Based on "The Devil's Footprints" phenomenon that occurred in 19th century England. Mysterious hoof-like footprints appeared in the snow between 8 February and 9 February 1855 in Devon all along the 40 to 100 miles (60 to 160 km). The prints appeared to pass through walls and over rooftops, marking a route in a perfect straight line. It is still considered to be an unsolved mystery.
(at around 52 mins) When Sheriff Shields and deputy Saunders meet inside the bar, Shields theorizes about a possible animal species not discovered nor classified by the modern science as explanation of the happened in Meadow Fields, and Saunders replies with a story about a Taiwanese fisherman who found a fish supposedly extinct some years ago. This is not fictional: on May 22, 2007 Taiwannews reported about an Indonesian fisherman named Yustinus Lahama who fished a coelacanth, a kind of fish theoretically extinct at time of the dinosaurs. The fish was later shown to Grevo Gerung, professor at the fisheries faculty at the Sam Ratulangi University. The news mentioned another coelacanth caught in a deep-water shark net off northern Sulawesi, in 1998. Coelocanths are dated more than 360 million years ago, according to the Australian Museum Fish, being the only one living animal to have a fully functional intercranial joint. It's a division which separates ear and brain from the nasal organs and eyes.
The title addresses about the 1927 blues-folk song "Dark Was the Night, Cold Was the Ground", composed and performed by Blind Willie Johnson. It has the distinction to be one of the 27 songs selected to be part of the golden disc incorporated to the space probe Voyager I, launched on September 5, 1977, which reached out the Solar System on September 12, 2013.
Shot in twenty days.
When sheriff Shields does an internet search for animals with 3 pronged hoofs one of the site results is the hoofed urban legend The Jersey Devil... which some believe haunts, mostly, the Pine Barrens of Southern New Jersey as well as surrounding areas.