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Let me tell you a ghost story. 200 years ago, London has no street lights. Walking on winter nights means braving the cold and the pitch black alleyways. But this doesn't stop the Scales sisters from staying out well past sundown. Heading home, the sisters eyes scan the shadows, carefully selecting the safer sides of the road. Their heightened alertness lengthens each step of the short walk along Green Dragon Alley, they spot a man stopped ahead, back turned. His cloak obscures everything but his impressive height. The sisters speed up, not calling attention to themselves. As they near the stranger, he whips around, leering he might mug them. So spit on them. No. He exhales. Blue fire. Bright indigo flames blind one of the sisters. Her eyebrows singe. Panic knocks her to the ground. Screaming and shaking, the attacker springs into the air, rising to the rooftops before landing a block away, then bouncing over a high wall, out of sight. The alley goes midnight dark once again. Later, the women learn they got lucky. The same mysterious figure has struck before. He slashed women's skin, ripped out their hair, forcibly kissed and undressed them. He even threw a woman in the river, drowning her. Some say it's a demon, others a band of costume elites conspiring to crime without consequence. And others still an alien hiding among us. But regardless of what they think their attacker is, everyone calls him the same name. Springhild Jack welcome to Conspiracy Theories, a Spotify podcast. I'm Carter Roy. New episodes come out every Wednesday. You can watch our episodes and more on our new YouTube channel, Onspiracy Theories podcast and check us out on Instagram he conspiracypod and we would love to hear from you. So if you're listening on the Spotify app, swipe up and give us your thoughts. Today we're talking about Spring Heeled Jack, a mysterious attacker in Victorian era London who frightened and assaulted young women. He or it was never caught. This episode contains discussions of violence and sexual assault. Consider this when deciding how and when you'll listen. Stay with us. This episode is brought to you by Focus Features. You've heard the theories. You know the signs. But what if you encountered the First Contact? On October 31st, Focus Features presents Begonia, the new film directed by Yorgos Lanthimos. Two conspiracy theorists are convinced that a high powered CEO isn't just running a corporation. She's behind an elaborate operation to end the planet. Emma Stone and Jesse Plemons star in Begonia. Rated R. In select theaters October 24th in theaters everywhere October 31st. So good, so good, so good. New markdowns are on at your Nordstrom Rack Store save even more. Up to 70% on dresses, tops, boots and handbags to give and get cause I always find something amazing. Just so many good brands. I get an extra 5% off with my Nordstrom credit card Total Queen treatment. Join the Nordy Club at Nordstrom Rack.
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To unlock our best deals.
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Big gifts, big perks. That's why you rack Hi there podcast lover. If you have a dark sense of humor and like your true crime stories paired with a glass of wine, then you need to check out our true crime comedy podcast, Wine and Crime, hosted by two Minnesotan childhood besties, me Amanda and me Lucy. Each week we dive into a bizarre true crime topic. Pair that topic with a whine and get into all the dirty details. Wine and Crime is dark, fun, feminist and perfect for satisfying your morbid curiosities with a healthy dose of humor. Join us as we chug wine, chat true crime and unleash our worst minutes. Check us out@wineandcrimepodcast.com and listen now, wherever you get your podcasts, Today's conspiracy theories surround a monster Spring Heeled Jack. He's far from the only famous London Jack. There's Jack in the Box, Jack O Lantern, and of course, Jack the Ripper. Springhill Jack is a blend of all three. According to reports, he pops out of the darkness and springs to supernatural heights. His chest somehow lights up and he breathes fire. He attacks women on the street in London's East End. In most accounts, Springhill Jack wears a long black cloak over a tight white jumpsuit and and a headdress or helmet, sometimes with feathers. He's tall and lithe, his fingers stretched to long metallic talons sharpened to tear through clothes and flesh. And in the center of his terrifying face, glowing red eyes. In a few stories, he's dubbed a shapeshifter, taking on the form of a bull, a bear, or a knight in armor. He breathes fire and is impervious to bullets. In almost all accounts, he jumps just out of reach, leaping over high walls, springing between rooftops. That's where Spring Healed comes from. And in every account there's a Don't go outside at night. It could attack, maybe even in your own front yard. That's just what happens in February 1838. 18 year old Jane Allsop lives with her parents and sisters in the London suburb of Old Ford. Their home has a name, not an address, Bear Binder Cottage. The property is gated and visitors alert the family by ringing the gates bell. Around 8:45pm the bell rings and rings and rings. Someone's impatient. Jane walks outside and crosses the yard to greet the family's visitor. A man shaped shadow. He stands in the darkness, no lantern, ringing the bell anxiously. Jane calls across the yard, asking who he is and if he can stop ringing like his life depends on it. The visitor replies that he's a policeman, demanding For God's sake, bring me a light, for we have caught Spring Heeled Jack. Here in the lane, Jane's heart races. She's heard the rumors about the horrid monster attacking servant girls and read newspaper mentions of the bizarre encounters. Of course she'll help. Jane races back inside and returns with a lit candle. As soon as she reaches the policeman and opens the gate, he snatches the candle. The light illuminates his face for the first time. His ghastly eyes glow fire red. He is not a police officer. He's Spring Heeled Jack. He throws off his cloak and spits blue and white fire, almost burning her face. Jane runs screaming, the open gate swinging behind her. But claws dig into her back and her Dr. The monster pins her down, puts her in a headlock. Metal talons shred apart her clothes. Jane fights back, collecting bruises. She wriggles out of his grip and stumbles back toward the house. She reaches the door and boom. He's on top of her again. He scratches wildly at her neck and arms and rips out her hair. Jane fears what he'll do next. One of her sisters runs outside and starts hitting Jane's attacker. Jane manages to get free and the sisters dash into the house, locking Springhill Jack outside. Inside, Jane's two sisters try to calm her. She's lost a lot of hair and her dress hangs on by a thread. Their parents, who are already in bed, come downstairs at all. A commotion outside Springhill Jack raps on the door as the family tends to Jane's injuries. Jack knocks with the same fervor as he rang the bell. The family hides upstairs. They open a window and look down. He is still at the door, still knocking. Family screams for the police, hoping a neighbor will hear and fetch help. Eventually, Springhill Jack sprints away, his bright white suit vanishing into the fog. Later, neighbors find the Alsop family in a panic. Jane's father suggests a plan. He saw Spring Hill Jack run off without the cloak he arrived in. If they can find it, they may be able to use it to identify Jane's attacker. But when the group searches the area, there's no cloak. It vanished. Jane's father sees this as proof it wasn't a single criminal but a team. One man attacked, another picked up the cloak. Maybe a third watched and laughed while his daughter was assaulted. It's a criminal conspiracy, an outrage. And the Allsopps aren't alone. A few days later, around 8pm, a family in a nearby suburb hears a knockout. The homeowner, Mr. Ashworth, has his servant boy answer. The servant boy opens the door, screams and slams it shut. He tells his boss it's a most hideous appearance. But when the Ashworths look outside, no one's there. Seems the monster didn't have an interest in a servant boy. Later that week, 18 year old Lucy Scales and her sister walk home from visiting their brother in a third neighborhood. They're the sisters from the beginning of the episode. Frightened in Green Dragon Alley. Summoned to the alley, their brother finds Lucy and her sister in a panic. Lucy's sister gives a complete description, including the detail that Springhill Jack wore a bullseye like the kind used by police on his chest. A bullseye is a lantern with a magnifier to direct the light, like an early flashlight. It's a bizarre detail, but both siblings are more concerned with Lucy. When the brother arrives, Lucy's in the throes of a violent fit. She's as hysterical as Jane Allsop, and Jack didn't even touch her. Lucy's fits continued for several hours. I mean, it's bizarre. But she's not the only victim who experienced this. As I mentioned earlier, rumors of Springhill Jack have flown through Greater London for months. A few weeks before Jane and Lucy's attacks, a young unmarried woman walking home from a party was, quote, nearly deprived of her senses by a white figure spitting blue fireballs. Other victims shook uncontrollably or fainted. One reported victim was so distraught her family checked her into an insane asylum. Meanwhile, the week before Jane Allsop's attack, a butcher reported being attacked by what the newspaper calls a hobgoblin. But descriptions of its height, agility and freakish saucer eyes resemble Spring Heeled Jack. Now the varied accounts merge into a bigger rumor. The devil himself has come to London. Let's look at it. There's the fire breath, the glowing red eyes. How he almost flies from place to place without being caught. There's the way he looks a little different every time, ranging from knight in armor to man in bearskin. Even the fits experienced by Lucy and others sound like classic demonic possession. And those who don't think it's a demon, well, they say it's a ghost. Okay, now Many people who experience supernatural events seek supernatural solutions. But not the Allsopps. The day after Jane's attack, they go straight to the local magistrate's office. While Jane wasn't the first to be attacked, hers is among the best documented. Jane had multiple witnesses, all from an upper class family, so her report was deemed serious by the authorities and the newspapers. It's an early version of missing White Woman syndrome, the phenomenon where a more privileged group's criminal case gets more attention and resources. For Jane Allsop, that means two different investigations. The local magistrate's police force seeks Jane's attacker, and so does the London Metropolitan Police. So the Metropolitan Police were established less than a decade earlier, in 1829. They're still a ways off from the detective fame of Scotland Yard. Researcher John Matthews notes that this force is barely equipped to solve a burglary, much less a violent assault. But they still direct resources to Jane's case. Meanwhile, the magistrate's police assigns one of the best detectives in the country to the case. James Lee. About 10 years back, Lee helped solve the infamous Red Barn murder. He ferreted out the killer who'd been on the lam for over a year. He's the best in the field, at least when it comes to solving crimes committed by humans. So while stories of ghosts and demons float through the city, Detective Lee keeps his theories on the ground. He has no doubts there's an evil terrorizing London, but he believes it's just one man. He doesn't even believe Mr. Allsop's theory that it's an organized group. Lee considers all the attacks stretching back the past few months. Like a clergyman's daughter assaulted back in January. And reports of a tall, thin character in a Spanish cloak skulking around. Putting all the stories together, Lee deduces that the attacks are calculated. He tells a local paper that Green Dragon Alley, where the Scales sisters were accosted, is basically the perfect scene for a crime. Lee also realizes that the attacks were all occur between 8 and 9 at night. The exact time frame police patrols swap shifts. The attacker likely knows this and strikes when he's least likely to be apprehended. When you add the knowledge of police procedure to Lucy Scale's report of the bullseye light and the tall hat and cape, it starts to paint a picture of a police police inspector audacious enough to believe he's above the law. Naturally, Detective Lee doesn't pursue that angle. He focuses on the Allsop family. He thinks Jane's attacker knows them. After interviewing the witnesses, he zeros in on reports of a man who told the Allsop's neighbors to get to police. This Good Samaritan, he's a tall man in a dark cloak, but no one knows who he is. Lee thinks he's Spring Heeled Jack. Together with his counterpart from the Metropolitan Police, the other force on the case, Detective Lee determines the attacks are the result of drunken antics taken too far. They interview locals who fit their suspect profile. But each possible suspect points fingers at someone else. None of the testimony lines up. And contrary to police opinion, the Allsopps all claimed Jane's attacker was sober. He was so close to her, she'd have smelled alcohol on his breath. Plus, the Allsops agree the attack was deliberately calculated. It's not the typical M.O. of a town drunk. All the while, the violence escalates. Springhill Jack enters a pub and swings a club at female patrons. He slaps a woman across the face. He rips a woman's clothes, then forces her to eat grass. The attacks stretch across London and its surrounding villages. Between 1837 and 1839, at least 15 Springhill Jack incidents get reported. Finally, someone pins down a man who looks like Spring Heeled Jack and quickly discovers this suspect hasn't actually attacked anyone. He's a copycat who heard the stories and dressed up like Springhill Jack to scare people. Two more copycats pop up and all three are fine for creating a public nuisance. With no answers, terror reaches a fever pitch. A shape shifting, fire breathing evil is jumping over rooftops. He's hiding in the darkness. Always just out of sight, always just above your head. No one can catch him, no one can stop him. And no one knows who or where he'll attack next. Hoping to put an end to the evil, vigilante groups gather reward money and scour the streets. Among the vigilantes, the story changes. Maybe the evil isn't supernatural. Maybe it's a massive conspiracy. In the late 1830s, an uncatchable evil terrorizes London. He jumps impossibly high and blows fire in his victims faces. His eyes blaze red and his attacks feel random. Even the best detective in the country can't solve the case. As the panic continues across London, the mayor receives a letter from a local constituent. It's from a whistleblower complaining that Springhill Jack's identity is intentionally being brushed under the rug. The mayor has it published in the Times. It reads in part. Individuals have laid a wager the task of visiting many of the villages near London in three disguises. A ghost, a bear and a devil. The unmanly villain has succeeded in depriving seven ladies of their senses. One victim has never from that moment been in her senses, but on seeing any man, screams out most violently, take him away. The writer stays anonymous, signing off as a resident of Peckham. Peckham is a London neighborhood. Perhaps they fear repercussions for whistleblowing. In the accompanying article, the mayor states he believes this letter tells the truth. It's not a demon. It's a criminal conspiracy. In the following weeks, multiple papers back up this theory with similar news stories. The sun reports, quote, the committee has been informed the Springhill Jack gang was made up of rascals connected with high families and that bets to the amount of £5,000 are at stake. And a letter to the Times says the goal of the wager is to kill six women. Springhill Jack has escalated from haunted house scarce to violent assault to murder. It's a terrifying idea that people with wealth and power would hurt others for their own entertainment and get away with it. Now, some say the idea of shadowy elites is grasping at straws, but the theory gets way more real when people start naming names. The prime nobleman suspect, Henry de la Poer Beresford. His title is Marquis of Waterford. He's a well known local bad boy. They called him the Mad Marquis. He inherited the Marquis title at just 17, while still in school. His father died young, perhaps due to the Waterford family curse. Yes, a curse. We don't just have a demon springing through the air and spitting fire. We have a curse. How did it happen? Well, allegedly, the first Marquis of Waterford punished a man by hanging him. Seeing her son on the gallows, the man's mother cursed the Marquis and his descendants to seven generations of painful deaths. Over the centuries, the sons who inherited the Marquis of Waterford title suffered lion maulings, drownings, gunshots and car crashes. Several eldest sons died before they could even take the title. Other descendants died in train derailments and horse accidents. So, yeah, I think maybe there could be a curse. Or maybe they were genetically prone to recklessness. The mad Marquis certainly lived on the edge. Not long after his father's death, he was kicked out of school for gambling and drinking. He was routinely caught brawling and fined. He'd pay the fines and keep brawling, and sometimes he'd even pay random bar patrons to fight him. He adored chaos. He shut the eyes out of the family portraits. He'd flip over horse buggies as a joke to scare people. He once snuck a donkey into someone's bed. I mean, that's kind of funny and no one could stop him. He may have been a party boy, but he was also the local bigwig. He had money, status, and virtually no oversight. It's even said the Marquis inspired the phrase paint the town Red. In April 1837, the Marquis and his friends spent a day drinking, gambling and cavorting at the horse races. On the way home, they stopped at the toll booth. The line was slow due to repairs, including a fresh coat of red paint. Annoyed at waiting, the Marquis and his friends stole buckets of paint and went on a rampage. They painted everything in town red, even the tollbooth operator. The next day, they were charged with vandalism. The Marquis paid the fine and took his antics international. A few months later, in Norway, he finally got a comeuppance. A night watchman saw the Marquis being inappropriate with a young lady and beat him up. Apparently, losing a fight was the only thing that could bring his spirits down. The Marquis fell into depression. So here's where we get into the conspiracy theory. Allegedly, the Marquis's friends wanted to cheer him up. So they proposed a new way to be a menace to society. Dress up as a monster and attack poor people. Starting in September 1838, this small group of noblemen, led by the Marquis, takes turns dressing up in the scariest costumes they can find in their manors. And that explains why Jack is sometimes a helmeted humanoid and sometimes a bear. They're using different costumes. Then the aristocrats pick a dark area and wait around for the perfect victim. They target young women because they're easier to overpower. No one can stop the mad Marquis and his friends from causing trouble as themselves. So of course they can't stop them when they're wearing costumes. Even if someone were to recognize the Marquis in his Spring Heeled Jack getup, what could they do? He's the local political authority and landowner. He has magnitudes of power over his victims. He'll never face repercussions. And some of the history lines up. Researcher John Matthews notes that on the Marquis's return to London, he doesn't stay static. He moves around town, staying with various friends from fall 1837 to spring 1838. The exact time frame Spring Heeled Jack attacks. That could explain how he pops up in so many different neighborhoods. And researcher Carl Bell observes Springhill Jack never attacks in so called bad areas. Areas where a member of the upper class would wouldn't dare set foot. Okay, to sum it up, the mad Marquis and his cronies certainly had the time, the money and the attitude to be Springhill Jack. Look at it. The Marquis loved a good bet, and the combination of costumes and status render him uncatchable. Feels like nothing can stop him not getting kicked out of school, not fines, not even getting his ass kicked now. The Marquis never confesses formally, but there's a hint of confession from beyond the grave. After he dies, his wife commissions an unusual memorial in his honor. It's a fountain in the town square. In the center of the fountain, there's a single column stretching above the nearby rooftops. A statue perches atop it. Up close, it's an angel, but it's so high no one on the street can see the statue clearly. At night, the single figure leering down from the rooftops looks a lot like Spring Heeled Jack. And that's what memorializes the mad marquis. A shadowy, sky high figure who could jump down on them at any time. There's just one wrinkle in the nobleman theory. Decades later, long after the Marquis dies and his friends go gray, Springhill jack returns. In 1872. A tall, cloaked figure terrifies a young maid, Sarah Ann Foster. Other witnesses see him jump high enough to clear a six foot fence. The editor of the local paper reports his own no man living could leap so lightly and I might say fly across the ground in the manner he did last night. Fifty years later, sightings occur in Bradford, far north of London. This apparition has glowing eyes and seems to be on springs. Other accounts pop up across England, the most recent in 2012. Almost 200 years later, people are still trying to solve the mystery of Spring Heeled Jack. And they've brought in more modern theories. Like aliens. The alien theory started in 1954 during the post Roswell craze. In an article, writer Valentine Dial proposed that Springhill Jack wasn't a demon or a but an extraterrestrial. He pointed out the odd appearance of Springhill Jack lined up with the more modern concept of a spaceman. He had a shiny white fitted suit, a big helmet, a strong wearable light. And maybe the blue fireballs were actually blue laser beams. People in the 1830s didn't know what lasers were, so they used the closest terms they had to describe their experiences. The spaceman theory also explains the spring heels. An alien might come from a planet with higher gravity than Earth, so a regular footstep resulted in a jumping motion, like astronauts on the moon. That's how Spring Hill Jack could clear high fences and rooftops. Looking at the accounts through a modern lens, they do line up with stories of aliens but they also line up with another modern cryptids. If this is your first time listening, a cryptid is a creature like Bigfoot or the Loch Ness Monster, native to Earth but not scientifically identified yet. The giant squid, the platypus and the okapi were all once considered cryptids. They're not supernatural, so different from ghosts and demons. And they're not aliens, though. Many cryptid stories include an alien visitor theory. But the reason people suggest Springhill Jack is a cryptid is because he looks and acts like several famous ones. First, the Dover Demon. It's a white humanoid with long fingers and glowing red eyes. It spooked young people around dover, Massachusetts in 1977. We don't know much about the creature because after two days of sightings, it disappeared forever. A few years before the dover demon, in 1966, the people of Point Pleasant, West Virginia reported a tall, winged humanoid with glowing red eyes. The Mothman. The Mothman frightened and chased young people across town. It once pursued a car going 95 miles per hour. It ate someone's dog and it was never caught. And going back to the uk, there's Cornwall's Owlman. White flying half man, half owl with glowing red eyes and sharp talons. If you're watching the video, you can see the similarities. But at the end of the day, we still don't know what any of these sightings actually are, or if they even happened. Aliens, cryptids, fire breath, high jumps, claws, bear transformations. It all starts to feel like an urban legend. Which leads you to wonder, was Spring Hill Jack a massive misunderstanding? This episode is brought to you by Jack Daniels. Jack Daniels and music are made for each other. They share a rhythm in the craft of making something timeless while being a part of legendary nights. From backyard jams to sold out arenas, there's a song in every toast. Please drink responsibly. Responsibility.org, jack Daniels and Old Number 7 are registered. Trademark Tennessee Whiskey, 40% alcohol by volume. Jack Daniel Distillery, Lynchburg, Tennessee. Here we have the Limu Emu in its natural habitat, helping people customize their car insurance and save hundreds with Liberty Mutual. Fascinating. It's accompanied by his natural ally, Doug Limu. Is that guy with the binoculars watching us? Cut the camera. They see us. Only pay for what you need@libertymutual.com Liberty Liberty Liberty. Liberty Savings. Very underwritten by Liberty Mutual Insurance Company affiliates. Excludes Massachusetts. The theories about Spring Hill Jack are so bizarre, so terrifying and so pervasive, it's hard to know what's real. So to get Some clarity. I spoke to researcher and historian Dr. Mike Dash. Hi, Mike. Hi.
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B
Good to see you.
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A
Can you introduce yourself for our audience?
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I'm Dr. Mike Dash. I'm a historian who specializes in history from below. So history of everyday people and particularly in strange and exotic history. One of the subjects I've studied in that line is Spring Hill Jack. I started researching it when I was about 19. I'm now 62, so it's been quite a long time.
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A
That is a long time. What inspired you to start your research?
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When I was 11 years old, I used to get a magazine in the UK for curious kids called World of Wonder, which had a section in it called Strange Stories and it had the story of Spring Hill Jack in it with a. With a scary illustration. And when I was 11, it sort of terrified me, really. Not least because of the implication that Spring Hill Jack was some sort of immortal being who could kind of turn up on your window somewhere in the middle of the night. So I've been researching it because I was scared as an 11 year old, essentially.
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So it's a lifetime of research, trying to understand your nightmares.
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I don't have nightmares about it anymore, thanks to all the work I've done on the subject. Yes. But it does say something about the vividness of the figure and the way in which people interpret it, I think has a lot to do with how powerful the story is and why so many people are still interested in it today, actually.
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A
Right. And you have a book coming out next year about Spring Heeled Jack. Can you tell us about that?
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It's called Spring Heeled Representation and Interpretation. A Multidisciplinary approach. It's a bit of a mouthful, isn't it? But the main interpretation that we are advancing, which is new, is to say you must pay a lot more attention to the people who put this stuff in print. When you read the original stories, you're seeing them through a filter in the sense that the first ones that come in are written by people who are middle class and have servants and they're writing about how. How annoyed they are that the servants are spreading these silly working class stories. So you're seeing them through this sort of veil of not really how they were originally told, but through a disapproving, this is a sort of nonsense that servants believe type of thing. Then in February 1838, they change in the sense that two people go to the courts and start and two girls say that they've been attacked by this figure.
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A
Right. And those, those two girls are Jane Allsop. And Lucy Scales.
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Yes, exactly. And at that point you're then getting material which had been written by court reporters. So the. The court reporters were not, in fact staff reporters on the Times, they were freelancers, they were called penny aligners and they basically could only make a living if they could sell these stories. They're starving hack writers who's living in a time when there's no Social Security paid, no social safety net. And if they can't sell a story to the newspapers, they don't eat that day. And so they had a motivation to find the most sensational stories, write them in the most sensational ways. What you don't see is Spring Hill Jack appearing when Parliament is in session, for example, because then there's plenty of other stuff to fill the newspapers. That's a very clear thing when you're looking at those coincidences of date.
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A
So Springhill Jack is at least in part, a conspiracy to sell newspapers.
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All I can really say, as a cautious historian, is that these are complicated sources and they cannot be read simply as accounts of exactly what happened. But the story effectively originates in rumours among working class people in London in the autumn of 1837. They talk about the rumours as they were then and they're very bizarre. The figure is completely shape shifting and at one point it's like a lamplighter walking with his lamp between his legs, on his hands, and at another point it becomes a snowball that rolls down a hill. I mean, it's really very surreal. They're also sort of children's stories, so they're used by parents to quiet children down and keep them under control. Basically, you frighten children by saying, if you don't do this, such and such will come to get you. You can see how the stories are used and spread by people who have other reasons for telling them than they think it's true or other reasons for telling them. They think it's scary and it doesn't feel very well. With the idea of Spring Heeled Jack as an actual sort of person who actually assaults people. In other words, it's much more complex than that.
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A
Yeah, I mean, can we talk about the stories that are confirmed? I mean, earlier you mentioned Jane Alsop and Lucy Scales and they are definitely real. Right.
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If Jane Allsop had never gone to the police, then we wouldn't be sitting here talking about Spring Hill Jack. That's my view after 40 years of studying this story. The Jane Allsop case is the. Is the sort of the thing that makes you stick because, I mean, it happened in the, to the extent that this girl went to the police, her family came in support of the story. They all told the same story about the assault. And she had, you know, at least some sort of marks of injury, bruising and so on, on her body. So she was attacked, I think by somebody. The real question is sort of how violently and how exotically. Jane is, you know, respectable middle class girl. Nothing about her would suggest that she would simply make this stuff up or lie. And she and her family were sufficiently outraged that they went to and reported it to the local police court the next day. And the only other one from London at that time that was similar came about 10 days later. So this was a girl called Lucy Scales. The interesting thing when you read the case is that her brother the butcher says the really odd thing to do me was that it was only 20 minutes earlier that we were sitting in my parlor reading the newspaper stories about Spring Eagle Jack. And so you suddenly realize again that this girl has in her mind the same name. And that I think has got to be significant. That. But in both cases, in both the really famous cases, the only two cases in fact that we have in which there is some credible reason to assume that Spring Hill Jack did his most spring heel Jack thing, which is breathing blue fire. They are both stimulated by the name Spring Hill Jack before they even start. I think that that's gotta be significant.
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A
Yeah, that does seem significant. And now you say that fire is the most Springhill Jack thing. What about his sky high jumping ability? Is there any credibility to his spring heels?
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B
So there is a huge literature here effectively suggesting that maybe it would have been possible that somebody invented some sort of spring heeled type of boots. It would be difficult to control. If you're in an area like Bear Binder Lane, for example, that's a muddy path around muddy fields. Maybe it's more credible on a sort of, you know, a modern bit of asphalt or, you know, concrete paving or something. But it's not credible that people could control heavy duty springs, get high leaps and not basically break their legs.
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A
Yeah. So you're saying it's not humanly possible for people to leap like that. So maybe they made it up to explain for why they couldn't catch him.
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B
Yes, yes, exactly. And that is a very important part of the story, isn't it? That he is never caught. It becomes scarier because the reality is always more boring.
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A
Ah. And more boring would be Jane and Lucy were attacked by ordinary men.
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B
Yes. There's actually very little in what Jane said that suggests that it could not have been done by somebody who wanted to scare a girl. And again, I mean, the Spring Heel Jack stories is. Has been around for long enough that pranksters, people who like attacking girls, might potentially put on this Persona, like maybe.
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A
The marquee of Waterford.
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B
So I have looked into the Mar, the Marquis of Waterford. What I've done is I. And again, this is only possible now that you can use digital archives, but I have recreated his itinerary across this whole period so I can say where he was and where he wasn't. So, first of all, in the summer of 1837, the Marquis went with some of his mates to Bergen and made a real fuss in this very quiet, backwater Norwegian town. And the local watchman came on the scene and tried to break up the noise and in doing so, he hit the Marquis of Waterford over the head with his iron tipped club and he was nearly killed. And he was incommunicado and indisposed for the next three months. So now, if you believe the newspaper stories, the stories of Spring Hill Jack started to circulate in September. Waterford was definitely not in a fit state to be impersonating Spring hill Jack. In September 1837, around about the time of the Jane Allsop account, he wasn't in London either. He went down to Kent and stayed in Dover. This is about 60 miles, 70 miles away from London. And, you know, there are several major hills, hills between Dover and London, which a horse and carriage struggle to get up in February, it would have taken at least a day, probably longer, to get to London and then come back again. And he was definitely at this hotel, the Ship Hotel in Dover, the day before the Allsop assault. So again, I can be almost as certain as I can possibly be that Waterford could not have been a nobleman attacking a girl in the East End of London on the 20th of February.
- [42:22]
A
Oh, yeah. Well, could it have been other noblemen?
- [42:27]
B
There might have been other noblemen, but I mean, the whole idea of mad noblemen, the idea that they were young, boisterous, took wages in ways that sort of caused horrible trouble for ordinary people, goes back to the early years of the reign of James I. In 1712, there was a very major scare in London involving a group called the Mohawks, who were again supposed to be young aristocrats who were sort of invulnerable. They could never be arrested. They have a different sort of elusiveness. In other words, their elusiveness is social. They can always bribe people or just sort of pull rank on people. There are different sorts of uncatchable. It's uncatchable because he's. He's agile or he's uncatchable because he's a nobleman who the watchman can't arrest or who will get out of prison if he is arrested. You can see in a sense that the story itself is mutating. But it's the same basic fear that something could happen to you and that person will not be brought to justice.
- [43:20]
A
Well, that is a very genuine fear that kind of keeps us all up at night. And how about. Yeah, for you, after 40 years of research, what still keeps you up at night?
- [43:30]
B
The most mysterious thing, perhaps for me, is how widespread stories of Spring Hill Jack are. I mean, they appear pretty literally all over the world, everywhere from Argentina in the 1960s, 70s, 80s, back to Russia at the time of the revolution. They appear in Somalia in the 1980s, in Czechoslovakia in the 1920s. And it is very difficult to know exactly how this happens. When Spring Heel Jack appears in New Zealand, in Australia, in Canada, it's with the name Spring Heeled Jack. And it's probably something which has been spread by British emigrants. Sometimes you get slight variants. For example, in Newfoundland he's called Spring Heeled Jackson, but it's still a very identifiable name. But weirdly, some of them come from places where there was no British presence at all. And that's what I find most puzzling. At one point I was working through a long list of all the British penny dreadfuls that were exported and translated into Czech. And weirdly and frustrating enough, Spring Hill Jack wasn't one of them. So I still can't explain why Spring Hill Jack was bounding around coal fields in the Czech Republic, Czechoslovakia, as it was called then in the 1920s, but he was Russia during the time of the Russian Revolution Revolution, there was a sort of street gang who called themselves the Leapers and who got dressed up in sort of weird like risen from the dead in a graveyard type costumes and sort of hopped around scaring people and robbing them. Gang of this sort were arrested by the new Bolshevik government in St. Petersburg, Petrograd, Leningrad in 1917. 18. And quite a few, three or four of them were executed. There are some Soviet archives on this, which again, I've managed to get hold of and get translated. And I really struggle to quite understand, and I've spent a lot of time worrying about this, how that character has ended up in a place like Somalia, which had appeared in Somalia in the 80s when it was beginning to be destabilized quite badly. They, they thought it was an unusual story in the sense that they didn't have, they didn't have a tradition of a figure called the Tall Man. It suggests that there's something about this archetype is so scary and so unique that it has a way of traveling or potentially a way of simply coming into existence in different places because it meets the same need society of being spooky, of scaring us. I'm still utterly baffled as to how he gets to some of the places he gets to. And you know, for me, who wants to explain it as a sort of socio cultural phenomenon, it's. That bothers me because I can't.
- [45:55]
A
Wow. It's incredible the scope of it, that it's not just back in the 1800s or just in England, but that Springhill Jack has become this worldwide fear and phenomenon. Thank you so much for joining us.
- [46:08]
B
I'm really pleased to have helped.
- [46:10]
A
One last report of Springhill Jack we haven't mentioned yet. In 1888, London's Metropolitan Police receive a letter. It confesses to attacking women on the street. It signed Spring Heeled Jack. The attacks mentioned were the work of another Jack, Jack the Ripper. Like Springhill Jack, he was never caught. And maybe that's why Springhill Jack faded away in the 1900s, why he's not as famous as other cryptids and conspiracies. Because the new terror lurked in the dark, warning people of the dangers outside their homes. No matter what's actually under the costume, there's nothing scarier than not knowing what's after you. And whatever Springhill Jack is, it's still out. Thank you for listening to conspiracy theories. We're here with a new episode every Wednesday. Be sure to check us out on Instagram. He conspiracypod. If you're watching on Spotify, swipe up and give us your thoughts. For more information on Springhill Jack, amongst the many sources we used, we found Mike Dash's academic paper, Springhill Jack to Victorian Bugaboo from Suburban Ghost. Extremely helpful to our research. And for more from Mike Dash, check out his book releasing in 2026, Springhill representation and a Multidisciplinary Approach. You can also find him moderating Reddit's Ask Historians page, which we linked in the show's notes. Until next time, remember, the truth isn't always the best story. And and the official story isn't always the truth. This episode was written and researched by Maggie Admire, edited by Miki Taylor and Pete Ritchie, Fact checked by Sophie Kemp and engineered video edited and sound designed by Alex Button. I'm your host, Carter. Roy. Sam.