My wife thinks Jack the Ripper is a cryptid.

I was prompted to write this post by a discussion on casebook.org. One individual was discussing the probability that the diary “proving” that James Maybrick was the Ripper was a hoax—but not like Bigfoot, which the commenter insisted was real.

I thought this was hilarious.

What is a cryptid? When we think of the concept, we think of the Loch Ness Monster, the Mothman, the Fresno Nightcrawler, even Alien Greys—fanciful creatures of modern legend. Does Jack the Ripper belong in such a fantastical category?

Here’s a good, if lengthy, definition of the term I found on Wikipedia, which I have quoted in full:

Cryptids are animals or other beings whose present existence is disputed or unsubstantiated by science. Cryptozoology, the study of cryptids, is a pseudoscience claiming that such beings may exist somewhere in the wild; it has been widely critiqued by scientists. The subculture is regularly criticized for reliance on anecdotal information, and because in the course of investigating animals that most scientists believe are unlikely to have existed, cryptozoologists do not follow the scientific method. Many scientists have criticized the plausibility of cryptids due to lack of physical evidence, likely misidentifications, and misinterpretation of stories from folklore. While biologists regularly identify new species following established scientific methodology, cryptozoologists focus on entities mentioned in the folklore record and rumor.

So what does the Ripper share with this description?

• We do not know for certain that one individual ever existed who could be accurately described as Jack the Ripper. While it seems likely that at least Tabram, Nichols, Chapman, and Eddowes were killed by the same person, we don’t know this. I don’t believe those four murders are unrelated, but it’s possible. Certainly the link is “unsubstantiated by science.”
• The cryptozoology subculture is “[reliant] on unsubstantiated information,” and so, I’m afraid to say, is the Ripperology subculture. The “facts” as we know them come almost entirely from Victorian newspaper reports, and the press of that time and place were hardly known for journalistic rigor, much less scientific rigor. The closest we might have had to facts would have been police reports, and these are pretty much non-existent today. And honestly, I don’t place much faith in the Metropolitan Police then, or even in the police today, to collect actual facts.
• “Cryptozoologists do not follow the scientific method,” and neither do many Ripperologists. Just today I read a Facebook post (repeated on casebook.org) claiming to have used Bayesian analysis to “scientifically prove” a certain individual was the Ripper. Sorry folks, you can’t use Bayes’ theorem that way. Then there’s the whole debacle with shawl DNA supposedly proving the Ripper’s identity—I don’t have room here to discuss what is wrong with that claim, but it’s a lot. We just don’t have the testable evidence to apply the scientific method to this case, especially after all this time.
• And as for “misinterpretation of stories from folklore,” well, half of Ripperology is folklore. The claims that get made that don’t hold up but are taken as gospel—that all the victims were sex workers, that serial killers never stop or don’t change their MO, that a certain five victims are “canonical”—constitute a kind of persistent folklore that just muddies the waters. Even the “facts” themselves, the newspaper reports, are a kind of folklore, hardly better than rumor.
• You want to talk about “misidentifications?” Ask poor Prince Eddy, or Walter Sickert, or Dr. Gull, or Lewis Carroll, or any of the other countless “suspects” who could not conceivably been The Ripper, but who have been tarred by association.
• Some aspects of the folkloric Ripper align with those of a cryptid, such as his ability to move unseen through the lamplit streets of Victorian London performing brutal vivisections in mere moments. He has a sort of supernatural quality—one that has led supposedly serious people to suggest an actual supernatural connection. No “witness” can seem to agree on what he looks like, kind of like The Mothman or various alien visitors. And while trained professionals (the police) used the admittedly poor crime-solving technology of the period to hunt for him, they could not find him, despite making what was, after they were urged on by the press, public outrage, and the Queen herself, a herculean effort.
• The popular conception of Jack the Ripper, the toff in a top hat with a curly mustache and a doctor’s bag, bears no relation to what little we know about the killer. He’s definitely a fiction kept alive in the popular imagination, like a cryptid.

So is Jack a cryptid? I think so, in a very real sense. I don’t doubt for a moment there was at least one real serial killer on the loose in the streets of 1888 Whitechapel. But this character, this phantom, this creature “Jack the Ripper,” a name taken from a letter that was probably fake—he’s at best a legend and at worst a myth.

All this shouldn’t be taken to mean that Ripperology isn’t a worthwhile pursuit, especially if your goal is to learn about the Victorian Era. Ripperology is fun. But just as we’re never going to find the Jersey Devil or chupacabra, we’re never going to definitely know the identities of the Whitechapel killer or killers. People who think the goal of Ripperology is to solve the murders are missing the whole point.