Did Spring-Heeled Jack really exist

Answer 1

Sort of.

The myth of Spring-heeled jack comes from the early 1800's and may have been (loosely) based off of a real person. Its not hard to believe that a series of grusome crimes might be mis-remembered and mis-reported, and as the crimes take hold of the public imagination, the distortion gets more and more extreme.

This is one of the anthropological explinations for the early pagan gods: That they may have been real people at one point, but the stories got scrambled like a message in a game of 'telephone'.

Also, for a brief time period, Spring-Heeled Jack was the name given to 'Jack the Ripper' in the papers (although, there is now some serious doubt as to whether or not this was actually one person, or a couple, possibly even copy-cat murders).