The Star newspaper wrote on the day after the first canonical Ripper murder (and the third appalling murder in Whitechapel):
Nothing so appalling, so devilish, so inhuman—or, rather, non-human—as the three Whitechapel crimes has ever happened outside the pages of Poe or DeQuincey.
If only the Star knew what was yet to come—increasingly brutal mutilations committed against victims found on the streets of London, after which the killer would slip off into the night without a trace.
How could he possibly be human?
At the end of September, 1888, police found two victims in one night. The second one was more severely mutilated than any previous victim. And not long after that, the first Ripper ghost story got published. Actually, it was the first piece of any type of fiction written about the Ripper. An excerpt:
The men were almost dead with fear. What was yon cloud? Why did it not move? The tempest seemed to gather round it, the lightning struck at it a dozen times. It slowly lifts and utters a hollow, dreadful laugh. Is it ghost or fiend? It seems diminishing in size. Horror! It assumes the shape of a man! What is it that it holds aloft? Again the lightning struck at it, and its ghastly head was seen.
Another crash of thunder, and a naked arm appears, holding a blood-stained dagger. Oh, what is it that it strikes with such a demon fury? Why that final, dreadful cry?
Think about it. The first guy to write a fictional story went straight for the supernatural. And why not? Nobody knew who the Ripper was, what he looked like, why he left no trace. You could tell just about any story about him that you wanted!
Last night, I asked why the films inspired by Ed Gein always have a thoroughly human killer, while movies inspired by the Ripper can do anything they want with him.
Well, I think the answer is pretty obvious.
Gein committed his deeds in private. Nobody knew about them until a fresh body was found in his shed. Once that body was found, everybody knew. There was no mystery about who the killer was. The only question was how many other “disappearances” in the area might have been murders.
The Ripper, on the other hand, left plenty of public evidence about his crimes. The women were found on the street—either killed there or dumped. The crimes created panic in the East End. When the crimes remained unsolved, the chief of Scotland Yard had to resign, the Home Secretary nearly lost his office, and the panic threatened to turn riotous and possibly even bring down the British government. There was nothing private about the Ripper’s doings. But the case was never solved. (Maybe we’ll talk about Patricia Cornwell someday).
When you’ve got a mystery killer, he can be anybody or anyTHING. He can be a ghost, or an immaterial entity that travels the galaxy feeding off fear, or an occultist who has prolonged his natural life by performing strange blood rituals. Those are just a few variations, and they have all been done. In the past 7 years, in fact, there have been two Ripper movies dealing with the subject of reincarnation: Ripper Man and Hell’s Gate.
Jack is great fodder for science fiction and the supernatural. After all, nobody alive really knows what happened. Nobody alive was there.
