Spring - Heeled Jack - The Terror of Barnes Common

Some of you with an interest in folklore and crypto-zoology might be aware of the Victorian bug-a-boo Spring-heeled Jack, a mysterious fleet-footed character who terrorised London in the 1830s and visited other towns and cities in the late 19th and early 20th century. Since the 1960s, when a writer in Flying Saucer Review claimed Jack was really an extraterrestrial, versions of the legend have turned up in the UFO/supernatural press.

Next year sees the publication of a new book on the SHJ legend, edited by Mike Dash and containing contributions from yours truly [DC] (2 chapters) and other scholars of folklore and Victorian literature.

Here's the book blurb from Mike Dash's website http://www.mikedash.com/

Publishing in 2010, Spring–heeled Jack: Sources and Interpretation will be the first detailed, fully–referenced study of perhaps the strangest and most enduring of contemporary legends. Spring–heeled Jack — a leaping, fire–breathing bogeyman who terrorised Victorian Britain — emerged from a welter of wild rumour in January 1838 and has never quite gone away.

This new study, edited by Mike Dash with contributions from an international line-up of scholars, is firmly based on a comprehensive survey of in excess of 200,000 words of primary source material. It includes brand–new research examining how the Spring–heeled Jack legend originated in the years 1804–1837 and how and why the nineteenth century media reported the story. The book discusses Jack’s impact on the popular culture of the Victorian era, and analyses the spread of his legend around the world, from pre-revolutionary Russia to modern Somalia via Newfoundland, New Zealand and Argentina.

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The Legend of Spring-Heeled Jack

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