Does anyone here have the truth behind the legends of the infamous “Spring Heeled Jack” who terrorized British citizens centuries ago?
Yes. And it wasn’t more than a hundred-fifty years ago.
It was basically just penny awfuls sensationalising a few stories. You could compare it to more modern (and therefore better documented) examples like the “Mad Gasser” who terrorized American citizens - same forces as work.
Heh…Spring-Heeled Jack and the Mad Gasser of Matoon! And Mothman and the Jersey Devil and the Devon Footprints…wow! You just unleashed all of my memories of the dreadful 70s Fortean books of my childhood…
Glad I could bring back some memories of Scholastic Book Services. What was it about the 70s that brought so much of that out?
Wikipedia suggests it was a big prank. As good an explanation as any (and consistent with what we usually find out about similar modern stories).
People go nuts when values change and the economy goes down. It’s happening again now–today’s interest in homeopathic cures and people who think they are foxes will seem just as strange as the 70s uptick in cults and interest in the devil causing everything, once the economy turns around and cultural shifts settle down.
If anyone has more information than the Wikipedia link provided, they will probably find this thread more easily in General Questions. This is not really a debate, so I am moving it.
Yes - just a few pranks and sensationalization by the press.
Or at least, that’s what I WANTED you to think! Mwahaha!
I like the idea of him being a sort-of a Victorian Batman.
No, actually. Wikipedia is advancing a particular theory (and violating their neutrality policy again) that a specific person caused the prank by dressing up and scaring people. Similar modern stories – and the history of folklore in general – are usually entirely cases of hysteria with no organized instigators behind them.
The original Springheeled Jack stories are extremely similar to early stories about bogeymen jumping people from a few decades before the main rash started. The earlier stories sound more lke the old folklore about ghosts and devils. These stories evolved over the years and came in waves – the Springheeled Jack is just the London Monster tale in a different time period. If you want to believe there was a prankster behind one logically you’d expect a prankster behind all of them, which is definitely stretching things.
Stories about ghosts and bogeymen are common across cultures and throughout history. They spread because these stories serve a function for society, not because of a long line of pranksters in sheets. The idea that Springheeled Jack was really the Marquess of Waterford is one of the typical modern attempts to explain strange stories with even stranger pseudo-scientific explanations. The one thing linking all of these attempted rationalizations is that they are made by people who don’t understand the long history and variations of the stories. It’s like trying to explain the origin of werewolf tales based upon the features of some film you saw. You have to be aware of the whole range of stories and which ones were the earliest before you can even begin to make any conclusions about the original purpose behind the legends.
Sorry to be long-winded there. Maybe I should have just said that that theory seems like it was stolen from an episode of Scooby Doo and is just as realistic.
But the later fictional Spring Heeled Jack was basically an early super hero.
Having spent the 90s listening to my Dad’s local stories of Bigfoot and the Mothman (we lived near the ‘sister’ bridge to the one in Point Pleasant, WV), so the fact that many locals had run-ins with Bigfoot and we had our tie to Point Pleasant made both subjects a never-ending topic. My conclusion was that everyone was high in the seventies, on pot or quaaludes, and were guzzling infinite amounts of this new thing from Colorado, called ‘Coors Beer.’
Imagine my surprise when I walked into my high school library to be summoned to a table by a group of my friends, who were massed around one of such book from the 70s–they drew my attention to an entry for our county, in which my own father was listed in a newspaper article describing his encounter with Bigfoot. I was a minor celebrity for awhile, but I was sure the others were questioning my mental genetics behind my back.
Were both made into figurines in Matchbox’s Monster In My Pocket line.
http://www.toyarchive.com/MIMP/MIMP48.html
I have the very common Jack, but not the Mad Gasser.
I first learned of Jack through a Ripley’s Believe It Or Not! comic book.
I had the Spring Heeled Jack MIMP too. I distinctly remember that it came in a pack that also had the elbow witch* and a T-rex that appeared to be wearing boxing gloves.
*the guide had an interesting backstory for her, but she was unmistakably just an old lady with spikes on her elbows.
And he would have gotten away with it too, if not for you meddling Dopers!