- In the winter of 1803, the outskirts of London found themselves haunted by a ghost story that would end in murder.

The residents in the rural village of Hammersmith whispered stories of a strange apparition haunting their community.

An eerie ghostly figure clad entirely in white was spotted roaming the local churchyard and streets.

There were even reports of the figure attacking men, women, and ch.. The tales of assaults led people to be terrified of something spectral lurking in the dark.

The events in Hammersmith even raised a legal question that would haunt British law for nearly 200 years.

A community became so convinced a ghost was stalking their neighborhood, an innocent man ended up dead.

Reports of the Hammersmith Ghost began in October, shout out spooky month, 1803, when witnesses claimed to see a tall figure wearing a white sheet prowling dark lanes at night, staying just out of reach of anyone who pursued it.

It appears suddenly, frightening whoever crossed its path and then vanished before anyone could catch it.

As the weeks went on, the story grew.

Most witnesses said it wore a white shroud, though others claimed it looked stranger than that, with a calfskin wrapped around its body in cloven feet with large glassy eyes staring out from the darkness.

Two women were said to have been seized by the apparition near a churchyard.

Another story claimed a wagon driver was so terrified by the sight of the ghost that he abandoned his team of horses and left his passengers in danger.

One more detailed account came from Thomas Groom, a brewer's servant.

At about nine o'clock at night, he was walking through the same churchyard with a companion when something rose from behind a tombs.. and grabbed groom by the throat.

He fought back, but in the darkness he couldn't make out a face.

All he could feel was something soft and heavy, like a great coat before the figure twisted away and disappeared.

Rumors began to fly about whose spirit would want to haunt the tiny village of Hammersmith.

Many were convinced it was the ghost of Thomas Flynn, who perished several years earlier in a dramatic fashion.

Abandoned by the wife he had abused, he'd fallen into a deep depression.

In August of 1800, Flynn traveled to Hammersmith to win back his wife.

When she refused his attempts at reconciliation, he stabbed her in the head with a poker.

Flynn then went to a nearby footpath where he cut his own throat before stabbing himself repeatedly several times in the chest.

He succumbed to his injuries a few days later, but his wife survived.

So was the Hammersmith Ghost the spirit of Thomas Flynn or something equally sinister?

Men began patrolling the streets to catch whatever was there.

One of those men was William Girdler, a local watchman whose job was to walk the village at night, keeping order.

If anyone was going to find the Hammersmith Ghost, it'd be him, but the ghost remained elusive.

In late December, a shoemaker's apprentice was walking home when he found himself face-to-face with the ghost.

Terrified he ran to Girdler to tell him what he'd seen.

At first, Girdler may have had reason to doubt him.

The village was full of ghost stories by then, but when he followed the boy, he saw the figure too, a white shape moving through the darkness.

Girdler gave chase.

For a moment, it seemed like the mystery might finally be solved.

Girdler got close enough to grab the ghost and yank off his white covering, and underneath it wasn't a ghost, but a man.

But before Girdler could identify him, the man slipped away into the darkness.

The incident should have helped calm some of the panic throughout the village, but it didn't.

At least one of the ghosts haunting Hammersmith was flesh and blood.

Someone was out there dressing up, frightening people, and slipping away before anyone could catch them.

Just a couple of weeks later, another man entered the story, Francis Smith, an excise officer who had been hearing the same rumors as everyone else.

One night in early January, Smith stopped at a pub and overheard more talk about the ghost.

Something about that conversation motivated him to act.

Smith went home, retrieved his musket, and returned to the pub, loading his weapon in front of witnesses.

He announced that he intended to hunt down the Hammersmith ghost, but before he went back into the night, he stopped to tell William Girdler of his plan.

After all, Girdler probably knew the ghost better than anyone.

Girdler agreed to join the hunt after he finished his rounds, but he would never get the chance.

Later that night, just after 11, Francis Smith saw a figure in white on Black Lion Lane.

He called out and when the figure didn't answer, Smith fired.

Smith wasn't firing at a ghost.

He shot Thomas Milwood, a local bricklayer.

Tragically, Milwood was wearing white clothing common to his trade.

The bullet went through his left cheek and killed him.

John Locke, a wine merchant, came upon Smith in the body almost immediately.

Smith was distraught.

He told Locke he had mistaken Milwood for the Hammersmith ghost and had never thought the figure could be a living m.. Smith and Locke went to find Girdler to report the incident.

Girdler arrived on the scene, accompanied by another man, Mr.

Stowe, to find Milwood's body lying in the street.

Notably, a street nearly obscured with thick rows of hedges.

It was later discovered that a week earlier, Milwood frightened two women and a man who also thought he was the ghost.

While Milwood was dismissive of the incident, his mother-in-law suggested he wear a colored jacket over his white work smock so that he would not be mistaken for the ghost again, if only he had listened.

Smith was arrested and charged with murder.

As he stood trial, he continued to deny knowing it was a man he had fired upon.

William Girdler was a key witness in the trial.

He testified that Smith had indeed approached him earlier in the night looking for the ghost and agreed to join him in the hunt after his rounds.

Girdler told of his encounter with the ghost a month earlier, saying the figure he saw wearing a large sheet had scared him as well.

Character witnesses testified that Smith was a kind, gentle, law-abiding man.

The victim's sister testified that she was a witness to the crime.

The night he was shot, Milwood came to their parents' house looking for his wife who had yet to come home.

As Milwood went to leave, his sister heard a voice cry, "Damn you, who are you and what are you?

I'll shoot you if you don't speak."

Then the gunshot.

Smith never denied shooting Milwood, but remained resolute that he truly thought he was a ghost.

There was some doubt to Smith's claims that he was unaware of who the victim was.

The coroner insurgeon detailed that Milwood's face was blackened by powder from the gunshot, meaning that Smith had to be very close to Milwood when he fired the gun.

Given Smith's comings and goings to the pub that evening, even though paper said he was sober, signs point too unlikely.

Smith admitted to killing Milwood, but held firm that it was a case of mistaken identity.

The jury had to determine if the misperception was enough to justify murder.

It left the court with an unusual question.

If someone kills another person while acting on an honest mistake, how responsible are they?

After hearing all of the evidence, the jury returned a verdict of manslaughter.

In other words, they believed Smith had unlawfully killed Thomas Milwood, but they didn't think he was a murderer in the criminal sense.

But Judge Lord Chief Baron MacDonald refused to accept their verdict.

Judge MacDonald instructed the jury that a charge of murder only had two possible verdicts, guilty or not guilty.

Judge MacDonald's position was that Smith was not acting in self-defense, approaching the victim with a loaded gun with the intent to kill.

In his mind, the shooting was both deliberate and unprovoked and Smith had no legal recourse to shoot the figure, ghost or not.

The judge sent the jury back to deliberate again.

After further review, the jury returned a new verdict.

Smith was guilty of murder and sentenced to death.

Fortunately for Smith, at the behest of the king, his sentence was commuted to one year in prison, but the question still remained, who or what was the Hammersmith ghost?

The publicity and bizarreness of the trial led to a confession.

Just weeks after the trial, local shoemaker James Graham admitted that he had scared his apprentice the year before, wrapping himself in a blanket and going out at night to spook people.

Graham only assumed the guise of a ghost in retaliation against his apprentices, who scared his children with stories of the ghost.

Graham insisted that it was only a one-time prank, but many villagers still believed he may have been behind more of the sightings.

There are varying reports as to whether Graham was ever brought in front of the magistrate.

Dressing up as a ghost doesn't exactly constitute a crime, but the rumors and ridicule that he faced were humiliating.

Graham's confession neatly explained the encounter witnessed by William Girdler, but it couldn't account for the dozens of other sightings and reported attacks.

There's another disturbing possibility.

We have to keep in mind that people were actually being attacked, specifically women, possibly by someone in disguise, using the rumors of a ghost to commit assaults.

It's possible that at least some of the attacks weren't the work of pranksters, but someone using the growing ghost panic to perpetrate real crimes.

The theory of a human predator behind the attacks gained substance when reports of a similar ghost emerged about eight years later.

Like the previous ghost, women were most likely to be attacked.

This time the figure was spotted not only in Hammersmith, but nearby villages of Webb’s-lane,# Chiswick Lane, and Acton.

The reports were so numerous that police were quick to investigate, likely in part to avoid another tragic accident.

The police eventually arrested a man wearing a long white dress and carrying metal claws, which he allegedly planned to use to climb walls and hedges.

The man, identified in the press only as a celebrated captain of sporting notoriety, failed to appear for his court date the following Monday.

It's not known what happened to the suspect after this point.

His story faded from recorded history.

Whether he was responsible for the attacks remains unclear, and Hammersmith ghosts would live on.

In 1825, a young farmer named John Benjamin was arrested after he was found scaring people while wearing a white sheet on horseback.

By his own confession, it was merely a drunken prank after one too many at the White Heart, which just so happens to be the same pub Francis Smith was at the night he mistakenly shot Thomas Milwood years before.

The Hammersmith ghost made its way into books detailing the history of London, although the claims of the ghost impact were exaggerated much in the same way they had been in the early press.

People even wrote fan fiction about the ghost.

William Girdler disappears from the record after the trial.

And while Smith was ultimately convicted of murder, his case established a legal precedent that someone could be held liable for their actions even if they were operating under a mistaken belief.

Throughout the 1800s, legal textbooks referred to the Hammersmith case whenever they discussed mistakes of fact, a case of mistaken identity doesn't absolve the defendant of wrongdoing.

In 1819, William Oldnall Russell paraphrased the Hammersmith ghost case in his book, Treatise on Crimes and Misdemeanors, concluding simply it is no excuse for killing a man that he was out at night as a ghost, but the case wouldn't rest.

It sparked decades of debate among judges and legal scholars.

Lawyers returned to the Hammersmith case repeatedly because it forced them to confront a very difficult question in criminal law.

Should someone be judged by what actually happened or what they genuinely believed reality to be?

And so 180 years later, Francis Smith's ghost returned to the court.

In 1984, the UK Court of Appeal revised the same legal question Francis Smith raised almost two centuries earlier, "What happens when someone acts on a mistaken belief?"

This time, the court ruled that jury should consider the facts as the defendant genuinely believed them to be a major shift from the principle that originally convicted Smith.

In 2008, this interpretation would help lay the groundwork for a change in UK law, stipulating that self-defense can be used as a defense, even if it was mistaken identity.

Under the new law, Smith could have been convicted of a lesser offense.

Whatever people were seeing in Hammersmith all those years ago, one thing is certain.

The ghost may not have been real, but its consequences were.