Spring Heeled Jack - was he a creature, an alien, or a man wearing some strange costume and a hidden jumping apparatus? During the 1830's, this 'man' terrorized England. Described as tall, thin, powerful, wearing a black cloak, the man could jump 20 to 30 feet vertical. It was reported that he had large pointy ears and nose, with red glowing eyes, and capable of spitting an odd white and blue flame from his mouth.

Can you imagine a mysterious masked creature that looks like a black shadow, with a monkey-like face, flaming red eyes, and sharp metal claws, attacking people at night, jumping four stories high and disappearing into thin air? Bunk, you say? Well, that's not what the people in East Delhi, India, thought last year. In May, just such a creature was repeatedly spotted, instilling terror and claiming two lives. The craze got to a point where vigilante groups armed with sticks patrolled the streets at night on the lookout for the creature and police announced a 50,000 rupee ($1,067) reward for information leading to its capture.1

Letters From Hell’ by Stewart P. Evans and Keith Skinner, tells readers that ‘Spring Heeled Jack’ has: ‘vague real-life origins’ of an attacker of women, who’s identity was never known, so I consulted my library and the Internet to find out more about this real-life villain:

Over a period of nearly 70 years, a leaping madman startled and attacked young women. His attacks were often reported in the local and national press of England, however few people believed these tales when they started and today it is thought that he was just a made up bogeyman, used by parents to warn and control their misbehaving children.

Press reports of a ‘peculiar leaping man’ appeared as early as 1817, then on October 11th of 1837 Polly Adams was attacked by a man that could leap over fences. In January of the following year, a resident of Peckham sent a letter to the Lord Mayor of London describing an attack by a creature he called ‘Spring Heeled Jack’. From then on, the press references to the attacker changed from ‘Leaping Terror’, and, ‘Suburban Ghost’ to ‘Spring Heeled Jack’.

the "wager" aspect of the story is something i havnt heard of before i read this article...thought id share it with yas its a good read

Spring Heeled Jack had appeared as a milk-white bull, a white bear, and an enormous baboon; he had been seen dressed in a suit of shining brass armour, and on one occasion in one of burnished steel; once, in Hackney, he appeared as a lamplighter - who walked upon his hands and carried his ladder between his feet. His ability to make prodigious leaps was popularly ascribed to springs attached to his boots.

We tend to regard the Victorian era as an age of science and reason, not unlike our own. However, there was another Victorian age, running parallel with this, an age that believed in phrenology (reading fortunes via bumps on the head) and fairies, in ghosts and galvanism, in photographs and séances. And some Victorians, at least, believed in a man called Spring-Heeled Jack.

Sightings of Spring-Heeled Jack are recorded across England, from London and Chichester up to Liverpool, but they were especially prevalent in the Black Country, where they peeked in the 1880s. Descriptions of the creature vary, but the salient characteristics were his goatee beard, pointed ears and horns, and flashing, fiery eyes. Illustrations in the popular (and sensationalist) magazines called Penny Dreadfuls, show him as a kind of Hispanic version of the Devil. The one feature that never varied was his ability to jump; to leap over rooftops and across hedges. Such agility always allowed him to terrify his victims and to escape his pursuers. A bounder, indeed.