What Caused The Devil's Footprints?

The Devil’s Footprints provided much noise and confusion during the 19th century when strange tracks came across Southern Devon. During the night, a mystery occurred when an unknown creature’s footprints were spotted in the morning. When the sun rose, people who woke up early in the morning concluded they saw footprints that resembled the devil. This mystery was known as “The Devil’s Footprints.” Now there are two theories people still think about what caused the footprints, they are an animal’s or they are Satan’s. The mystery of the Devil’s Footprints is an unsolved mystery that cannot be solved, but there are many theories on what caused the tracks. After the sun went down on Thursday, “a mass amount of snow hit the block of Exter, South of Devon” (Clark 160). During that night, an
A notable theory was that many animals could have made the prints, such as kangaroos, cats, a donkey, a badger, and possibly a deer. (Nickell). On the last day of the week, a theorist, Rev. Musgrave, concluded that the tracks were of kangaroos even though the kangaroos were found on the sides of estuary or a delta of the Exe (Nickell). A number of theorist concluded that this could have been many other animal’s prints that made up the single line of prints. For example, “rabbits, hares, rats, and squirrels can leave hopping tracks that won’t show in a straight line” but the four rodents feet combined could have formed a pattern similar to the hoofmark (‘Devil’s Footprints: solving a classic mystery). In fact, a witness released some thoughts on what caused the footprints after the scenario occurred; a woman who was a young girl there concludes the tracks were made by a number of cat markings and later thawed out and the imprints grew bigger making it look similar to the footprints(“Devil’s Footprints”). To summarize, there are many theories that involve animals but they also have different stories behind them