Near the end of 1803, many people claimed to have seen or even been attacked by a ghost in the Hammersmith area of London, a ghost believed by locals to be the spirit of a suicide victim. On January 3rd 1804, 29 year old excise officer named Francis Smith, a member of one of the armed patrols set up in the wake of the reports shot and killed what he thought to be the aggravating apparition, but did he really shoot and kill a ghost, or was it just a poor bricklayer leaving his sister's abode? And if Smith didn't gun down the ghost, who, or what, was the Hammersmith Ghost?