An Everton Ghost Story.
Considerable commotion was caused yesterday in William Henry-street, Everton, on a rumour that a sort of “spring-heel Jack” was pursuing his antics in that neighbourhood. The story, as it was passed from mouth to mouth, reached sensational dimensions. It referred chiefly to the annoyance of the inmates of a certain house by means of various missiles being thrown about in a mysterious manner and without any visible agency. The annoyance is said to have been so great that the tenants left the house to-day: but the police have been unable to find any ground for the suggestion that a “ghost” was at work, and believe some foolish person has been playing pranks.
Liverpool Echo, 21st September 1904.
“Spring-heel Jack.”
The district of Everton, in Liverpool, is scared by the singular antics of a ghost, to whom the name of “Spring-heel Jack” has been given, because of the facility with which he has escaped, by huge springs, all attempts of his would-be captors to arrest him.
William Henry-street is the scene of his exploits, and crowds of people assemble nightly to see them, but only a few have done so yet. He is said to pay particular attention to ladies.
Northern Daily telegraph, 22nd September 1904.
Over the Mersey Wall. George Harrison.
In my story the other evening about odd incidents in Everton, way back in September, 1904, which led to a scare among the inhabitants that “Spring-Heeled Jack” was up to his tricks there. I suggested that the strange things which happened then would to-day have been immediately credited to a poltergeist. Dictionary definition of a poltergeist: “A mysterious invisible agency asserted to throw things about ; a noisy ghost.”
Now from one of our senior citizens, Mrs A. Pierpoint, of 14 Moss Pits Lane, Fazakerley, comes some background to the ghost story. She tells me: “I lived most of my life in Everton, in Lloyd Street, and like everybody else in that area I knew all about the haunted house in Stitt Street.” Mrs Pierpoint continued: “I was going to school at the time in 1904 that the incidents occurred which you described. The people who lived in that house were awakened night after night by furniture and other things being thrown about the rooms, with no human hand doing the throwing. It got so well-known that people from all over Liverpool used to go and stand outside and look at the place often enough in fear and trembling. Eventually the tenants gave it up and moved out. The windows and doors of the house were boarded up and it was left to its ghost.”
Mrs Pierpoint also had a story to explain the so-called “Spring-Heeled Jack” of that same district at the time. “He was a local man slightly off-balance mentally,” she said. “He had a form of religious mania and he would climb on to rooftops of houses crying out: ‘My wife is the Devil!’ They usually fetched police or a fire-engine ladder to get him down. As the police closed in on him, he would leap from one house roof to the next. That’s what gave rise to the ‘Spring-Heeled Jack’ rumours.
“But the poltergeist which haunted the house in Stitt Street was no myth. That existed right enough, as any Everton resident of those days will confirm,” she added firmly.
Two days after the family had moved out, and before the boarding-up of the premises, there was a report in the Echo (September 1904) of a police court case in which a young man named Hugh Morgan was charged with breaking a window in the vacant house. Let me quote the story just as it appeared-
“The people in the neighbourhood had for some reason voted the house haunted. Several hundreds of the denizens yesterday swarmed about it and the prisoner determined upon the self-imposed task of interviewing the ghost. He climbed the back wall and entered the house, having to break a pane of glass to unfasten the window-catch. Great excitement prevailed among the juveniles in the crowd as to the fate of Morgan, but in the midst of it a constable arrived and arrested him for breaking the window, which provided a humiliating discounting of the youth’s heroism.
“Mr Stewart (the magistrate): What business of yours was it to enter this house? The prisoner: The house is haunted (laughter). I thought it would be good for the landlord and for the neighbourhood to go into the house. Mr Stewart: You must not break people’s windows. The prisoner: It is a haunted house, your worship. Mr Stewart: What does that matter? Five shillings and costs or seven days. You can let the ghost alone for a bit now.”
Liverpool Echo, 19th May 1967.