Of land animals we saw none; and the only traces we could discover of there being any on this island were the singular foot-steps of a pony or ass, found by the party detached for surveying purposes, under the command of Lieutenant Bird, and described by Doctor Robertson as "being three inches in length and two and a half in breadth, having a small and deeper depression on each side, and shaped like a horseshoe".

Both the following reports come from Charles Fort’s Book of the Damned.

In the Illustrated London News, March 17, 1855, a correspondent from Heidelberg wrote, "upon the authority of a Polish Doctor in Medicine," that on the Piaskowa-góra (Sand Hill) a small elevation on the border of Galicia, but in Russian Poland, such marks are to be seen in the snow every year, and sometimes in the sand of this hill, and "are attributed by the inhabitants to supernatural influences."

There have been many incidents of strange footprints with cloven hoofs appearing without an obvious cause. Most occur during or after a fierce electrical storm. Some of these are linked to the legend of Kui found in the Shanhaijing. This is a 2000 year old book recording the culture and geography of China prior to the Qin Dynasty (221-207 BC) The Shanhaijing say the Kui is a mythical monster with one leg like cloven hoof that looks kind of like a cow, except with one foot. Fierce electrical storms heralded its presence.

The Daoist Zhuangzi, who lived c. 3rd-2nd BC, mentions Kui in two chapters of the book "Autumn Floods" in which he describes Kui as a one-legged creature.

The K'uei envies the millipede, the millipede envies the snake, the snake envies the wind, the wind envies the eye, and the eye envies the mind. The K'uei said to the millipede, "I have this one leg that I hop along on, though I make little progress. Now how in the world do you manage to work all those ten thousand legs of yours?" The millipede said, "You don't understand. Haven't you ever watched a man spit? He just gives a hawk and out it comes, some drops as big as pearls, some as fine as mist, raining down in a jumble of countless particles. Now all I do is put in motion the heavenly mechanism in me ‑ I'm not aware of how the thing works."

The Jersey Devil is reputed to be a horse-headed ,bat-winged, fork-tailed horror with cloven hooves. It has supposedly terrorized the Pine Barrens of New Jersy since colonial times. The most intense flap of sightings came in January 1909 when thousands of reports of a winged monster in no less than thirty towns. In Burlington the creature left hoofprints on the rooftops and back yards in a manner akin to the Devon case of 1855. Whatever made he tracks seem to have an intrest in rubbish bins suggesting it was some kind of animal searching for food.

The residence of nearby Bristol also found hoofprints in the snow after the Post Master saw a huge bird like beast and awful screams were heard. Two local trackers said that they had never seen anything like them. Later the tracks turned up at Camden and Riverside. In Trenton, Councilman E.P. Weeden heard the flapping of wings and then found hoof prints outside his door. The prints were also found at the arsenal in Trenton. As the day wore on the Trolleys in Trenton and New Brunswick had armed drivers to ward off attacks.

It has been suggested that the Jersey Devil flap of 1909 was a newspaper hoax. If it was then it was a remarkably well-organized and far-reaching one.

On January 10th 1945 weird tracks were found in the snow in Belgium. Eric Frank Russell wrote the following in issue 15 of Doubt the magazine of the now defunct Fortean Society.

(The prints) were spotted on a snow-covered hill behind the Chateau de Morveau, near Everberg, part-way between Brussels and Louvain, Belgium, at 10 a.m on January 10th 1945. The snow varied from two to four feet in depth and I traced the prints for half a mile in a north-westerly direction until they entered a tiny wood or copse, where abruptly they disappeared A thorough search of the copse revealed no hole, lair or tree where anything might have concealed itself with-out leaving some evidence in the snow. I then traced the prints in the opposite direction, south-easterly, for nearly two miles, crossing several fields and a small stream, until they faded out on a hillside thick with windblown snow which had drifted over the prints for an unknown distance. But the sign did not reappear on the crest of the bill, nor was there any indication on the opposite sheltered side.

The prints measured about two and a half inches in length by one and a half wide, were spaced in pairs one behind the other to form a single file. the distance between prints of one pair being about nine inches, and between pairs twelve to fifteen inches. (This means they were not regularly spaced print by print, but alternated in nine and twelve-fifteen inch gaps.) They ran in a dead straight line, one print immediately behind the other without slightest misplacement to left or right. Judging by their depth whatever made them was at least the weight of a good medium-sized creature such as an Airedale.

Due to heavy frost and lack of further snow, the prints remained visible for two days, during which time I drew the attention of several people to them, including one Arthur Davies of Sheffield, and Victor Beha of London, as well as some local Belgians. Unfortunately all were singularly lacking in curiosity, Beha jesting that they must have been made by a gyroscopic rat - probably as good a guess as that of any dogmatic expert.

The Belgians could not think what they might be, never having seen the like before. Three cameras were available, all empty, and not a film to be got for love or money, otherwise I could have recorded this phenomenon for all time.

The tracks looked to me somewhat like those of a large goat, and there were goats aplenty in that part of Belgium, but goats don't step leaving single-line spoor.

Unfortunately, the prints were not as dramatic as the ones seen in Devon - they didn't run for miles and they didn't traverse rooftops.'

LOOK WHAT HELEN SENT US....

It's sunday morning, at this point in time,
everyone seems to be talking in rhyme,
so rather than commit some bad social sin
I suppose that I had better join in
Helen Lester email'd me last night
with the URL of this website
No Jokes about the License Fee,
'cos the CFZ have made the BBC!



http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/devon/7942954.stm

LINDSAY SELBY: The Devil Went Down to Woolsery

The devil went down to Woolsery
Jon Downes and co were in hot pursuit
They sought it here, they sought it there
Following the devil's boots

The trail went on for yards
Prints dotted here and yon
A hoax was on the cards
I think I know the answer cried Jon

A fox, a deer, followed by a rabbit or two
Gave the appearance of the devil's shoe
With that he and his band of Fortean types
Went back to the pub and had a few pints.

A bit of bad poetry to lighten the weekend lol


Tabitca/Lindsayx

THE DEVIL WENT DOWN TO WOOLSERY: More Press News

This is all very gratifying, but why don't we get this sort of coverage when we have a PROPER news story?: We had practically no coverage of the Russia expedition, for example. Ah well....

http://www.google.co.uk/search?sourceid=navclient&aq=h1&oq=&hl=en-GB&ie=UTF-8&rlz=1T4GGLL_en-GBGB302GB302&q=devil%27s+footprints+woolsery

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1161765/Ancient-mystery-returns-Satans-hoofprints-spotted-Devon-garden.html

http://news.cnet.com/8301-17852_3-10195871-71.html

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/4983344/Ancient-legend-of-Satans-visit-reawakened-by-footprints-in-the-snow.html

http://www.thaindian.com/newsportal/world-news/devon-once-again-spooked-by-satans-footprints_100165937.html

http://www.thisisnorthdevon.co.uk/news/paid-visit-Woolsery-snow-8212-possibly-wasn-t-Satan/article-763209-detail/article.html

THE DEVIL WENT DOWN TO WOOLSERY: We're in The Sun!!!

Bloody Hell!

(Makes you proud to be a journalist dunn'it?)

THE DEVIL WENT DOWN TO WOOLSERY: Today's Press Coverage (2)

Western Morning News (12th March 2009)

THE DEVIL WENT DOWN TO WOOLSERY: Today's Press Coverage (1)

North Devon Journal (12th March 2009)

AND THE PAPERS SAID...

As far as I am aware, the interview with the journalist from the crappier tabloid newspaper has not appeared yet, so I as yet we don't know whether I will have been quoted as claiming that the Lord of Darkness visited North Devon to rend and to slay amongst the world of men.

I did another interview, this time with The Western Morning News which is, I believe, appearing tomorrow, and also one with the North Devon Journal which may or may not get published, but the most amusing news was when we heard that this morning we appeared in the website of the most prestigious British newspaper.. The Times Online.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/weather/article5883755.ece

I am sure that the only reason that this story is attracting so much attention is that they truly think that Satan Mekakreig Himself is responsible for these mysterious imprints. Well guys, if He is, then The Devil has to be less than a foot tall! But I guess He can assume many forms...

GUEST BLOGGER COLIN HIGGINS: Rants - Right on Brother!

One of my favourite guest blogs over the last few weeks has been Colin Higgins from Yorkshire, who - incidentally - was the winner of the compy in January's `On the Track`.

One of the things I most value about the CFZ is the open-mindedness with which it approaches its subjects. It’s an increasingly rare quality in a discipline, indeed a world, where an open mind is often seen as a flawed one.

Two of Jon’s recent posts found me nodding like those dogs in the back window of a Ford Anglia - his response to the diabolic footprints and his Darwinist blues refrain. My agreement shouldn’t be remarkable, he was stating an entirely mainstream view that science and evolution shouldn’t be seen as antipathetic to systems of belief and yet his position is becoming increasingly exotic.

Religious beliefs and testable hypothesise are orthogonal, which is to say they have almost nothing to say about t’other but even hinting that one may subscribe to a view about either puts you bang in the firing line of those who would see them as polar opposites.

I have no difficulty in seeing Jon’s use of the Devil’s Footprints as a euphemism, a metaphor, a narrative trigger, a historical reference and a cultural trope, even if pushed a synecdoche, so why has a linguistic inquisition developed - or a verbal Puritanism to be even-handed - that states words only ever mean they say and nothing else. Ergo, the Auld Lad has been on a jolly to North Devon: go prove it Mr. Downes!

Popular Darwinism also exercise me to the point of dancing from foot to foot like Yosemite Sam, firing off my six-shooter (all allusions for the figuratively challenged; I neither dress in a large hat, own a revolving pistol or resemble a two-dimensional Looney Tunes simulacrum).
A bit of wordy legerdemain assumes science suggests evolution, equals atheism, means humanism. Aaagh, as the teenagers say.

Most thoughtful grown-ups have no trouble in accepting Darwin’s ideas, Islam and Rome have long maintained evolution as the tool by which stuff gets done (whatever reservations one may have about some of their other tenets) and yet even a willingness to entertain a ‘more things in heaven and earth’ discursive liberalism to Fortean phenomena marks one down as a swivel-eyed Creationist book burning new-earther who handles strychnine, drinks snakes and prepares for the rapture from his heavy armed local authority maisonette. It cheeses me right off! Grow up people.

If one is serious about cryptic animals it seems entirely reasonable that one should if not embrace native transformational beliefs, Franciscan inter-species dialogue, classical animal worship and contemporary shape shifting bugaboos, then at least accept them as a narrative vein by which encounters with the animal kingdom are explained by percipients rather than condemn them as speculative and uneducated hogwash.

Having got that off my chest I shall retire to the cartoon corner into which a few will have already painted me, where animals have skills in vernacular American, Wile E Coyote transgresses the known hunting practice of Canis latrans and Roadrunner drives a coach and horses through Newtonian physics.

PREPARE FOR A STORM...

The furore over what happened the night that The Devil (didn't) go down to Woolsery seems to be growing and growing. There newspapers are even more interested in this than they were when I didn't steal a seal head back in January. This is all part of our trivia obsessed culture, and although it is mildly amusing, it is also quite disturbing. This afternoon I had a telephone call from one of the less-salubrious national newspapers who had obviously done some in-depth research on the case (they looked me up on Wikipedia, and found that I have at times been involved with the local Church). "So you are a Christian?" the person said without bothering to introduce herself.

"I don't see what my religious views have to do with you, or anyone else" I said. "But, yes".

"And your brother is a priest?" I just grunted.

"So coming from a religious background, does this make you qualified to claim that The Devil has visited a small North Devon village?"

I began to get angry. "I have never said anything of the sort" I said. The silly bint began to get all self-righteous. "You have been writing about the night the Devil went down to Woolsery".

"For God's sake", I grunted. "It's a joke! Haven't you ever heard of the Charlie Daniels Band?"

Obviously not

So, just for the record, before the people who seem to like to take a potshot at me every time that I put my head above the parapet, read whatever is printed about us with glee:

1. The Devil did NOT come to Woolsery last weekend

2. Nobody in the CFZ has ever intimated that He did

3. I am not some weirdo fundamentalist who is claiming Demonic intervention for some peculiar reason of my own

4. The footprints found last week are of perfectly natural origin (as were the more famous ones of 1855) but we don't know what caused them just yet.

5. It is interesting that so many different explanations have been mooted for the Woolsery footprints in the week since they were photographed.

6. If we can find out conclusively what caused the Woolsery prints of 2009, we will have a pretty good idea what caused the South Devon ones of 1855, and we can put an enduring mystery to bed.

7. And, by the way, we did not put out a press release about these prints. The newspapers concerned read about the mystery online and telephoned us (that will scotch the inevitable "Jon Downes is a shameless self-publicist" rumours")

but above all (for the sake of tabloid journalists who may be reading this:

I do not know what made the footprints, but it was NOT the Hornéd One. Capisce?

GUES BLOGGER NIGEL WRIGHT: That Old Devil strikes again

I had intended to have finished off my next blog for the CFZ Bloggo a few days ago, but due to the rather interesting news about new “Devil’s footprints” appearing in North Devon, a few days ago, I have decided to re-write my article. May I, at this early point, add my own comment on this new case. One thing of which I am certain is that I totally agree with Jon when he states that this is NOT a case of the devil actually appearing in our beautiful county! I am sure that there is a perfectly natural explanation for this new appearance, as well as the case from the 19th century.

So, just what did occur in Devon, all those years ago? Well, here are the bare facts of the case; in so much as we know them. On the 8th February 1855 sometime between midnight and 6a.m. mysterious footprints appeared in deep snow, between Littleham village, in East Devon and Totnes, in the South Hams of Devon. These “footprints were cloven-shaped, and seemed to run one in front of another. The distance these prints ran for was truly amazing, as was the objects they seemed to climb over. In one instance they went over a 14ft high wall! Many “explanations” were offered at the time, raging from the just plausible to the downright ridiculous! For instance, someone, who must of suffered from a very over-active imagination, offered the answer that an hot air balloon had trailed a print-making device over the area, on the end of a rope, at night!. Fine flying indeed!

What is not so well known is that this is not the first of this type of event to have occurred in the UK. Way back, in the year 1205 (19th July to be precise) a series of strange “footprints” appeared during a violent electric storm. So, whatever the cause of these mysterious visitors really is, it appears to happen a lot more often than we thought. Nor is these phenomena restricted to the UK, there are reports of similar events happening all over the known world.

Why is this particular case so interesting to me? Well, I happen to live in Littleham! And the church in the village is where the footprints started from. So this is a case that happened not a mile from my front door. The whole area of East Devon is steeped in cases of extreme weirdness. From waves of UFO activity to black cat sightings and disappearances, and much, much more! But that, as they say, is a completely different story.

THE DEVIL WENT DOWN TO WOOLSERY: Jan Edwards writes...

Jan initially wrote to us the other day:

The horne'd bunny of Woolsery

My initial thought was ‘taint no bunny... looks more like a sheep or deer perhaps. But it’s hard to see how big these prints of yours are. Like you, I have seen lots of bunny footprints in snow, and they NORMALLY look like this http://thumbs.dreamstime.com/thumb_7/1109091111pKMBTf.jpg but in looking for this image on google, I came across this photo, which is also supposed to be rabbit footprints:
http://www.istockphoto.com/file_thumbview_approve/5542048/2/istockphoto_5542048-animal-tracks-rabbit-footprints-in-the-snow.jpg which looks very much like your images, doesn’t it?

I currently have 21 pet rabbits looking for homes here at the sanctuary... we also have some snow.... Would it be really really terribly cruel of me to test it out? You know: Bunny walking in snow; bunny running in snow; bunny freezing it’s ...err... tail off in snow.... all in the name of science, you understand...

So I wrote back:

would you? And could you film and photograph it? We have no secure area in which to do it without the sods escaping... (and the snow is almost gone)

love

j

But two days later she replied:

Typical really.... Most of the snow has melted overnight, but more is expected in the next week. I will get you photos, and try to track down a video camera too. However, I showed your footage to a friend who is a crypto-naturalist, and HE doesn’t think it’s bunny either. The track is too straight, for one thing, and it looks biped. Rabbits (at any speed) will use all 4 feet. When it’s in a hurry, the big back feet appear to be in front of the smaller front ones, but you’d see all 4 feet... especially in snow that’s not deep. I still think it could be a deer or perhaps Boar – but the footprint would be deeper in the soft soil for boar. Do you have muntjac or roe deer nearby? Sheep /lamb perhaps, but you wouldn’t just get one. Or maybe goat??

Have you thought of Springheeled Jack?

And what do you think the “original” devil prints were? I have theories ranging from elaborate hoax to weather balloon, but I don’t believe the tracks went on for hundreds of miles, as reported.

Meanwhile.... back at the Ranch... we have our own mystery here. Not nearly to this scale (always trying to get one better, aren’t you?) but a mystery all the same. It’s the Phantom Peanut Pincher. We have bags of peanuts and suet balls and things hanging on trees for the birds. Something is eating a whole bag of peanuts and stealing suet balls from one of the trees during the night. Whatever-it-is, is too timid to come close to the house, where the birds make use of the food. It doesn’t tear holes in the peanut bag, like a rat or a squirrel would. It isn’t a small bird, because they go on all our bird feeders, and the other ones are only needing topped up once or twice a week.... plus whatever-it-is, takes down the mesh bags of suet and eats the contents, 10 foot from the tree on a dry stone wall. We are going to set a trap tonight – wet sand around the bottom of the tree, to see if we can get some tracks. I’m wondering about a pine marten...

Well, as always seems to be the case, you start looking at one mystery and you end up looking at another. I have been on the track of England's elusive marten population for twenty years now, and there are, indeed, records of this rare and beautiful carnivore in Co. Durham. The only problem being that according to accepted scientific methodology the species was hunted to extinction in all of England by the 1870s....

THE DEVIL WENT DOWN TO WOOLSERY: Paul Vella thinks...

I was chatting to Paul Vella on MSN this morning. Here are some excerpts from our conversation...




Paul Vella says:
I think the solution is 'sheep'
Paul Vella says:
it seems that they bring their back feeet right up to their front feet when they walk and can look vaguely bipedal
Paul Vella says:
http://www.buyimage.co.uk/photonet/peaks04/pages/3763.htm

Jon D says:
i think there would be lots more damage to the snow and the garden itself if there were sheep in there overnight
Jon D says:
bloody hell
Paul Vella says:
what if there were only one?
Paul Vella says:
here is one in deeper snow where the sheep's belly has dragged through the snow http://www.flickr.com/photos/wheatfields/3276491530/

Jon D says:
Pauly. Can I cobble together excerpts from this convcersation in a bloggo posting?
Paul Vella says:
sure
Paul Vella says:
if it were a sheep, it might explain how it scaled a fence
Paul Vella says:
otherwise, I'm out of ideas now.
Paul Vella says:
But I thought those photos of the sheep tracks were odd - I'd never seen sheep tracks in snow before
Jon D says:
yes
Paul Vella says:
you would swear blind they were bipedal
Paul Vella says:
bears do the same thing, which I think is the most common cause of bigfoot tracks
Paul Vella says:
the hind feet and the front feet create one elongated print

Jon D says:
weird isnt it
Paul Vella says:
very. If it isn't a sheep, then I have no idea

THE DEVIL WENT DOWN TO WOOLSERY: Dave McMann thinks....

How can I put this without offending you Jon? OK, you've known me long enough, so you know I don't mean anything untoward to you and CFZ.

OK. My theory. Kids. Let's face it. It happens near you, plus, looking at the video, the tracks are near bushes, so a telescopic angular device could have made those track. Also a one legged beast??? Also, that woman was far from convincing, if she had phoned the Sun she would have made a few quid!! I am certainly not saying you are involved with this 'hoax' It screams FAKE!

Nice entertainment though.

I don't agree Dave, but am not the slightest bit offended by your suggestion. I could have been done by kids, but I don't think it was.

Why?


1. There were no kids. It wasn't a bad enough snowfall to cause school outages even in these poncy health + safety obsessed days.

2. Apart from us fortean types, no-one has heard of the Devil's footprint mystery these days

3. There was bo sign of human disturbance to the snow until Graham arrived


And the beat goes on.........

THE DEVIL WENT DOWN TO WOOLSERY: Graham Inglis's story

There’s an old-fashioned phrase, “there’s method in our madness.”

Today was a day when I went for lots of method, and saved up all the madness for later on.

When I carried the CFZ rubbish bags out into the road Wednesday night, the 4th of March 2009, it was snowing. I was surprised: I thought we’d seen the last of the “Christmas postcard” look, this winter. But I shrugged (mainly to shake snowflakes from my shoulders) – and retreated back indoors and thought no more of it. Until…

Thursday morning, got a phone call at around 0950 from Mrs Wade - a resident of our village - that some strange footprints were in her back garden. I was the only one awake (it had been a long and difficult evening, yesterday), so I grabbed my camera and headed off to have a look.

On arrival, shortly after 10am, my early and non-zoological impression was that the the prints looked like they’d been made by a one-legged deer. Sometimes, people describe an animal that’s missing a leg as “one-legged” when really they mean “three-legged” – and I may not be a zoologist, but I know enough to dismiss the idea of a one-legged deer pogo-ing around the rural landscape.

Mrs Wade recapitulated for the video camera how she’d seen these footprints from her window, had wondered what they were – and had then decided to ring the CFZ.

I was in preliminary investigation mode: rather like Sherlock Holmes, who said it’s a capital error to theorise in the absence of data. So, I just improvised. I’m very unused to studying snowprints, as we don’t get much snow in Devon. Mud, yes. There’s plenty of that in Devon. But mud’s quite a different medium, as sloppy mud doesn’t retain imprint countours and firmer mud doesn’t compact nearly so readily as snow.

Anyhow, the tracks presented a markedly in-line appearance, ie there was no discernable left-right-left-right pattern straddling an imaginary centre line.

I inferred direction of travel from the fact that one end of each track was clearly defined, whereas the other end was blurred. Forward motion of a human in the snow usually shows a well-defined heel print and a scuffed toe impression, so I decided to allow myself that assumption. A working assumption, of course.

The track ran from the far end of the lawn, across the almost-pristine snowy surface (just a few bird prints showed), and petered out at the paved area adjecent to the house, where the snow had already melted. Another linear string of tracks headed back out from the patio area, across the other side of the lawn.

So, with my back to the house, and facing south across the lawn, the inbound track (on my right) approached from the SSW (ie, south-west, but more south than west: a bearing of around 190º, I’d say). On the other side of the patio (my left), the tracks resumed in an arc roughly SSE (bearing 170º) back towards the end of the lawn area. The patio distance between the arrival point and departure point was roughly 20 ft.

Each print was roughly horseshoe-shaped, as if made by a cloven hoof – or two elongated feet close together, that move in unison. A U-shape describes the track quite well; V-shaped equally so. Something inbetween, really.

Devil’s Footprints? Well, the area at the dead centre of each overall shape showed no discernable impaction in the snow. The snow was around 2cm (almost one inch) deep, and a cloven foot would have to have an unusually deep cleft to leave that portion of the snow untouched. However, the sun was already destroying the early-morning evidence, and it was difficult to be sure.

After taking a few pictures, I suddenly had the bright idea of following the prints. Remember, this was 10am in the village of the CFZ, and I’d only had one coffee so far, so I wasn’t firing on all cylinders yet.

I found the garden had a well-defined boundary fencing – nothing that would thwart an intact deer, but definitely one that would make a one-legged deer scratch its head… assuming it had any spare limbs with which to do that, of course…

Following what I felt were the departing tracks, I found they fizzled out at the boundary hedge: snow had fallen on the hedge itself, but none had fallen – or at least none remained – under­ the hedge. So that trail had run cold. As a second-best, I then back-tracked the prints approaching the house, and found they fizzled out in exactly the same manner. However, the snow on each hedge and its associated shrubbery showed no significant disturbance, so I concluded nothing had barged through the foliage since the snowfall.

Inference: something had passed under the hedge? Something pretty small? A Mad March Hare, maybe?

Well, yes - possibly: on considering the matter later on, I decided the entity had not jumped the hedge. There was no snow-scatter (or deeper impression in the lawn itself) that one would expect if something had jumped a barrier several feet high and then landed on the other side. Not that I had ever thought this was seriously the case, but one has to cover all bases – remember, I had set myself the task of gathering data, rather than jumping to conclusions.

Since the snow in the vicinity of the hedge was shaded from the rising sun, there had been little melting, and thus tracks were well-preserved. However, since the snow in Woolsery mainly had arrived on a south-westerly track, approaching the garden from its (roughly) southern aspect, the areas most shielded from the sun had earlier also been well-shielded from the snow! So tracks were better-preserved there, but also less pronounced, since there was less snow to do the preserving in the first place.

If the snow had been borne on a northerly wind, then ingress and egress evidence might have been a lot more conspicuous. Still, there you go: we don’t always get what we wish for, in life, do we?

Observing a crime scene and not jumping to conclusions has been drummed into me by watching many Forensic Detectives shows on Discovery. But I couldn’t help but feel that this was probably tracks of a rabbit or hare. Something that hops with its feet together, anyway. The alternatives – that either a one-legged deer was exploring people’s gardens, or that Woolsery had received its first cloven-hoofed emissary from the Devil – these were both too much to contemplate before my second coffee of the morning!

THE DEVIL WENT DOWN TO WOOLSERY: the video

WHEN THE GOING GETS WEIRD: The Devil Went Down to Woolsery

Now, I would like to say, here and now, that if I was standing on the outside looking in, I wouldn't believe this story at all, and I would be convinced that those naughty rapscallions at the CFZ had got a little tipsy in The Farmers Arms last night, and were playing a joke upon the rest of the fortean omniverse.

But, speaking as one of the aforementioned rapscallions, I can assure you that I am not!

Just before ten this morning, when Graham was toddling about the place all on his lonesome (because Graham is the first of the CFZ posse to rise in the morning) the telephone rang, and - being a dutiful fellow - he answered it.

It was a local lady who wondered if we would like to go and have a look at some peculiar footprints in the snow in her garden. Graham finished his coffee, grabbed the cameras and set off.

Despite the slidy nature of the roads (the snow having taken everyone by surprise) it only took him a few minutes to get to his destination, a private house next to a small close called `East Park`. (Yes there is a `South Park in the village, much to the amusement of all and sundry especially Oll and Richard)

In the garden he found a long line of footprints leading across the snowy lawn. As you can see, the only human footprints next to them are Graham's.

I am sure that you are all aware of the legend of the Devil's hoofprints - an occasion in February 1855 when a series of prints of what appeared to be cloven hooves were found in the snow all across South Devon. The superstitious locals believed that they were the work of the Devil and that the hornèd one had paid a personal visit to the county.

Well I don't believe that happened then, and I don't believe that is what happened last night either. There is certainly a perfectly rational zoological explanation for both events but our investigations are at a very early stage. In must be stressed however, that there are no scuff marks in the snow as would happen if a person had walked, and although the marks could have been made by someone on stilts that is highly unlikely.

Our investigations are continuing, and we will bring you more news as we get it...