The Devil's Footprint
Portland, Maine, United States
A stone footprint on the First Parish Churchs 1826 granite step, attributed by local legend to the devil thwarted by the minister, recorded by the church itself.
On the granite step of the First Parish Church in Portland, Maine, is a footprint-shaped mark in the stone that the church's own history records and the legend explains: the devil, thwarted by the Reverend or cheated of a soul by a bargain's fine print, stamped the step in leaving. Roadside America carries it, the church guides tell it, and the stone is pointed out the way churches in older countries point out their own devil-marks.
The mark is almost certainly a fossil or a sedimentary feature in the granite, and the honest telling gives both readings: the geology and the story, each with their own centuries behind them. The legend is part of Maine's witch-and-devil folklore belt, where colonial-era tales have stayed in circulation in ways larger cities lost.
Visiting
First Parish Church, 425 Congress St, Portland ME; the step is on the public sidewalk side of the church. See the church's history.
Photo: [Wikimedia Commons](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:First_Parish_Church_(Portland,_Maine).jpg), CC BY-SA.
Associated traditions & practices
Visitor stories