Jack Aitken was an arsonist whose ghost is reported to haunt the English city of Portsmouth.
The city's Royal Navy dockyard houses a building known as No. 18 store, or The Great Ropehouse, three storeys high and nearly 336 metres (1100 ft.) long. Originally built in 1700 (when the original brick building was destroyed by fire) it was rebuilt again in 1776 following another fire, this time deliberately laid by Jack Aitken, also known as Jack the Painter. Aitken was subsequently hanged for his crime, and his corpse left on display in the harbour inside a gibbet. York reports that he was executed on 10 March 1777 in front of a crowd of 20,000 people. Rather than using the traditional gallows they took the mizzenmast from a dry dock ship and erected it just for that purpose, so that he was hauled up 65 feet. His neck was not broken so that he instead suffocated. Local people have regularly reported that the chains of the gibbet can still be heard clinking in the wind during stormy weather, while there have also been sightings of what is believed to be his apparition, dragging heavy chains behind him.
References
- York, Neil "The Arsonist as Revolutionary" John the Painter and the War of American Independence. Lecture given at Brigham Young University 6 October 2005. Accessed 6 November 2008.
- Paranormal Database - Portsmouth. Accessed 1 November 2008.
- Haunted Mansions Around the World. Old Portsmouth. Accessed 6 November 2008.