Once Upon a Time, On a Dark Stormy Night...

Dark, stormy, and cold is the kind of night I think of when I hear the name Jack the Ripper. This was almost exactly the kind of weather we encountered on the Jack the Ripper tour. I have never really learned about Jack and I wasn’t too sure about what it was that he was famous for. Donald Rumbelow, the tour guide and writer of The Complete Jack the Ripper, could not have been any better than he was. Not only did he know what he was talking about while giving the tour, he knew the exact spots that murders occurred and the timeframes in which they happened. Even the most miniscule information about Jack the Ripper seemed to make a bigger impact because of the way that he told us.

The way that he killed his victims was rather gory. The fact that, not only would he strangle them until they died, but then would proceed to slit their throats back to their spines and cut their stomachs from the breast bone to the pelvis bone was chilling to me. The fact that someone can do that to another person without feeling regret or guilt is beyond me. And though it is a very gruesome story, I find it very enticing and I would love to read Donald’s actual book. He made the tour extremely interesting and fun due to his exceeding knowledge of Jack the Ripper.

I could barely stand the cold and windy night, but I suppose that made the tour that much more creepy. The fact that it went on into the night as it was getting darker was the perfect affect for such a ghostly story. When I heard that Jack only targeted prostitutes, I wondered why these women weren’t catching on to the fact that there was a killer on the loose looking for women dressed exactly like them. If I was a prostitute at that time, I would have been keener to the fact that I probably shouldn’t be wearing slutty outfits and huge hats, like Donald said these women would be wearing. I understand that they didn’t have much money to buy different clothes, but I would at least try to conceal my profession.

Now that I have been on the Jack the Ripper tour with the professional Jack the Ripperist, I can say that I have a newfound admiration for the Jack the Ripper stories. They have caught my interest enough to look further into the stories and spooky nights that the murders took place. The sole fact that no one knows exactly who he was to this day is quite amazing, seeing as how we have so much technology now a days that figures those things out for us, though these murders did take place in the late 1800’s. Jack the Ripper was a sneaky killer and is still on the loose to this day in my mind. Now if only someone had the information as to who he was, this mystery would be solved.