Podcast Summary

In January 1838, the Lord Mayor of London read an anonymous letter aloud claiming that someone in disguise was terrorizing the villages around the city, and that seven ladies had already been frightened out of their senses. The newspapers printed the story, letters flooded in from across the suburbs, and Victorian England’s strangest legend was born: Spring-heeled Jack, the leaping phantom said to clear nine foot walls and breathe blue flame. Within weeks the story entered the official record, with sworn courtroom testimony from Jane Alsop, a suspect who walked free because he could not breathe fire, and a second reported attack in Limehouse days later. Suspicion fell on a prank-loving nobleman called the Mad Marquis, but nothing was ever proven.

Instead of fading, Jack kept appearing for 67 years: a costumed copycat convicted in Devon in 1847, sentries at the Aldershot garrison shooting at a bounding figure in 1877, a church rooftop in Liverpool in 1888, and a final flap of sightings in 1904. No one was ever caught for the original attacks, and no one ever explained the flames. This episode kicks off our October run of history that is actually a little scary, and it asks the question Victorians never answered. Who was Jack?

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Until next time, remember: truth is stranger than fiction, and history is weirder than you think.

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