Obscure Occurrences : The Murder Case of The Hammersmith Ghost

 In the December of 1803, the residents of Hammersmith, a small town located on the northern banks of the river Thames, started facing a ghostly problem. They started reporting petrifying encounters with a phantom that haunted the lanes, churchyards and fields of the town. With some witnesses describing it as a white hooded figure and others claiming it to be in the skin of a beast, one concordant thing about the ghostly figure was the terror it inflicted upon its victims. It struck so much terror in the mind of the residents that they tried their best to not go out of their homes after five in the evening.

Magazine Drawings of the Ghost

Ghost Attacks

 On 15 December 1803, while Thomas Groom, a brewer servant, was walking through Saint Paul’s Churchyard with a fellow servant at around 9 pm, he encountered this ghostly figure. According to his own account, something came from the tombstone behind him and caught him by the throat. It twisted him around but he did not see anything in front of him. He tried pushing it away with a fist and while doing so, he felt something that resembled a great coat. This incident gave Thomas a terrible fever from which he very lately recovered.

 On 29 December 1803, while William Girdler, the private watchman who was appointed by residents of the town, was on his nightly rounds, he reported seeing a tall whitish figure. When he walked towards it to get a better look, he noticed that it was a person who had covered himself up with a white cloth. Underneath the cloth, he wore a dark coat with metal buttons. William tried nabbing him but the person fled into the darkness.

 Even with the dawn of the new year, the attacks of the ghostly figure never stopped. At the beginning of January 1804, the ghost attacked two women. With one elderly and the other pregnant, the shock caused by the terrorizing encounter killed them both. One night in the same month, while a driver of a coach was travelling on a remote lane in the town, he started hearing a strange rustling sound. When he looked around to see what was causing the sound, he saw a strange white figure gliding over the nearby meadows parallel to him. As it got closer and closer, he noted that it had bladders on different parts of its body. Completely terrified, the driver jumped out of his carriage and ran back to the town, leaving behind his passengers and his horses. When he returned back with over a dozen residents by his side, he found the traces cut and the horses grazing in a nearby field.

The Murder

 Following this event, a clergyman and a resident of the town offered a reward to anyone who could capture the ghost. With half of the residents considering this ghost a real one and the other half considering it as a man acting as a ghost, groups of young men armed with guns began roaming the lanes and fields of the town by night to put an end to the troubling ghost. One of these men was a 29-year-old excise officer named Francis Smith.

 On 03 January 1804, armed himself up and headed out to hunt for the ghost at around 10:30 pm. When watchman William met him at the corner of Black Lion Lane, smith told him that he was out in search of the ghost. After the meetup, William continued on his rounds and Smith plunged into the darkness to continue on his hunt. At the same time, a bricklayer named Thomas Millwood was going to his house from his mother’s house and he was still clad in his work clothes which were completely white. Because of his work clothes, he had already been mistaken for the ghost twice and even this time, he was mistaken for a ghost by Smith. Thinking Millwood was the ghost, Smith shot him. With a bullet put through his jaw, Millwood met his demise and his body was taken to the Black Lion Inn. Smith acknowledged the crime he had committed and he turned himself in.

 Despite Smith claiming that it was an accident and that he only killed Millwood because he resembled a ghost, he was sentenced to death on 6 January 1804 but his sentence was changed just in a few days’ time. On 24 January 1804, he was pardoned by the King himself on condition he severed one year in prison.

The Ghostly Attacks Pause and Resume

 By the time of Smith’s trial, one of the culprits behind the haunting was found. It was discovered that a shoemaker named John Graham had a habit of disguising himself as a ghost. He was a religiously inclined man who was the principal singer in the Chapel. This made him the last guy to be suspected as the man behind the haunting. According to Graham, he did it to take revenge on his apprentices after they scared his children by telling him ghost stories. However, Graham was adamant that he went out dressed up as a ghost only once. This was accepted by the community and no further action was taken against him.

 Following this incident, the ghost stopped appearing and life in the town started returning to normal. With the fear slowly dissipating, more and more people started venturing into the dark and the Hammersmith ghost eventually became a distant memory. But the ghost would come back to haunt them two decades later.

 On 03 December 1824, the town residents were greeted by the headline “A New Hammersmith Ghost”, in their newspapers. In the lanes and roads of the town, a tall white figure started crossing paths with females only to magically disappear later. One night, while a girl was returning home after her work in Angel Public House, a tall white figure appeared in front of her and started chasing her. The poor girl was so scared by this that she was subject to dangerous fits. A few nights later, when a hardworking man was returning home from his work, the ghost jumped on his back, threw him to the ground and then vanished. The man was left with a broken arm. The ghost attacked its third victim a few days later. This time it was a woman whose clothes were torn to pieces. The woman was found unconscious on the road with multiple deep scratches on her body.

 On 15 February 1825, the true identity of the ghost was revealed. When the ghost tried attacking a man named Worsley, he got hold of it. It was revealed that it was not a ghost but a farmer named John Benjamin who was pulling up the ghostly antics. After he was caught, the sightings of the ghost stopped. So, were all the ghosts of Hammersmith merely dressed up human beings? The headline of the newspaper published on 29 July 1955 says no.

Claims of a Real Ghost

 The newspaper article told a story that was not publicized until then. In 1803, a man slit his throat open and died right next to the church. He was buried in the churchyard. Back then, it was believed by the locals that it was the ghost of this man that was haunting the town. The person who shared this information with the newspaper claimed that his great-grandmother had seen a tall white figure rise from the tombstone of the man’s graveyard. She claimed that it had flaming eyes and it chased her until she fainted. When she woke up the ghost was already gone.

 Two days later, the poor woman died because of fear. The woman’s husband i.e. the anonymous person’s great-grandfather apparently saw the ghost on the first full moon night in August for the last time. According to the article, the ghost was rumoured to appear every 50 years on the first full moon night of August. According to a paranormal investigator named Chris Farman, the claims became true.

 On 5 August 1955, which was the first full moon night of August, Chris Farman and 17 other paranormal investigators witnessed a white figure rise out of the dead man’s tomb in the middle of the night. The figure did not seem to have legs and it appeared as if it was hovering over the floor. After drifting around the churchyard for some time, it moved back to its tomb and disappeared.

Conclusion

 In 2005, the next time the ghost was supposed to appear, several newspapers tied to build up anticipation for the occasion but it did not catch public attention as it did in 1955. Thus, not much information about the events in 2005 is known and to confirm if the ghost is true or not, one has to wait until 2055. So, was Hammersmith haunted by a real ghost or a man dressed up like a ghost? The answer remains a mystery.