The Case for the UFO - Varo Jessup Edition-pages

Page 110 of 165

Page 110 of 165
The Case for the UFO - Varo Jessup Edition-pages

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The following series of oddities is perhaps the most conclusive of all. Because | wish to develop "The Devil's Footprints" fully, | shall not go into detail about the innumerable marks and depressions in stone. However, after the footprints study, and a mention of the stone depressions and what they are, | believe the case for the UFO's will be clearly in your mind. What other source but something from space could account for these erratics? The story of "The Devil's Footprints" is classic. It was told as follows, by Frank W. Lane, In Fate, April-May, 1952 — The material being largely the product of research by Rupert Gould as printed in Stargazer Folks and elsewhere: On the night of Thursday, February 7, 1855, there was a fall of snow over South Devon, in southwest England. The next morning, as men and women went about their business, they discovered, imprinted in the virgin snow, a series of tracks unlike any seen before. At first glance they looked like the impression made by a donkey's hoof, measuring four by two and three-quarter inches. But there, all resemblance between the imprints on the snow and the sort of tracks left by a workaday donkey, ends. 7 ee en en It was found that the hoof marks ran in a single line, and also that the distance between one impression and the next, as carefully measured, was undeviatingly eight and one-half inches. to appreciate properly the imprints in the snow that greeted the incredulous eyes of the Devonians, that Friday morning, you must try to imagine a line of marks such as would be made by a creature with only one leg, terminating a hoof, which proceeded by a series of jumps, always mathematically eight and one- half inches apart. This was only the beginning of the puzzles associated with this mystery written in the snow. As word of the strange markings spread and men began to look more closely at them, and to trace their path across the whitened landscape, they discovered further inexplicable details. Whereas the tracks of cats, dogs, horses, rabbits, birds and so forth, looked much as tracks always do in the snow — some clearly defined, others smudged, some cutting the snow deeply, others merely leaving a light imprint — these mystery markings were everywhere utterly clear and distinct. One investigator-on-the-spot said: "This particular mark removed the snow wherever it appeared, clear, as if cut with a diamond, or branded with a hot iron — so closely, even, that the raising in the centre of the frog of each print could be plainly seen." Some witnesses claimed to have seen traces of toe or claw marks at the edges of the impressions. The tracks were not confined to the ground. Two men following the tracks for three and half- hours ("under gooseberry bushes and espaliered fruit trees") suddenly lost all trace of it. They cast around and eventually picked up the tracks in the last place they thought of looking for them: on the roofs of some houses! The witnesses already quoted said that the marks could be traced "in some instances, over the roofs of houses, and hayricks, and very high walls (one fourteen feet high), without displacing the snow on either side, or altering the distance between the feet; and passing on as if the wall had not been an impediment. The gardens with high fences or walls and gates locked, were equally visited as those open and unprotected." 110 Marks and "Footprints" And the real mystery begins. MARKER: IDELING (sic) MARKER IS LIKE LOW POWER STONE CUTTER