Ghosts of the Tower of London (2 page)

This attitude of mind was very much in evidence in the family of a yeoman warder living in the Casemates, the apartments situated within the thickness of the outer walls of the castle. In the early 1980s he and his wife became aware of a figure which came out of a room, passed across a corridor and disappeared into one of the arrow-slits which pierces the opposite wall. It moved quickly, never visible for more than a couple of seconds, and appeared quite frequently to the residents, who familiarly referred to it as the ‘Flitter.’ Guests staying in other of their rooms complained of a feeling that they were not alone, and of hearing the sound of deep, measured breathing, and this sensation had been experienced in other apartments in the Casemates, sometimes accompanied by other, more unpleasant emanations. In one, the occupants became aware of a strong dank smell which occurred about ten o’clock each night for over a fortnight, a smell reminiscent of mouldering clothes. There was also a feeling of intense evil where the smell was strongest. In that particular apartment the three-year-old son of the family was found sitting at the end of the bed, whimpering and tense and, as described to me by his mother, as ‘looking at something through his closed eyelids.’

Children seem to be very susceptible to supernatural visitations. In the terrace of houses once the Tower’s hospital, the family in one of the flats reported that although their small son frequently played in a comer of the lounge, once or twice a month he would run out of it and stay a few feet away, staring into the corner and crying. No amount of cajoling would persuade him to return to his usual spot, even when his father went there and tried to coax him.

And it was related to me by a 1920s resident of the Tower that Eileen, the teen-aged daughter of a yeoman warder then living in the Broad Arrow Tower, felt far from alone when going up the spiral stairs to her bedroom. On this occasion, the ‘presence’ walked around the spiral ahead of her, abruptly stopping when she stopped, and her bedroom felt suddenly cold and damp. Again a search revealed nothing but empty rooms and locked doors.

The Bloody Tower, of course, cannot be left out, so grim is its history, and it was during World War I that its then occupants, a yeoman warder and his family, almost had a glimpse of the unbelievable. Their daughter Nellie went up to bed as usual, her bedroom being the one in which the two little Princes were believed to have been murdered, only to scream as she saw ‘two boys in funny clothes’ sitting on her bed. Running downstairs she returned with her parents, who later commented on the chill, eerie atmosphere in the room. Nothing was found, and the matter was later reported to the Governor of the Tower.

This extra awareness seems to be possessed, not only by children, but also by animals. In 1979 the poodle owned by a yeoman warder living in the Casemates would growl and bark while staring up at Northumberland’s Walk, That stretch of inner wall battlements adjoins the Martin Tower wherein Ambrose Rookwood, one of the Gunpowder Plotters, was imprisoned and interrogated prior to being hanged, drawn and quartered, and it overlooks the site of the rifle range in which enemy spies were shot; so who knows just what caused the poodle’s hackles to rise?

From poodles to labradors, two of which lived in a house on Tower Green in the early 1980s. Their owners, a yeoman warder and his wife, were awaked at one thirty in the morning by a gentle knocking on their bedroom door. The sound grew louder and more insistent, but on opening the door, no-one was there. Although everything was checked for the possible cause of the noise, radiators, loose window catches, etc., the knocking continued until four o’clock, the two dogs meanwhile barking so wildly that eventually they had to be shut in the kitchen.

The houses surrounding Tower Green, in the very heart of the castle, look out on to the private execution site, and in earlier centuries provided the accommodation for some of the doomed prisoners. One house in particular stands on the site of that occupied by Lady Jane Grey before her decapitation by the axe, and in the 1920s Nellie and her family moved there from the Bloody Tower. Coming home with friends one night, they walked across the cobbles, then stopped as, approaching the house, they saw the face of a young girl looking out of Nellie’s bedroom window. Entering the house they hastily told her parents and a search was immediately instituted but, as usual, no trace of anything untoward was discovered, and the episode became yet another unsolved entry in the Tower records.

Part of the shock caused by a supernatural experience is the sheer unexpectedness of it, even though one’s training has been to prepare one not to be caught unawares. Even yeoman warders and Army sentries are initially taken aback, but because of their service background quickly recover and react with their usual efficiency. And so, when a tall dark figure appeared near the Martin Tower in the small hours of the morning and seen to ‘drift’ down the adjacent steps, no time was lost in turning out the guard and conducting a widespread search of the entire area. Alas, the search proved fruitless - as was a similar one some years ago, in the 1970s, when a sentry became aware of a crouching figure watching him from behind the locked glass entrance doors of the Waterloo Block. The silhouette was unmistakeable, being outlined by a bright light behind the figure, and even as the sentry stared, the shape moved away. Despite his fright the soldier acted promptly, summoning assistance and, with other members of the guard, searched the locked building from top to bottom, and had any living person been hiding there, he would certainly have been detected and apprehended.

In 2002 I was contacted by the Officer of the Guard in the Tower, who related an occurrence involving one of his sentries who, while on post facing the Wakefield Tower in the middle of the previous night, suddenly saw the figure of a man wearing a hat and long dark coat mounting the steps leading up from the base of that tower. On reaching ground level the ‘man’ turned left under the archway leading to the Inner Ward. The sentry, aware that all the Wakefield doors were locked and that rationally there could not have been anyone at the foot of those steps anyway, immediately called out the guard and a thorough search was carried out, with the almost inevitable negative result. I interviewed the somewhat shaken young soldier over the telephone and have no doubt whatsoever that he had seen what he said he had seen, inexplicable or not.

On other occasions, of course, the phenomenon is so ordinary and commonplace as to cause no unease at all - at first. What was more pleasant to the author and his wife than the smell of hot, freshly baked bread? Yet no-one was baking bread or cakes anywhere in the vicinity! Nothing wrong either, for a tourist visiting St John’s Chapel in the White Tower, to hear medieval music being played on the organ. Except that the Chapel doesn’t possess such an instrument! And who was the man seen at midday by a yeoman warder in the Waterloo Block not long ago? On entering a corridor the yeoman warder heard a voice say “Oh, sorry!". He turned, to see a man approaching the swing doors six paces away. One door being propped open, the man passed through and turned the corner. The yeoman warder, now curious, followed - to find no-one in sight, all other doors being locked and securely barred! He recalled that the figure, far from being clad in Tudor dress, wore an ordinary suit and a ‘wartime type’ brown trilby hat. The Waterloo Block is relatively modern, and did in fact house a German spy awaiting execution by firing squad in the Tower in 1941.

All being ex-Warrant Officers or Sergeant Majors, and therefore trained by their service background to be observant and not easily duped, yeoman warders can be relied on for detailed descriptions when necessary. So when, before dawn one October morning, a warder on his way to open the archway doors at the front entrance to the Tower, saw an unexpected figure ahead of him as he approached the Bloody Tower archway from Tower Green, he took good note of his appearance. A tall man, he said, wearing a long coat and a sort of floppy brimmed hat. Curious to know who was about so early, the warder sought to catch up with the man as he passed under the Bloody Tower; yet once through its arch, the warder looked to left and right along Water Lane, to see nothing at all along the full length of the roadway, only the high ballium walls on each side and the water lapping the steps of Traitors’ Gate.

But in case anyone should suspect that only the yeoman warders and soldiers are susceptible to such supernatural occurrences, let me relate the instance in the 1970s when two workmen unlocked the great wooden door of the Salt Tower one morning, only to hear the sound of footsteps on the floor above, footsteps which slowly paced back and forth. Eventually the sound ceased, and it was a very reluctant pair of workmen who ventured up the spiral stairway to the chamber which had once housed badly tortured Jesuit priests - only to find an empty room, the dust lying undisturbed on the floor and ledges.

The same tower featured in yet another frightening episode a year later, when a young workman, having finished his task in the upper room, closed the door after him and started down the stairs. Halfway down the unlit spiral he suddenly heard the sound of stamping feet in the room he had just vacated. Thinking that some-one, somehow, had got in, he retraced his steps, only to find the room empty, the light still on (the switch being at ground level). It was then that understandable reaction set in and, pausing not, he fled from the Salt Tower. Meeting the author minutes later, he recounted his experience and we conducted a thorough search, but the sounds could not be duplicated by making the boards creak or windows slam; with the young man on the spiral stairs, only MY stamping feet could reproduce the sounds he had heard.

Another episode involved, not a workman, but a postman, delivering mail to the Tower families. A hundred yards from the Well Tower, a small tower on the outer wall, he saw a yeoman warder in blue undress uniform sitting on the steps outside its front door. Such an everyday sight at 10.30 in the morning was far from unusual, but as he got nearer he saw that the warder was no longer there. Somewhat surprised, he spoke to another warder some little distance away, who explained that HE was the only one on duty in that area, and that the Well Tower had been empty and locked up for years.

Coincidentally the Well Tower had been a residence in the 1960s, and the yeoman warder’s wife who had lived there related to me how she had been pushed out of bed by unseen hands one night, to land unceremoniously on the floor! On telling her husband - for they occupied separate beds - he informed her that the same thing had happened to him on the previous night!

So physical contact is also a manifestation, and was experienced by a London Tourist Board Guide who, as he left St John’s Chapel in the White Tower, distinctly felt a hand grasp his shoulder and squeeze it twice. Expecting it to be a colleague, he swung round, only to find nobody near him. Similar supernatural mischief has also been practised on such inanimate, 20th century objects as radios and electrical appliances. In the Lanthorn Tower, manned by office staff, kettles and refrigerators were occasionally switched on, or off if already on, resulting in cold kettles and warm fridges! In an effort to thwart the playful spirits, the switches were taped over - but later were still found to have been operated!

Perhaps the most inexplicable and blood-chilling visitation in the 1970s occurred in the Royal Chapel of St Peter ad Vincula, the last resting place of the three executed queens and those decapitated on Tower Hill. As related to the author by the chapel’s organist not long after it had happened, late one evening he was practising in the darkened chapel, the only illumination coming from the small organ light immediately above the music rack. Whilst playing, he suddenly heard the heavy entrance door open and close and, assuming it to be a patrolling yeoman warder who had entered, he turned and looked over the organ screen. No-one was there, but as the last echoes of the organ chords died away, he looked up - to see a face, glowing eerily, about fourteen feet from the floor, against a supporting pillar near the chapel door. For seemingly minutes he stared unbelievingly at the apparition as it floated there, then saw it fade away. Badly shaken, he admitted that although he had frequently practised his music late at night, in future ALL the chapel lights would be on!

Ghostly occurrences similar to this have been experienced in other places within the castle, not only by residents or staff, but by tourists and passers-by, some of the reports dating back a century or more. Many residents live in the Tower for a considerable number of years yet encounter nothing untoward; others take such happenings in their stride, accepting them as inevitable consequences of the Tower’s bloody history. But when all is said and done, remember - the Tower’s ghosts don’t really care whether YOU belive in them or not!

© G. Abbott
7 Kent Place
Kendal
Cumbria LA9 4EY
tel; 01539-727339
May 2004