Is the Legend of Spring Heeled Jack Worth a Second Look?

Spring-heeled Jack is an entity that first appeared during the Victorian era. Is the legend of Spring=heeled Jack worth a second look?

Beginning in the Spring of 1888, a series of grizzly murders would shake the city of London so badly that, even today, they remain among the most famous crimes ever committed. Attempts at bringing the killer to justice have led to numerous theories about the identity of the man who became known to history as Jack the Ripper. Today, despite a number credible leads that have been presented since Jack’s reign of terror, along with new evidence that employs modern science to try and crack the case, a conclusive case for The Ripper’s identity has remained elusive.

The infamous killer of Whitechapel was by no means the first eerie figure to terrorize Londoners by night. Five decades before Jack the Ripper first scrawled his name in red ink on a letter sent to London’s Central News Agency, a less murderous–though far more strange–series of incidents would arouse similar terror among the people of London, and under a similar name that remains one of the most odd and evocative in the annals of Forteana. Read more

Spring-Heeled Jack In America

Spring-heeled Jack is a legendary figure in British folklore, but he appeares in American folklore too.

In the night the world reveals its second nature and weird things stir and start to wander. Strange shapes hide in architectural and unlit dead zones. As has been done for centuries, darkness reawakens terrible presences in those places. Whether a hedge, fence or row of abandoned buildings, whether a narrow winding path in a distant past or the alienating cityscape of today, it is the territory of the scare. Such a fright is Spring-heeled Jack. He was born out of similar surroundings almost two centuries ago, and this article chronicles its presence in America. Read more

Has Spring-Heeled Jack Returned?

Spring-heeled Jack was thought to be a nineteenth century urban legend, but a recent sighting calls that into question.

Spring-heeled Jack, the legendary bogeyman familiar to students of British folklore, has been invoked by news of an extraordinary experience with a road ghost in Surrey.

Scott Martin and his family told the Surrey Comet they were confronted by a ‘dark figure with no features’ that vaulted over a dual carriageway and over a 15ft bank whilst on a taxi ride home late on Tuesday, 14 February.

The experience left Scott, his wife and four-year-old son Sonny shocked whilst the taxi-driver ‘admitted he didn’t want to drive back alone’ along the Ewell bypass near Epsom afterwards. Read more