by Joe Nickell
The prints were discovered over a wide area and they were observed by hundreds of people. No one observer tracked them all. Everyone needed to rely on the reports of others. The stories told agreed as to size and shape, because everyone tried to fit his or her observations into the general pattern.
VARIED DESCRIPTIONS
On this last point, however, Furneaux is partially in error. Many of the early descriptions were clearly contradictory, thus helping establish that there were indeed multiple creatures involved. Some drawings showed hoof marks that were “plainly made by a pony-shoe” (Brown 1982), while others described tracks that were “cloven.” Some reported “claws” and “toes” in the tracks (Brown 1982; Furneaux 1977).
By no means did all correspondents report tracks of exactly the same size and spacing. For example, the account published in the Times (London) of February 16, 1855, stated that the tracks varied from 1-½ to 2-½ inches in width, and while their spacing was “generally” eight inches (Gould 1928, 1964), other sources represented the stride as up to twice that distance (Dash 1994). Nor were the tracks in a straight, unbroken line, as shown by various sources, including a dossier kept in a parish church by Reverend H. T. Ellacombe, who had been vicar in 1855. Says Brown (1982):
He made careful drawings of the tracks and had found that the marks were not continuous, but appeared sporadically, e.g. suddenly in the middle of a field, with a flurry surrounding them, as though made by a large ice-laden bird struggling to take off. It was noticed in the estuary that many of the birds seeking water were liable to become frozen into the water, as has happened in some more recent frosts this century. So birds with ice on their feet seem part of the solution, but not all.
Moreover, Gould (1928, 1964) dismissed as “in the last degree unlikely” that any one person had followed the tracks continuously for the alleged hundred or more miles.
As for Colby's (1971) claim that “the tracks never swerved,” that is simply not true. First of all, there is the Times report (February 16, 1855): “The creature seems to have approached the doors of several houses and then to have retreated.” Indeed, Dash (1994) correctly notes: “Contemporaries reported meandering lines of prints crisscrossing gardens and churchyards,” and a map of the area shows the large-scale zigzagging that is necessary to connect all the villages where the tracks were reported (Gould 1928, 1964).
The notion of the unswerving line seems to have originated from accounts that mention that the tracks appeared in a straight line, with one print directly in front of the next. And various animals, such as the donkey, fox, and cat, for example, can leave trails that resemble a single line of imprints. As well, rabbits, hares, rats, and squirrels can leave hopping tracks that not only appear in a straight line but, with their four feet held together, “can form a pattern similar to a hoofmark” (Dash 1994). In any case, one newspaper reported that the tracks were “alternate of each other like the steps of a man and would be included between two parallel lines six inches apart” (Knight 1950).
I believe we can rule out hoaxed tracks like those Brown (1982) mentions at Woodbury, which he says “were obviously manufactured by practical jokers with a hot shoe, since they were said at the time to look like this, the shoe pressed cleanly down to the ground as if made by a hot iron.” Surely an iron would not have remained hot for the production of many tracks, thus making the supposed method impractical; and the description seems consistent only with the effect of melting and refreezing that took place.
However, there is ample evidence, in addition to the variety of track descriptions, that multiple creatures were involved. A number of cats, for example, were responsible for many of the tracks in one village, as was explained in 1923 by a woman who had been a young girl there in 1855. As Furneaux (1977) relates:
She recalled that the footprints were all over the town of Dawlish where her father was Vicar. He and his curates, she said, carefully examined the tracks which ran from the Vicarage to the vestry door, and came to the conclusion that they had been made by the paw-marks of many cats which had been partly washed away by the slight thaw, and expanded into the shape resembling hoofmarks by the early-morning frost. An explanation which, she says, was vehemently rejected by the townspeople who preferred to think they had been visited by the Devil himself. A widespread conviction which the Vicar of Lympstone, the Rev. Musgrave, also found himself unable to dislodge.
In another village, Torquay, a man followed a line of tracks that led from his garden to a tree stump, beneath which he discovered the putative track maker: a large toad! Gordon Stein (1985) has made a very good case for Devonshire foxes making many of the tracks, although he conceded they would have had difficulty scaling fourteen-foot walls or walking on roofs. He suggests that swans might be responsible in the latter instances, except that their footprints do not match those reported. But can we not expect that tracks on roofs, and no doubt in many other out-of-the way locations, were seen at a distance, which would have left their exact appearance to the imagination, a collective imagination it would seem?
CONCLUSION
Clearly, as most writers on the topic agree, no one creature—not even a paranormal one—left all the reported “Devil's Footprints.” As Stein (1985) points out, “When no explanation will exactly fit, either we need an additional explanation, or else some of the ‘facts’ may need to be discarded as weak.” I suggest that we need both. We have seen that many of the alleged facts are indeed weak, and only the concept of contagion seems capable of explaining the overall case.
The specter of death by inexplicable burning has haunted much of history. In earlier times it was attributed to the supernatural—either “by the visitation of God” (LeCat 1813) or by the legendary “hell's fire” (Arnold 1982, 60).
OCCULT CAUSES?
Apparently spontaneous fires that pseudoscientists today link to poltergeists (German for “noisy spirits”) might in earlier times have been attributed to witchcraft. Charles Fort (1874–1932)—who made a career of taunting “orthodox” scientists with things they supposedly could not explain—suggested that “‘poltergeist disturbances’ are witchcraft under a new name” (Fort 1941, 983).
Indeed, in 1744 a sixty-year-old wife of an Ipswich fishmonger, Grace Pett, was found dead with her body still burning. Her daughter extinguished the fire by pouring water on it. Later, some said that Mrs. Pett was a witch and that she had died as one—through what folklorist today call sympathetic magic: she supposedly perished on the same night a farmer's wife had one of their sick sheep burned alive to end what she believed was a spell of bewitchment (Randles and Hough 1992, 20–23). (In fact, Pett had died on the hearth, apparently having ignited her clothes—either as she attempted to light the fire or as she smoked her pipe or as she brushed against a nearby candle. That she had drunk “a large quantity of spirituous liquor” no doubt helped cause the accident [Nickell with Fischer 1988, 152, 168].)
Fort also opined (1941, 662), after describing some mysterious burning deaths, “I think that our data relate not to ‘spontaneous combustion of human bodies,’ but, like werewolves, or alleged werewolves, mostly pick out women.” However, most sources that offer a supernatural explanation attribute such deaths not to sinister, hellish fires but to divine retribution.
HEAVEN SENT?
In the Old Testament, those who engaged in some wickedness might be consumed by “a fire from the Lord” (Numbers 16:35). Leviticus tells how such holy fire consumed two sons of Aaron.1 One may wonder if this was a real event, but if so, the statement that the pair were using incense and “offered strange fire before the Lord,” together with the prohibition against using “strong drink” within the tabernacle in future (Leviticus 10:1–9), suggests that the two men may have had an accident. Perhaps they had been playing with fire, attempting to stage some pyrotechnic effect.
In fact, the second-century Greek traveler Pausanias described how priests in Lydia—under the domination of the Persians—would place on their altars “ashes”
of an unusual color, whereupon “the wood soon lights of itself without fire” (Hopkins 1976, 213). Again, a work entitled Philosophumena (presumably by St. Hippolytus) explains how ancient priests created illusions by rigging altars: in place of ashes, calcined lime was used, mixed with powdered incense, and it was “only necessary to throw a little water on the lime, with certain precautions, to develop a heat capable of setting on fire incense or any other combustible, such as sulfur and phosphorus” (Hopkins 1976, 213).
SPONTANEOUS COMBUSTION?
If such chemical spontaneous combustion could account for some instances of mysterious burning death, is it possible that spontaneous human combustion (SHC) could occur, produced by the body itself in some inexplicable manner? Consider a case discussed by Doctor Claude Nicholas LeCat (1813), who concluded that a victim of 1725 had died “by the visitation of God,” but whose death others have attributed to other causes, both scientific and pseudoscientific.
The fiery death was that of a Madame Millet, of Rheims. In February 1725, her burned remains—a portion of the head, a few vertebrae, and lower extremities—were found upon the kitchen floor, a portion of which had also been burned. Her husband was convicted of murdering her; the motive is alleged to have been “an intrigue with a female servant.” He was freed, however, after a higher court decided this was a case of spontaneous combustion. But neither assumption is necessary, since the wife reportedly “got intoxicated every day” and was last seen when, unable to sleep, she went to the kitchen “to warm herself.” Her remains were found only “a foot and a half's distance” from the fire on the kitchen hearth. Stevenson (1883) suggested that her clothes had been “accidentally ignited” (see also Beck and Beck 1835; Lewes 1861).
The Millet case is typical of many that indicate a correlation between drunkenness and instances of SHC. The temperance movement promoted the notion that alcohol-impregnated tissues were rendered highly combustible. However, scientific experiments easily refuted the notion. Besides, one would die of alcohol poisoning long before imbibing enough alcohol to have even a slight effect on the body's flammability (Lewes 1861, 398).
INVESTIGATING THE CASES
In 1984, after forensic analyst John F. Fischer and I investigated some famous SHC cases, we compiled abstracts of thirty claimed instances of the alleged phenomenon (Nickell and Fischer 1984). Using also a much larger set of abstracts from Randles and Hough (1992), I have since extracted and tabulated data for 120 reported cases from the eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth centuries.
The results showed that the alleged phenomenon occurred disproportionately to females (61 percent), who generally live longer than men and are therefore are more likely to be elderly and to live alone. Indeed, victims did tend to be elderly (over sixty years old), or they were ill, infirm, or suspected of intoxication or other diminished capacity (60 percent). Such persons might be more careless with fire and/or less able to effectively respond to an accident.
Also, victims tended to be alone or at least unobserved (90 percent), and the events occurred largely indoors (84 percent), at night (72 percent), and during winter months (46 percent). These conditions would be such as to cause fire victims to encounter matches, candles, oil lamps, coal heaters, stoves, fireplaces, and similar hazards. The conditions would also provide ample opportunities for persons to fall asleep while smoking.
Specific cases are instructive. That of Mary Reeser in St. Petersburg, Florida, in 1951, for instance, involved the plump, sixty-seven-year-old woman wearing a flammable night dress and smoking a cigarette after having taken sleeping tablets. She was sitting in an overstuffed chair that probably burned slowly, fueled by melted body fat in a cyclical process known as the wick effect. (For a full study of this case, see Nickell with Fischer 1988, 149–57.)
In another gruesome case, which took place in Chorley, England, in 1980, a crime-scene reconstruction (see figure 57.1) showed that the elderly lady fell into the fireplace (as confirmed by the displaced grate), causing flaming embers to shower upon the body, igniting her clothing. As the fire progressed, once again the wick effect contributed to the destruction. (For a step-by-step reconstruction, see Nickell 2012, 44–45. For additional detailed cases of the alleged phenomenon, under a variety of different circumstances, see Nickell 2001, 2004, and 2012; see also Nickell and Fischer 1984, and Nickell with Fischer 1988.)
In cases of supposed spontaneous human combustion—or earlier heaven- or hell-sent fire—arguments for a paranormal or supernatural cause are invariably based on the logical fallacy of arguing from ignorance: “We don't know what caused the body to burn; therefore we do know: it was SHC.” Actually, except in those cases wherein crucial data is lacking, careful investigation and analysis typically yielded plausible, naturalistic explanations. This would appear true of other supernatural or “miracle” claims as well.
Introduction. Toward a Science of Miracles
1. Hume is here using the principle of Occam's razor, which I explain presently.
Chapter 5. The Painting That Performs a Miracle
1. Vaughn Rees used a handheld ultraviolet lamp (both short-wave and long-wave) to examine the area around the cross but the UV showed nothing remarkable.
2. One source claims that any known luminous paint should have ceased to be phosphorescent by now due to oxidation (Shadow n. d.). Be that as it may, paintings are often given a protective coat of varnish (Laurie 1967, 169–71), which can improve the longevity and brightness of luminous paints (“Phosphorescent Pigments” 2003).
Chapter 22. In Search of the Emerald Grail
1. St. Lawrence was a deacon of the Roman Church, martyred during the persecution of Valerian in 258 CE.
2. Another source reports that the bowl was booty from Almeria, Spain, taken in 1147 (see Marica 2007, 7).
Chapter 23. St. James's Miraculous Relics
1. The usual Latin word for cemetery is sepulcretum (or sepulcrum, a place of interment). However, compono (with forms compostus, compositum, and so forth) means “to lay out for burial, place in an urn, bury” (see Oxford Latin Dictionary 1969).
Chapter 27. The Belgian Lourdes
1. States Adrien Delcour (1987): “At the price of slight hip dislocation certain rather supple persons (the author of the present lines, for example) can manage without effort to turn their foot around, with the great toe almost to the back by rotation [of] the ankle. This exercise should have been easier for De Rudder because he had lost the extender tendon of the big toe.”
Chapter 28. Miracle Dirt of Chimayó
1. Finally, I ran a battery of standard analyses using a commercial soil-test kit, determining that the pH was 7.0 (neutral) and that nitrogen, phosphorous, and potash were at insignificant levels.
Chapter 31. Spiritist Healer: “John of God”
1. At the event I attended in Atlanta on April 4, 2006, at the Renaissance Waverly Hotel, a staffer told me the water could be replenished by refilling the bottle when the level gets low, using ordinary tap water—the original water energizing the newly added.
Chapter 33. Jesus’ Resurrection Apparitions
1. For a comparison of the resurrection narratives with ancient ghost stories, see Riley's Resurrection Reconsidered (1995, 7–68). He observes that among the ancient Mediterraneans generally, ghosts lacked fleshly substance, yet they still exhibited the phantom wounds that caused their death, thus being recognizable to the living (50–51).
2. Craveri (1967, 219) argues that the story is only a “myth…designed to stress the power of faith” and not a misplaced account “based on a subsequent ‘vision.’”
3. At the close of Matthew (28:16–17) is an account of the disciples having an apparent vision of the resurrected Jesus at a mountain site, similar to the story of the Transfiguration.
Chapter 35. Eucharistic Signs
1. For an updated discussion of the Shroud of Turin, see Nickell 2007, 122–79.
2. Another version of Luke is in Codex Bezae (Price 2003, 298).
&nbs
p; 3. In the first instance the man is not stated to be a Jew, but it is implied by his being a “non-Christian” and, stereotypically, a “pawnbroker,” and it is further indicated by the similar tale specifically involving Jews assembled in a synagogue.
4. Examination with a 10× Bausch & Lomb illuminated Coddington magnifier reveals that the parchment's text was penned with a quill, in an ink that has the appearance of an age-browned (oxidized) iron-gallotannate variety, and in an italic hand known as cancellaresca (i.e., “chancery” script) because it was widely disseminated by scribes of the papal chancery in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries (Whalley 1984, 22, 41, 181; Nickell 2003, 123, 131, 140).
Chapter 36. The Secrets of Fatima
1. For a discussion of fantasy proneness, see Wilson and Barber 1983.
Chapter 45. Tijuana's Murderer “Saint”
1. See, for example, Thompson (1955, 403–58), including motifs “The Unquiet Grave” (E410), “Revenant as Blood” (E422.1.11.5), “Ineradicable Bloodstain after Bloody Tragedy” (E422.1.11.5.1), and so on.
Chapter 46. Stigmata: Wounds of Christ
1. I also discovered that one could produce the opposite effect—renewing the bleeding of a cut that was many hours old—by applying hydrogen peroxide. This has implications to cases of stigmata in which bleeding was reported over an extended time, although there are many ways of accomplishing such an effect.
Chapter 47. The Case of Padre Pío
1. For a discussion of fantasy proneness, see Nickell 2001, 84–85, 298–99.
2. The three-inch side wound was seen relatively rarely, and though “most witnesses” said it was cruciform, others described it as being “a clean cut parallel to the ribs” (Ruffin 1982, 147).
Chapter 48. Stigmata of a Convert
1. I am grateful to Martin Braun for advising me of a lecture by Lilian Bernas. Benjamin Radford (Skeptical Inquirer) and Jenny Everett (Popular Science) accompanied me to witness Bernas's stigmata, and they shared valuable notes and observations. I also received very useful material from John Zachritz.