Ghost Hunting Gone Wrong: The Hammersmith Ghost of 1804 and Sprectrecide in Self Defense
The night of January 3, 1804 is bitterly cold and moonless. The residents of the borough of Hammersmith on the western outskirts of London are ill at ease and on edge as a still winter’s darkness descends over their neighborhood. Since early November of the previous year the people of this working class suburb have been reporting sightings of a white, sometimes formless almost translucent spectre floating through the air. Some, especially those that have the misfortune of having to pass by the Hammersmith churchyard after nightfall on their way home from work, have even claimed to have been groped or attacked by the shrouded spirit. Speculation in the neighborhood has been running rampant. Many believe that the so-called “Hammersmith Ghost” is the disembodied spirit of a man who hung himself the previous year and was buried in the consecrated ground of the churchyard. According to English law, up until the year...