The Book of the Damned

This one datum: The fall of blood from the sky-- But later, in the same place, blood again fell from the sky. 28 Notes and Queries, 7-8-508: A correspondent who had been to Devonshire writes for information as to a story that he had heard there: of an occurrence of about thirty-five years before the date of writing: Of snow upon the ground--of all South Devonshire waking up one morning to find such tracks in the snow as had never before been heard of--"clawed footmarks" of "an unclassifiable form"--alternating at huge but regular intervals with what seemed to be the impression of the point of a stick--but the scattering of the prints--amazing expanse of territory covered--obstacles, such as hedges, walls, houses, seemingly surmounted-- Intense excitement--that the track had been followed by huntsmen and hounds, until they had come to a forest--from which the hounds had retreated, baying and terrified, so that no one had dared to enter the forest. Notes and Queries, 7-9-18: Whole occurrence well-remembered by a correspondent: a badger had left marks in the snow: this was determined, and the excitement had "dropped to a dead calm in a single day." Notes and Queries, 7-9-70: That for years a correspondent had had a tracing of the prints, which his mother had taken from those in the snow in her garden, in Exmouth: that they were hoof-like marks--but had been made by a biped. Notes and Queries, 7-9-253: Well remembered by another correspondent, who writes of the excitement and consternation of "some classes." He says that a kangaroo had escaped from a menagerie--"the footprints being so peculiar and far apart gave rise to a scare that the devil was loose."