Spring-heeled Jack

Spring-heeled Jack is a press name for a person or entity, often described as a ghost, who was reported to have stalked and attacked people in London, England during the late 1830s, the appellation based on the supposed ability of the man to leap to great height, as if he had springs in his heels. The early reports of Spring-heeled Jack inspired a rash of imitators over the years and decades that followed, perpetrators of what were termed ghost pranks, and the name entered into the popular English lexicon, the character becoming the subject of poetry and plays.