Scary Jack the Ripper Urban Legends

For those of you who don’t know, Jack the Ripper was a serial killer who terrorized the Whitechapel district of London in 1888. He brutally murdered and mutilated at least five prostitutes and his identity was never discovered. He had a very particular way of murdering his victims and he was never caught. So of course, there are a lot of conspiracy theories surrounding Jack the ripper and his murderous rampage through London. So, here are the top 10 scary Jack The Ripper Urban Legends.

10. Mary Ann Nichols

She was one of the Whitechapel murder victims who was viciously murdered by the infamous Jack the Ripper. Her throat was slashed twice from left to right and her abdomen was mutilated with one deep jagged wound. She also had many incisions across her abdomen and a ton of other deep stab wounds. Since her brutal murder, it has been said that her spirit has been haunting the Whitechapel area and people have been hearing strange ghostly noises of Jack killing Mary Ann Nichols. People have also said that they can see her spirit glowing at the site of her murder and horses and dogs will refuse to go near that location.

9. Lewis Carroll was actually the murderer

This is the author of Alice’s adventures in Wonderland, which to me sounds like a very unlikely suspect. However, there are a bunch of urban legends that point to him. Apparently, people believe that he killed a bunch of women and left clues about the murders in his children’s stories. There are a bunch of ripperologists who have studied his writings and they were able to unscramble a bunch of passages from Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and from a bunch of his other works that make you wonder, did he kill all of these women?

8. The last four murders

Mary Jane Kelly was believed to be the final victim of Jack The Ripper but according to an urban legend, the first four murders were just an elaborate attempt to cover up the real reason why Mary Jane Kelly was murdered. It is believed that her husband was the infamous serial killer and his motive for killing his wife was because he was so angry that his wife turned to prostitution shortly after they got married. So he killed four other prostitutes to make it look like a pattern and then he killed his wife so that the police wouldn’t suspect him of committing the crime.

7. The murders were part of a black magic ritual

According to an urban legend, it is believed that Jack the ripper was apart of a cult who indulged in a very violent form of Satanic worship. Apparently, his true motive was to kill four prostitutes in order to become the cult leader. In this black magic ritual, certain organs had to be removed from the murdered prostitutes and they had to be killed at pre-arranged sites that resemble a satanic symbol. The organs that were commonly removed were the heart, kidneys, genitalia and the womb which of course, were also commonly removed during black magic rituals during this time period.

6. The American Jack the Ripper

There is a lot of speculation that Americans Urban Legends were also the victim of Jack the Ripper. So, three years before the first Jack the Ripper murder happened in England, a serial killer dubbed the servant girl annihilator brutally murdered 8 people in Austin, Texas. Similar to Jack the Ripper, the servant girl annihilator has never been identified and there are so many theories about his identity. All of the women were killed indoors while asleep in their beds and some of them were dragged outside and mutilated in the same way as jack the ripper victims. Because of all this evidence, there is an urban legend that suggests that Jack the ripper was actually the servant girl annihilator and he roamed the streets of Texas, brutally murdering eight people before heading off to England to do the same.

5. Elizabeth Stride

She is another victim of Jack the Ripper but she wasn’t as brutally murdered as the others. The only body mutilation that she had was a slashed throat, so it is believed that Jack the Ripper was most likely interrupted during his murder and he was unable to chop up her body like his other victims. The local urban legend surrounding her murder says that if you go to Dutfields Yard on Berner Street, you can supposedly hear ghostly and eerie screams of a woman struggling and crying for help.

4. Mitre Square

This cobblestoned area is the site where one of London’s most infamous crimes occurred. At the south-west corner of Mitre Square, the mutilated body of Catherine Eddowes was discovered at this location at 1:45am on September 30th, 1888. Catherine Eddowes was Jack the Rippers fourth victim. She was found lying on her back in a pool of blood with her clothes over her waist. Her throat was slashed, her intestines were taken out and placed over her right shoulder and she had a lot of other brutal cuts all over her body. Well the local legend states that on the anniversary of her death, people have reported seeing her ghost figure lying where her corpse was discovered.

3. The second victim

Annie Chapman was viciously murdered by Jack the Ripper on September 8, 1888. Her throat had been slashed, she was disembowelled with her intestines thrown out of her abdomen and part of her uterus was missing. So basically, she was chopped up and her body was severely sliced and hacked. Her disfigured body was found in the backyard of the Truman Brewery and when this brewery was still in business after her murder, it was reported that on the anniversary of her murder, you can see her ghost standing in the exact spot where she was viciously sliced up to death.

2. Mary Kelly

It is believed that she is the last and final victim of Jack the Ripper. She was about 25 years old at the time of her vicious murder. Her body was found lying naked on a bed in an apartment. Her whole abdomen and thighs were removed, her chest was cut off and her arms had several jagged wounds. Her face was hacked up so badly that you couldn’t even recognize her and her neck was cut so deep, that you could even see her bones. An urban legend states that after her murder, anyone who lives in that apartment will see a bloody handprint on the wall. Even if you attempt to clean it or paint over it, the bloody handprint will reappear shortly after. Some people even claim that they have seen her ghost wearing all black and she has been haunting the building on the very same night of her murder.

1. Westminster Bridge Jack the Ripper sighting

Legend has it that if you stand on the Westminster Bridge on December 31st and look east as midnight approaches, you might see the ghost of Jack the Ripper. And as Big Ben chimes in the new year, you will see a shadowy figure creeping down the wall and into the Thames river. This legend began to circulate because back in 1888 it is believed that Jack the Ripper killed himself by diving into the river at this very spot and now every year since, his spirit is forced to repeat this over and over again as a form of punishment.