Devil's Toenail

No doubt some children this Halloween will have been making spells in their imaginary cauldrons and joyfully adding gruesome ingredients such as jelly eyeballs, Dracula’s teeth, spiders, rats, worms, skulls and fangs. The more horrid it sounds, the more they enjoy offering it to someone.
Supposedly witches made spells from all sorts of revolting things including toe nails. Here is one of the Devil’s Toenails.
I found it near my previous home in an area rich with fossils in the Jurassic rocks. It is about finger length and is not uncommon in certain areas. This fossil oyster, Gryphaea, lived nearly 200 million years ago when the area was covered in shallow seas. Judging by the size of the toenails the Devil must have been huge so it’s a good thing that he wasn’t around this evening when various little witches, ghouls and skeletons were enjoying their Halloween activities.