Spring-heeled Jack, the legendary bogeyman familiar to students of British folklore, has been invoked by news of an extraordinary experience with a road ghost in Surrey.
Scott Martin and his family told the Surrey Comet they were confronted by a ‘dark figure with no features’ that vaulted over a dual carriageway and over a 15ft bank whilst on a taxi ride home late on Tuesday, 14 February.
The experience left Scott, his wife and four-year-old son Sonny shocked whilst the taxi-driver ‘admitted he didn’t want to drive back alone’ along the Ewell bypass near Epsom afterwards.
spring-heeled jack
Scary stuff! Mr Martin, 40, who lives in Banstead, told the paper how initially they paid no attention when the figure appeared by the road. But ‘…the next thing he jumped over the centre fencing…and ran across two lanes. On the side of our road is a bank easily 15ft in height and this figure crossed the road, climbed this bank and was gone from sight all in about two seconds.’
Mr Martin described the figure as ‘dark…with no real features, but fast in movement with an ease of hurdling obstacles I’ve never seen. My last image was of him going through the bushes at the top of the bank. I’m not usually one to be freaked…but the cab driver was petrified.’
The Martin’s experience is of course a classic extraordinary experience with a ‘road ghost’ of the phantom jaywalker type. Other examples are the ‘phantom hitch-hiker’ at Blue Bell Hill in Kent and the infamous Stocksbridge by-pass ghost in South Yorkshire, described in see my paper here. However this part of Surrey is not, as far as I’m aware, associated with a haunting tradition of this type, nor have the police received other reports of ‘unusual incidents or sightings in the area at night’. It will be interesting to see if publication of this report produces a rash of similar phantom jaywalker accounts.
As for Spring-heeled Jack, the newspaper account says ‘the family has since likened the figure to the legendary figure reported to be responsible for a string of attacks in the 1800s and known for his ability to leap great heights.’ After a brief summary of the SHJ legend it adds that the last ‘sighting’ was in Birmingham in 1986!
But as recent research into the Victorian newspaper archives has made clear, there was no one identifiable person called ‘Spring-heeled Jack’. Rather he was a frightening figure, an archetype: ‘part ghost, part bogeyman, part mystery assailant’, whose name and disguise was adopted by a range of human imitators in the century that followed his reign of terror in Victorian London.
As this Surrey story shows, the leaping legend continues to live on in the collective memory 175 years after his name was first uttered….
I am course leader and senior lecturer in journalism at Sheffield Hallam University where I teach media law and investigation skills. Prior to teaching journalism skills I worked as a news reporter for The Sheffield Star and Yorkshire Post and spent four years working as a Press Officer in local government. My Ph.D is in Folklore and was completed at the National Centre for English Cultural Tradition, University of Sheffield, in 1999. My interest in folklore and the supernatural goes back to my childhood and I've been researching and writing about strange phenomena for as long as I can remember. Since 2008 I have been working with The National Archives (TNA) as their consultant for the ongoing release of the UFO files created by Britain's Ministry of Defence. My book, The UFO Files, was published by TNA in September 2009.
A little bit of Halloween on Saint Valentine’s
It did make me wonder if this wasn’t someone who was dashing home to buy flowers and chocolates for someone – if so he should be a contender for the Olympic team!
I have recently written and drawn a Graphic Novel that is available on Kindle, all about Spring Heeled Jack and it’s worth a read.
Hi Craig, thanks for your email – can you supply the title and a link to the Kindle book?
thanks from Dave
Spring Heeled Jack at
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Spring-Heeled-Graphic-Horror-ebook/dp/B00727E208/ref=sr_1_5?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1327674973&sr=1-5
Free Kindle reader for colour
http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/feature.html/ref=kcp_pc_mkt_lnd?docId=1000423913
I would be happy to send you copies of my three Sheffield based Surreal Murder Mystery Graphic Novels on CDRom, the format they are sale in at Space Centre, Galaxy 4 and Rare and Racey.
That’s Spring Heeled Jack, Meadowhell and Football Crazy.
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Thanks Tony – please keep sending over any new information on SHJ and related phenomena.
If the phantom hitch-hiker/jaywalker tradition has any supernatural basis to it, then I suggest it is a result of faery tricks on humans for destroying their habitat. Take Bluebell Hill. It may well formerly have been a lovely area deserving of this name, but in reality today it is a horrible main road. If you were faery, you’d probably be upset at this man-made change.
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I had a quick look on Google Streetview of the road mentioned in the newspaper report. While there are bushes, hedges and trees, there doesn’t appear to be any bank on the side of the road. I guess that leaves the story as someone crossing a road late at night quite quickly and then jumping over or through a hedge or bush.
Good work JAC! Things are not always what they seem (or at least how they are reported!)
I’m sorry to rain on your parade here but there is indeed a bank on the A24 by pass if you follow the bypass past castle ave on your right you have swell castle school shown on the left with a body of water! A touch further up is an unnamed slip road and opposite on google maps is a square green area if you street view the road between the slip road on the left and green on the right you will find your steep bank I think the article mentions.