Final Sightings and Lasting Legacy

This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK The ultimate cookout starts with the ultimate ingredients. At Whole Foods market, no antibiotics ever burgers and kebabs are prepped and ready to throw on the grill. Fire up a juicy ribbeye. Grab creamy potato salad and savory flatbreads from the prepared foods department, and round it all out with three hundred sixty five brand condiments, chips and dips at everyday low prices Whole Foods Market, Make your summer sizzle. Ever invest in something that seemed incredible at first didn't li up to the height. Like those five dollar roses at a gas station or a second hand piece of technology that breaks in the first ten minutes. Marketers know that feeling We optimize for the numbers that look great. impressions reach and react that when they don't show revenue, Well That's a not so great conversation with the CFO. LinkedIn has a word for that Bullpan Now you can invest in what looks good to your CFO LinkedIn adds generates the highest roWas of all major ad networks You'll reach the right buyers because you can target by company, industry, job title M cut the blls spend Advertise on LinkedIn the network that works for you two hundred and fifty dollars on your first campaign on LinkedIn ads and get a two hundred and fifty credit for the next one 's go to LinkedIn d. com slash broadcast. That's linkedIn d. com slash broadcast Terms and conditions apply Hello, Thankk you for all of your comments, questions and theories on all of our cold cases so far. We're going to be updating on all the investigations later in the series, but right now We've got a deeply dark mystery from Victorian Times, a mysterious assailant who brings fear to the streets of London. He moves with terrifying, seemingly supernatural speed and escapes the police by leaping over rooftops which earns him a chilling nickname Fring heels Jack ase behind. trail of destuction, Londoners are afraid to open their door after dark. Is he a real person somethingomething paranormal it is time To get investigating. I'm Danny Robins and this his uncanny cold cases. What has pass Howusic good Is theross learn S good st Yeah S secret cstal rem Welcome back todayod. We are unboxing a mystery that has remained unsolved for almost two hundred years. It's an incredible story, like something for a nightmare brought to life, but backed up. by multiple witnesses who went on record in the media of the time. dozens of people claimed to have seen Sring heeled Jack, this dark frightening figure of apparently supernatural powers, but Who or what is he too help us prowl the streets of Victorum London looking for evidence, we have our brilliant experts, forensic psychologist Kia O'Keee, the team skeptic and writer, parapsychologist and queen of team believer, Evelyn Hollo. Karen, we are about to touch down in Victoria London. What should we be looking out for? Well, I think this is an amazing case. and as a skeptic when I'm confronted with a fantastical creature, I always think that it's a hallucination. But the lovely thing about this case is there is physical contact. People get hurt and so therefore we know it's not a hallucination. I mean It's a case with real jeopardy, real stakes. it's a case that's really hard to categorise as what is this? Is it a haunting Yeah, I don't know, because originally when it starts off, we're thinking, oh, you know, Victorian London, it's dark, it's spooky, people are being scared. We think, is it you know a ghost story or an urban legend that spans out of control? Are we thinking, okay, is it some sort of serial killer? But every single time we think we understand what it is, it shifts. It's a monster that keeps changing and changing and changing It's really difficult to categorize. Okay, well, prepare to write a new chapter in your nightmares as we start investigation. The story begins in october eighteen thirty seven, London is a rapidly growing metropolis, expanding ever outwards from the Thames. shhrouded in a perpetual black smog and current rumors fate of attacks by a mysterious figure that some claim Ghost or demon They're said to have taken place in Barnes, then a village on London's southwest side, and on this particular night A young carpenter, Mr. Jones, is making his way home from work just a few miles away from there. He knows that the rumors are probably just made up stories, but He can't help feeling a little uneasy as he makes his way down The morbidly named street And then from Ananoa The cloaked stranger jumps out at him from the shadows. Jones falls back in shock. The stranger raises his hand In the street lightights, Jones sees the glint of what appear to be large metal claws with razor sharp tips. A swipe across the torso leaves Jones's clothes torn blood seeping throughuit. startled and heard Joones scramble backatwards and gets a full view. of his attacker The figure is clad head to toe in what appears to be. bleaming armour. On his feet a pair of bright red shoes, his face doesn't look quite human. Jones could swear eyes almost glow red and most frightening of all is his smile Whever he is, he seems to be enjoying the terror he is inflicting. Then as quickly as the assault begins, it is over The figure leaps away into the darkness and Jones' left sprawled on the coblestones, panting, feeling lucky to be alive He realizes something, he packs his pockets, his money, his keys, his watch remain untouched Jones wasn't mugged. He's been insaulted by someone or something with just one motivation to strike fear to his heart. is going on Evelyn, we said that we're gonna hear about multiple witnesses in this story. Now Jones is not the first person this happens to potentially. We've got other documented witnesses and yet he is the first one anybody pays any attention to. Why is that Because all of the other ones were women. Not that's any different today. but in Victorian London it was so common that it's not even reported about in the newspapers. And also when the women are attacked and they give this fantastical seeming account of this mugger with sort glowing eyes and sharp claws and potentially bouncing away over walls, they think, oh they're hysterical, they're hallucinating, they don't listen to them This changes when a young lad is attacked and not only was nothing taken. so like you say, it's not a mugging, which is very weird, but he gives the same report with the same shocking description, but he's a man and therefore anything he says has validity and suddenly they start taking it seriously and that's when it hits the paper. It's a sad fact, isn't it? Some victims are listen to more than others. and Kirin, certainly after the Jones attack, this becomes a huge story, doesn't it? Its across all the newspapers. It does, and there's a weird incident that happened with Sir John Cohen, who's the mayor of London who actually publishes a letter from a Pecham resident talking about this supernatural attacker. and he basically is requesting the authorities to do something, but it's a joke He does it to make fun of the whole incident, but it completely backfires because of course now you've got, you know the stamp of genuineness from the mayor of London and it kind of you know creates genuine concerns amongst the public. Panic on the streets of London. and Evelyn, what is this? this creature, this figure, this entity, whatever you want to call it? Jones describes it as being like a man And yet it's got this kind of inhuman characteristic of these glowing red eyes and these massive claws, like some Victorian wolverine. Yeah, it's a really, really bizarre one. It is literally like Victorian London Freddie Kruger essentially. so if you look at the migration patterns at that time, there's a lot of people coming from rural areas into London for work. And so in rural areas You still have beliefs that are perhaps prior to Christianity. So some pagan beliefs, some older beliefs connected to the land. And you do see aspects of animism. and this is beliefs in things that animals and people essentially merge. So for instance, in Nordic paganism, you would have the berserkers and warriors who take on the spirit of a bear essentially In China, you've got something called the hopping vampire, the Jiangxi, which was essentially believed to bounce around through the mountains, essentially. It was when people died doing building work in the mountains and their corpses were all tied together. And of course as they were walked home to rural China, they would be bouncing up and down very weird. But it's one of the few other cases where I can point to something being spring heeled, if you like. One of them is spring heeled Jack and the other one is the Chinese hopping vampire. He's gotta love hopping vampire, super sinister. but let us hit the cobblestones of Victorian London again because just two months after poor Jones the Cpenter was thrown bloody to the ground fifteen year old Mary Snowden is walking home through the cold January air in Stepney, East London. She rounds the corner and walks along the large outer wall of the local cemetery when the terrified cry of a woman in distress cuts through the air Mary sprints towards it and is presented with the most frightening sight she has ever seen and will ever see again. There is not a woman in sight instead. in front of her is an impossibly tall man, on his head some kind of shiny brass helmet, maybe military. from the top A huge plume of feathers pokes out that makes him seem even more imposing. and on his body beneath a close He wears a tight fitting bodysuit that clings to him like sealskin And at the end of his arms are razor sharp metal claws just like the ones that Jones described. Her knees go to Jelly because this must be Springheel Jack. But then she notices two men flanking jack, they wear long black coat and white gloves. What a relief, Mary thinks they're policeman Relief transforms to panic as Mary realizes They are not policemen. They're not arresting Jack. They are helping him escape. And Jack then disappears with his two accomplices into the gloom afterfter that Things are about to kick off in explosive stuff. Three weeks later, eighteenth of Fbruary in Limehouse, East London, eighteen year old Lucy Scales and her sister are walking home down a street called Green Dragon Alley. Turning a corner into the alley, the two girls are accosted by a tall, thin man blocking their path. He launches himself at them, revealing those huge claws and glowing red eyes. On his chest, Lucy makes out The letter W But there' no idea what this could stand for. Jack putens his mouth wide And from the gaping hole impossibly gets of blue and white flame shoot out, scoallding both girls and leaving behind an accurate smell. Jack then vanish. Lucy and her sister remain slumped on the ground stunned. Have they just survived? An attack by a fire breathing monster Green Dragon Alley. Strike a light. Evelyn, are we starting to feel that Spring Heel Jack, whatever he may be has a sense of irony here. Cutfroat lane for his first attack, and then green Dragon Alley for this new one. I mean, is it a case that was all of Victoria London just named really bizarre whimsical names? or is this something or someone that has a sense of humour, that has a sense of irony and is purposely picking these Scary lanes to go down, the core aspect here feels like it's designed to scare. So why wouldn't you pick cutthroat lane? Why wouldn't you pick Green Dragon alley to attack some? Interesting detail about how the women are lured out by the sound of a female voice here That's different to the Jones attack. It's definitely different. So the two options I feel that either one you've got mimic phenomena, which is a supernatural type of phenomena where something mimics the sound of usually someone you know, usually a family member or a friend. We talk about a lot in polterg scasures, don't? Do you feel that'spl here? That shifts this into something that definitely feels paranormal,ir? So to me, it would be more so if it was a voice that they recognized because normally when we talk about that in poltergeist cases, it's designed to bait someone. So it doesn't feel like mimic phenomena to me. Kirin, we talked in one of our earlier cases, the black monk of Ponefract about whether a paranormal entity can hurt a human being. Whatever Jack is here He hurts, doesn't he? I mean this fire breathing that we hear about. this isn't a little puff of smoke. We talk about the witnesses being burned, scoallded here Yes, we cannot simply explain it away as hallucination. We cannot simply explain it away because of You said a puff of smoke or something ethereal, We've got tangible contact here. And so the problem is as a skeptic is I would be going down that line of saying, is there some human interference? Are we dealing with a human actor, an individual that is deliberately causing this harm in some way? It's quite a hard thing to get your head around there, isn't it? A H human being who can breathe fire in this way Yes it is, but there are a of explanations that we could go down. So one possible explanation is this lovely thing called palinopsia Pelinopsia is this idea that you have kind of an after effect of an image that you carry on seeing. And in the dark and kind of foggy area of London, if somebody has a flame and then you see the after effffect, I could quite easily see somebody misinterpreting the flame coming out of their mouth Now, before you jump in and say, yes, that could explain it, but it's visual And if it's a visual hallucination, how do you explain the burns You're right. I could discount it because of that but then there's another explanation. Officer Lee, there was a police detective that really got involved in this case because of course he thought there was a criminal out there that was causing harm. He went to London Hospital and he saw a demonstration of somebody blowing through a tube that was filled with spirits and chemicals such as sulfur and causing it to light and produce blue flames So in Officer Lee's idea, he thought that it was some sort of prank. and of course, in some of the accounts, you get kind of you know a shiny helmet of some sort that would be obscuring a tube that's coming out of the person's mouth. So there's a couple of possible explanations. you thin think this could be like a Victorian jackth Yes, they could be. why not? Okay, so much to think about in this case. Are you feeling team skeptic or team believer? Let me know what you think in the comments down below. We're going to be doing case updates on all of our cases later on in this series, exploring your theories, trying to answer your questions. But for now, let's go back in London because things are about to get really disturbing. It is the evening of twentieth of february, eighteen thirty eight and terrifyingly Spring heeled Jack to start making house schools We're in a cottage outside Old Ford, another village to the east of London. The front doorbell rings at around nine twenty PM. eighteen year old Jane Osop looks at her parents and sister unsure whether to respond Look could any one want at this hour? the ringing comes again this time, withith an even greater frantic urgency, Jane wraps herself in her housecoat to protect against the cold. Oens the door tries to make out who is summoning her at this hour by the gate She sees a tall man wearing a long coat. There's something on his head, but it's too dark. she can't quite make it out. Jane calls out. What do you want I'm a policeman, he barks back to her. For God's sake, bring me a light, for we have caught Spring Heel Jack here in the lane. Jane reacts quickly. She has heard the stories off Spring Heill Jack and his merciless attacks. She'll do whatever she can to aid in his capture. She rushes into the house, fetches a candle, returns quickly and hands the light to the visitor. which is when things take a sinister terrifying turn because Jane gets a good look now at the man in front of her and This is no policeman His face is contorted in a demonic grin. His eyes glow red like coals set in his pinched face. On his head is some kind of helmet. His body is wrapped in a skin tight suit and there is some kind of lantern like object strapped to his chest and As he sees the terror rise in poor Jane's eyes, he laughs loudly He is enjoying seeing heria and then ing his mouth white Jack it is him, vomits forth blue and white flames into Jame's face burning her cheeks He leaps forwards and grabs her under one arm, beginning to thaw at her face and clothes with those metal claws, leaving deep cut across her face and body. As she desperately tries to fight that, pulls clumps of hair from her scalp. Sreadding her heouse coat and underclothes. But now, Jane's screams have roused the others in the house, and her younger sister, Mary, rushes out to see what the commotion is Jack's appearance is so distressing that Mary finds herself unable to move frozen to the spot in fear. So it is Sarah, Jane's older sister, who finally wrestles her sister out of the clutches of this demon, dragging her inside. Jack continues to raign, Furious blows down on the front door, using his razor sharp claws to splinter the wood It's utterly terrifying, and Jack's frenzy is only curtailed when the rest of the Osop family arrive at an upstairs window to shout and summon the police It's only then that Jack finally flees into the night with lightning speed, his cruel laughter echoing into the darkness. the Allsot family Huddled by their door are trauma Jack is not done Just a few days later, he makes another house school this time Turner Street in Limhouse. He slams on the door, insisting on speaking to the owner of the house, Mr Ashworth. A servant boy answers and reels backwards as he sees Jack Rushing towards him, the boy claims that Jack's cloak is embroidered with a letter W that same letter that Lucy Scales ane sister saw on Green Dragonalley. byy now word of Jack's activities has spread across England. Jack is now appearing as far north as Warwickshire and as far south as Devon. in each case we see supernatural feats of athletic power combined with ferocious, unprovoked attacks. And in each case also from the description, this appears to be the very same man, the same kind of attack the same escape. Laping away with those springy heels Holy springy footwear, Batman, Kiran, I cannot get that supervillain analogy out of my head. And any supervillain needs a logo We have got the letter W here. It's come up two times now in the case, is it a clue? What the W is going on I think it could be a clue, and it's something that's put forward by the newspapers and also the police at the time that effectively what we might be dealing with is a prankster, a prankster who's part of the aristocracy at the time. In the same way now we talk about the Bullington Club and Boris Johnson and others trashing restaurants doing horrible things to a pig's head Exactly doing horrible pranks. donon't Google that Yeah gone. Doing those sorts of things Back at then, the prime candidate was this individual, this hellraiser, Henry de La Pur Bereresford, who interestingly was also the marquis of Waterford W And so he was a kind of boy gone wrong. he was out there causing trouble in other ways. Exactly. He was known for doing pranks and, you know the fact that you've got a prime candidate here and the W is quite key in his name, Marquis de Waterford, means that you've got a potential suspect. Really interesting because inevitably we draw certain parallels with the Jack the Ripper case, you know later, but still that idea of an assailant terrifying London In that case, there's all these different theories about who Jack the Ripper might be. There are theories here about who Springheld Jack might be. Yeah, there is. and I mean Kiran's right and that the prime suspect was Bereisford. He was really well known to be an absolute menace. However, unfortunately to put a small sharp pin in Kiran's balloon, at this time, Bereisford had settled down, he was reformed, he'd married and he'd moved to Ireland, so he wasn't in town when this was happening Whatever's going on, whatever he is, he seems to be thriving off the fear that he's creating, doesnn't he, Evelyn? Is that odd? If it is a human being, why is he not trying to steal or do something more? Why is it just this enjoyment of terror? Yes, I think that's the big question at the base of it, because if it's something supernatural, we can talk about escalation, we talk about it in pololtergeist's cases, where people feel that If you try to ignore it, it gets worse. it almost demands more attention And if you believe that it is a person, if it's some sort of psychopath going around What happens next? Be we're now at the point where we're turning up at doors in the middle of the night and we're snatching young women out of the doorway and attacking them. So what comes next? He's changed his MO. He's also, potentially Kan expanded the area where he is committing these attacks. We're talking about things being reported all across the UK now. and I guess the big question is is this the same Spring heel jack or is this what we would now call copycat attacks? Well I think it could be either. F from a forensic psychology perspective, it could be an individual that know suddenly realizes all of the attention that's focused on London. all of the policing that's going on in London. so he's going to find new ground, new places where he can find victims, or it could be a copycat. We could have individuals in other parts of the country thinking, Ohh, there's a perfect opportunity for us to do the same thing. And some of those descriptions do alter But I'm going to throw in a little postcriript for you. And that is a more recent case that I've heard of back in nineteen eighty in Central Oxford where an individual phoned up the police because they had been attacked by what they described as a vampire. And in their description they talked about very, very long sharp fingernails, red eyes and fangs When the police respond to this call, thinking it's some drunk individual and it's just made up. They encounter the victim and he points out this weird vampire The police chase after this assailant and the individual jumps over a ten foot high fence And you've got the reports from both of these police officers and an MO that sounds exactly like Spring Heel Jack almost two hundred years later It's just Very, very odd The ultimate cookout starts with the ultimate ingredients. At Whole Foods market, no antibiotics ever burgers and kebabs are prepped and ready to throw on the grill. Fire up a juicy ribeye. Grab creamy potato salad and savory flatbreads from the prepared foods department, and round it all out with three hundred sixty five brand condiments, chips and dips at everyday low prices Whole Foods Market, Make your summer sizzle Ever invest in something that seemed incredible at first didn't live up to the height. Like those five dollar roses at a gas station or a second hand piece of technology that breaks in the first ten minutes. Marketers know that feeling We optimize for the numbers that look great impressions reach and react when they don't show revenue Well That's a not so great conversation with the CFO LinkedIn has a word for that Bullpan Now you can invest in what looks good to your CFO LinkedIn ads generates the highest roAas of all major ad networks You'll reach the right buyers because you can target by company, industry, job title and more cut the bulls spend Advertise on LinkedIn the network that works for you two hundred and fifty dollars on your first campaign on LinkedIn ads and get a two hundred and fifty credit for the next one 's go to LinkedIn d. com slash broadcast That's linkedIn d. com slash broadcast T terms and conditions apply Things are certainly looking suspicious, but we are far from finished yet, and I'm afraid to tell you It is all about to take a much darker turn as we enter Our final chapter. overver the next thirty years, confirmed sightings of Springhill Jack become less frequent, but the story never quite disappears It's almost certain that some of these are copycat attacks. Jack is a popular cultural figure by now. There's a play about him on in the West End. But some of these attacks still defy rational explanations. In eighteen seventy, he is seen jumping over a six foot fence in Peckham in London by a group of workmen In eighteen seventy seven or someone like him tall and supernaturally fast is shot at as he runs away over the top of a Roman arch in Lincoln Don't touch it But one of the saddest port of sightings is in the crumbling tenement blocks of Jacob's Island, a slum in the poor area of Bermondsey in South London. A young sex worker, Maria Davis, is walking across the thin walkways which across the open sewer system And it's here that she happens upon a very familiar figure Jack. grabs Holder Maria and breathes white and blue flakes into her face, in metallic claws, scratching her skin that she tries to wrriggle free. then This case. takes a sickening turn as Jack raises the poor girl over his head and throws her into the opens to ass system. Maria can't swim. After a few minutes of helpless struggling, she sinks beneath the surface. It was Maria the only person to die at the hands of a supposed supernatural attacker. or was it easier to blame a phantom for a murder would otherwise never be solved Jack and his mysteries disappear into the night. He's never seen in Britain again In nineteen thirty eight, in Massachusetts in the United States of America a hundred years after he was firsting in London There are reported sightings of a strange creature said to be terrorizing the residents of Provincetown. He is said to have flaming eyes and a cackling maniacle laugh. He moves with incredible speed and spits fire and he has a preternatural ability to leap impossible distances