From 1837, Londoners reported a clawed figure with red eyes who vomited blue flame and bounded over walls. Sightings spread across England for 70 years, and he was never caught.
The full legend: a leaping, clawed entity first reported in 1830s London, with metallic claws, glowing eyes and the ability to spit blue fire.
Extra History traces how a panic in gaslit London hardened into a folk devil stalked by vigilantes and splashed across penny dreadfuls.
Simple History's animated retelling of the attacks on Jane Alsop and Lucy Scales that turned rumor into citywide terror.
Dr David Clarke separates the few documented 1838 reports from a century of embellishment, pamphlets and moral panic.
A fast overview of the sightings that rippled from London to Sheffield and Liverpool, and why nobody could ever pin him down.
The suspects: a bored aristocrat's cruel prank, mass hysteria, or something the Victorians had no name for. The theories, weighed.
Mythology & Fiction Explained on how the figure outlived the panic, becoming a bogeyman used to frighten children into the 1900s.