In 1803 in Hammersmith, a village then outside London, England, a ghostly apparition appeared in a church graveyard and frightened late night passersby. When a blunderbuss toting excise officer mistakenly shot a bricklayer dressed head to shoes in white was shot to death, his trial for murder began a nearly 200-year legal debate in the United Kingdom over what could be asserted as a valid self-defense justification for a charge of murder or manslaughter.
—David Bassler