The Scribbler

The more The Scribbler read on various websites about Spring-Heeled Jack, the more his hair stood on end. This mysterious figure who plagued London and then the Midlands for decades in the 19th century had never been caught or identified.

Appearing in various guises, but usually in a cloak and helmet and a skin-tight suit of white oilskin and with protruding red eyes "burning like coals", he would accost people - usually women - sometimes trying to throttle them, and then blow blue flames into their faces before bounding away with great springing strides, often over tall hedges and rooftops.

Some believed he was a demon, others that he was a person of high rank who had accepted a wager to scare people to death and who had somehow fitted springs to his heels to allow him to move so swiftly over great distances.

All this spooked The Scribbler. That night he slept fitfully and with the light on in his hammock in his broom-cupboard home on the third floor of the T&A's Hall Ings premises, clutching his teddy, Elvis.

He slept even more fitfully the next night, having read about the 1926 antics of the Bradford Ghost. In the September of that year a white-clad figure in a pointed hood with oval slits for the eyes had over several nights frightened people on the Bierley housing estate and up Manchester Road. Lone women were its favourite targets. Although lots of people had turned out to hunt for it, it was never caught. And its campaign of terror had ended as suddenly as it had begun.

As the number of reported sightings of the man the T&A quickly dubbed the "Hobnailed Horror" grew, The Scribbler wrote all this up for a special feature, somehow managing to imply that this new apparition might be that 1926 ghost returned.

Oh how the letters came in! Angry parents complained that their terrified children couldn't get to sleep. Angry children made similar complaints about their terrified parents. Soon "Hobnail-mania" was gripping Bradford.

It wasn't long before the copycats began. Skeletons, white-sheeted ghosts, polar bears, gorillas and even a Dalek bounded, lumbered or trundled out of dark corners of the city centre emitting muffled "Hee-hees". But none of them could produce a trail of sparks to match that of the real Hobnailed Malcolm who after every incident in which he was involved would send an unstamped postcard to The Scribbler containing the simple message "Hee-Hee!"

"You'll have to solve this, Scribbler," grumbled the Assistant Editor with Special Responsibility for Counting the Pennies. "We can't afford to continue paying all this excess postage."

Speculation about the possible identity of Hobnailed Malcolm became the only topic of conversation around the town. The snug of the Boilermaker's Arms was no exception. "At first I wondered if Gaylord the Psycho had come back to plague us," said Boris the Landlord. "But I don't think he's bright enough."

"I think it's a theatrical spirit angry about the plan to pull down the Odeon," suggested Daphne the Venerable Barmaid.

The Scribbler was sitting at a table in the corner of the snug, half-listening to all this and reading through the notes in his book of the latest sighting, when Doris Thrope came in. Although she was known as "The Happy Medium," her expression was far from cheerful.

"I've something to show you, Scribbler," she muttered, putting a Morrisons carrier bag on the table. Your columnist peeped inside. What looked back at him were the laceholes of a well-worn hobnailed boot..

To be continued.