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Post by dem bones on Dec 15, 2007 20:24:57 GMT
Peter Haining - The Legend And Bizarre Crimes Of Spring Heeled Jack (Muller, 1977) Blurb "Out of the darkness sprang a huge, cloaked figure. In an instant the man had thrown aside his cloak, revealing a hideous and frightful appearance. Blue and white flames shot from his mouth, and his eyes appeared like balls of fire. The young girl who witnessed all this was so terrified that she fainted right away."
This is just one of dozens of contemporary reports of the bizarre criminal who for over sixty years held the British population in a grip of fear. A man known only as "SPRING HEELED JACK".
During the period of his reign of terror, this frightening, agile figure who attacked unwary travellers and pounced on terrified girls and women - and may have been responsible for several murders - attracted as many headlines and alarmed the authorities as much as his later mysterious compatriot in crime, Jack the Ripper.
From the late 1830's he confounded the police, outwitted all attempts by the Army to catch him, and even boldly confronted law officers -slapping them across the face with his `ice cold hands' before disappearing into the darkness with his eerie laugh ringing behind him....
Today, though, while Jack the Ripper is the subject of book after book, "SPRING HEELED JACK" has become just a name associated with anyone who jumps well. His real story is unknown. This is the first book to examine the legend in detail and throw new light on who the man behind the mask might have been.
Peter Haining's fascinating study not only examines the reports of his activities - and suggests that more than one person adopted the disguise, including a famous nobleman -but discusses his fame as a star bf Victorian melodrama, and considers some of the strange theories that have been advanced about him -including one that he was really a spaceman!
The book is fully illustrated with remarkable engravings and photographs and includes a special section from one of the famous "Penny Dreadful" serials which featured the legend of the extraordinary "SPRING HEELED JACK".
Ghost, Vampire, Or Phantom Raspberry Blower ? "It was also asserted that no weapon could hurt him and that, like a vampire, he could only be killed by a round silver bullet. And when he sped off into the night with the cry 'The day is yours - leave the night to me !' his feet made a dull thudding sound that seemed to echo through the very earth" - Peter Haining In Harry Price; Ghost Hunter, Paul Tabori pays tribute to his subject's tireless efforts to chronicle the minutiae of the multifaceted alleged haunting of Borley Rectory. For all the scorn heaped on Price the showman, Tabori contends "he ... combined all the pieces of the hopelessly scattered jigsaw puzzle into a harmonious whole. Practically everything fitted and it was certainly a most impressive performance ... to create a consecutive narrative which sounded most convincing". The same might be applied with equal justification to Peter Haining for his achievement here. No matter that his findings are about as far fetched as a bucket of shit from China, its to Haining's credit that he somehow fuses fact, 'fact', urban myth, wild speculation and monstrous fiction into one exciting, patchy but coherent case history of the bouncing bodice-ripper. If you want real research, hunt down Mike Dash's magnificent Spring-heeled Jack: To Victorian Bugaboo From Suburban Ghost in Fortean Studies # 3 (John Brown, 1996), which absolutely demolishes Haining's theories. But if you're not much arsed about facts and fancy a wildly entertaining read, you can do a lot worse than The Legend And Bizarre Crimes Of Spring Heeled Jack.
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Post by dem bones on Apr 19, 2008 9:03:05 GMT
Caught the Mystery episode of Nightwatch early this morning (12.35 - 2. 35 am, ITV) which explored top moments in Victorian vileness including the golden age of Body-Snatchers, 'The London Monster' and Spring-Heeled Jack. The latter was particularly of interest as the interviewees included Mike Dash, Helen Smith (an authority on 'Penny Dreadful's) and, on the strength of his The Legend & Bizarre Crimes Of Spring Heeled Jack, the late, great Peter Haining! The Bride assures me that she's seen much of this footage before in short, stand-alone documentaries, so perhaps someone could clear that up for us? Incidentally, the only Peter Haining clips I've been able to find on YouTube pay tribute to his prowess as a "the finest custard pie marksman of his generation"! "Pie Caper tribute to Peter Haining (instigating pie capers From Beyond The Grave since 2007)" |
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Post by doug on Nov 3, 2011 8:39:40 GMT
Hi, it's a wee bit off topic, but this blew me away as a kid in Ohio.  |
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Post by dem bones on Aug 13, 2014 9:32:43 GMT
Steve Moore (ed.) - Fortean Studies Vol 3 (John Brown, 1996)  The ghost-like apparitions of Spring-heeled Jack at Aldershot, from an 1877 edition of the Illustrated Police News
Andy Roberts & David Clarke — Heads & Tales. The Screaming Skull Legends of Britain
Michael Goss - The Devil and Barn Hall. the folklore of changed sites.
Mike Crowley - The God Who Drank Urine. Soma & mushroom use in Indo-Tibetan texts.
Dr Karl P.N. Shuker - Super-Emus & Spinifex Men. How tall are the tales of giant birds?
Gary S. Mangiacopra, Dr Dwight G. Smith & Dr David F. Avery - Homo Nevadiensis of Carson City. Giant footprints exposed.
Ulrich Magin (with Lars Thomas) - St George Without a Dragon. A critique of Bernard Heuvelman's seal-serpent theories.
Jonathan Downes - The Singing Mouse of Devonport. Miniscule musicians take to the airwaves.
Joseph Trainor - Monkey Business. The New England UFO Flap of 1908
Neil Nixon - Flying Triangles & Media Triangles. The UFO media explosion chronicled.
Michel Meurger - Surgeons from Outside. The SF origins of the abduction mythos.
Michel Raynal, Mike Dash & Steve Moore — Follow-ups: Giant Octopus controversy — Devil's Hoofmarks — Parallel Arrays
Steve Moore - Index to Fortean Times 1995Blurb: Published under the aegis of Fortean Times, the journal of strange phenomena, this is the third in an acclaimed series of volumes collecting original source materials and scholarly research articles exploring the vast range of anomalies called 'Fortean' in honour of Charles Fort (1874-1932), the American iconoclast who pioneered their collection and study.A bumper 384 pages, 118 of them devoted to Mike Dash's remarkable Spring-heeled Jack opus. The main essay relates the history of the fire-breathing, dress-destroying fiend with the proto-Freddie Kruger claws, as pieced together via a calendar of contemporary sources and dubious 'non-fiction' studies, including Peter Haining's aforementioned The Legend & Bizarre Crimes of Spring-heeled Jack which Mr. Dash tears to shreds as a particularly risible example of 'fakelore.' The author also reproduces 85 newspaper and magazines reports dating from January 1838 to the summer of 1986, provides a summary of sightings and rounds off his exemplary piece with an annotated biography. Put simply, it's the finest and most exhaustive study I've read on the case to date.
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Post by dem bones on Dec 13, 2020 16:45:59 GMT
Jacob Middleton - Spirits of an Industrial Age: Ghost Impersonation, Spring-heeled Jack, and Victorian Society: Revised Edition (Jacob Middleton 2018. originally 2014) Preface
A Shot in the Dark
A Brief Interlude on the Subject of ghosts
The Hammersmith Ghost Returns
The Restless Night
A Suburban Ghost
Monsters in Human Form
The Further Adventures of Spring-heeled lack
Urban Ghost Stories
The Life and Death of Ghosts
The Lost World
Timeline
Notes
IndexBlurb: The cities of Victorian Britain were haunted by ghosts. These were not the spirits of the dead, but flesh-and-blood entities, which wandered the streets and harassed those who they found outside alone in the hours of darkness. These apparitions were said to take on strange forms, being seen in the guise of bears, or bulls, or as horned men. Popular rumour held that they possessed strange abilities, and could leap remarkable distances or breathe fire. Stories of these strange apparitions circulated through the newspapers, and left many citizens afraid to leave their homes on dark winter nights, for fear of what they might encounter.
Jacob Middleton is a historian and writer who specializes in the Victorian period, the history of education, and nineteenth-century popular culture. He holds an MA and Phd in History from Birkbeck, University of London, and has written extensively for the Fortean Times, Times Education Supplement, and History Today, in addition to his academic journal articles. He lives in Sydney, Australia.A history of the many 'ghost' panics to plague Britain (primarily England, on the evidence of this study) from circa 1712 through to 1901. Prominent among these public nuisances, hoax blokes, pranksters, Mohawks (proto-Hooray Henries) & Co, Spring-heeled Jack and his several tribute acts, plus the perhaps less celebrated Hammersmith Ghost, Westminster Pretend Ghost (a servant wearing a white sheet), the Croydon Monster, New Forest phenomenon 'the ghost with an umbrella,' the Winford Nude Ghost (one of several glorified flashers/ exhibitionists/ sex pests), the Peckham serial window-smasher, and the prowler in the grounds of Surrey County Asylum.
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Post by ripper on Dec 15, 2020 10:31:16 GMT
Spring-Heeled Jack was a fixture in my local library for years back in the 70s. I must have borrowed the book 5 or 6 times over the years. It's very entertaining.
On fake ghosts, there was a case during the aftermath of the murder of Hollywood director William Desmond Taylor in the early 1920s. Apparently, some suspected Taylor's servant of murdering Taylor, so some newspaper men arranged for the servant to go to the grave of Taylor in their presence. At the grave, someone dressed in traditional ghost garb jumped out from some trees and wailed to the servant to confess, while the newspaper men waited to record it. Unfortunately, the servant just laughed, cursed them all and walked off.
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Post by Swampirella on Dec 15, 2020 11:43:56 GMT
Spring-Heeled Jack was a fixture in my local library for years back in the 70s. I must have borrowed the book 5 or 6 times over the years. It's very entertaining. On fake ghosts, there was a case during the aftermath of the murder of Hollywood director William Desmond Taylor in the early 1920s. Apparently, some suspected Taylor's servant of murdering Taylor, so some newspaper men arranged for the servant to go to the grave of Taylor in their presence. At the grave, someone dressed in traditional ghost garb jumped out from some trees and wailed to the servant to confess, while the newspaper men waited to record it. Unfortunately, the servant just laughed, cursed them all and walked off. I'd have loved to have seen that; good for "the servant". |
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Post by Michael Connolly on Dec 15, 2020 14:12:34 GMT
I also read The Legend And Bizarre Crimes Of Spring Heeled Jack. As Peter Haining wrote it, it must be true.  |
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Post by dem bones on Dec 17, 2020 9:20:48 GMT
Spring-Heeled Jack was a fixture in my local library for years back in the 70s. I must have borrowed the book 5 or 6 times over the years. It's very entertaining. On fake ghosts, there was a case during the aftermath of the murder of Hollywood director William Desmond Taylor in the early 1920s. Apparently, some suspected Taylor's servant of murdering Taylor, so some newspaper men arranged for the servant to go to the grave of Taylor in their presence. At the grave, someone dressed in traditional ghost garb jumped out from some trees and wailed to the servant to confess, while the newspaper men waited to record it. Unfortunately, the servant just laughed, cursed them all and walked off. - Via Jacob Middleton's Spirits of an Industrial Age, a marrow-freezing encounter with a Spring-Heeled Jacqueline, courtesy of "the ever-unreliable" Illustrated Police News, 17 November 1877 |
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Post by dem bones on Mar 21, 2021 18:31:55 GMT
Charlton Lea - Spring-heeled Jack: Man or Fiend?, (Aldine, March 1904. This edition, Joseph E. Lovace, Penny Dreadful Press #2, 2017) Blurb: Whether man or demon, he seemed to be gifted with the power of flying, for with bound on bound he sped onwards at the side of the galloping horsemen. "Ha, Ha!" screamed the creature, "the hour of retribution has come. Villains, you shall not escape me."Facsimile of the first of twelve (?) 24 page instalments of this thrilling romance! Meet Lieutenant Bertram "the Swift-footed" Wraydon, Lionheart, Old Etonian, deuced fine chap and .... traitor? Tell me it can't be so! And yet, the documents recovered from his despatch box by Captain Manfred tell a sorry tale. England's most eligible bachelor has been selling state secrets to those infernal French scoundrels! "A lie! A base conspiracy! Those documents are forgeries!" protests Wraydon as he's hauled away to face justice. We'd like to believe him, but who could possibly benefit from such treacherous conduct? Surely not his half-brother, Hubert Sedgefield, shifty lawyer, and next in line to the family fortune? It is the eve of the execution. Bertram, pining for his fiancee, Helen Meadows, receives a visitor to the condemned cell. Ernest Philbrick, youthful barrister, has every faith in the lieutenant's innocence. Philbrick advises his client to make his escape by taking a leap out the window onto the branch of a convenient positioned giant elm. It's a crazy stunt to pull but it might just work! And besides, what other option has the Lieutenant but to clear his name, bring those who've framed him to justice? Tiny print. We're only on p.4!
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Post by dem bones on Mar 24, 2021 13:15:25 GMT
With Bertram disgraced, presumed dead, the new Squire, Hubert Sedgefield, wastes no time in alienating the tenants with his pathological moneygrubbing and tyrannical ways. One of their number, an old farmer, risks pelting to death by vowing before Sedgefield that he'll live to see the master restored, and "I'll walk a hundred miles if need be on my bare feet to see you swing on a roadside gibbet." The Squire soon has far worse to worry about - the manor is haunted by a demon! The fiend, a man-beast-bird hybrid in tight-fitting, bat-winged tunic, most notable for it's phenomenal leaps and seeming ability to shoot fireballs from it's bony fingers, scares Sedgefield to abandon his home and spend the night at the Rosebush Inn, Blue Bell Copse, with hated co-conspirator Colonel Manfred who is by now in regular receipt of a tidy sum for keeping his silence.
On learning that a demon is at large, a comedy vigilante group, fronted by parish constable Sam Bullifant and Joe Braid, the beadle, set into the woods to settle its hash, only to scatter on sight of the thing perched in the trees. "Ha, ha, ha!' cries the creature. "Wait for me, ye dogs! Wait, and learn that to meet with Spring-heeled Jack means death!"
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