Hello, everyone, and welcome to another Morbid Moment, where you won't learn enough to teach a college class about spooky stuff, but you might learn enough to entertain your friends. My name is Katie Nyborg, but everyone on the internet already knows me as Stick. Joining me is Red, the comparatively uncredited, and somewhere, hiding in the back, is Toki the Sound Guy. Every other week, I bring us something mysterious and creepy to talk about.
Yay, we're back! We're back! Yay! And we've already had one incident of stop chewing on your pop filter.
That is already happened. We're feeling a little crazy, because if you've been following the podcast for a while, you might have noticed that we haven't put out any new content for a while. In a little while. Red.
Red, um, would you like to maybe, uh, explain? Yeah. A bit. What happened?
Let me tell you a story all about how. Our life got flipped, turned upside down. Yeah, so, um, if you've been on the Facebook page at all, you already know some of this, but for everybody else, you know, I think the last episode, we talked about how we were going to go on our super awesome California trip. It was super great.
Visited the Winchester house. Also super great. And we came back, sat down to record our mini episode about visiting the Winchester house, and it all gone broke. Our audio interface just stopped everything.
Everything. It stopped recording. Stopped accepting microphones after a while. Before that point, everything sounded like...
Like it was recorded on a toaster. Full of gravel. Yeah. Anything.
And so we needed to get a new thing. We held a little sale on Facebook for some Morbid Moment Magnus. They're still available for sale if you're interested. Go to our Facebook page and find the post or email us about it.
We do have some left. Um, so yeah, we finally got our new thing. New equipment. We have it.
We did it. It's recording. We are recording right now in case you hadn't noticed. And, uh, yeah, it really sucked not being able to record for that long.
Like, we got a couple comments like, oh, you're on a nice break. At least you got a little vacation from your thing that you're doing. No. It wasn't great.
It was terrible. I feel awful. So we're really, really, really happy to be back. Like, super happy to be back.
So happy. And in the meantime, though, we made the best of a really crappy situation. Um, while we were gone, we took the opportunity to do a bunch of planning, organizing, a bunch of research. Basically, we were getting ready for what we have decided to unofficially call Morbid Moment Season 2.
Welcome. So, to kick off Season 2 and to get us back into the habit of, like, talking into microphones because it's been a while. Imagine my blank stare into the distance as I say this. It's been so long.
Uh, we're gonna do a little welcome segment, like normal, as if this was not strange, as if we'd never been gone. So, Greg, we've been fortunate enough to go on a couple of spooky trips recently, which has been awesome. Um, so, I wanted to ask you, where do you next want to go on a spooky vacation? What should we hit up next?
Okay, so, this isn't necessarily, like, a haunted location that we would go and, like, look for ghosts. See, yeah, compared to the creepy things that we've heard, you know, as far as, like, sightings or ghosts or whatever. But it, just by its nature, is creepy and wacky and amazing. Okay.
Which is the House on the Rock. Yes! And- We need to go there! Yeah, it's one of those places that I can't really summarize.
Because it defies explanation. It defies explanation. And it's also absolutely humongous. Because there is the House on the Rock, which is a literal amazing, weird, crazy house on a big rock cliff thing.
But there's also buildings of collections and constructions and just craziness. It's all, like, creepy old weird stuff, right? That's a way to explain part of it. Yeah, it's- I've read about it in Neil Gaiman's American Gods, and it sounded insane.
Right, yeah. No, it is. It's basically, like, a Willy Wonka factory of creepiness and sheer imagination. That sounds, like, exactly our style.
Yeah, like, there's no way to summarize it. You have to just kind of go there and walk around and be confused and amazed for hours. Okay, sounds- Yeah, I've been there once. It was amazing.
We walked around all day until our feet fell off. Oh. And then your feet joined the collection and you haven't seen it since. Yeah, they do have a collection of feet that were left behind.
The giant organ collection. Oh. Organs, like, oh, not like your body, but, like, the opening of our show. Yeah.
Gotcha. That's a kazoo and not an organ, but, yeah. What is Rhett talking about? Did I just ruin the illusion?
My pipe organ is beautiful. Don't make fun of it. Just because it's a little smaller, you know? Kazoos are just, like, small pipe organs, really.
Pipe organs are just giant kazoos. Okay, okay, ask me next. Okay, all right. Stick, where do you want to go on our next spooky vacation trip, please?
Okay, so this is kind of lame, but I have always- I expect nothing less. Hey. I've always wanted to visit the former site of the Murder Castle, where H.H.H. There's nothing there.
I don't even know if there's a plaque. But for some reason, I really just want to stand there and, like, absorb the ambiance. Which in Chicago is mostly just, like, dirt and people yelling, I think. Oh, that's more of New York, but pretty close.
And I don't know. I just- I would like to be able to stand there and be like, yes, a long time ago, a lot of people were murdered in terrible ways here. Okay. Just to be in the historical- I don't know.
Just pretend. Yeah, that's kind of lame. It would be a very short trip. We'd probably show up, stand there, be like, oh, okay, this is it.
Yeah, I was gonna say, there's so many haunted places in Chicago. Yeah, we could visit the other ones, too. I just really like the murder castle. That's the one that's in your little heart.
In my heart, yeah. Okay, so if I do manage to swing this trip back home for Thanksgiving that I'm really hoping to do, maybe we can hit up a couple of those Midwestern haunts. Yeah. You just did finger pistols on me.
Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Well, I think that's enough about us.
All right, I feel warmed up. So, let's dive into this week's topic. Which, I don't know what it is. I'm so excited, you guys.
I don't know what it is. All she's told me is a spooky guy. It's an old-timey spooky guy. Ooh, okay.
I'm taking us back to London. All right, 1837. Good one. Yeah, that's a good one.
So, just to give you some context, we're at the very beginning of the Victorian era. All right. Back when sewage was pumped directly into the river. I thought you were going to say, back when sewage was at the height of its popularity.
Men were men, and sewage was everywhere. Yeah, they hadn't quite embedded sewers yet. No. Just put it where the water goes.
Yeah, and it takes it away. And it's fine. It doesn't spread cholera at all. It spread a lot of cholera.
That was a big problem. Okay. Sewage down. 1837.
Ding. Got it. Women had just been banned from voting. Oh.
Before then, they were sort of just assumed that women wouldn't vote, because why would they? And then, like, someone was actually like, oh, no, they shouldn't. Like, they shouldn't go. Wait a minute.
These ladies have been voting. We should stop that. So, that's where they are socially. Got it.
Cool. And we were definitely big in corsets. This was our London scene. I'm there.
I can smell the smog. And there would be a lot of smog, because London was at this time one of, if not the biggest city in the world. Oh, all right. So, our story starts on a night in October, the spookiest month.
Yes. Mary Stevens, a house servant, was walking to her place of employment, and then a mysterious figure jumped out of an alleyway and attacked her. As she described this attack, he grabbed her with his arms, started ripping at her clothes, and started grabbing her with his claws. Okay.
And she described his hands as cold and clammy as those of a corpse. Oh. George vote. Okay.
So, she started screaming, and the man fled the scene. All right. He didn't expect that, apparently. Yeah, you know.
Come on. She started yelling for a while. Come on. Imagine someone screaming when you jump out of an alley and grab them.
With his cold, clammy claws. So, several residents in the area immediately launched into the area to go search for him, because you don't go attacking ladies in the dead of night, even if we don't want the boating. You can't have them. You can't just claw him up.
Yeah. So, they went looking for him, but they couldn't find him. He vanished into the night. All right.
The next night, there was an incident where a mysterious figure jumped out in front of a moving carriage, and the coachman lost control and swerved to the side, and the whole thing toppled over, and the coachman was severely injured. It was bad. Bad times. Witnesses claimed that they saw the figure escape by jumping over a nine-foot wall.
Oh. And the escape was accompanied by the figure's high-pitched, ringing laughter. Yeah, kind of like that. Okay.
Saw this guy with a hop skip and a jump. Heads up the wall. Fucking were-rabbit over there. Just bounds away.
Okay. I can't wait to hear what this thing is named. I just smiled. The evil rabbit of London town.
The dark skipman. Oh, friends, Red doesn't even know yet. I don't. January, 1838.
A couple months later. The mayor of London holds what's essentially like a press release. Okay. To talk about this mysterious figure.
That has scratched a woman and tipped over a carriage? Yes. And jumped really high. And jumped really high.
The mayor did this. He held this press conference because he had received an anonymous letter from someone who was complaining about some mischievous individual going around and scaring people in his neighborhood. Okay. Specifically, the letter detailed that- Scratching every woman, jumping over every fence!
Yes. Yeah, actually, the letter described that someone was going around at night, dressed up as like a devil or a ghost or something, ringing people's doorbells, and then scaring the shit out of them when they came to the door. Oh, my God. Like a ding-dong ditch, but without the ditch part.
Okay. Here's a quote from this letter, and I'll use my best old-timey London voice. It's probably going to sound like an old-timey American voice, but all right. The unmanly villain has succeeded in depriving seven ladies of their senses, two of whom are not likely to recover, but to become burdens to their families.
Are you serious? Yeah. So about that whole women thing. Scared into useless.
To be fair, whenever they say that, this was, you know, when hysteria was kind of the answer to everything, so we're not sure if they were, like, literally scared out of their senses or if they were just, like, kind of upset about it and the men just didn't like that. So you have to sort of always take it with your hands off. She made loud noises. Lock her up.
She keeps crying for some reason. I don't understand these womanly feelings. No one will ever love her. There is more to this letter.
Okay. At one house, the man rang the bell, and on the servant coming to open the door, this worse-than-brute stood in no less dreadful figure than a specter clad most perfectly. The consequence was that the poor girl immediately swooned, and has never from that moment been in her senses. Oh, my God.
Swooned to death. And again, swooned. Swooned into uselessness. Swooned is like fainting.
Fainting. So the letter was summarizing that someone was going around door-to-door in the dead of night, dressed as a perfect specter. Scaring the shit out of women. Into senselessness.
The letter writer fully believed that this was the work of some hooligans who accepted a dare or something. Somebody getting their jollies from. You get drunk with your friends, and you're like, hey, let's go scare the shit out of some people. That sounds like fun.
He also low-key accused the mayor's office of trying to keep the whole thing quiet, because he hadn't seen any of this reported in newspapers, but it was happening all over the area. So he was like, you keeping it quiet, bro? You don't want to share this? All right.
So that's why the mayor responded publicly, basically saying that if some guy is going around the neighborhood causing this much trouble, the London police will find him and arrest him. Okay. Not saying that he'd like do anything about it or acknowledge if it was real or not, but like, we have police, and if this is a thing that's happening, they'll take care of it. And then, two days later, the mayor held another public press conference to share that he had received a pile of letters since then from all around London complaining of similar pranks.
Is that in metric or? Yes. It's metric. Okay.
From all around London complaining of similar pranks and incidents of attacks at the hands of this mysterious devil man. Mm-hmm. Most of the letters. The Doc Skipman.
The Doc Skipman. Most of the letters described the individual as being dressed as some sort of devil or animal man, usually in white, sometimes with horns. Okay. Often he would be wearing brass armor or steel armor.
Oh my. Or a helmet. Okay. Having sharp claws of some kind, or claw-like gloves.
Many people claimed that he had used those claws to wound his victims. Several claims said that bullets or attempts to fight him would pass right through him. Okay. So if they try to, you know, whack him with a stick, it sort of like phases through him.
I was going to make a joke about that he was really serious about his cosplaying adventures, but I don't know of anybody there. That they're so good at cosplay that bullets pass right through them? Yeah, they've got the spectral thing down. Yeah, that's some top tier level.
You'll definitely win the costume contest. He was usually described as being able to jump extremely high over walls and rooftops. Uh-huh. And he was always running away or jumping away after the encounter.
Okay. Making a crickery. I'm still guessing. It was around this time that the media did start picking up on the story, and this is when newspapers started referring to this mysterious assailant by my name, Spring-Heeled Jack.
Oh! It's all coming together. I've heard that phrase. There you go.
So I wasn't that far off with jumping jack. You were not. The Dark Skipman. Spring-Heeled Jack.
Okay. So shit didn't really start popping off until the third attack. Okay. Well, this sounds like the 33rd attack.
Oh, well, this is the third significant recorded by police attack. Okay. The night of February 18th, about a month after all that stuff with the mayor. It's my mom's birthday.
Well, congratulations. Her birthday falls on the same date as one of the most famous Spring-Heeled Jack attacks. Happy birthday! It's so weird that I haven't heard about this before.
Jane Alsop. Let me say that less weird. But I liked it. Jane Alsop.
Heard the doorbell ring. No. Yes. When she answered it, a man claiming to be a police officer was outside, and he told her to quickly go grab a light for him because they had caught Spring-Heeled Jack in the lane.
Okay. The lane, because it's old-timey. Right? London.
So, because she wanted help with the police and she wanted to see Spring-Heeled Jack, she went and got a candle and came back out to meet him. And when she was outside, she noticed that he was wearing a large cloak. But, as soon as she handed him the candle, he threw off the cloak dramatically, and, according to the police report, presented a most hideous and frightful appearance. I- Okay.
Gonna keep moving through this description because what I'm picturing now is, uh, different than reality, I'm sure. You're imagining he's a flasher, aren't you? Yeah. No.
Uh, she said that he wore a large helmet, and that his clothing was very tight-fitting and looked like white oil skin. Oh. Okay. Kind of weird, huh?
Yeah. Then, she said that he vomited blue and white flames from his mouth, while his eyes resembled balls of red fire. Okay. He grabbed her after that and started tearing at her clothes with what she was sure were some sort of little claws, and she managed to get away from him, while screaming and running back to her house.
There, he caught up with her and managed to scratch her arms and neck pretty bad before her sister heard the commotion and came running out of the house to rescue her. Dang. In the chaos, the attacker fled the scene, springing to safety. Spring-heel jacking to safety.
Dang. What are your thoughts here, at this part? Somebody's real creative back then. That cosplay's getting real intense.
Yeah, like he's upgraded to some sort of butane rig for the fire. You know, LEDs for the lights, for the eyes. Those old-timey pocket flamethrowers. Yeah.
Those reflective red things. And then I just still picture him just like scritcheting. Those little claws like... Like not like lacerating with like Wolverine claws.
Like squiggling? Like fire. Eyes. Just a little tiny...
No, from all the reports, it sounded rather terrifying. Okay. And then there was one more notable attack. Eight days later, Lucy Scales and her sister were walking home at night after visiting their brother.
They passed through an alley where they saw a man leaning against one of the balls of the passageway. According to her, he was tall, thin, and looked gentlemanly in appearance. Okay. He was also wearing a large cloak and a small lamp similar to those used by the police at the time.
Okay. Lucy was the one walking in front, so when she got close to him, he suddenly spurred blue flames out of his mouth right in her face. Oh my gosh. And she was instantly blinded and so alarmed that, quote, she instantly dropped to the ground and was seized with violent fists that continued for several hours.
Oh my god. Her sister ran up to her, and their brother actually heard the screams from his house. They hadn't gotten very far. So he ran out to see what had happened.
The man didn't attack either of the sisters, but he instead walked away quickly in the opposite direction after Lucy's collapse. Dang. Very mysterious. I imagine there was a flurry of his cloak.
But then he just kind of power walked. Yeah. He's like, I don't know where to jump in here. I don't know what to do if I can't jump.
These are the last two notable big attacks. These two attacks were in pretty respectable rich neighborhoods, so they got a lot more police attention than the first ones did. All right. Because now this is happening to the fancy folk.
We have to do something. This is unacceptable. The records of these two instances are pretty solid, and they got all the details at the time of the attacks versus earlier attacks where police didn't really pay as much attention. Yeah.
And a lot of details were gathered long after the attacks had happened, like once people started realizing that Spring Hill Jack was a thing and we should go back and ask about that. Yeah. After these attacks was also when a reward was finally offered for the capture of Spring Hill Jack, so they were starting to take this seriously and they wanted this guy, you know, caught. Stop scaring our fancy women.
Several people were brought in and questioned the suspects over the following months, but all of them were eventually... It was the whole London basketball team. Ew, you can jump high. They were all eventually set free, though, because no one completely matched their, like, fire-breathing, cloak-wearing, wall-jumping.
Right. One of them could jump walls but didn't have the fire thing down. Somebody got the fire thing down but his eyes didn't glow. Yeah, we're gonna...
Didn't look gentlemanly enough. Yeah, that's actually not as much of a joke as you would think. Oh, we'll get back to that. Okay, so the media, also, as you would imagine, in old-timey London, kind of fucking loved it.
Yeah, I mean, it's usually just like, I imagine, reporting on syphilis and sewage levels. Oh, the cholera is still bad today. Good sewage weather, fine color, but good news, soon women won't be allowed to vote. So very quickly, Spring Hill Jack became one of the most popular characters of this time period.
Okay. Man, he must have loved that. Oh, I'm sure. He was the most popular man in London.
And it seems like all he wants is some, like, lurid attention. Oh, and he got it. Newspapers started printing front-page stories about whatever Spring Hill Jack accounts or incidents they could get their hands on. Sometimes they even printed fake stories by accident or on purpose.
Like, for example, they do stuff like whenever a store was robbed and there were no clues as to who the culprit could have been. Could it be Spring Hill Jack? Yeah, they come out with articles like, Spring Hill Jack has struck again. Oh my god.
Because... Boy claims to be illegitimate son of Spring Hill Jack. What is Spring Hill Jack star sign? Turn to page 24 to find out.
He gets little puppet shows down in the town square. Actually. Oh. Can I make my other joke and see if that one's true, too?
Yes. Meat pies shaped like Spring Hill Jack. You know what? I didn't read about any meat pies shaped like Spring Hill Jack.
Okay, but I was one for two. Yes, you were. Okay. Let's fill this in.
Oh my god. He did become a popular literary character. Oh my goodness. Sort of like a Dracula thing where he was quickly turned into almost a romantic character.
Romantic, yeah. I was going to make a romance novel joke, but I'm like, were there other novels? I can't remember. Yes.
So he was represented as everything from, like, a literal demon monster to, like, this dude who was attacking women because he had been scorned by his own lover and he wanted revenge. Really, it's whatever your fetish is. He was usually a villain, but, you know, I'm sure there was some sympathetic... Oh yeah, absolutely.
Shipper's dream over here. ...of the time. They were just garbage. Oh my god.
Very cheap. Full of violence and sex. Uh-huh. There were also a lot of trashy plays written about him for the cheap theaters, which were basically like TV back then.
I'm so happy. They were everywhere. And then Punch and Judy, the famous puppet production, renamed their devil character to Spring Hill Jack in some shows because people like that a lot more than they like Satan. Oh my god.
The gentlefolk, as they said, preferred Spring Hill Jack to, like, mentions of the actual devil. Right. Oh my god. I'm so happy.
And then over time he warped into almost this fairy tale creature or, like, this living myth. Slenderman. Yes. Yeah, but, like, started as, like, an urban myth sort of thing that somebody made up and it turns into, like, local folklore after a while.
So it was not unusual for parents at the time to tell their children that if they didn't behave, Spring Hill Jack would get them. Oh my god. And Spring Hill Jack will jump into your bedroom window and watch you while you sleep because he can jump really high. You know what pervy is.
You know Spring Hill Jack. That guy's gross. So, through all this he almost became, you know, he became a phrase, basically. Spring Hill Jack is used to describe people who can jump high.
Oh my god. Or people who mysteriously do things and they can't find another logical explanation. He became more of an idiom than a person. If you need a short way to describe those folks who could breathe fire.
Spring Hill Jack. Oh my god. That guy's a regular Spring Hill Jack over there. Yeah.
It's catchy. After a while. Oh my gosh. I've also heard that the Jack in the Box toy was named after Spring Hill Jack, but I can't actually confirm if that's true or not.
It sounds so good, though, right? Oh, it would fit so good. I want it to be right, but I can't confirm, so don't go tell all your friends. Someone try this out for me.
Yeah, or just tell your friends, but just accept the fact that you may be telling a tall Spring Hill Jack tale. If you can confirm, please email morbidmomentpodcast.gmail.com and let me know so I can rest in peace. I want this to be real, please. So, someone edit the Wikipedia page.
His name, Dr. Spring Hill Jack, clearly. Source is the morbid moment. No, no, no, don't do that.
Not the publicity we want. But as far as the actual real Spring Hill Jack, like whatever dude or creature was going around town, the actual reports of attacks kind of taper off after those two last big ones. Yeah. There were some more attacks reported later, but they were disparate and pretty far from the heart of London.
They kind of spread out and got weirder. Could be copycats. Yeah. And because of this character's popularity and all the fake news that was written about him, it's hard for historians to actually look back and get an accurate picture of what fits into the Spring Hill Jack legends and what doesn't.
And it's hard to tell what was made up. Yeah, he pretty much ascended at that point. So, how the hell are you going to be able to tell? Yeah.
And in addition to that, we also can't be sure how accurate the eyewitness accounts are since we know that eyewitness accounts are basically the least accurate evidence you can get, especially when, you know, everyone knows his MO. And again, it didn't help that the phrase Spring Hill Jack practically became, you know, an idiom. So, good luck searching backwards through articles because you'll find all sorts of stuff that's unrelated to the London attacks. Oh, boy.
You get like stage play times and stuff. Or you'll get articles about a guy who can jump high. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, the newest recruit on the London basketball team is quite the Spring Hill Jack.
Exactly like that. Oh, my God. But, despite all of this, it doesn't stop us from trying to figure it out anyway. So, what the hell was Spring Hill Jack?
What the hell? There are basically three schools of thought, three camps that people sit in about this Spring Hill Jack thing. The first, that, Rad, you will probably like the most, it's pretty sound, is that he was some well-to-do guy with a bad sense of humor who dressed up in a scary costume and freaked people out, like, on a bed or something. Oh, man.
One man was brought in for questioning after boasting that he was Spring Hill Jack in a bar. You know, how does he get drunk? You're like, I killed blah, blah, blah. Yes.
And this was shortly after... You know how it goes. Everybody's been there. This was shortly after the Jane L.Sauv attack.
He had a police lantern. It was a little suspish. Okay. But then he was eventually released because Jane insisted that her attacker could breathe fire.
And he admitted that he could not breathe fire. Are you for real? Yes. They let him go.
They're like, oh, well, it can't be that guy. He's like, no, he breathed blue flames. And he's like, I don't know how to breathe blue flames. I'm just a dude.
All right. And so they let him go. London. When men were men.
And sewage of civilization was everywhere. Oh, my God. Sewage for brains. Old-timey people are gross.
And also, sometimes, maybe not the best that police work. All right. I changed my time travel answer. Everybody's got their time travel answers.
Where are you going to go? What are you going to do? What are you going to do? Fucking set that guy down and be like, no, it was him.
I'm going to go, guys, come on. Look. We're going to skip the jump test and go right to the fire breathing test. Are you serious?
So even at the time, many people thought that Spring-Heeled Jack was not one dude, but like you thought earlier, probably several dudes, maybe some copycats afterwards. Yeah. Okay. There's also some evidence that bystanders saw dudes being shady around some of these attacks, like a guy coming back to the scene of the crime to pick up Spring-Heeled Jack's cloak before the police showed up.
Uh-huh. Or a group of dudes who were seen walking conveniently away from the attack, and one of them's holding a white suit because it's for something. But these accounts got swept under the rug pretty quickly next to all the media hype and everyone looking for a mysterious monster man. Right.
And then, you know, with all the other false accounts at the time, it's also, you have to take that with a grain of salt. Like, did these people actually see those people there? Are they just trying to say that they solved the mystery? Like, what?
Yeah. So that's, could have been dudes. It could have been a group of dudes because you need somebody to, you need an engineer to build. You need a five-man band.
You're engineer, you're front man, you're talk guy. And you're drummer. And you're girl. Yes.
And then, a popular theory at the time was that the Colbert was actually this Irish nobleman, the Marquis of Waterford. Oh. He was already nicknamed the Mad Marquis. Oh.
Because he was known for drunken brawling, brutal jokes, vandalism, hating women, and thinking it was really funny to get him and his friends together and jump out and scare random passersby. That was, like, his fun time hobby. How is he on jumping and breathing fire? He was in London at the time of the attacks.
Okay. So a lot of people, you know, were like, well, clearly it's that fucker. He was always in the news for, like, disorderly conduct and being a huge asshole. So it was a very popular theory.
Oh, my God. Now, the second camp of thought. That was all one camp? That was all one.
Oh, all right. I thought that was camp one and two. Oh, all right. That was the it-was-a-dude camp.
Oh, okay. Boy, I can't wait to hear what camp three is, then. So the second thinks that Spring-Hale Jack is essentially a cryptid. Yeah.
Gotta get one of those in there. Yeah, you know, he could be a serious creature with unknown origins, like a Mothman or a Jersey Devil situation, where he just shows up, is weird, and then leaves. And everyone's like, what the fuck happened? You know, like cryptids.
Yeah. There is a category of paranormal happenings called phantom attackers. All right. Which are creatures or specters who look human, but can perform extraordinary feats that would break a normal human, such as sticking the landing of a 10-12-foot jump without spraining your ankles, ringing doorbells, and appearing to be police.
These creatures can usually be explained away with psychology, except for when their attacks are witnessed simultaneously by multiple people who all say they saw the same thing. Yeah, okay. So that's how those get weird. Gotcha.
That's their classification. Yes. And then some people have also said that Spring-Hale Jack is a literal demon. Right.
Gotta get the devil in there. Always gotta get the devil. You know, there are numerous accounts where he had horns and claws. Scared women into permanent senselessness.
The whole fire thing kind of theme. Being generally terrifying. Being just a little bit sexy. In an anti-hero way.
In an anti-hero way. I think this was popularized by the fiction of the time the most, but I can also see why fiction would want to go that way. Oh yeah, for sure. Maybe he was summoned by some occult group that wanted him to, you know, just cause spiritual turmoil all over the place.
The devil's work. Ding-dong ditch. We learned the unholy origins of the ding-dong ditch. Now, the third theory is that Spring-Hale Jack was an alien.
No! I was gonna make the joke! Darn it! The only reason I did it is because we already had a cryptid category, and I figured if I said alien, you'd say we already covered it with the cryptid.
No! Think about it! No, I did think about it! That's why I was gonna say it!
All right! Oh man! It's so close! I should've just opened my mouth!
Non-human appearance and features! Reflective red eyes! Phosphorous breath! Superhuman ability derived from life on a high-gravity world!
Oh my god, are you serious? Think about it! It fits! Oh my god!
He wears a helmet because he can't adapt to this Earth's atmosphere! Are you for real? Oh man! Oh man!
And that's why he disappeared! It's because his face is off! I came to take him away! It was aliens the whole time!
I'm not saying it was aliens! Oh my god! But it was aliens! But somebody's saying it was aliens!
I- if you- if you think it's aliens, I don't want to make fun of you. It just seems very silly. I- I do though, I do though. You can take the high road.
So, there's always that guy on the forums! It's gotta be- it's gotta throw out the, like, the weird theory from left field, insist that it's canon, show all these, like, supporting points that he's pulling out of his ass! That's this one. Alien.
Oh man, I fucking love the alien theory. God, it's always there! Ugh. I mean, we're not- we're gonna be the ones, like, the other ones not laughing when it turns out that the answer is always aliens.
I was gonna say, when the aliens come for us all, it's okay. We're- we'll be sorry. We'll be the first ones to apologize. So, whatever he is, he continues to puzzle people to this day.
Oh man, making it into TV shows, novels, comic books, video games, and actually, Rad, you first heard of him in your Scribblenauts game. There were a bunch of Jack characters, and you're like, what's a Spring-Hill Jack? And I went, oh yeah! Is that where you got the idea?
Uh-huh! Well, I was playing Scribblenauts! Yep! Oh dang!
So, uh, congratulations, now you properly know what Spring-Hill Jack is. Well, you at least know what people think Spring-Hill Jack is. I know the three camps of Spring-Hill Jackology. Congratulations!
Now go forth. Oh. And tell your friends. Oh, that's great.
This is great. This is a good one. So if you also like learning about Spring-Hill Jack and want to help us make even more episodes about weird, old-timey mystery men, and this is important, I mean, we always say it's important, but guys, it's really important this time. Tell a friend about us!
Maybe you've got a buddy that's in history, or you have- a family member that loves spooky stuff whatever it is send them a message tweet it out help us reach some more years you can also leave us a reading and a review on itunes i know like literally every podcast tells you to do that but it really is the best way to help us grow and help support the morbid moment project and especially like right now it's really super important because since we haven't put out stuff in a while it's probably unsubscribed most of you like like boy those algorithms they're gonna get us hard like we really need a boost right now back in the game we really appreciate it we also have a facebook page uh at morbid moment podcast which i highly suggest you follow if you want to see podcast updates uh photos from our trips uh an extra material that we put out sometimes has to do with the episodes and like in this case uh sometimes we can't record and uh the facebook is how we do our updates so that has been super helpful if you're into facebook go ahead check it out like it subscribe to it friend it i don't like it i don't know we're really good at facebook if you have a topic you want to hear us talk about on the show feel free to send an email about it morbid moment podcast at gmail.com i'm thinking of doing another suggestion episode sometime soon so now is a great time to send those in if you've been sitting on one do it now yeah we like to end these episodes on a high note so i'm good i'm feeling pretty high high defense spring heel jack jumps over what but we do have a little cool thing to talk about for our little closing feel good segment i think it's actually very fitting i think it's just wacky and creepy enough to fit the spring heel jack episode quite well uh-huh so that's perfect uh we were invited to a thing in oregon by one of our friends and since it happened to be my birthday we did birthday we made a little trip of it and we went to the thing and then i got to spend a birthday afternoon in portland and one of the places that i demanded to go to was the peculiarium portland's resident place of weird because portland itself is not weird enough yeah i think they get quite a bit of weird from the peculiarium um the best way to describe the peculiarium if its name itself doesn't do the work it was part museum part oddity shop part art gallery and i would say part interactive comedy yes and they have ice cream oh they have ice cream yeah we uh we took a little trip down there all the pictures are on facebook let's share some highlights real quick okay um i was buried alive you were quite buried alive that was fun there was an amazing haunted dollhouse which coincidentally reminded us a lot of a haunted dollhouse that someone had just recently shared with us on facebook yeah so weird coincidence yeah we showed up there and we saw the dollhouse we're like oh is is that the same one turns out it's a different dollhouse but it's amazing there was also my favorite thing which was like a lovely little uh spontaneous human combustion homage exhibit that i just fell in love with took lots of pictures oh that's beautiful alien they had alien autopsies they had curiosity cabinets they had a ton of sci-fi weird props from like movies yeah they had props they had sci-fi craziness it's a lot of stuff crammed lovingly into this tiny space and we spent so much time there it was a lot of fun and then their gift shop is just like we spent i think just as much time in the gift shop as we did in the rest of the place it's ooky and spooky and everything we love and it's hilarious and gross so if you're ever in portland take some time out of your day to go check out the peculiarium their hours are weird so call ahead and i would say that it's not a place meant for kids but you definitely need to be a kid at heart that's good sit on krampus's lap while you're there and get an ice cream sundae potentially related uh there is a warning for theatrical gore and bugs in our photo album bugs so be careful there may be bugs there may be bugs it was great though fantastic it was a lovely a lovely little outing five out of five would recommend it gave us it refilled our spook meters it was wonderful and yeah i think that wraps it up all right yeah folks that'll do it for us uh this has been stick red and toki the sound guy we are very happy to be back we will see you in two weeks as long as this piece of sound equipment doesn't explode ah don't say things like that i am tempting fate all right until then friends remember to stay morbid stay morbid bye