Single File

Image by Claire Witham.

“February 9, 1855. South Devon, England. Early morning.

Townsfolk awakened to a heavy fall of snow, covering the rolling hills dotted with small towns. Joshua Stone, a local farmer, exited his home and stopped dead in his tracks.

He had seen many a thing in his day, but never anything like this. Everywhere he looked: footprints. The impressions of some strange and mysterious animal, he thought, in open fields and gardens and courtyards enclosed by high walls. They were found on both sides of a two-mile-wide estuary, beginning on one side and continuing on the other. 

There were footprints on rooftops. There were footprints going up and down the sides of buildings.

These were not like normal animal prints. They were placed one in front of the other, like human steps. By one report, the impressions resembled those of a donkey’s shoe … a cloven hoof.”

–From the Wondery podcast “Inside the Exorcist,” Part IV (describing a real event)