Awesome or Off-Putting is a weekly delve into cryptozoology, ufology, aliens, medical marvels, scientific wonders, secret societies, government conspiracies, cults, ghosts, EVPs, ancient artifacts, strange facts, odd sightings or just the plain unexplainable.
Poor Jack – stuck in those irons. Irons, of course, meaning chains in this case. And why, you may ask, is he stuck in chains? Well some would argue it’s because at some point in his life he’d been incarcerated.
Did we mention that he’s now a giant that haunts old, lonely English roads? Or that his chains are adorned with severed human heads?
Without a doubt, one of our favourite stories that we ever brought you was that of Spring-Heeled Jack. He used to hop around England scratching pretty young girls and then disappearing into the night. That’s creepy, right? Well if you don’t think so it’s only because you just read our synopsis up there.
Ol’ jumping Jack isn’t the only thing to have haunted England – the similarly named Jack-in-Irons also spends ample time patrolling the English countryside – more specifically, Yorkshire. Here’s your first briefing – it’s from Paralumun.com:
Jack In Irons Ghost is a famous English ghost that haunts the backroads of Yorkshire. He is a tall, evil looking figure that is covered in chains. He usually wears black robes. He usually haunts people by jumping out late at night and terrifying people who are alone at night. The chains that cover Jack are probably indicative of the fact that Jack died in a prison during the times when prisoners were also chained. Although he scares people, he does no further harm and just simply disappears.
That sounds like a practically cuddly spectre, doesn’t it? Well maybe that’s because they forgot to mention that Jack is also draped in the severed heads of his victims. That’s right, you read that right. To anchor this fact we’ll give you another quote – it’s out of the Encyclopedia Mythica Dictionary:
“[Jack-in-Irons is] a very dangerous giant who haunts the deserted roads in Yorkshire. He is covered with chains and the heads of his victims. His weapon is a large club with spikes.”
It’s worse than you thought, isn’t it? If you’re terrified already, then we are really sorry to tell you we think that despite what our first quotation said, it looks like Jack-in-Irons kills absolutely everybody he’s ever come across. This is our assumption as we can’t find a single witness account. Bigfoot has witnesses, Spring Heeled Jack had witnesses – but this guy? Nothing.
We assume he adds the head of everybody who sees him to his ornamentation. What we’d really like to know is this – does he wear the heads forever or do they have a sort of expiration date? Because if he leaves them hanging from him eternally, after 30 killings or so you’d think his movement would be very restricted. Kind of like the little brother in the snowsuit on A Christmas Story.
We’re gonna bet that the heads eventually rot and then naturally fall off.
It’s the most logical explanation.
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