The Tower of London

written by Matthew Gorman

Tower of London seen from the river with a view of Traitors Gate, by Viki Male

Grim and imposing, and rising from the London skyline to loom starkly above the dark waters of the Thames, stands the age-old Tower of London. This immense fortress, originally constructed in 1078 by William the Conqueror, the first Norman King of England, has served throughout the centuries as a royal palace, an observatory, a menagerie, and as an infamous prison and place of capital punishment.

Unspeakable acts of torture and hundreds of executions have occurred within the confines of the Tower of London during the course of its prolonged existence, and the list of those who have met with the headman’s axe upon the Tower’s two execution sites, Tower Green and Tower Hill, reads like a veritable who’s who of British history. It should not be surprising then that many believe that the tortured and oft unjustly executed still roam the towers and walkways of this gloomy edifice today, and that the frequent sightings of fully-formed apparitions and other supernatural phenomenon have earned the Tower of London a contending spot for the most haunted building in all of England.

The Tower of London as a title is a bit of a misnomer, as the structure is, in fact, a sprawling castle comprised in part now of some twenty individual towers, each with its own sordid and often bloody past, and each it seems with its own resident phantoms.

The original tower built under the rule of William I (The Conqueror) is known today as The White Tower, and it remains virtually unchanged since its original construction. Standing at 90 feet in height, the White Tower casts it stern shadow across the streets of London, guarding a cache of horrible secrets within.

The White Tower is haunted by the spectre (we’ll use the English spelling) of a lady in white. Although her identity is unknown, it is said that in life the woman would often stand at one of the tower’s many windows and wave to groups of children passing by below. Her ghost is often seen roaming the grand galleries of the White Tower and it is believed that the acrid scent of her perfume sometimes lingers outside the entrance to St. John’s Chapel (which is part of the White Tower). Many a Custody Guard has been reduced to retching by the considerable potency of this ghostly odor.

Outside the chapel exists a large gallery in which is displayed the ceremonial armour (yup, English spelling again) of the notorious King Henry the VIII. Guards entering this gallery by way of the chapel have sometimes reported a horrible crushing sensation that descends upon them and forces them staggering from the room.

In one incident on a stormy winter morning, a guard patrolling the White Tower experienced the feeling of an invisible cloak being thrown over his head by some unseen force. As he struggled to free himself, the phantom garment was pulled taut around his neck and began to choke him mercilessly. He somehow managed to break free from this ghostly strangulation and ran fear stricken to the guardroom where his fellow guards bore witness to the red marks about his throat, the evidence of his terrifying encounter.

One possibly anecdotal occurrence in the White Tower allegedly involved a guard by the name of Arthur Crick. Mr. Crick had elected to sit down on a ledge for a quick rest during his rounds. He removed one shoe and began rubbing his tired foot when he claims to have heard a disembodied voice address him from the surrounding gloom. “There is only you and I here,” it said to him, to which Mr. Crick succinctly replied, “Just let me get this bloody shoe on and there’ll be only you.”

Outside the White Tower is a huge grassy stretch lined with plane trees known as Tower Green. This was the place where public executions were carried out throughout the Tower of London’s past. A memorial on the grounds pays its respects to all who were executed on this parcel of land and includes the names of Anne Boleyn (second wife of Henry the VIII whom he executed for not bearing him a son and allegations of adultery) and Lady Jane Grey (grandniece of Henry the VIII who ascended to the throne of England for a brief period of nine days before her heirdom was challenged and she was executed). The ghosts of these two tragic figures are said to return to this, the place of their deaths.

A residual haunting that occurs on Tower Green relives the execution of Margaret Pole, Countess of Salisbury. Margaret was sent to her death by King Henry the VIII as revenge for remarks made by her son, Cardinal Pole, in which he decried Henry’s claim as head of the Church in England. As Cardinal Pole was safely in France at the time, Henry elected to dispatch with his seventy-two-year-old mother instead. At her execution when she was told to kneel, Margaret replied, “So should traitors do and I am none.” In a horrific spectacle, the executioner ended up chasing Margaret about the scaffold and literally hacking her to death blow by blow. On the anniversary of Margaret’s death, her screaming ghost can be seen on Tower Green being chased by a spectral executioner as the scene of her shameful murder repeats itself again and again.

In another of the Tower of London’s many towers, The Wakefield Tower, a residual haunting plays out as well. Just before midnight on May 21, 1471, as he knelt in prayer at a small altar, King Henry the VI was knifed to death by a power-hungry Duke of Gloucester (who would later become the infamous Richard the III). Henry’s spirit returns each year on the night of his murder to pace about the room until the final stroke of midnight.

In the tower known as The Bloody Tower, the ghost of Sir Walter Raleigh has been observed on occasion. And this tower is also the backdrop for yet another bloody chapter in the rise of Richard the III.

Upon the sudden death of Edward the IV, his twelve-year-old son, Edward, was poised to succeed his father’s throne as Edward the V. However, Prince Edward and his younger brother, Richard, were sent by their uncle, The Duke of Gloucester (later Richard the III) under the pretense of preparing for Prince Edward’s upcoming coronation. While there, the two boys were declared illegitimate by a corrupt Parliament and the throne was abdicated to Richard the III. The young princes then subsequently disappeared, never to leave the Tower of London, and were presumed murdered within The Bloody Tower on King Richard’s orders. The skeletons of two young boys were unearthed beneath a staircase at the Tower of London in 1674 seemingly confirming this suspicion. It is said that the apparitions of the two young princes still haunt the Bloody Tower to this day.

The tower known as The Salt Tower was once home to the Tower of London’s deepest dungeon. It was used to imprison Jesuit priests during the reign of Henry the VIII after the loathsome monarch outlawed Catholicism in England. The priest, Henry Walpole, imprisoned here in 1593, carved the names of the saints into the walls where they can still be read to this day. While no apparitions have been spotted in The Salt Tower, visitors to this tower have reported an eerie yellow glow that fills the room and the feeling of ice cold fingers touching the back of their necks. It is also said that dogs refuse to set paw into the structure.

The keeper of the Crown Jewels (the jewels have been housed within The Tower of London since 1303) at the time, one E.L. Swifte bore witness to the supernatural proclivities of the Tower of London in October of 1817. He and his family had just sat down for dinner in the Martin Tower where they made their residence when his wife cried out in alarm, “Good God! What was that?” Swifte looked up to see a glass beaker filled with a strange, blue liquid floating seemingly unaided about the room. When it drifted behind his wife’s chair she exclaimed in panic that it was attempting to grab her. At this, Swifte picked up a chair and brandished it at the strange apparition at which point it headed for the window before disappearing into thin air.

The above are but a brief smattering of the hundreds and hundreds of ghostly tales surrounding the Tower of London. In addition, there exist a number of superstitions concerning the tower and the fate of England itself. One contends that Britain can never be defeated as long as the tower stands and is summed up in the saying “He who holds the tower, holds the power”, and another maintains that if the hundreds of resident ravens populating the tower were ever to leave it for good then the tower would fall. Well, whether or not the squawking mobs of ravens will forever make their roosts upon the turrets of The Tower of London remains to be seen, but it seems almost certain that the tower’s ghosts are in for the long haul.