Can you see an 'FM' on the backwall in the famous Mary Kelly photograph?

[Lombro2]

We believe Jack is an unknown and unclassified bipedal primate. How dare Ike think he's anything but?!

[Kunochan]

This discussion is hilarious to me because my wife has decided that Jack the Ripper qualifies as a cryptid.

[Lombro2]

The James are not the May that will be Bricked for nothing

You're free to use that, Ike.

[Geddy2112]

It looks even better than the M-A-Y allegedly on her right leg.

What if the M A Y was written on a Brick? Clue?

[rjpalmer]

Someone on t'other thread asked how there could be arterial spray on the wall if Mary Kelly had no pulse.

The following is from Dr. Thomas Bond's report, 16 November 1888, based on his post-mortem notes, conducted 'in situ' in Miller's Court on the 9th.

"The wall by the right side of the bed & in a line with the neck was marked by blood which had struck it in a number of separate splashes."

[Underline added--note the specific emphasis by Bond that these 'splashes' were in a line with the neck].

What is inside of a neck? Arteries.

I've yet to encounter a single commentator with forensic experience who didn't believe that Dr. Bond was describing arterial blood spray.

But let's pretend, for the sake of argument, that it was just splashing from the knife. Does it matter?

Bond, while making the initial notes, was staring at the wall next to Mary Kelly, noting the pattern of blood splashes. He sees them. He describes them. Yet somehow, Bond fails to see the 'FM' in bloody letters that must have been 5 or 6 inches high, because, we are assured, the room was dim.

Also dim were the minds of everyone who worked for the Metropolitan Police in 1888 because not one of them had the brains to open the door, take the coat from the window, or bring a lamp into the room while Bond and his colleague conducted the most challenging postmortem of their careers.

They decided to do it in near darkness.

If this is not a fair representation of what is being suggested, please correct me.

[Lombro2]

Are you sure it's not an AY with maybe an M in there?

It looks even better than the M-A-Y allegedly on her right leg.

[GBinOz]

In this colourised version the square behind the body appears to be some sort of metal hoarding with raised lettering. I think that I can see the letters YA.

Cheers, George

[Lombro2]

Looking back, my major problem with the mainstream of any unsolved mystery is when the players covering the phenomenon or the mystery for the public, who in the old days were the authors like Green and Dahinden etc, leave out entire parts of the mystery. In the Bigfoot case, it would be the connection to UFOs. They purposely leave that out of their books.

That now leaves me with a bad taste in my mouth because it led me astray and not just intellectually. They should have at least mentioned it in passing, just to cover the bases. Now some of us know that what was left out is key to the solution or the connection was real, meaning they are both in the same category. (So The Six Million Dollar Man was actually the truer story after all.)

The same thing happens in Ripperology with things just left out on purpose, for no real reason other than personal sensibilities. In the end, what was left out will probably prove to be the key or the actual answer.

[GBinOz]

The trouble with being open minded is that you have to make sure your brain doesn't fall out!

Cheers

[Mike J. G.]

Hi Mike,

Would you change your mind if you actually sighted the creature?

Back in the 1980's I was in a small aluminium boat mid-morning on a fine day with my father and my brother. We were drifting the shallows of Wallaga Lake, which has a 95 mile foreshore abutting the Mount Dromedary wilderness, for flathead. Our attention was attracted by the crashing of a large creature in the forest. Suddenly it emerged onto the lake foreshore only about 30 feet away, and we had a clear unobstructed view. It was...not a Yowie, but a very large monitor lizard. We all commented that it was the biggest goanna we had ever seen. It was about 10 feet tip of nose to tip of tail and stood about 2 feet high at the shoulders. It literally lumbered along the foreshaw in plain sight. After a few minutes my father became a little nervous at the size of this animal, and started the motor and we quietly cruised away.

Since then I have realised that this creature was not a goanna, whose maximum size is about 4.5 feet. It was not a perentie. It was much larger and the perentie is a desert creature. My conclusion is that it could only be a Komodo Dragon. But while this creature originated in Australia before migrating to Indonesia, it has been considered to be extinct in Australia for 50,000 years - 10,000 years after the arrival of the aboriginal people.

So what should I think. That I didn't see this creature, even though there were 2 corroborating witnesses? Humans are a communal species, but some species are solitary. No one doubts the existence of snakes, but usually they see you before you see them, so you don't see them. In a wilderness area where a massive monitor lizard can go largely unseen, could not a more advanced species achieve the same, or more, anonymity? Just relating my experience.

I should add that there are wilderness areas in south-west Tasmania, that no man has ever seen, that could accommodate the thought to be extinct Tasmanian Tiger. Just because humans don't see it, doesn't mean it isn't there.

Cheers, George

Allo, George,

I've no doubt that monitor lizards exist, or snakes. Tasmanian Tigers have been rumoured to be still around, but absolutely no solid evidence has ever emerged, despite the efforts of groups that are actually actively looking.

Likewise for Bigfoot, or basically any upright hairy hominid. The trouble with Bigfoot is that it's actually a modern myth. A lot of people attempt to tie it in with native legends and various other myths from back in the day, and when you actually look into those claims they quickly fall apart. The natives of the Americas never once described anything remotely like a Bigfoot, and the great book by Daniel Loxton and Donald Prothero, "Abominable Science", goes into great detail in deconstructing this supposed history of Bigfoot.

In truth, Bigfoot was born in the 50s. Just as Nessie was born in the 30s. They have no actual history. If I saw a Bigfoot would I change my mind? If I wasn't drunk, absolutely. The trouble is, nobody has actually seen a Bigfoot, and when we actually go about deconstructing this so-called evidence, it quickly falls apart.

There have been e lots of documented expeditions going way back to the 1950s, from the Americas, to Russia, Asia, even Europe. Not one single shred of credible evidence has been unearthed to suggest that a viable breeding population of giant hairy bipedal ape-men are evading science across the globe. That's the trouble.

When we look at the USA, for instance, arguably where the legend was born in the 50s via Ray Wallace, you can check the BFRO (Bigfoot Field Research Organisation) map of sighting reports, and they all predominantly take place in areas not only highly populated by people, but highly populated by bears. Places that are teeming with people, loggers, scientists studying all manner of flora and fauna, outdoors people, biologists, etc. These people would be seeing evidence of Bigfoot on a weekly basis.

The best evidence for Bigfoot is still the 1967 film at Bluff creek, taken by a known conman who was in the middle of making a movie about Bigfoot based on a book about Bigfoot in which he featured a drawing, that he actually stole from another artist, which depicted the William Roe encounter with a female Bigfoot (complete with pendulous breasts) that looks suspiciously like the encounter Roger Patterson had in 1967...

Trust me when I say, I'm not being closed minded about the existence of Bigfoot. The trouble with being open minded is that you have to make sure your brain doesn't fall out!

Cheers

[GBinOz]

Bigfoot is a modern myth, certainly in North America, much like Nessie is a modern myth born in the 1930s following the sauropod of King Kong wowing audiences in cinemas, the same can be said for similar US based lake monsters.

Hi Mike,

Would you change your mind if you actually sighted the creature?

Back in the 1980's I was in a small aluminium boat mid-morning on a fine day with my father and my brother. We were drifting the shallows of Wallaga Lake, which has a 95 mile foreshore abutting the Mount Dromedary wilderness, for flathead. Our attention was attracted by the crashing of a large creature in the forest. Suddenly it emerged onto the lake foreshore only about 30 feet away, and we had a clear unobstructed view. It was...not a Yowie, but a very large monitor lizard. We all commented that it was the biggest goanna we had ever seen. It was about 10 feet tip of nose to tip of tail and stood about 2 feet high at the shoulders. It literally lumbered along the foreshaw in plain sight. After a few minutes my father became a little nervous at the size of this animal, and started the motor and we quietly cruised away.

Since then I have realised that this creature was not a goanna, whose maximum size is about 4.5 feet. It was not a perentie. It was much larger and the perentie is a desert creature. My conclusion is that it could only be a Komodo Dragon. But while this creature originated in Australia before migrating to Indonesia, it has been considered to be extinct in Australia for 50,000 years - 10,000 years after the arrival of the aboriginal people.

So what should I think. That I didn't see this creature, even though there were 2 corroborating witnesses? Humans are a communal species, but some species are solitary. No one doubts the existence of snakes, but usually they see you before you see them, so you don't see them. In a wilderness area where a massive monitor lizard can go largely unseen, could not a more advanced species achieve the same, or more, anonymity? Just relating my experience.

I should add that there are wilderness areas in south-west Tasmania, that no man has ever seen, that could accommodate the thought to be extinct Tasmanian Tiger. Just because humans don't see it, doesn't mean it isn't there.

Cheers, George

[Lombro2]

You’re welcome, Pc.

I highly recommend MK Davis who has the best breakdowns of the P-G Film for skeptics and non-skeptics. Even if he saw pools of blood. Who cares?

[Pcdunn]

This sounds so much like the issue with the Patterson-Gimlin Film. Most people see only a fifth or sixth generation copy, but you need to go to the original master copy to get a full appreciation of Patty.

Bigfoot Proof…3 Images That Prove the Patterson-Gimlin Film is Real - YouTube

This is another example of where mainstream Ripperology follows the pattern of the Bigfoot faithful and the Patterson-Gimlin believers, just so that people get the correct application of the analogy.

As for the letter M, I see nuzzing. And I don't see the wallet on Patty's right thigh, the sagging part on the butt that looks like a separation in a costume, or where Patty stops for a second to wait for Patterson to recover himself after he trips. I see nuzzing.

Thanks for your comments and the video link. I've subscribed to the YouTuber. Must confess to being interested in Bigfoot since encountering the original article about the Patterson-Gimlin film in one of my dad's magazines.

[c.d.]

Yeah, Pat I see the face as well. Now some might argue that the initials are supported by the diary reference but having a suspect (Sickert) who was an artist and then seeing a caricature is also quite a coincidence. So what is more likely? That both images are the result of pareidolia or that both Maybrick and Sickert were in that room?

c.d.

[Pcdunn]

I think it was Tempus Omnia Revelat back in the day who made the excellent observation that the photographer blasted the wall for a billionth of a second with some kind of LVP flash bulb - thereby bringing to life the detail on the wall.

Patricia Cornwell said in her video that she hired a top Forensics Document Examiner to sharpen the photo of Kelly on her bed using computer processing. After examining the wall next to the bed Cornwell said she saw a very distinctive caricature of Sickert's face. She does not mention seeing the famous F.M. initials of diary fame. She might have addressed the initials somewhere else but here she does not.

If you want to hang your hat on the effect of a flash bulb doesn't computer processing trump that by a great deal?

I couldn't find the image which she claims was a caricature of Sickert's face but I have seen it before and it does look like it. A much harder feat to pull of than initials consisting of straight lines.

c.d.

I too see a vague sketch or drawing of a human face, well above the supposed "M" letter, (as well as what seems to be a sketch of a female breast under the "face"). I think, though, they're the result of pareidola, or were drawn at a different time than MJK's murder. Just too awkward a position to have been drawn by the Ripper.