So Supernatural - THE UNKNOWN: Spring-Heeled Jack

Episode Date: April 21, 2021

In 1838, a strange villain began stalking the London suburbs. For the next 70 years, Spring-Heeled Jack — a fire-breathing, metal-clawed monster — terrorized the city. 

You've probably heard this one before. Faster than a speeding bullet, more powerful than a locomotive, able to leap tall buildings in a single bound. Obviously, that's a line from Superman. But it also describes a Victorian-era villain known as Spring-Heeled Jack. Today, many people haven't heard of Jack, but his name was once on the lips of every person in London. To them, Spring-Heeled Jack was a lot of things. At best, he was a public nuisance. At worst, a genuine monster. And whether you believed he was real or not, everyone agreed on one thing. If you ever met Jack in a dark street, you'd better run.

This is Supernatural. I'm your host, Ashley Flowers. This week, we're looking at Spring-Heeled Jack. Beginning in 1838, a mysterious figure attacked Londoners only to escape capture by literally jumping over buildings. There are plenty of stories, and it's not clear just how true all of them are. But some believe Spring-Heeled Jack was not only real, he's still alive today. We'll dig into the mystery coming up. Stay with us. Like all the best legends, Spring-Heeled Jack evolves over time. In some stories, he's wearing a white bodysuit and a cape. Other times, he's not even human. And the earliest reports are probably the strangest,

because that's when he's just getting started. These sightings happen in the fall of 1837. Reports trickle into London from nearby towns about all sorts of ghostly creatures attacking people at night. First, it's a white bull. Several women from the village of Barnes claim they've each run into this bull. It scares them half to death, and for some reason, they interpret it as not just a normal animal, but a supernatural entity. Then, as December turns into January, a new creature shows up inside the London suburbs, a bear, or at least it looks like a bear. Some witnesses claim it's a mysterious man wearing a bear skin.

Like the bull, this bear mostly targets women, but it actually attacks them, shredding their clothes with its claws. Eventually, a third figure pops up. This time, it's a man wearing polished armor with these wild claws coming out of his fingers. He's wearing the Victorian version of moon shoes, like boots with coiled springs coming out of the heels. And according to the rumors, he's able to jump incredibly high, like over tall buildings in a single bound kind of high. This terrifying night appears all over London's suburbs, scaring people, and each time he grows bolder, until finally he crosses the line from disturbing

to dangerous. He attacks a carpenter on a street that's ironically named Cutthroat Lane. His victim, the carpenter, is a powerful man, not somebody that's easy to mess with, but the knight literally claws his clothing into ribbons. All these stories, the bear, the bull, the man in shiny armor, are trickling into London and people are confused. Like, is it just a coincidence that these weird things are happening? Or is there some sort of shapeshifter going around? And as news of these assaults trickle in, they notice a pattern. A figure attacks a person alone at night. It uses its claws to hurt them or rip their clothes, and then it

leaps away down the street and over rooftops like a Victorian Michael Jordan. It just doesn't make any sense. And it's not until January 9th that the pieces start to fall into place. That morning, the Lord Mayor of London prints an anonymous letter he's received in a newspaper called The Times. The mystery writer sounds upset about all the attacks, and he basically speculates that it's all the work of one unknown assailant. This person uses a variety of disguises to confuse and attack people, and the writer claims that he knows about seven different ladies who have had these encounters and fainted. Now, the Lord Mayor's response is basically to shrug. He publishes the letter probably to make it seem like he's doing something.

But in reality, the shapeshifter hasn't stepped foot into London proper. He's still operating in the suburbs. So basically, it's all out of the mayor's jurisdiction and not his problem. But the letter gets everyone in London riled up. Suddenly, people are looking over their shoulders. They're talking about it in pubs and worrying about walking home late at night. And in the midst of all of this, the newspapers give the attacker a new name, Spring-Heeled Jack. Spring-Heeled because of the shoes, and Jack probably because it was a common name, like this guy could literally be anyone. On February 20th, just five months since the bull sighting,

Jack appears inside the London city limits. It's around 8.45 p.m. 18-year-old Jane Alsop is in her home on Bearbinder Lane when someone starts violently ringing her doorbell. Jane's annoyed, so she goes to the door to ask them to stop. There's a man in a large, dark cloak standing outside. He says he's a policeman and demands Jane bring him a light. Then he claims that he's got Spring-Heeled Jack tied up in the street outside. Jane rushes into the house to grab a lit candle, but as soon as she hands it over, the stranger throws off his cloak.

Underneath, he's wearing a tight-fitted white costume and a large helmet. There's some sort of contraption strapped to his chest, and according to Jane, his eyes are glowing red. Then, supposedly, the guy opens his mouth and breathes fire right in Jane's face. As far as I know, Jane isn't burned, but she screams and runs back into the house. The guy chases her inside and catches her in the hallway. Then he starts tearing at her clothes and hair, and Jane realizes he's using sharp claws made of metal. Thankfully, her older sister Sarah hears her screaming. She runs downstairs to find

this guy's hauling Jane over the threshold. Sarah reaches out, grabs Jane, and heaves her inside the house and slams the door. But the man won't go away. He keeps knocking on the door and calling to them. It's not until Sarah yells for the police through a window that he finally flees the scene. Jane and her family report the incident to authorities and the London public goes nuts. A man attacked a woman inside London Proper and he mentioned the name Spring-Heeled Jack. Police scour Bearbinder Lane for clues and one detective, Officer James Lee, is made the lead investigator. Lee interviews Jane's neighbors and he finds out that a man in a cloak and white costume has been loitering around for a month. And then somehow or another, he lands on a suspect, a local carpenter named Milbank.

Allegedly, on the night of Jane's attack, a local named James Smith ran into Milbank in the street. Smith heard a scream come from the Allsop house and then saw Milbank walking away wearing a white coat and hat. Later that night, Smith ran into Milbank again on Bearbinder Lane. Clearly drunk, Milbank lunged at Smith and yelled, What have you to say to Spring Jack? Which is pretty suspicious. But Detective Lee can't connect Milbank to Jane's assault. There's no physical evidence, and when authorities try to question him, they find out that he was so drunk on the night of February 20th, he supposedly can't remember a thing. Then there's Jane's version of the story. She's not even sure her attacker was

human. It appeared as a wild-eyed, fire-breathing monster, which that's definitely hard to believe. But either way, Milbank is never arrested or brought to trial. Everyone is freaking out about Jane's attack. Then, just eight days later on February 28th, Spring-Heeled Jack strikes again, this time in a completely different neighborhood. It's around 8.30 p.m., so almost the same time as Jane's attack, and 18-year-old Lucy Scales and her sister are walking home from their brother's house in the neighborhood of Limehouse. They're cutting through a street named Green Dragon Alley when they spot someone standing in the shadows. He appears to be wearing a cloak, and as they come closer, Lucy can make out some kind of hat or bonnet on his head. Suddenly, the stranger jumps towards

her and breathes a fireball in her face. Lucy is terrified, to the point that she falls to the ground and begins having a seizure. Meanwhile, her brother hears her screaming and rushes out of his house. But by the time he reaches his sisters, the attacker is nowhere to be found. Unfortunately, Lucy's case doesn't get the same press coverage as Jane's attack. For one, Lucy is lower class, the sister of a butcher.

The mainstream press isn't as interested in her experience as Jane's. But authorities think the person who attacked Lucy and Jane is probably the same guy, because he's following a pattern. He goes after young women around age 18, he wears a cloak, and in both cases, there's the fire-breathing thing. So they put the same investigator, Officer James Lee, on Lucy's case. Now all they have to do is figure out where Jack will strike next. Coming up, Spring-Heeled Jack takes on the British Army.

Now back to the story. On March 2nd, 1838, two days after Lucy's attack, there's a fresh attack, this time inside a pub. A man with a club walks in and tells the owner that he's Jack. Then he tries to clobber her, but he's thrown out onto the street. And later that month, police arrest another man from the neighborhood of Kentish Town. He had put on a bright blue mask and was going around scaring women and children. Then, on March 31st, a third person, a teenager, James Painter, is arrested for attacking a woman while dressed in all white. Apparently, Painter's victim had recognized his voice. So all of this brings up a great point, which is that Spring-Heeled Jack could be the work of multiple people.

The real Jack, plus a load of copycats. Not to mention, newspapers are cashing in on the Jack panic. They're quick to label anything strange or dangerous as the work of Spring-Heeled Jack. But assuming that in most cases Jack is one person, he seems to be targeting the mid to lower class. He attacks several servants including a woman named Polly Adams in 1837 and a young boy in London's East End in 1838. And by this point there's a common story floating around London and its suburbs. It goes like this. An unnamed local woman is walking alone at night when Spring-Heeled Jack attacks her.

He scares her half to death, leaving her with seizures. So basically, the Lucy Scales attack, over and over again. But beyond torn clothes and seizures, Jack's victims usually aren't injured. He just likes to scare them. In any case, over the next few years, it seems like everything is blamed on Jack, from robberies to attempted sexual assaults. Then in 1845, a story circulates about a way worse incident that happened in a neighborhood known as Jacob's Island. Jacob's Island is basically a rundown district that sits above open sewers with bridges connecting the apartment buildings. Kind of like the Venice Canal, if they were full of human waste. Now, a young sex worker named Maria Davis is standing on a bridge one night when, without warning, Jack appears.

He grabs her with his claws and breathes fire into her face. Then he picks Maria up, lifts her over his head, and hurls her into the sewer where she drowns. So now, Spring-Heeled Jack is a murderer. Or is he? Unlike Lucy Scales and Jane Alsop, Maria's story never appears in the news, so it's probably nothing more than a rumor. But similar stories compound for decades throughout the mid to late 1800s, until eventually Spring-Heeled Jack becomes a pop culture icon. This is mainly thanks to Penny Dreadfuls, fiction books about murders, demons, and mayhem around Victorian England.

For example, Sweeney Todd, the murderous barber of Fleet Street, gets his start in a Penny Dreadful. But most of the time, they take inspiration from real headlines, which is the case with Spring-Heeled Jack. His character also pops up in theater. Audiences love him, and multiple plays feature him as their jumping, fire-breathing villain. That's not to say Jack isn't still operating out on the streets. In fact, one of his most significant attacks, or in this case, a series of attacks, doesn't happen until 1877, almost 40 years since he first showed up in London. Only this time, he takes on the British Army. It's spring and there's a rumor circulating through the Aldershot Army Camp, just southwest of London. Apparently, in the dead of night, a soldier is

standing guard in a remote part of the camp. He's minding his business when suddenly something jumps on his back. The soldier can feel its cold, clammy hands clawing at his arms, and he realizes it's trying to steal his weapon. But before he can get his bearings, his attacker, poof, just disappears. Other soldiers report even weirder encounters. They claim a strange figure leapt impossibly high over them and whacked them in the face with his cold, corpse-like hands. Which, if you think about it, is kind of like a weird flex. And it doesn't really match the whole metal claw thing that Spring-Heeled Jack had going. Still, it is pretty scary, and supposedly when the soldiers fire at this guy, the bullets do nothing. So he's either wearing some sort of body armor or the shots are passing

through him. These reports continue off and on through 1877 and 78. Eventually, the army higher-ups get angry. Like, how are they expected to defend the country if they can't defend their own base from an intruder? So they give an order to double the night watch, telling their men to stop Jack by any means necessary. So in December 1878, a guard is on duty at the edge of Aldershot Army Camp when Jack attacks him. Only this time, the soldier stabs Spring-Heeled Jack in the leg with a bayonet, and Jack goes down hard. In a scene straight from Scooby-Doo, the soldier pulls off Jack's disguise to reveal a junior officer from the base. The entire year and a half of Spring-Heeled Jack tormenting the army was a hoax. So to me, this is more proof that

Spring-Heeled Jack could have been a string of pranks. Still, Jack keeps operating off and on for decades until finally, in the fall of 1904, he vanishes. But not without making his boldest appearance yet. By this point, Jack's been running around England for an impressive 67 years. Residents of William Henry Street in Liverpool report a spring-heeled man leaping across the rooftops at night. Sometimes, he even descends to the street to scare whatever ladies are walking by. Then, at the very end of September, Jack appears in broad daylight wearing a mask and black cloak. He bounds up and down William Henry Street, jumping higher and farther than humanly possible. This goes on for about 10 minutes in front of dozens of people until finally Jack leaps a full 25 feet straight up from the street and lands on a nearby house.

He gives a disturbing laugh and runs off across the rooftops of Liverpool, never to be seen again. So, who was Spring-Heeled Jack? Let's go back for a minute to the main investigation, because remember, Detective James Lee was put on both the Jane and Lucy cases. Lee noticed a similarity in both their testimonies. Spring-heeled Jack had been wearing some sort of headgear or bonnet, as Lucy called it. Lee wondered if this had something to do with Jack's fire breathing. So in 1838, the same year as the attacks, he went to the London Hospital for help. There, hospital technicians actually duplicated Jack's fire breathing using a technique similar to what a circus fire eater uses. They filled a tube with wine and sulfur and had a

test subject blow air through it. Someone else held up a flame and presto, the person's breath caught fire. All to say, this could be why Jack asked for a candle at Jane's house. He needed some type of ignition to light his helmet. Once he had it, he breathed fire in her face. When Detective Lee discovered this, he was convinced Jack wasn't some type of monster like Jane had implied, just a dangerous man or potentially group of men. And actually, back in January 1838, just a month before the Jane and Lucy attacks, a reporter for the Morning Chronicle also speculated that this could be a group of men. Only he thought that a group of bored aristocrats were responsible. Supposedly, this group had made a bet, like whoever frightened the most people won money, which could explain why Jack showed up all across London in all sorts of disguises.

Even the Lord Mayor thought Jack was one or more persons rather than some kind of beast or supernatural creature. Not long after he published the anonymous letter in 1838, he decided to actually do something. He began collecting money from wealthy Londoners to fund a prosecution of this gang, and he even posted a reward of 10 pounds for anyone who caught Spring-Heeled Jack. But for years, the public felt divided over who or what Spring-Heeled Jack really was. The working class seemed more willing to believe Jack was a

supernatural being, but the upper class, who read about Spring-Heeled Jack in the news, agreed he was part of some prank. In fact, many of them believed that they knew exactly who Spring-Heeled Jack was. Coming up, we'll uncover Jack's possible identity. Now back to the story. At the height of Jack's popularity, many Londoners familiar with his reputation speculated that Spring-Heeled Jack was actually the creation of an aristocrat, a man named Henry de la Porte Beersford,

the Marquis of Waterford. Henry was not originally supposed to be the Marquis of Waterford. He was the second son in a noble Irish family, but when Henry was 13, his brother died, leaving him to become the family heir. Young Henry found himself at the intersection of unbelievable wealth and incredible boredom, so he used his money to amuse himself and raise a little hell. For example, Henry once sailed his yacht to America with his drinking buddies, where he was arrested for beating up people on the street. When he came back to England, he tried to start a Victorian fight club, literally offering to pay men to fight him. There's a report that one night he attacked a group of singers while

entirely naked. And according to legend, he's the guy behind the phrase painting the town red. As the story goes, in 1837, Henry wrought havoc on the town of Melton Mowbray. He and his rich friends beat an English police officer and splashed red paint all over the buildings. They even broke a man out of the local jail. People at the time called Henry the Mad Marquis. He was known for pranks and vandalism, so scaring people with a spring-heeled jacket sounds right up his alley. The only hitch is the timeline. You see, Henry lived in England in 1837 and 1838, the years when Spring-Heeled Jack first came to prominence. But by 1842, three years before Jack drowned Maria Davis,

he'd moved back to Ireland. And in 1859, he died falling off a horse. So Henry and his friends might have been responsible for the first attacks, but he couldn't have been the spring-heeled jack who haunted the London suburbs and countryside through the mid-1800s, and he definitely wasn't the person who leaped across Liverpool rooftops in 1904. Although that last sighting might have never happened. In 1967, a woman who lived in Liverpool during 1904 wrote into a newspaper hoping to set the record straight. She claimed the famous jack sighting was actually a common incident. Apparently, there was a local man with a mental disability who tended to

fixate on religion. More than once, the man had climbed onto his roof to yell about the devil, and when people called the authorities, he would run away across rooftops. Over time, this story morphed into the last confirmed sighting of Spring-Heeled Jack. Whether or not that's true, people, especially working-class women, had a lot to be afraid of in Victorian era London. Crime was rampant. The neighborhoods in London's East End were dangerous and theft happened everywhere. People didn't feel like they had any protection and many of them distrusted the Metropolitan Police. The organization had been founded not even a decade before Jack appeared,

and according to records, a lot of cops were drunk on the job. The reason Jack permeated every aspect of society, from word of mouth to stage plays, is probably because there was a culture of fear. So in a weird way, believing in a supervillain or a shape-shifting monster could be comforting, a way to make sense of the constant danger. And in retrospect, Jack probably dropped off people's radar because something else took his place. Someone even more famous than Spring-Heeled Jack. Between August 31st and November 9th, 1888, an unknown assailant stalked and killed five women in London's neighborhood of Whitechapel. He mutilated their bodies, slit their throats, and cut their organs out with a knife.

Then, the murderer allegedly sent letters to the press and the Metropolitan Police, dubbing himself Jack the Ripper. Jack the Ripper's killing spree only lasted a few months, but it was terrifying. A total of 11 murders happened in close proximity around the same time, meaning there could have been even more victims no one knew about. The manhunt became a national sensation. Even today, there are Jack the Ripper tours around Whitechapel, and no one's ever solved who the killer was. A boogeyman like Spring-Heeled Jack pales in comparison. But even though Jack the Ripper became way more popular, the original Jack didn't just fade away. He may have found a new home. In the fall of 1938, literally 100 years after Jack first came into existence, a strange figure appears in the Cape Cod village of Provincetown, Massachusetts. One witness says he encountered this mysterious person and they spat blue flames into his face.

Newspapers dub him Black Flash, and a year later in 1939, a reporter from the Provincetown Advocate claims that Flash can jump over 10-foot hedges. Their explanation? Well, he has springs on his feet. From 1938 to 1945, the Black Flash frightens people around Provincetown. It's always in the fall and winter, so not during tourist season, and Flash never seriously hurts anyone. Like Spring-Heeled Jack, he could be a lot of things. A prank, a monster, even a figment of the town's imagination. Because fear can do anything. It can make a shadow loom as large as a house or turn a night breeze into a ghostly whisper. It can make a shadow loom as large as a house or turn a night breeze into a ghostly whisper.

It can even make a spring-heeled man breathe fire. Thanks for listening. I'll be back next week with another episode. To hear more stories hosted by me, check out Crime Junkie and all AudioChuck originals.