The winter of 1855 was harsh in the British Isles. The inhabitants suffered greatly from the cold, and many were already beginning to grumble at God, believing that he had turned away from them. Due to severe frosts, trees were cracking in the gardens, and in the forests, predators began to attack people.
The appearance of unusual traces
This mysterious and eerie story began on February 8, 1885 in the south of England, in Devonshire, on the coast of Lyme Bay. On a frosty sunny morning, people leaving the houses of the town of Exmouth, which at the mouth of the Aix River, which flows into Lyme, saw strange footprints clearly visible in the freshly fallen snow. The footprints were like small hoof prints. The inhabitants of the town were alarmed, some were seized by panic: they decided that the Lord had really left them, and therefore the devil himself came to visit them.
When the confusion subsided somewhat, the most balanced and prudent inhabitants began to look at the mysterious tracks. According to the general opinion, they could not have been left by any animal known in these parts, although in principle the tracks were a bit like those of a donkey. Each of them was 10 centimeters long and seven wide. and the distance between two adjacent prints was 20 centimeters. But the most surprising thing was that the tracks were drawn in a perfectly straight line, and, therefore, they could only be left by a creature that moved … on two legs!
There was another inexplicable feature here: although the snow that fell the night before was soft and fluffy, each hoof print was covered with an ice crust, which gave the tracks high definition. Such prints could only appear if the hooves (or what left these prints) were in the snow for a very short time and were at the same time … hot!
A strange and long walk
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When people decided to follow the walking route of the bipedal ungulate. then faced with another mystery. An even chain of footprints, not deviating a centimeter from a straight line, crossed fences, climbed the roofs of houses and stacks of hay three meters high. In one case, traces remained in a rainwater drain suspended from the roof, in the other, on a narrow cornice on the second floor of a house. And in all these implausible situations, the stride length remained equal to 20 centimeters.
In this manner, the unknown creature passed through Exmouth and rushed north, then abruptly - at a right angle - turned west, crossed to the other side through the Aix estuary three kilometers wide, then turned sharply south again, reached the town of Teignmouth and found itself on the coast covered with ice Lime Bay. Here the tracks ended. But tireless trackers found them on the opposite shore. Once again on land, the creature headed south-west and, passing a number of villages and towns, passing through snow-covered fields and pastures, arrived in Bikton, one of the districts of Totnes, where the tracks were already cut off completely. The total length of the route of the mysterious traveler was more than 160 kilometers.
Pathfinder Versions
In one of the parishes, the local pastor, Rev. JM Mazgrave, calming the agitated parishioners, assured them that nothing special had happened, that a kangaroo who had escaped from the menagerie left footprints in the snow. That's just where the kangaroo's hooves came from, and how he managed to walk 160 kilometers in one night in frosty weather, while jumping over fences and climbing onto the roofs of houses, the holy father could not explain. Local clever people offered other, no more convincing explanations. They said that the footprints belong to a lame hare, a toad, an otter, a huge bird that flew from the continent, and other absurdities of the same kind.
Almost 160 years have passed since this mysterious incident, but its mystery has not yet been solved, and it still attracts the attention of scientists, journalists and simply inquisitive people. Often they find new documents - written eyewitness testimonies, old newspaper publications, helping to get closer to solving the mystery and giving reason to offer new versions of what happened.
One of the most important of these documents - fragments of the book "Riddles and Notes from Devon and Cornwall," written by the daughter of a pastor from the town of Dawlish, Henrietta Fersdon. and published at the turn of the 50-60s of the XIX century:
“The tracks appeared at night. Since my father was a pastor, other clergymen from our Anglican diocese came to him, and they all began to talk about these unusual footprints that could be seen throughout Dawlish. The tracks were in the shape of a small hoof, inside some of them, like claw prints …
I still remember how clear these strange and somehow ominous traces were, how many of them there were, and what fear they instilled in my soul. I then thought that such traces could have been left by huge wild cats, and I was very afraid that the servant would forget to lock all the doors at night …"
Has it returned?
In the fall of 1957, an article by paranormal researcher Eric Dingwall titled "The Devil Walks Again" appeared in Tomorrow magazine. In it, in particular, the story of 26-year-old Colin Wilson (later a famous writer) was cited about how in the summer of 1950, on one of the deserted sea beaches of Devonshire, he saw on the smooth and dense surface of wet sand, compacted by sea waves, strange prints, similar on the hoof tracks. The prints looked completely fresh and very clear, "as if they had been cut out with a razor or stamped with some sharpened instrument." The spacing between the prints was about 180 centimeters, and they were significantly deeper than those that remained in the line from Wilson's bare feet. And he weighed over 80 kilograms. Strange tracks came from the very edge of the waterbut there were no tracks back to the water. This gave the impression that they appeared just a few minutes before Wilson's arrival. Had he come to the beach a little earlier, then, perhaps, he would have met face to face with the Devonshire devil himself! Later, Wilson joined the research team of this mystery, and in 1988 his book The Encyclopedia of Unsolved Mysteries was published in London, where, in the chapter on the Devonshire devil, the author writes:and in 1988 his book The Encyclopedia of Unsolved Mysteries was published in London, where, in the chapter on the Devonshire devil, the author writes:and in 1988 his book The Encyclopedia of Unsolved Mysteries was published in London, where, in the chapter on the Devonshire devil, the author writes:
“The tracks looked as if this creature was looking for something. It wandered around the backyards of houses and on roofs, and it seemed that he was completely unfamiliar with the human way of life. And then Wilson says something sensational:
Find in Antarctica
“One of the correspondents for the Illustrated London News quotes an excerpt from the notes of the famous British polar explorer James Ross, dated May 1840. When the Ross ships anchored near one of the islands of the Antarctic Kerguelen archipelago, the members of the expedition were surprised to see hoof tracks on the snow-covered coast. The polar explorers went in the direction where the tracks led, but soon reached a rocky hill, free of snow, where the tracks were no longer visible. The appearance of hoof prints in these places seemed completely inexplicable, since no hoofed animals were found on these islands."
Already in our time, the events described above have received an unexpected and surprising continuation. It turned out that one of the members of the Ross expedition, a certain Clark Perry, after leaving the British Navy, settled in Devonshire, in the already mentioned coastal town of Teignmouth. located 10 kilometers southwest of Exmouth. In 1980, among the papers of the late Clark, his diary and a daguerreotype (old photograph) were discovered, which showed Clark himself holding some incomprehensible spherical object in his hand. As for the diary, the following picture of events was formed from the regular and lengthy notes of the sailor.
The item Clarke is photographed with is a metal ball he brought back from Kerguelen. According to Clark, James Ross deliberately kept silent about the fact that on the island, in addition to inexplicable footprints in the snow, two strange metal balls were found, one of them intact, and the other broken into pieces. Moreover, the hoof prints began just from the fragments of the broken ball and led from it in a perfectly straight line to the rocky hill. According to Clark, the balls they found fell from the sky, while he adds that during his stay on the island, he did not leave the feeling of the constant presence of an invisible spy near the members of the expedition, who did not take his eyes off them.
Clark Perry's fate
When the ships of the expedition headed for the island of Tasmania, both mysterious balls - both whole and broken - lay in Clark Perry's sailor's trunk. However, when the other sailors found out what souvenirs Clark was carrying from Kerguelen, they were seized with superstitious fear, and they began to persuade Perry to throw the balloons overboard. However, he did not obey, and then his comrades demanded that Clark, along with his balloons, leave the ship as soon as they arrived in Hobart, the main city and port of Tasmania. This time the sailor obeyed the majority and after a while was hired as a sailor on another passing ship, on which he safely arrived in England in the fall of 1842. During the entire voyage, Perry did not say a word to anyone about what lay in his things.
Clark settled in Teignmouth, found a job there on the shore, and hid the chest with mysterious souvenirs in the basement of the house, where they were kept for 13 years, until February 3, 1855. On that ill-fated evening, Perry returned home with several friends, all of whom were deeply tipsy. The libations continued, and on a drunken affair, Clark let his drinking companions talk about the balls. Those wished to immediately inspect the overseas curiosity. Everyone went down to the basement, the sailor took the balls out of the chest. The unanimous opinion was that the intact ball had to be opened. All in turn began to hit him hard with a heavy hammer. After one of the blows from the inside of the ball, there was a grinding sound, and a crack appeared on its surface. Clark instantly sobered up, escorted his friends out of the house and went to bed.
Going to work the next morning, Perry saw that the crack on the surface of the ball had grown noticeably, and realized that the "souvenir" could crack at any minute. After that, contrary to usual, for several days the sailor did not write anything in his diary. Then, on February 7, 1855, there was only one phrase - that on that day Clark would have to throw balloons into the sea on the beach in Teignmouth, and then go to Exmouth and spend the weekend with a friend. This entry was the last.
Clark's relatives who live to this day in Teignmouth were able to find out that he died on the night of February 8-9, 1855 in Bickton, that is, where the 160-kilometer journey of the Devonshire Devil, which began on the beach in Exmouth, ended. Does this mean that the devil was really looking for something, as Colin Wilson claims in his book? And he was looking for Clark Perry, with the intention of killing him. After all, the sailor was the only person who died in Devonshire that night.
But why and how did the creature from the ball kill the person, and what then happened to this creature itself? It can be assumed that the answer to the first part of the question is that the De-.ch Vonshire devil needed to get rid of an unwanted witness who opened the veil of secrecy over an unusual object that fell into his hands. The answer to the second part contains a death certificate, which says that Clark Perry died of a heart failure caused by a strong mental shock. Presumably, it was the horror that gripped Clark when an unknown guest visited him at night. To answer the third part of the question, let us return to the incident that happened with Colin Wilson on the beach in the summer of 1950. It is possible that both in 1855 and in 1950, people saw traces of the same creature, only in the past 95 years it has grown and matured.
New evidence
At various times, the press reported on the new appearance of traces of mysterious bipedal ungulates - in the snow or on sandy beaches - not only in Devonshire and Kerguelen: in Scotland in the winter of 1839-1840 (Times newspaper dated March 13, 1840), in Poland in 1855 year (the newspaper Illustrated London News from March 17, 1885), in Belgium in 1945 (magazine Doubt №20 for 1945), in Brazil in 1954 (book by Bernard Huvelmans "In the footsteps of unseen animals").
It is absurd to assume that absolutely all these messages are fiction, which means “there is something in this”, and this “something” is another mystery that the Earth (or space?) Presents to the enlightened and technically savvy humanity of the 21st century.
Vadim Ilyin. Secrets of the XX century magazine