Ever dreamt of the Ripper?

[Phil H]

No, but I had recurrent nightmares from age 10 (or so) to 19/20.

There was a second show cinema in my home town that used to change programmes mid week. First half of week and evenings were horror, second part of week matinees was Tarzan, Roman epics etc etc. I used to love going on a Saturday afternoon.

On one occasion they showed the trailer for a film "Jack the Ripper" (which I now know to be the 1959 b&w film). The scenes of a top-hatted, caped, anaonymous figure with a Gladstone bag, walking on wet cobbles really scared me.

My unease increased when my parents (who knew little about the case) said he was never caught. In 1965 it was JUST possible that had Jack been young in 1888 he might still be alive - though very old!! That was enough. He became a bogeyman for me.

(I think I conflated the images from the film, the caped Spaniard that was the symbol of Sandiman's port, and the song about the "Sandman" who came to put children to sleep. (My nightmare was that Jack came to kill children as they slept.)

I only rid myself of the nightmare when I was attending the University College of wales at Aberystwyth around 1972, when I used the resources of the National Library of Wales to read all I could on Jack - Matters, Odell, Stewart, McCormick - and laid the ghost.

Ironically, my seat was right under the statue of the man who is now known as "Uncle jack"!!!

But I replaced the nightmare with a life-long fascination with the question, "Who might Jack have been?"

Phil

[Robert]

I once dreamt that I was Jack the Ripper, who was lying in bed asleep and dreaming of Horatio Nelson, who in turn was dreaming about Julius Caesar...

It took me bloody ages to extricate myself.

[Mayerling]

No, but I have dreamed about the Titanic Disaster several times.

On one or two occasions I have dreamed of looking at a book where the infamous Kelly photograph pops up. I always manage to avoid looking at it in my dreams.

Jeff

[sdreid]

I was a witness and dreamed that I saw JtR walking out of a building. He was about a 15-year-old kid.

[Heinrich]

Hmm ... Let's do some dreamwork.

Were you killer, cop, or victim?

I'll tell when you tell. K=453.

[mariab]

A few times.
In the first dream I was chasing the Ripper (after he had just killed someone) through meander-like Victorian yards, but eventually I lost him, and I was thinking to myself “I should have studied Rob (Clack)'s pics and maps better“.
In the second dream there was an assassin killing the Fenians among Ripperologists (go figure, it was a dream), and I was running around trying to warn some people until I somehow got knifed in the heart, was dying, and regretting it. :-)
I've also had a dream about a Ripper conference where Don Rumbelow was showing us a wall in London which contained graffitis of occult drawings allegedly engraved on MJK's bed.
Plus I once dreamed I was a spy instrumentalized by Lynn Cates to steal Okhrana records from the KGB in Russia and I was penetrating a building as a fake researcher, speaking fluent Russian.
The rest of the dreams are of a more private nature and unmentionable.

[K-453]

Hmm ... Let's do some dreamwork.

Were you killer, cop, or victim?