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Martense Lane Rock in Brooklyn, New York

Posted On 11 Dec 2014

Uprooted outside of an unrelated church, this innocuous boulder showed up one day outside the gates of Brooklyn’s Green-Wood Cemetery, moved their by persons trying to honor a 400 year old folktale.

The legend differs in the telling but a couple of versions seem to be prominent. One version of the story says that a man was walking along what was then Martense Lane, back when Brooklyn was first being developed, when he came upon a stranger with whom he got into an argument. At the end of the altercation the stranger was angered and stomped his foot on the ground which left a large hoofprint, revealing his true identity: it was THE DEVIL! According to another version of the story, which is actually printed on the plaque near the rock, is that The Devil lost in a fiddling contest and stomped his foot in anger, leaving the hoofprint then.

Either way the cloven indentation was the consistent thread so when a boulder was found outside of a local church that looked to have an oversize hoofprint in it fans of the legend moved it to where the story is said to have taken place: modern day Green-Wood Cemetery. At first the boulder was just dumped outside the cemetery’s fence but was soon taken in and even given a plaque explaining the rock’s folktale origins. Not a bad deal for a seemingly random stone.        

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