SPRING-HEELED JACK
Superman with eyes of a devil
ue of the mists of the night he came, a
O leaping, bounding superman who
held a nation in a grip of terror for
more than 60 years.
‘At first, he was just a rumor. Few took much
notice when people crossing a common in
southwest London first reported seeing an
alarming figure that flew through the air in
great leaps across their path. But the reports
persisted, until they were terrifyingly confirmed
a year later, in February 1838.
Jane Alsop was young and pretty. She lived
with her two sisters and their father on a
London back street. She had heard of the
bogeyman called Spring-Heeled Jack. But she
p
V4 4
a
LEAPING AWAY. The descriptions of Spring-
Heeled Jack varied litle, although be was sen in
many diferent areas,
was too sensible to heed such tales.
One night there was a violent knocking at
the door. Jane went to answer it. The man
standing in the shadows near the front gate
swung around, “I'm a police officer,” he said.
“For God’s sake, bring me a light, for we have
caught Spring-Heeled Jack in the lane.”
“The stories were true after all,” thought
Jane excitedly, as she ran to fetch a candle. “Ill
see him being arrested.” She rushed back out-
side with the candle.
But as she gave it to the man at the gate, he
grabbed her by the neck and pinned her head
under his arm. Then he ripped at her dress and
body. She screamed and tore herself away. He
chased her, caught her by the hair, and clawed
her face and neck. Her sister, hearing the
screams, ran into the street and cried out for
help. Bur before anyone could stop him, Jack
soared away into the darkness
Jane later described her inhuman attacker to
police officials. “He was wearing a kind of
helmet,” she told them, “and a tight-fitting
white costume like an oilskin. His face was
hideous, his eyes were like balls of fire. His
hands had great claws, and he vomited blue and
white flames.”
Te was a description that was to be repeated
over and over again in the following years
Always the leaps, the flames, and the eyes of hell
were recounted.
Lucy Scales was 18 years old, the sister of a
butcher. She had just left her brother’s house
one evening on her way home with her sister.
As they walked along a lonely street, a tall,
cloaked figure jumped out of the shadows. He
spat blue flames at Lucy’s face, blinding her.
During the 1850's and 1860's, Spring-Heeled
Jack was sighted all over England, particularly
in the Midlands.
In the 1870’s army authorities set traps after
scared sentries reported being terrified by a man
who darted out of the darkness to slap their
faces with an icy hand or sprang onto the roofs
of their sentry boxes. Angry townspeople shot
at him in the streets one night in 1877. Always,
he laughed and melted away.
No one, even today, really has any idea
who—or what—Spring-Heeled Jack was. For a
while suspicion rested on the eccentric young
Marquis of Waterford. But though the “mad
marquis,” as he was known, was one of the “wild
ones” of Victorian society, he was nevet vicious.
Jack’s eyes of hell were last seen in 1904 in
Liverpool—66 years after the first sightings.
There he started a panic one night by bounding
up and down the streets—leaping from the
cobblestones to rooftops and back. When some
of the braver ones tried to corner him, he simply
vanished into the darkness he came from—this
time for good?