Cornish Devil

"The Devil's hoof-marks" were so called by the astounded villagers who saw them appear overnight in rural England in 1855. On the morning of February 8 countless numbers of unidentifiable prints were discovered in the snow around 18 communities in the county of Devon. They were shaped like small horseshoes and ran in absolutely straight lines-one directly behind another, as if whatever had made them had only one leg, or a peculiarly mincing gait.

In a single night the unknown beast had traveled about 100 miles, crossing a wide river, and had skulked around houses. In some places it had apparently walked right up walls and along rooftops, and here and there the tracks gave the impression that the thing had actually passed through walls and roofs.

For some time thereafter people feared to go out after dark, and the superstitious believed that the tracks were made by Satan himself. (Bernard Heuvelmans, On the Track of Unknown Animals , pp.324-25)

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