Martense Lane Rock in Brooklyn, New York

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.