David Wallechinsky and (his father) author Irving Wallace, in their initial offerings of The People’s Almanac [1975] presented (on Page 1380 ff.) an item, as titled here, above:
“The ‘Jumping Man’ made his official debut in 1837, the same year that 18-year-old Victoria ascended to the throne of England.”
(The story is usually reported with the “Jumping Man” called Spring-heeled Jack.)
This alleged “Jumping Man” terrorized the English countryside for almost 70 years.
The London Morning Post, in 1929 reported that he was “clearly no ordinary mortal, if indeed, he were of this world at all.”
A 15-year-old London girl, Miss Jane Alsop, was “the apparition’s 1st recorded victim.”
When she answered the door to her house, after hearing the gate bell ringing, she found a “tall stranger standing on the stoop.”
Placing a candle near the stranger’s face, to see who it might be, caused the “creature” to “stumble back with a roar, throwing off a long cloak wrapped about it.”
“The sight she saw left her petrified.
The man’s body was covered by a tight-fitting garment which resembled a slick, stark-white, oilskin jumpsuit. His head was completely enclosed by a globular object which was fastened to the collar of his tunic. His encased arms terminated in sharp, metallic claws. Inside the transparent globe, [she] could see 2 eyes, which glared at her with a white fury.
Before she could slam the door, the creature leaped upon her, blazing a blue-white ray of flames through an opening in the front of the head-covering globe.”
Her screams brought her sister, whose arrival sent “the assailant bounding off into the night.”
“The story carried more credence a few days later when a young butcher came forward” with a similar story.
The “Jumping Man” dropped from sight and reportage until 1845 when “a weird figure [was] seen, leaping with shrieks and groans over hedges and walls.”
A man, called the phantom, was caught and “the scare abated for [a while]” only to emerge in the countryside” during the years between 1860 and 1870.
Then in 1877 the “creature” – as a large, dark shape -- showed up at a British army post where two sentries saw it, one shooting a bullet at it, causing the figure the bound towards them, belching “a stream of blue flame” at them.
A court martial provided a description not unlike that of Ms. Alsop’s years earlier: “Tight-fitting white suit, with a slight phosphorescent glow … a glass bubble over the head. Luminous, reddish eyes like burning coals. Blue flames coming from the mouth aperture … a scream … Fantastic jumps. And prompt disappearance without a trace.”
Months later, the “Jumping Man” was spotted atop a Newport cottage, attracting a crowd of people, one of whom shot at itm to no apparent effect, The creature bounded away, in 20’ high leaps followed by the mob.
It was shot at but, again, to no effect, when it leaped over a high wall and disappeared.
The thing was seen off and on until 1904, when it “made its last-reported appearance, this one in the older section of Liverpool. For more than 10 minutes, hundreds of spectators watched its antics in broad daylight.”
Thw “white-suited” creature leaped over some slate roofs and “vanished for good.”
Walter Kempthorne, who wrote the piece for The Almanac, concludes by noting that the creature “bore a striking resemblance to the space suit worn by Neil Armstrong as he stepped to the surface of the moon in July 1969 … And the creature itself seems to have existed by breathing a gaseous substance which, when exhaled, combined with oxygen [produced] the bluish-white but harmless flame …
The ‘Jumping Man’ …may have come from outer space – a being sent from beyond our solar system to observe the strange life-forms found on the planet we call earth.”
RR
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