Lux Esoterica (Nifiluz)

In the winter of 1837, something began jumping over the hedges of suburban London. The reports that accumulated through the following months described a figure that leapt garden walls and coach roofs in a single bound; that wore a black cloak and a tight oilskin garment; that had eyes like balls of red fire and fingers ending in claws of some metallic coldness; and that could, when cornered, spit blue-and-white flame into the face of its victim before bounding away into the dark at impossible speed. The newspapers, then the magistrates, then the Lord Mayor of London himself took notice. He was called Spring-heeled Jack, and for the next seven decades he haunted Britain — a devil for the age of gaslight and newsprint, the first great monster of the modern city, born not in a forest or a fen but in the suburbs, and propagated not by firesides but by the penny press. The Panic of 1838 The affair crossed from rumor into record in January 1838, when the Lord Mayor, Sir John Cowan, made p...