Ghosts of the Tower of London
Page 8
Questioned the next day by the Jewel House Keeper, Mr Edmund Lenthal Swifte, the sentry was ‘trembling and haunted by fear, a man changed beyond recognition’. Within two days he was dead-during which time his bayonet still pierced the ancient timbers of the door he had died guarding.
And such are the quirks of fate that it was Lenthal Swifte himself who was involved in one of the eeriest emanations ever to occur within the fortress. One cold night in October 1817 the Keeper of The Crown Jewels was having supper in the dining room of the Martin Tower. The three doors to the room were closed and heavy curtains shrouded the two windows. His family, consisting of his wife, their son aged seven, and his wife’s sister, sat round the oblong table, his wife facing the fireplace. Two candles illuminated the scene, though doubtless a fire burned bright as well. Mrs Swifte raised a glass of wine and water to her lips, then suddenly exclaimed, ‘Good God! What is that?’ Swifte looked up – to see what appeared to be a glass cylinder about three inches in diameter floating above the table; within it bluish-white fluids swirled and writhed. It hovered then, moving slowly along, passed behind his wife. Immediately she cowered, covering her shoulder with both hands. ‘Oh Christ!’ she shrieked. ‘It has seized me!’ That she felt something was evident, for no mirror faced her, only the fireplace, yet her sister and son saw nothing of the appearance. Mr Swifte, filled with horror, sprang to his feet and hurled his chair at the hovering apparition - to see the tube cross the upper end of the table and disappear in the recess of the opposite window.
Later Mr Swifte, an intelligent and highly responsible official, set down a detailed report of the occurrence. Never once when recounting it during later years did he change a single detail – or deny the terror which imprinted itself on his memory that dark night in the Martin Tower.
Not all visitations in that locality are, however, hostile. South of the Martin Tower and connected to it by Northumberland’s Walk lies the Constable Tower. Once, long ago, the residence of the Constable of the Tower of London, it is now the home of a yeoman warder and his wife.
Over the years since 1973 a ‘presence’ has manifested itself. This spirit has nudged the wife’s arm so determinedly that the pen spluttered sideways across the paper! The occupants of the Constable Tower are immediately aware of its arrival, because it is heralded by a strong ‘horseman’ smell, a compounded odour of leather, of sweating horseflesh, - that of a rider who, having just dismounted after a long hard gallop, strides into his home.
‘He’s here again!’ comments the yeoman warder, and his wife nods agreement. They’re not apprehensive for, far from being hostile, this spirit generates a warm friendliness - a rarity indeed in the Tower of London!
The Salt Tower
There is a merrie England
Of a compact sphere,
That dwelleth here
Within the Tower of London.
Merrie enough if there be gain
At plain man’s torture,
Lover’s pain,
Liar’s shriek, honesty’s prayer,
And the signet of blood on floor and stair.
So pause as ye go, think as ye stand,
Of the fluttering kerchief,
The enfeebled hand.
Did ye not see them?
Say now for sure,
For a ghost made not welcome,
Appeareth the more.
The Salt Tower guards the south-east corner of the Inner Ward. Originally it could only be entered via the battlements, as could the Beauchamp Tower and others. The lower room therefore was a dark and noisome dungeon, half underground, though the upper cells were little better. Dating from the thirteenth century, it too confined many prisoners behind its grim walls. Most of them were Jesuit priests, caught in the religious persecutions of the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. One such was Henry Walpole, a young Englishman. He had witnessed the execution of Jesuit priests, men who had been terribly tortured for their Catholic beliefs. This spectacle, at a time when this country was at war with Spain, only inspired Walpole to take over their task. Already converted, he became a Jesuit and in 1589 he joined the Spanish Army in Flanders, as a chaplain. Four years later he returned to further the Catholic cause. He was captured and sent to the Tower of London. There every effort was made to extract information from him. Despite being racked many times he remained silent. He was imprisoned in the Salt Tower and there on the cold stone walls he carved his name and those of the saints who gave him the strength and fortitude of soul to endure the torture and confinement. At last, in 1595, he was taken to York where he was tried and executed, probably by being burned alive.
One late afternoon in 1973 a yeoman warder visited the Salt Tower. He had recently been reading a book about the Jesuits, a book which discredited their principles and condemned them as traitors. He mounted the narrow winding stairs and, alone in the gathering gloom, he studied the inscriptions so laboriously carved by tortured hands. Without warning, a sudden glow illuminated the prison chamber - and he felt some ‘thing’ touch him on the back of the neck! For one moment he stood frozen with fear – then hardly knowing what he was doing he fled down the spiral stairs and out of the arched doorway. It was some considerable time later that he was able to control his racing pulses and calm down. Yeoman warders are not given to imagining things - but the book, needless to say, is no longer in his possession!
Nor is it only sensations which pervade this particular tower. On 12th January 1957, soon after midnight, two guardsmen on sentry duty saw a shapeless white form high up on the battlemented roof of the Salt Tower. As they stared unbelievingly, the apparition lingered - then slowly faded away!
Just a few yards from the Salt Tower stands the new History Gallery. Before its foundations were laid, excavations took place alongside the base of the Roman Wall there. At a depth of more than fifteen feet a grave was discovered in 1976, a grave containing the skeleton of a young man. He lay on his back, his knees slightly bent, his hands crossed before him. His head was tilted to one side - and in the skull gaped an ugly hole.
Who was he, this Iron Age youth who had lain there for nearly two thousand years, making his the earliest human remains to have been found to date within the City? How different was his life from ours? How violent his death - and why?
And will his spirit return, to drift phantomlike in the dim recesses of the History Gallery, to reproach those who dared to violate his last resting place?
Conclusion
I would smile me a smile,
Sing me a song,
Dance me a dance
As the day is long.
But who would I partner,
Death or delight?
Now that is the question….
That is the fright!
Most of the uncanny happenings within the Tower of London have been experienced by sentries and yeoman warders. This is quite understandable, they being on duty in the Tower grounds during the traditional haunting times, the hours of darkness.
But should you, dear reader, visit the Tower of London, do not get the impression that you are exempt from similar experiences; do not think for one minute that the Past will not reach out and tap you on the shoulder, to remind you of the horrors and violence enacted within this most historic of castles.
Within and around the towers the memories linger, waiting perhaps to reveal themselves to those whose thoughts or sympathies may be receptive to them.
A candle flame is almost invisible in the sunlight -but it is still there. So it is with the Ghosts of the Tower of London - and if you look where the shadows linger, in the corners, round the stairs – you may see them too.
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Ghosts of the Tower of London by G. Abbott first published in 1980 by Hendon Publishing Co.
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