Paranormal record / 1904
Everton, Liverpool. September 1904. Something was pelting a house in William Henry Street. Nobody could see who. The Liverpool Echo said the missiles came "in a mysterious manner and without any visible agency." Then the rumour spread from mouth to mouth. A "sort of 'spring-heel Jack'" was said to be pursuing his antics in the neighbourhood. Crowds gathered every night, hoping to see him. On Friday 23 September, several hundred people swarmed about the house. The tenants left. A boy was arrested for breaking a window. Within days a London paper had a ghost on "huge springs" that outran the police. Later retellings turned him into a cloaked figure bounding from the cobbles to the rooftops.
Spring-heeled Jack was an old bogey by 1904. The leaping figure had frightened London in 1837 and 1838. Provincial outbreaks followed through the nineteenth century. Everton had a story of its own. Around 1888, Jack was said to have appeared on the roof of St Francis Xavier's Church in Salisbury Street. And in 1904 the Aldine penny-dreadful serial Spring-heeled Jack was in print.