• We have updated the guidelines regarding posting political content: please see the stickied thread on Website Issues.

Spring-Heeled Jack, East-End Disappearances & Other Mysterious Characters

On a (sort of) related note, from today's 'On This Day':

On 24 July 1924, at a time of Arab hostility, Flight Lieutenant W.T. Day and Pilot Officer D.R.Stewart were sent from British headquarters on a routine reconnaissance over the Mesopotamian desert. According to schedule, they would not be absent for more than a few hours. When they did not return, the plane was found in the desert in perfect running order with petrol in the tank. Footprints of both men were traced for 40 yards from the plane and then vanished. Aeroplanes, mounted police and tribal patrols searched unceasingly for five days. The mystery remains unsolved.
 
My parents have a book about mysteries. It's a huge tome, about 40 years old. In it Springheeled Jack is supposed to have attacked a woman in a London Street called Green Dragon Alley. It doesn't appear to exist anymore......
 
In Lawrence Kusch's The Bermuda Triangle Mystery - Solved (1975), he tells of Jack attacking an 18-year-old called Lucy Scales in the shadows of Green Dragon Alley in Limehouse in February 1838. This was a matter of days after SHJ attacked Jane Alsop in her home in Bearbinder Lane in Old Ford.

These are both confirmed cases of SHJ attacks, which tally with newspapers of the time. Others, such as the attack of Polly Adams, appear to be fictional accounts made up after the time.

See Mike Dash's exhaustive study in Fortean Studies 3 for a complete overview of SHJ in London, Sheffield and elsewhere.
 
nicolachi said:
My parents have a book about mysteries. It's a huge tome, about 40 years old. In it Springheeled Jack is supposed to have attacked a woman in a London Street called Green Dragon Alley. It doesn't appear to exist anymore......
Click to expand...

There is a Green Dragon YARD, a lane &/or road, that runs between Old Montague Street & The Whitechapel Road, (the first on the left, if you are going East, from Brick Lane)....

But from memory, it is still firmly in Whitechapel or Spitalfields, rather than Limehouse. Infact, Shadwell lies between them.

I can find no G. D. Yard in both Collin's Atlas of London of 1851, or the 1891 Census.... although the Census index is a bit of a mess!!!!
 
This was excellently covered in one of the earlier Fortean Studies books. Curious how the name Jack has been given to people of this nature on so many occasions.
 
well ..jack sounds kinda sinister....although that more then likely becouse of things like this...hmm intresting
 
You might want to check this thread out:East End Disappearances

Mod Edit: Likely due to threads being moved and merged, this link only references back to this same thread but gives an error when doing so.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
She's bucking to become a mod...:D

Watch out for your job rynner!
 
Me a mod? I think that would give everyone nightmares... :eek!!!!:
Besides, I'm not power-hungry. :D
 
Great maps.

This is what I love about this mb. The totally useless, but facinating links you can collect.
 
Whatever happened to him after he jumped over the house in Tranmere?
Remember reading about him when I was a kid and it scared the life outta me.
 
If you take events at face value and believe what all the witnesses say, a possible explanation of the Spring-Heeled Jack phenomenon might be that a mad scientist devised some form of device for amplifying running and jumping.
It's also possible that the mad inventor handed the device down to his heir, or whatever.
I seem to recall an inventor coming up with some running/jumping device, which apparently gives the user the ability to run as fast as 50-60 mph:

http://www.springwalker.com/
 
Mythopoeika said:
If you take events at face value and believe what all the witnesses say, a possible explanation of the Spring-Heeled Jack phenomenon might be that a mad scientist devised some form of device for amplifying running and jumping.
It's also possible that the mad inventor handed the device down to his heir, or whatever.
I seem to recall an inventor coming up with some running/jumping device, which apparently gives the user the ability to run as fast as 50-60 mph:

http://www.springwalker.com/
Click to expand...

Maybe he just had the prototypr Nike Shox :D
 
There is an excellent essay on Spring-Heeled Jack in one of the Fortean Studies books (six I believe).

As I remember, the sightings continued over a period of about seventy years. (so the "mad Scientist" must have been a bit old and knackered by the end!).

I suspect that mass hysteria plays a bit part in the sightings.
 
Things picked up interestingly in Sheffield a couple of decades ago (in the seventies, I believe), and there was the "Monkey Man" panic fairly recently, which bore a number of similarities to the cases.
 
I love the springwalker concept, that would be rather jolly for walking around on a Mars type planet or something:)
And the noise they make- I bet they sound like an Anglepoise lamp...
zdoiiinggzdoiiingg
zdoiiingg
zdoiiinggzdoiiingg
zdoiiingg
zdoiiingg
 
Red Dalek said:
Curious how the name Jack has been given to people of this nature on so many occasions.
Click to expand...
Perhaps because he springs - like a Jack-in-the-Box.
 
i'm sure there was a SHJ sighting in Liverpool, near Maryland Street a couple of years ago, was in the Liverpool Daily Post I seem to recal...
 
Maybe what we're dealing with is an immortal, humanoid creature which constantly moves around the globe taking on the guise of one of the local folklore characters and then getting it's rocks off attacking people.
Fairly pointless I have to admit but depending on how old the thing actually is it could have gone totally insane.
 
Maybe it experiences time differently, and in such a way that it doesn't experience boredom.
 
An ex-army officer encountered SHJ in South Herefordshire. He saw a
strange figure leaping hedgerows and seeming to defy the laws of gravity.

He leapt onto the road and slapped the witness so hard across the face
that he was left with the hand imprint on his cheek for hours. SHJ gave
out an almighty cackle of a laugh and continued his journey across the
fields. He was described as wearing a black all-in-one suit and having an
elongated chin.

A Victorian tale? Maybe - but this is said to have happened in the Summer of 1986
and is recounted in "Fairies & Magical Beings" by Cassandra Eason, 2001.
Her source was one Mark Fraser, editor of haunted Scotland.

This is the most recent sighting I know of. :eek:
 
springheel jack

Spring-Heeled Jack, the Terror of London, appeared in a 48-part serial written by Charlton Lea

Spring-Heeled Jack is described in the texts as a "weird being;" one critic describes his appearance this way: "a skin-tight glossy crimson suit, with bat-style wings, lion's mane, devil's horns, talon hands, cloven hoofs and a `sulphurous-breathing mouth.'"
 
As much as I think this is a case of fiction using fact as a basis, I've always thought old S-H J made a brilliant hero!
 
nicolachi said:
My parents have a book about mysteries. It's a huge tome, about 40 years old. In it Springheeled Jack is supposed to have attacked a woman in a London Street called Green Dragon Alley. It doesn't appear to exist anymore......
Click to expand...

There is a Green Dragon court, which is a tiny little cut through alley near london bridge...
 
Bear in mind many roads, especially little alleys, have disappeared over decades of rebuilding, the Blitz etc.
 
Spring Heeled Jack.

Hi.....dont know if this should be here or not but......

I did a search on the boards and could really find anything about this. I remember reading about him in a book at school when I was about 8, it used to scare the shit out of me!!

Spring Heeled Jack - was he a creature, an alien, or a man wearing some strange costume and a hidden jumping apparatus? During the 1830's, this 'man' terrorized England. Described as tall, thin, powerful, wearing a black cloak, the man could jump 20 to 30 feet vertical. It was reported that he had large pointy ears and nose, with red glowing eyes, and capable of spitting an odd white and blue flame from his mouth..........

Check out the link.

http://www.spartechsoftware.com/dimensions/crime/SpringHeeledJack.htm


Ta.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top