Spring-heeled Jack at the Aldershot Sentry Posts

Aldershot Camp, Hampshire. In 1877 it was the British Army's main home garrison, and every night rank-and-file soldiers stood guard at its sentry posts. The name Spring-heeled Jack was already decades old. That spring, the sentries of Aldershot met it in the dark.

About midnight. A sentry post at North Camp. A figure approached and refused to answer the challenge. Sheldrake's Aldershot Military Gazette, reporting on 17 March, described it "dodging about the sentry box in a fantastic fashion for some little time." The sentry loaded his rifle and fired, "but without any effect." The figure made off "with astonishing swiftness."

It came back. On 28 April The Times ran the story as "The Aldershott Ghost." It reported that "the would-be ghost went direct the sentry-box, slapped the soldier several times in the face, and before he could recover from his confusion, made off across the common with astonishing bounds." Near the Female Hospital, it outran a number of pursuers.

Those who faced it described a tall figure in a tight-fitting oilskin suit. Its hands were "cold as that of a corpse." The Illustrated Police News wrote of "two spectral looking figures," "glowing with phosphorus," "making tremendous springs of ten or twelve steps at a time." In September the same paper said its method was "to approach unobserved some post, then climb the sentry box." Sheldrake's even reported that Jack had told someone "his object is to frighten the British army."

The appearances seem to have stopped at the end of April. A short return followed over the summer, usually dated August. Yet the famous August version, with its slaps and its useless shot, matches the Times report of 28 April almost word for word.

Even the gunfire is disputed. Sources disagree on whether the shot was a blank, a miss or a warning. One account says live ammunition was issued first, then swapped for blanks to avoid killing anyone. Lord Ernest Hamilton said the reverse. No sentry is named in any 1877 source.

No military inquiry has ever been found. But The Times recorded one curious moment. At 10 p.m. a "tall gentleman, carrying a carpet bag" entered the camp. The provosts stopped him. He said he was an officer, and they let him go.

In 1907 Col. Alfred Welby wrote in Notes and Queries: "Jumping pranks were played many nights on the sentry over the magazine by the canal near the South Camp." He blamed "a lively officer of the Rifles," who "certainly was not convicted." In 1922 Lord Ernest Hamilton named a Lieutenant Alfrey of the 60th Rifles. There is no record of Alfrey ever being court-martialled. The folklorist Jacqueline Simpson saw a rumour panic that no single man could explain.

The story did not end with the Victorians. In Flying Saucer Review, J. Vyner gave Jack a metallic-seeming helmet, a lamp strapped to his chest, flight, paralysing rays and blue flames. None of it appears in any 19th-century report. Mike Dash called it "possibly the most influential contributions ever made to the legend." Jacques Vallée carried the new version into Passport to Magonia, and Aldershot became a UFO entity case.

Patrick Gross filed it as URECAT-000077. His verdict was plain. No UFO. No landing. No alien. What remains is a garrison at night, and soldiers who could not catch what they saw.