24/10/2026
Every town has a spooky tale the locals still whisper about. 👻
What’s the one from where you grew up?
I didn’t grow up in Britain, so I’ve been collecting them since I moved here 25 years ago. This is my 'favourite'.
Hammersmith Village, winter 1803. A figure in a white shroud had been seen around the village at night, grabbing people in the dark. Locals were terrified. On 3 January 1804, an excise officer named Francis Smith took a gun and went looking for it.
On Black Lion Lane, just after 11pm, he saw a white figure walking towards him. He called out. No answer. He fired.
It was Thomas Millwood, a bricklayer on his way home in his white work clothes. His wife had already begged him to cover up, because people kept mistaking him for the ghost.
Smith was sentenced to death, later reduced to a year’s hard labour. And the real ghost? An old shoemaker called John Graham, wandering about in a bedsheet to frighten his apprentice, who had been scaring Graham’s children with ghost stories.
Now tell me yours. Where are you from, and what’s the eerie tale everyone there knows? 🖤
