This Paranormal Life - #024 The High-Jumping Razor Blade Demon - Spring Heeled Jack

Episode Date: August 29, 2017

London wasn't always the nature reserve for bunny rabbits that you see today - it was actually pretty scary in Victorian times. Not least because there was a demon on the loose, attacking anyone and everyone with it's wolverine-like claws and Michael Jordan-esque jumping abilities.And this demon's children might be alive today...Support us on Patreon.com/ThisParanormalLife to get access to weekly bonus episodes!Buy Official TPL Merch! - thisparanormallife.com/storeFollow us on Twitter, Instagram, and YouTubeJoin our Secret Society Facebook CommunityIntro music by www.purple-planet.com Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Is Alex Jones right and we're all wrong? Is Ronald McDonald a reincarnation of some ancient hell beast enslaving humanity 199p burger at a time? Answers to these questions and more in this episode of This Paranormal Life. Welcome back to the podcast. It's Tuesday again. You're joined by Mr. Roy Pars and myself, Mr. Kit Greer, two paranormal investigators, professional paranormal investigators, on the brink of insanity, broadcast live to you from our basement every week. I really hope that second one isn't true, because I've had a bit of McDonald's recently.

I don't know if you've noticed. I've had a bad amount. I've gained about 200 pounds. Holy shit, dude. i wasn't gonna say um and the problem is every mcdonald's i've been to now have self-serving really asks yeah which is a big problem because it eliminates the shame factor a little thing i i've patented the shame these are like the tablets on the wall yeah where you just press the pretty things put and it's all like contactless you don't even

give them money you just tap no no no it's so and then it's done and then at the end they just like they're like um a package for fatso and i just walk over and take it and that's rude do they say that yeah every time they're like um oink oink piggy i'm the only one as well throw it in a trough every other one every other one they're like number 34 uh 61 uh chubasaurus i'm like yeah what do you order come eat fatty what what do you order not even from the menu i just say like the runoff lard just put it in a bag you're like i just like salted salted chips hold the chips and just like put it in a bag for me just put me in the fryer at the end of the night put me in the fryer and i'll leave in the morning i'll let myself out could you please uh guantanamo me in the fryer welcome back to the podcast where every week we

dissect a different paranormal claim or tale and just find out what's true and what's fake as shit. Well, as always, Roy, I've got a doozy for you today. Okay. So last week we covered something very modern. I'm taking you back a little bit further, but very close to home physically. This is in London. Okay. Tell me, how much do you know about Spring Hill Jack?

So I know we've had a number of people actually email and suggest that we investigate. Yes. But aside from that, I know that he was a nuisance. I know that he was... He was a premier dickling. Local to London. Yes. I guess the implication from his name is that he can jump or leap.

He's got hops. He's got hops. He's like Jordan or something. Yes. He's capable of leaping. Although, to what amount, I have no idea. Is it a building or is it a foot higher than the average man? Yeah.

It's a mystery. I actually didn't know much about it before we started getting submissions requesting this particular topic. And it took me down a deep rabbit hole with lots of twists and turns. Rather than get bogged down right away, let's just wind the clock back to 1837, right here in London, England. In the 1800s, there were many reports of ghosts that stalked London streets, and they would descend on lonely passers-by in the streets.

But one such ghost was all too real. It's October, and Mary Stephens is walking to Lavender Hill, where she worked as a servant. Seems rough, doesn't it? Yeah. Yeah, it doesn't seem right to say in a sentence. No. She works as a servant.

Worked as a servant. As nice a place as Lavender Hill as well to presumably get whipped, to walk, to get whipped on Lavender Hill. Yeah, I live on Princess Avenue where I'm flogged. I wear a toilet. My professional job is a toilet on a petticoat lane yeah that's a bummer it's like working paradise square as a whore maybe they love sex though so you know uh she's walking through clapham common i don't know what the weather was like but let's just say it's dark Stormy as shit

Windy, the wind's howling Suddenly Something leaps out of a dark alleyway It grabs Mary, tossing her about Ripping her clothes And when she feels it touch her, she feels claws Instead of skin She claimed his touch was cold

And clammy like a corpse. She, of course, freaks out, running, battling this creature off. Startled, the beast runs off quickly into the night, and people run to Mary's aid, but by now the attacker is, like, long gone. Yeah. Probably due to the spring in his heels. I presume. I don't know what you're talking about Roy

we have no evidence of that yet well the people of Clapham didn't have to wait long for their second

glimpse of the attacker because the very next day near Mary's home in fact a man is driving a horse and carriage through

the streets when out of nowhere a shadowy beast leaps out at him the coachman swerves violently

I don't know how he can swerve a horse and't know how he can swear the horse just locks in place yeah yeah they've got like tokyo drift he powersled around the corner i've got those modern like anti-locking horses yeah like super safe in a crash he swerves violently crashing and injuring himself dreadfully witnesses claim that the culprit escaped by jumping over a nine foot high wall laughing in a high-pitched scream all the way into the distance can you imagine how terrifying that is that's terrifying for two reasons yes one

obviously the screaming man jumping over a nine foot wall but also let's think about this if you have to stop a carriage yeah it's not like a car right presume like how did they slow a carriage down because if the horse just stops it dies like it's killed by the carriage yeah i guess it's quite a bit of momentum i feel like there's some braking mechanism right on board yeah i mean like but don't you just like pull on like oh yeah for the wheels the carriage of tnt doesn't have any brakes i'm sure it'll be fine maybe like carriage our horses that pull carriages are just like one trick ponies like they just die they're like expendable and then when you arrive at your destination you hop on a new one yeah it's like a little like origami carriage yeah just recycle at the end of every ride. Yeah, and also, I feel like, I mean, I guess it's the driver doing this,

but I feel like if one man jumps out in front of a horse and carriage, I feel like those horses are just mowing that man down. Yeah, you're going to kill that guy. Yeah. Unless it's not a guy. Hey. Hyperventilate. Drop to the floor.

Swallowed a fly. hyperventilate drop to the floor swallow to fly needless to say people start going freaking primal dude and the papers dubbed him spring heel jack after after two oh yeah he's got his own name and persona it's our boys eat that shit up people had nothing to do back then that's crazy i know but i feel like these days if donald trump takes a shit it's like all over huff post and like washington post and stuff you know it's like they always call him the goblin shit lord he's got his own persona so you can imagine if there's like a fiery ass trump imagine if there's like like a stabbing down the street and then within one day there's rumors being spread about like jake knife fingers you know like well yeah it's more mystical than just a stabbing what we'll see throughout this

story is like the way that people talked back then is like so stupid it's so like like you forget how far we've come in terms of the most polite person today if they went back in time they would probably like shoot them in the face thinking they were like a feral dog for how like casual our speech is today right back then even didn't matter who you were you spoke like dickens english it's very odd to read in these early sightings of spring hill jack he was described as disgusting devilish awful monstrous appearance deep red eyes and according to one report a wicked smile of wait let me do an authentic, like, London 1800s accent. Yeah, yeah.

According to one report, a wicked smile of unimaginable terror. I thought you were going to... It really threw me, because I thought you were going to do a fancy voice. No, dude, that's like an authentic London accent. Do you, like, do you not hear people in the streets? You hear people in the streets talking to each other.

Yeah, yeah, a little time. Where's it going, mate? Yeah. No, mate yeah no no no like last time i was out and i was like getting stuff from the shop and they were like do you want a pack of smokes with that right so like a little different to what we're doing though that's fair they're so different i feel like yours is just it's all over the place right where you. I mean, what you're doing is probably like, that's more of an Eastern, like, song. But like, West, where like this was set. Right. It's more like,

it's talking like this. No, that's still so wrong. Look, just say, where's the car in your accent? Where's the car? I'll do mine. Where's the car? Right.

This is where you should be. I see what you're saying. Sorry, dude. Just stop. Honestly. Okay. Just stop. Because it's an embarrassment at this point. a car i mean right this is where you should be i see what you're saying sorry dude just stop if honestly okay just stop because it's an embarrassing embarrassment at this point yeah i hope you cut this part of the podcast i'm embarrassed for you yeah or as they would say i'm embarrassed for you i love that mine is worse i'm embarrassed, color me embarrassed. Well, if I didn't need a peach iced tea on a cool August night such as this.

Time to play on the old London banjo. Yeah, so he had a wicked smile of unimaginable terror. Of course he wore a cloak. Underneath. Of course. Underneath, some described him wearing, this is is hideous a tight fitting white oil skin which i had to look up that was but that's what fishermen wear at sea well apparently that's an oil skin you would wear if you're fishing why would he wear a skin tight tight one that was white but they didn't say it was it was literally that but that's what it looks like

that's what he looked like so we don't know if that's his so he painted himself or if it's skin or whatever yeah another account described him wearing a helmet uh and having obviously if you jump that high yeah and having a tall gentlemanly physique a couple of witnesses even claimed that he spoke english but he looked at me like i was gonna have something more to say about that but that's pretty standard but before that you jumped to conclusions that this was just nice dude yes that's good for you spring to conclusions for you stabbed conclusions that this was just a man several people agreed that he could breathe white and blue flames and that he had sharp metal claws like the Wolverine. So definitely paranormal. Right, okay, we're getting there. Shortly after these sightings, on the 9th of January, 1838,

the Lord Mayor, Sir John Cowan, led a public meeting addressing the people's concerns. This is the Lord Mayor of London. This is like Sadiq Khan holding a meeting tomorrow about Spring Hill Jack. One member of the crowd brings up Spring Hill Jack saying that it's definitely real meeting tomorrow about Spring Hill Jack. One member of the crowd brings up Spring Hill Jack saying that it's definitely real. What about Spring Hill Jack? He's there to discuss the new sanitary regulations and the whole

crowd's just like, get to Spring Hill Jack. So we're here to discuss the strikes on the TFL What about Spring Hill Jack? Yeah, I mean, that's just hearsay. He's coming for us!

No, we're here to talk about economic policy What are you going to do to keep him out of town? He's not bloody real, is he? That's just what Spring Hill Jack would say! Oh Jesus! Get him boy! Oh Christ! Yeah, this guy in the crowd said that the servant girls

of Kensington, Hammersmith and Ealing tell dreadful stories of this ghost slash devil. The mayor was pretty sceptical, but people agreed. One person suggested that someone had been dared by their friends to scare people. It was a pretty practical idea. Yeah. And because some of the girls had been describing people in friends to scare people. It was a pretty practical idea.

Yeah. Because some of the girls had been describing people, you know, in the guise of a ghost, a bear or a devil. Right. Which are all quite broad things, I would say. But I guess this came in a spate of attacks and so they were all grouped together as the same thing. Were these attacks following a discount sale at a Halloween store or something? attacks following like a discount sale at a halloween store or something they described attacks from a gorilla man a vampire and a sexy nurse elsa from frozen dude yeah in by one account from these people he said that a man had appeared at one house knocked the door and when a answered, she was so horrified by what

she saw, she goddamn fainted and she hadn't recovered since. This was days later. What did she see? Did she say what she saw? Just this devilish man with a horrible physique, spitting blue flames. Okay, well, yeah, that would do it, right? Yeah. Well, news of this meeting got out and it was reported in the Times

and several other papers. The mayor was forced, this is quite funny, the mayor was forced to reveal that even though he was skeptical he revealed he had known about spring hill jack all along and he revealed to the public a giant pile of letters from all over london people complaining about the wicked pranks committed by the spring hill jack that's crazy he was kind of hoping to like like, sweep it under the rug, like, not really talk about it at that. Yeah. But he was like, okay, this is the most pressing shit. Letters full of women frightened into dangerous fits and some severely wounded by claws.

Others claimed that in Stockwell, Brixen, Vauxhall, and Lewisham, several people had died of fright or had fits. The mayor was torn. He said, it's impossible that a ghost performs the feats of a devil upon the earth. Sorry. It's impossible a ghost performs the feats of a devil upon the earth. But he also personally knew someone who had been caught up in one of these incidents. Basically, he was looking for the Scooby-Doo unmasking moment. He accepted it was happening, but he was pretty skeptical. This is like a paranormal event. This sounds quite though because sounds like uh peter parker says he's like best friends with spider

man and he's like yeah i can get you all these like pictures of spider man like i think the mayor is being like all right i actually i know someone who's a close friend it's very hill chat and he has to just set up all these pictures to make it look like he's been caught like in actions like so we have a photograph yeah of the guy there of course the mayor is gonna like downplay that he's real it's like i don't believe it i think it's just a guy yeah it's like why is spring hill jack uh wearing the memorial ribbon that only the mayor has like he must have just ganked it off me at some point and the keys to the town why is the mayor wearing air jordans why does he need air jordans yeah i was thinking about it popped into my you know when you're having like shower

thoughts like yeah that's a good name for a podcast yeah that is it definitely exists it's got to exist you think so probably let's change our name oh shit let's just change the podcast shower ghost paranormal showers that's good oh yeah i was thinking that like one day it just like popped into my head while i was cycling or something i was like that was such a funny premise for a superhero that he like makes his living by taking photos of himself yeah it's like oh i got some good pictures of like maybe that's what the mayor is doing is being like yeah oh here's a picture of me beating up spring hill jack it's doing that thing where you're in a doorway but your hand is

just off the sides it looks like you're strangling someone but it's just your own hand it's like oh i'm getting them good in this one and they're all like it's mayor! Oh, oh, oh. And the mayor's like, anyway, see you later. Leaps 20 feet. It's proper Scooby-Doo style, like a video where he runs in one door and Spring-Heel Jack comes out the other, he runs in the other. Mrs. Doubt firing his way through it, yeah. Whenever he's going up for re-election. Spring-Heel Jack, attacks have been done 600% since I've been mayor. So he's pretty sceptical, but he knows that something's going on so he instructs the police to hunt down

this individual there is even a handsome reward for who could do it things were starting to heat up the stories were still pretty vague was it always the same attacker is this just a prankster is it even paranormal at all right well two incidents around this time would cement the spring hill jack in people's minds for decades as paranormal or just he clawed someone again i'll let you do the deciding okay it was the night of 19th february 1838 it was the night of the infamous clawing the great lond Clawing of 1838. Which was the night of the homeless clawing. And Jane Als... F***, don't pronounce that.

One of those words that you read but never say out loud. Yeah. Okay. And Jane Alsop hears a knock at her door. A police officer is standing there. And he says to her quickly, Bring a light. We've caught Spring Hill Jack here in the lane. Jesus.

She brings him a candle, and as the flame illuminates her hallway, all the way to the front door, she looks up and notices this policeman's wearing a large cloak. No. As she hands him the candle, he throws off his cloak, revealing a most hideous and frightful appearance. He vomits blue and white flames. His eyes burn red with balls of fire.

He grabs her immediately and starts tearing her gown off with his metal claws as she scrambles away. He grabs her leg. She tries to hide in the house and get up the stairs. One of her sisters hears a commotion. Running down, coming to her aid, spring-heeled Jack flees from the scene. Damn. But she's okay. So she's okay.

She's aight. Okay. Only a few days after this chilling attack, there would be another victim. Lucy Scales, age 18. Her and her sis are walking home after visiting their brother down Green Dragon Alley. Which is badass. Yeah. If you're walking home at night green dragon alley avoid it yeah i would

definitely try and avoid that one i feel like i i just think this is so badass like all these stories are because i think this is near lime heist i think it said like we should go to these places we need to go to green dragon alley because everyone's always like oh let's do the tour of london where we can see where jack the ripper killed his victims. Yeah. F*** Jack the Ripper. Did he have balls of fire? Yeah. Could he vomit fire onto people? Did he even have claws? Did he have metal claws?

Absolutely not. I mean, he had knives. I don't give a damn. I want to go to Green Dragon. Green Jack, what did you say it was? You said there was like a dragon or some shit in London? Piccadilly Circus or something. Yeah, they're walking home and they see at the end of the path Down Green Dragon Alley

A man Standing in a large Black cloak Turn around Lucy's walking in front of her sister Towards the man And just as they're passing him He vomits blue flames into her face

Temporarily blinding her She drops the ground It's a violent fit Her brother hears the commotion Because he's just left them They were meeting in the street and he runs after them to see what's up.

He sees a tall, gentlemanly man. I mean, it's not gentlemanly. I know, why? What kind of a description of a physique is that? Gentlemanly? I mean, how good does he look?

He looks like a demon but his posture is incredible. I mean, holy shit. Is that an Armani suit? That's insane. That thing think so expensive he sees the gentlemanly man in a large cloak carrying a small lantern a bit like the police would use he said he walked away quickly and no one caught him i guess he was too far away with

his brothers running down the lane right but no one caught him well the police searched high and low questioning many particularly one thomas milbank who immediately after the reported attack on jane alsop had boasted in the local pub that he was springfield jack he was arrested and tried in court milbank had been wearing white overwalls and they had found a cloak and candle he dropped in the street jesus but he couldn't be convicted because jane insisted that her attacker could breathe fire but milbank could not breathe fire so fair play to jane here she's gone around saying that this person is breathing fire yeah to the point where it seems almost certain they've

caught the right person yes but she insists it's not him because you can't breathe fire so it does seem a bit preposterous. But if you've been attacked in that way, when someone comes to your door and you've seen them face to face and they've bloody manhandled you and ripped your clothes and chased you up a set of stairs, you probably do know what they look like. Right. So.

It's kind of like if I'm walking home from work, like late at night, down Green Dragon Lane. Granted, you work on Green Dragon Lane. Yeah, this is a weird coincidence. And I get stabbed by an alien. God forbid. Right? And then I'm on the floor.

I get rescued. I survive. And then the police call me in. They're like, look, we caught the attacker. He fessed up to the crime. There's some CCTV footage. And I can watch the footage, but the footage is a man stabbing me. And they've caught the man from the video.

But if I was 100% sure that it was an alien, how do you express that? How do you word that? Would you feel comfortable letting a man be punished for that crime if you were a hundred percent sure yeah that it was a three foot gnomish bulbous head big-eyed alien that's tough i mean like even if it was a guy but a small detail like well he was levitating yeah and you know it's but it would be hard to and then they're like hey we caught the guy it's like well can he levitate no but well i mean he could so that's a little bit more difficult because it's like it's like well is he levitating well can you levitate uh no it doesn't seem like it i'm trying right now i promise break his legs so like this dude that they've caught she's like oh

it's not him because he can't breathe blue fire i mean how do they know that maybe he just refused to breathe the fire it's a tricky one because he has already fessed up to the crime it's not like he even just caught a guy who happened to be there and looked like it right he's told everyone that he's him i also love the idea of him like meeting every other description like he looks like a demon he's got red glowing eyes like blood on his clawed fingers it's like what about the fire thing i don't think he could do it let him go boys he's just killing people on the way out he's like i did it i for sure did. They go to let him out of the cell and he's just murdered his cellmates. Am I free?

He's springing around the place. In Blood on the Wall, Springheel was here. So the stories of Lucy and Jane became famous and Springheel Jack became famous beyond belief. He was all over the newspapers and several theaters performed shows featuring him. And if you're wondering what he looked like this is awful apparently the theaters mostly just cast him as the devil but hispanic jeez come on guys how rude is that goddamn london i guess i feel like we've moved on 1800s you know god's not that long ago. Let this one slide.

Yeah. Okay. I mean, weirdly, that play is still running in the West End today. Hit show. Les Mis and the Legend of Spring Hill Jack. Of Hispanic Jack. And all during this time of fame and popularity, Spring Hill Jack was still being seen,

although somewhat less frequently. He was spreading out. There were sightings all over the country. He could be seen attacking people in the streets, fame and popularity, Spring-Heeled Jack was still being seen, although somewhat less frequently. He was spreading out. There were sightings all over the country. He could be seen attacking people in the streets, drivers and carriages on the roads. He was even reported to have infiltrated the British army. Soldiers at Aldershot Barracks said that the Sentry on Duty won August night was walking through the barracks in darkness on his usual patrol, when he suddenly turns to see a shadowy figure standing right ahead who goes there he shouts show yourself but the figure doesn't flinch until he runs at the soldier full pelt anime style hands behind his back and the soldier kunai in hand the soldier draws his

weapon but the figure slaps him several times in the face. No match for the mighty Rasengan the creature lashes upon it. Reeling, the soldier fires on the man, but he doesn't go down. He runs and jumps away with supernatural speed. This was taken so seriously that in Lord Ernest Hamilton's memoir, he wrote about his time at Aldershot Barracks and about the Spring-Heeled Jack appearing and how sentries across the barracks were issued with ammunition in order to shoot the night terror on sight. Damn.

People were divided. Some thought the Spring-Heeled Jack was a paranormal beast. Others thought he was a prankster. And we know law enforcement was taking Jack seriously. But did they catch anyone? Well, one man was a prime suspect. A man so devilish and awful, so prolific, so many experiences with the police and women that his name immediately came to mind when people heard of these attacks. Jack. It was Jack.

He was an Irish nobleman called the Marcus of Waterford. A nobleman? Really? Irish, though. Right. He was constantly brawling, drinking, cursing, betting, and making, quote, brutal jokes. Which I just love. I like to think that he was just like a roast artist of like the 1800s.

Just like calling out like dwarves or being like short af or whatever i don't know just roasting people left right and center i assume like brutal jokes would be more like knock knock who's there like open the door i'll kill you it's like just horrible but maybe that was funny at the time do you think like brutal jokes is just like ron house kicking someone in the face it's just like a brutal joke yeah floors him there's the punchline bitch puts on whatever the equivalent of sunglasses are in the victorian days two monocles walks out of the bar also throwback to another episode this nobleman is corny the ghost oh shit yeah irish nobleman in constantly

with people he was known far and wide as the mad marcus apparently he was known to amuse himself by pranking travelers freaking them out and whatnot i actually i actually discovered during this research that the mad marcus get this is where the term paint the town red comes from what why basically him and his mates the mad marcus the marcus of waterford him his mates were staggering back one night from a fox hunt totally pissed and when they had to pass a toll gate basically didn't want to pay the toll keeper who does so rip off kill him kiss his neck blat rip off. They tied up the gatekeeper and stole his paint and brushes that he had lying around. They painted him and his gate red and went on a brutal rampage, knocking on people's doors, kicking over flower pots. And at one point, they flipped over a caravan.

And when policemen tried to intervene, they were beaten up and painted red. Well, all these men were eventually arrested For their crimes and fined 100 pounds each And that's all? Maybe that's like a million dollars I did look this up Apparently it's hard to adjust for inflation But it could be anything from about 20 grand To like a quarter mil

God damn and these boys just paid it off Like it was nothing Well Marcus of Waterford is flush with cash He made his money the old the old-fashioned way i was run over by a carriage this makes so much sense jumping in front of carriages yeah that's all spring hill jack was trying to do was get a sweet payout he was just leaping in front of carriages trying to get hit oh my god sue that back backs up the claim that it is marcus himself it does a bit so people were pretty convinced this could be him but

unfortunately it didn't add up uh he eventually retired to a quiet life in ireland so he wasn't in london and he actually died and like spring hill jack sightings continued to go on so okay uh one man was actually caught and convicted for being a suspected spring hill jack and mr captain finch he was caught indeed dressed like jack with a awful mask and horns except he was uh 100 human and he was using the disguise to assault women in the street and And because sightings of Spring Hill Jack continued after his arrest, we can assume he was just harassing women. Okay. And I imagine this is probably quite a thing that people started doing it

because they thought, knew they would get away. They're like, this Spring Hill Jack guy is getting away with molesting women left, right and centre. I'll just do that and put on a mask. And people will say it's Jack. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it'll just add it to the right and centre. Yeah. I'll just do that and put on a mask. And people will say it's Jack. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I'll just add it to the list of attacks. Right. It's like this new person that pops up.

Yeah. One guy does it, first night gets busted, knocked the f*** out by the first woman he touches. And in some instances, for example, people's imaginations definitely just got the better of them. One Brighton man in 1838 reported that Spring-Heeled Jack had appeared to him as a small bear or other four foot tall animal that jumped into his garden and chased him around the garden growling at him for a long time eventually it ran up the wall and escaped that's that's a badger i mean that's that's like a forest creature i don't know

man like again we briefly mentioned on the podcast before but the experience that i did have in dublin it sounds quite similar to right to that story can you just stop how about you just stop i mean like okay like wait wait i mean like i feel like i've barely even begun to get into my story i feel like i've barely i feel like you've just been hogging the mic uh all episode actually yeah it's fine i just you just think like it's good to just derail the part you just think that's good that's a good thing it's just something that happened and it was paranormal yeah and i thought people would be interested in it but no you're right i derailed can i no no can i let's just let's just talk about your like childhood experiences let's just talk about your childhood how about that

let's just talk about your childhood how about that i was just shut up and let's move on dude you leap nine feet into the air shut up and i won't get too into it but weirdly this that sentry at the barracks who was slapped there does seem to be a number of slapping incidents this is a bit like what happened remember when happy slapping was big yes because there's another story here of a british army officer in um south herfordshire he was cycling along i believe and saw a man leaping over hedgerows in a single bond and eventually the man reached the road he was cycling on and slapped him so hard he fell to the ground and left red hprint on his face for hours. It's weird because like happy slapping is such a childish thing.

Yeah, Spring-Heeled Jack could be seen leaping over nine foot walls and backhanding people in the crotch. Yeah. What was that one called? When you smack people in the dick? Swifty. Was that what it called? Swifty? Well, that's what our principal called it.

I do remember that. We had a whole... But was there not a different name for it? I swear there was one. Because I remember that assembly. I remember that. What? Dick tap?

Dick flick. Dick flick. Maybe that's what it was. Yeah, dick flick. I remember we had a whole assembly in school with the principal just being like, this has to stop before none of you can have children.

He was like... do you remember that assembly yeah it was really he was like i'm being so serious he's like can all the girls in the school leave the hall i remember like it was yesterday because it was yesterday we went back back we went back we were like the spring heel jacks of our school so one interesting thing i came across in all my research about spring heel jack was that like many paranormal tales it's not isolated to one place like london it's not even isolated to one country yeah that's right if we travel to prague in the czech republic there is history tales of that i'm probably butchering this pronunciation but the parak the spring man of prague spring man of prague was said to leap out

from shadowy alleys and startle passers-by oral tradition suggests that some of parak's leaps were of extraordinary magnitude wow he would apparently jump over train carriages and walls. So this sounds a lot like the legend of Spring-Heeled Jack. It does, yeah. Very similar. And I think it's kind of in the same sort of time period of that kind of hundred years sort of time period. Interestingly, there's another tale in the Czech Republic of a creature called Razorblade Man.

Okay, a bit more on the nose who was said to slash victims with razor blades which while bizarre does sort of echo spring hill jack's metallic claws that he had right that he would mess up these people within the streets they just didn't call him razor blade man however the difference being from the parak and yes sorry i just you visibly have an issue with this whole story it's not the story but you just mentioned you know they didn't call him razor blade man yeah i just find that so strange that they got this guy who has like razor sharp claws can spit fire from his mouth and they named him after the fact he can jump slightly higher than any other human that's true like of all of his like that's the most mundane of all his abilities yeah they call it could have called him like dragon boy yes spitting

fire yeah yeah i guess like back then it's you know, white people can't jump. Victorian people of London could not jump. Couldn't jump. That was the weirdest thing. It's like fire, we get. Claws, we get. We all breathe it. It's fine. We all have claws.

But jumping more than two foot, whoa. He's a wizard. However, one of the differences between the Perak, spring man of Prague, and Spring Hill Jack of London, is that in the Czech Republic, Perak was a goddamn folklore hero. He starred in movies, including one in 1946, called Perak and the SS, where he battled the Nazis himself. What? That's right.

But I thought he was, I thought he like jumped out and spooked people. He was. Killed people. But I guess when the Nazis come along, enemy of my enemy is my friend or some shit. It wasn't that the moral of the movie or something. The moral of the second world war. I do love the idea of like a team up movie where,

um, it is something like that where the Nazis have spread globally. So it's up to like the villainous monsters of the world to take them on it's like nosferatu dracula like bigfoot like everyone's gotta be they're like the avengers of the paranormal world that's pretty bad and they gotta team up together to take down hitler that would be awesome let's not air this and let's make it let's shoot it i'll be hitler let's do it right you get a bunch of peeps rounds i wanted to be hitler damn it um everyone we try and cast wants to be yeah

it's like a nine foot hairy dude we're like we were hoping you'd play the role of bigfoot i was gonna go for hitler we have a waiting list for hitler can i be uh hitler understudy then there's a hispanic man who could jump nine feet tall i'm going for hitler too to be honest are you here for the play the role of uh spring hill jack nine oh god we got another one bizarre casting ever i'm starting to think we shouldn't have done this casting call in berlin yeah it's just bullshit okay so we've covered some of the history right you know from whenever we started this podcast this was quite an early on request for the spring-heeled jack um i was researching it um a couple different times and it kind of

never i never hit the right tone or found the kind of right info that i was willing to do an episode on this okay i was kind of waiting for the time to be right whenever i looked at our gmail inbox the other night i stumbled across an email and the time is right because i came across this revelation i had an email from a dan f who emailed us at this paranormal life podcast at gmail.com nice dude he's something to get off his chest are these nudes you slowly close your laptop no obviously that would be weird. He had a nine foot long... Anyway, he wrote,

One night in the 1870s, during reports of Spring Hill Jack sightings in the black country, a man called Joseph Darby was arrested by police after reported sightings of Spring Hill Jack led them to this location. This man, Joseph Darby, is my ancestor. What? He was a competitive jumper and was able to jump six foot in the air standing still with his ankles tied together. From a standing position, he was able to jump over 12 foot horizontally.

He was so nimble, it was said that he was able to jump, land on a man's face while he was lying down, and spring off his face without even harming the man. Joseph Darby was arrested by police whilst he was practicing his jumping over a canal approximately 12 foot wide. That'll do it. I mean, he fit the profile. And he was wearing a mining helmet. Spring-Heeled Jack sightings continued until 1904. Joseph Darby died 33 years later in 1937 at the age of 76. Perhaps he wasn't the first Spring-Heeled Jack, but maybe he was the last. So one of our listeners, ancestors, was this competition jumper.

And I researched this and looked up this Joseph Darby character. And it is like Wikipedia pages, like totally documented. this joseph darby character and it is like wikipedia page is like totally documented he entered like you know championships and global competitions in like you know standing jumps high jump records right things like that and he could legit jump 12 to 13 feet just horizontally and he would do he would do let's say like he had another record i think which was for double clawing most people clawed women's blouses ripped open with razor blades but he would he would he had like triple jump records as well where he you know he's allowed three successive jumps right he could go something like 50 or 60 foot it was insane that's crazy yeah

so so if anyone fits the profile yeah you're looking at him so i guess i don't know what this tells us i did ask this gentleman who wrote into us i said you know do you feel demonic blood coursing through your veins and you're saying look i'm not much of a jumper i don't i don't think it's like passed on i think that's how it works right really but um i don't know what this means i mean this guy was pretty prolific i think he was busy with his jumping career i don't think this is spring hill jack necessarily but it does tell us that that kind of jumping was possible it is possible definitely possible by a human right right and especially if you know back in these olden days there's not a lot to do they

don't have game boys this is like a recurring theme of of all our old stories yeah is that there's not a lot going on so what do you do you just practice jumping you just get really good at jumping not really a hobby but i'm kind of into standing at the moment just trying different stands so i don't know whether this is spring hill jack uh but it did lead me to an interesting train of thought i was sort of thinking what would the motive be of a sports person to commit those acts um and i started researching and turns out sports people do some bad shit oh you know because you have these people and they're blessed with super normal athletic abilities right what if, instead of using those powers to win the Olympics, win championships, win prize money,

they use it for evil? Okay, interesting. As an example, fast Eddie Johnson used his... Used his ironic javelin skills to spear men. Used his 10-year NFL career in the Atlanta Hawks to commit more than 100 crimes,

including theft, battery, and sexual assault. But how did he use those abilities to commit crimes? I mean... Or was he just committing crimes? I guess he... Like, if I went out and committed a crime tonight, I'd get caught, like, right away. But not to me.

I'm not that athletic. Fast Eddie Johnson, he committed 99 before he got caught in the 100th what a time to be caught as well you're like the big one hundo

busted I mean like you've gone down in the NFL like Hall of Famers like Atlanta Hawks you know won every competition

there is but the one thing you haven't done it's been a centenarian of crime centenarian of crime that's so cool that now i want to do it hell yeah dude we'll just do lots of little like petty we'll steal like a hundred chocolate bars from my shop let's do that i'm really hungry tonight preferably a hundred i'm hungry too powerboat racer Ben Kramer ordered the assassination of his racing rival Don Arum. God damn. Fun side note.

He tried to escape prison in 1989 by having someone fly a helicopter to the prison yard. And jump out or die. But because he was over 200 pounds, whenever he jumped up to grab the leg of the helicopter it leaned to one side snagged the yard fence crashing and almost killed the pilot the pilot had only learned to fly a helicopter specifically for that mission ben escaped with only a broken ankle oh the poor pilot i feel so bad oh the poor pilot i feel so bad like to look at the other side of that coin there's like it's also crazy if you look at the

list of sports persons who served in the military which is quite a cool thing right if you look back to like ww2 and the vietnam war and stuff they were really into like recruiting yeah like super soldiers nfl absolutely essentially uh like nfl players like baseball players whatever it was presumably in these olden days if you were eligible for a draft yeah which most athletes would be you would imagine i mean they're at like the peak of physical fitness makes sense so yeah you want those guys out on the front line hell yeah uh speedy quick quick boy man, whatever his name is. Vassily Johnson.

But he's just stealing all the guns. And he almost stole 100 too. So I think we're sort of drawing a conclusion of evidence here, probably back in the seventh minute of this podcast, to be honest. Right. Where do you fall on this kind of idea of the Spring Hill Jack, this assailant of the Spring Hill Jack, this assailant of the innocents of London?

Yeah. You've done a good job, Kit. You've painted a history. I know. Right, just take the compliment. Yeah, no, I will. I was just, yeah. I'll savor it.

Can I get it in writing? You did a good, you did a banging job, Kit Greer, of illustrating this history of debauchery. But. Excuse, where's the next bit about our all being real? You know, any testimonies we get from the 1800s, you got to take with a grain of salt. Why? Do I think that there was a man long ago jumping out and molesting women yes most likely that happens in today's world do i think he breathed fire and had the eyes of a demon

i don't believe i do why would they lie though that's a good point i mean the the story with the woman who wouldn't convict a murderer because he couldn't blow blue flames that's a tough one because i don't i also don't know what that could be yeah you know what what did she think she saw although i do think it's interesting that one witness saw a potential spring hill jack carrying a lantern right another man was caught with a candle yeah so what you're thinking is like he pops out and like blows the candle maybe he spits like like lighter fluid or something yeah honestly i mean that's not beyond the realms of possibility that's more likely than a supernatural demon man it is true i mean you you've investigated this

more than i have where where's your opinion falling oh it's horse shit oh my god to be fair i think a good percentage of these spring hill jack sightings are like copycat nonsense yeah it seems to be that it was a lot of people doing the same sort of behaviors i don't think it was one person it's sort of like um like most recently in popular culture like all over the news there's been clown sightings yeah murderous clown sightings and i guess one person did it as a joke to prank their friends that went viral and then all of a sudden everyone was doing it all across the world and i guess that's maybe not the most fitting example but it is an example of how one idea and one you know villainous figure can spread like wildfire throughout multiple people now whether there was any sort of paranormal beginnings i think that might be like you're still left unresolved because there's lots of as we see with perak the spring man of of prague of course

and we look at other you know paranormal beings like i don't know even the jersey devil and like you know there's there's many stories of like beasts that run along rooftops and things like that so i mean that's that's still within the realms of possibility but i think for the specific case of spring healed jack assaulted all these people i just think it's people i think it's people too that's going to be a double no that's a double this week this episode but that was a fantastic story just an incredible input from uh dan f thank you so much for that email that just illuminated this story beyond belief if you have your own inputs paranormal submissions tales or speculations

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