The Specters of the Tower: A Tale Told in Letters

19th century illustration of the Jewel House

In August 1860, a correspondent who signed his name only as “K.B.” sent a brief question to the magazine, “Notes & Queries.”  He asked, “Is there not a ghost story connected to the Tower of London, and what is it?  Has not the ghost, or appearance, been seen once at least during this century, and with fatal results?”

Little did “K.B.” know that this innocent query would soon open a Pandora’s Box of The Weird.  Over the following year, the magazine received a flurry of responses attesting to the fact that, yes, the Tower is one very strange place.  One account in particular can not even be called, strictly speaking, a “ghost story”--in fact, you’d have to label it as simply “uncategorizable.”  These tales of the “Tower ghost” have long achieved a certain fame in Fortean circles, so apologies if this is old news to some of you, but I couldn’t resist publishing them on this blog as well, simply because they’re so dang peculiar.

The fun started with a letter from one Edmund Lenthal Swifte:

I have often purposed to leave behind me a faithful record of all that I personally know of this strange story, and K. B.'s enquiry now puts me upon consigning it to the general repertory of Notes and Queries. Forty-three years have passed, and its impression is as vividly before me as on the moment of its occurrence. 'Anecdotage,' said Wilkes, 'is an old man's dotage,' and at 83 I may be suspected of lapsing into omissions or exaggerations; but there are yet survivors who can testify that I have not at any time either amplified or abridged my ghostly experiences.

In 1814 I was appointed Keeper of the Crown Jewels in the Tower, where I resided with my family till my retirement in 1852. One Saturday night in October, 1817, about the ‘witching hour,' I was at supper with my then wife, our little boy, and her sister, in the sitting room of the Jewel House, which then--comparatively modernised--is said to have been the 'doleful prison' of Anna Boleyn, and of the ten bishops whom Oliver Cromwell piously accommodated therein. For an accurate picture of the locus in quo my scene is laid, I refer to George Cruikshank's woodcut in p. 384 of Ainsworth's Tower of London, and I am persuaded that my gallant successor in office, Colonel Wyndham, will not refute its collation with my statement.

The room was, as it still is, irregularly shaped, having three doors and two windows, which last are cut nearly 9 feet deep into the outer wall; between these is a chimney-piece projecting far into the room, and (then) surmounted with a large oil picture. On the night in question the doors were all closed, heavy and dark cloth curtains were let down over the windows, and the only light in the room was that of two candles on the table. I sat at the foot of the table, my son on my right hand, his mother fronting the chimney-piece, and her sister on the opposite side. I had offered a glass of wine and water to my wife, when, on putting it to her lips, she paused, and exclaimed, ‘Good God! what is that?' I looked up, and saw a cylindrical figure, like a glass tube, seemingly about the thickness of my arm, and hovering between the ceiling and the table; its contents appeared to be a dense fluid, white and pale azure, like to the gathering of a summer cloud, and incessantly rolling and mingling within the cylinder. This lasted about two minutes, when it began slowly to move before my sister-in-law, then, following the oblong shape of the table, before my son and myself; passing behind my wife, it paused for a moment over her right shoulder (observe, there was no mirror opposite to her in which she could then behold it). Instantly she crouched down, and with both hands covering her shoulder, she shrieked out, ‘Oh, Christ! it has seized me!’ Even now, while writing, I feel the fresh horror of that moment. I caught up my chair, struck at the wainscot behind her, rushed up stairs to the other children's room, and told the terrified nurse what I had seen. Meanwhile, the other domestics had hurried into the parlour, where their mistress recounted to them the scene, even as I was detailing it above stairs.

The marvel--some will say the absurdity--of all this is enhanced by the fact that neither my sister-in-law nor my son beheld this ‘appearance,' as K. B. rightly terms it, though to their mortal vision it was as apparent as to my wife's and mine. When I the next morning related the night's horrors to our chaplain, after the service in the Tower Church, he asked me, ‘Might not one person have his natural senses deceived? And if one, why might not two?' My answer was, 'If two, why not two thousand?' an argument which would reduce history, secular or sacred, to a fable. But why should I here discuss things not dreamed of in our philosophy?

I am bound to add, that shortly before this strange event, some young lady-residents in the Tower had been, I know not wherefore, suspected of making phantasmagorial experiments at their windows, which, be it observed, had no command whatever on any windows in my dwelling. An additional sentry was accordingly posted, so as to overlook any such attempt.

Happen, however, as it might, following hard at heel the visitation of my household, one of the night sentries at the Jewel Office was, as he said, alarmed by a figure like a huge bear issuing from underneath the door; he thrust at it with his bayonet, which stuck in the door, even as my chair dinted the wainscot; he dropped in a fit, and was carried senseless to the guard room. His fellow-sentry declared that the man was neither asleep nor drunk, he himself having seen him the moment before awake and sober. Of all this, I avouch nothing more than that I saw the poor man in the guard-house prostrated with terror, and that in two or three days the 'fatal result,' be it of fact or of fancy, was that he died.

My story may claim more space than Notes and Queries can afford; desiring to be circumstantial, I have been diffuse.

This I leave to the Editor's discretion; let it only be understood, that to all which I have herein set forth as seen by myself, I absolutely pledge my faith and my honour.

EDMUND LENTHAL SWIFTE.

Swifte’s letter inspired a follow-up:

This unfortunate affair took place in January, 1816, and shows the extreme folly of attempting to frighten with the shade of a supernatural appearance the bravest of men. Before the burning of the armouries there was a paved yard in front of the Jewel House, from which a gloomy and ghost-like doorway led down a flight of steps to the Mint. Some strange noises were heard in this gloomy corner, and on a dark night at twelve the sentry saw a figure like a bear cross the pavement and disappear down the steps; this so terrified him that he fell, and in a few hours, after having recovered sufficiently to tell the tale, he died. It was fully believed to have arisen from phantasmagoria, and the governor, with the colonel of the regiment, doubled the sentry, and used such energetic precautions that no more ghosts haunted the Tower from that time. The soldier bore a high character for bravery and good conduct. I was then in my 30th year, and was present when his body was buried with military honours in the Flemish burial ground, St. Catherine's.

GEORGE OFFOR.

Swifte then replied:

Could I, by referring to circumstances of that period, have satisfied myself on Mr. Offor's dates, I would readily acknowledge their correctness, but on other points he is certainly mistaken. The Jewel House guard had been doubled before that fearful night—and, therefore, nec post nec propter, hâc—for the surer supervising the phantasmagorial pranks which some fair neighbours of ours were suspected of playing. When on the morrow I saw the unfortunate soldier in the mainguard-room his fellow-sentinel was also there, and testified to having seen him on his post just before the alarm, awake and alert, and even spoken to him. Moreover, as I then heard the poor man tell his own story, the 'figure' did not cross the pavement and disappear down the steps' of the sally-port, but issued from underneath the Jewel Room door-as ghostly a door, indeed, as ever was opened to or closed on a doomed man; placed, too, beneath a stone archway as utterly out of the reach of my young friends' apparatus (if any such they had) as were my windows.

I saw him once again on the following day, but changed beyond my recognition; in another day or two, not in a few hours, the brave and steady soldier, who would have mounted a breach or led a forlorn hope with unshaken nerves, died at the presence of a shadow, as the weakest woman might have died.

A moment's recurrence to my own personal adventure. Our chaplain suggested the possibility of some such foolery having been intromitted at my windows, and proposed the visit of a scientific friend, who minutely inspected the parlour, and made the closest investigation, but could not in any way solve the mystery. Subsequently, a professor of the Black Art favoured me with a call, and undertook to produce my cylindrical figure, or serpents on the ceiling, or any other appearance which I should bespeak, provided that he might have his own apparatus on the table, or (with the curtains drawn back) on the seven-gun battery immediately fronting the window, and where, by-the-bye, a sentry is posted night and day. His provisoes were of course declined, and the wizard acknowledged that of himself he was no conjuror.

Sir John Reresby, who was Governor of York Castle, records in his Memoirs, that one of the night sentries was grieviously alarmed by the appearance of a huge black animal issuing upon him from underneath a door in the castle. I have not my copy at hand to transcribe the passage; but the volume itself is not very difficult of reference.

Others soon joined the chorus:

Is Colonel Swifte aware of the publication made by Dr. Wm. Gregory in his Letters on Animal Magnetism, London, 1851, p. 494. &c.? There are circumstances mentioned in this account, certainly not obtained directly from Col. S. (as he is called) on which I think it very desirable, after his full account, that his comment should be made. Such are-the court-martial held on the soldier-his acquittal by means of Colonel Swifte's evidence that he was not asleep, but had been singing a minute or two before the occurrence-the declaration of the sergeant that such appearances were not uncommon, &c. I should suppose that all this is the additional snow which the ball has got by rolling.

A. DE MORGAN.

Up to a certain point there is a striking resemblance in the apparition recorded by Mr. Edmund Lenthal Swifte as having been witnessed by himself in the Tower in the year 1817, and one recorded in that curious volume, Footfalls on the Boundary of Another World, a collection of authenticated ghost stories by Mr. Robert Dale Owen. It is to be found at p. 282 of the English edition of the above named work, and is entitled 'Apparition of a Stranger.' I will transcribe as much of the story as will serve to show the likeness to Mr. Swifte's preternatural visitant:

In March of the year 1854, the Baron de Guldenstubbé was residing alone in apartments, at No. 23, Rue St. Lazare, Paris.

On the 16th of that month, returning thither from an evening party, after midnight, he retired to rest; but finding himself unable to sleep, he lit a candle and began to read. Very soon his attention was drawn from the book, by experiencing first one electric shock then another, until the sensation was eight or ten times repeated. This greatly surprised him, and effectually precluded all disposition to sleep; he rose, donned a warm dressing gown, and lit a fire in the adjoining saloon. Returning a few minutes afterwards without a candle, he observed, by light coming through the door of the saloon, just before the chimney (which was situated in a corner of the room, at the opposite diagonal from the entrance door), what seemed like a dim column of greyish vapour, slightly luminous. It attracted his attention for a moment, but deeming it merely some effect of reflected light from the lamps in the courtyard, he thought no more of it, and re-entered the parlour. After a time, as the fire burned badly, he returned to the bedchamber to procure a faggot. This time the appearance in the front of the fireplace arrested his attention. It reached nearly to the ceiling of the apartment, which was fully 12 feet high. Its colour had changed from grey to blue-that shade of blue which shows itself when spirits of wine are burned. It was also more distinctly marked, and somewhat more luminous than at first. As the Baron gazed at it, there gradually grew into sight, within it, the figure of a man. The outlines at first were vague, and the colour blue like the column, only of a darker shade. The Baron looked upon it as an hallucination, but continued to examine it steadily from a distance of some thirteen or fourteen feet. Gradually the outlines of the figure became marked, the features began to assume exact form, and the whole to take the colours of the human flesh and dress. Finally, there stood within the column, and reaching about half way to the top, the figure of a tall, portly old man, with a fresh colour, blue eyes, snow-white hair, thin white whiskers, but without beard or moustache.  He appeared to lean on a heavy white cane. After a few minutes the figure detached itself from the column and advanced, seeming to float slowly through the It returned to the fireplace. After facing the Baron it remained stationary there. By slow degrees the outlines lost their distinctness, and as the figure faded the blue column gradually reformed itself, inclosing it as before. This time, however, it was much more luminous, the light being sufficient to enable the Baron to distinguish small print, as he ascertained by picking up a Bible that lay on his dressing table, and reading a verse or two. He showed me the copy, it was in minion type. Very gradually the light faded, seeming to flicker up at intervals, like a lamp dying out.

For the remainder of this remarkable story, which was related to the author by the Baron de Guldenstubbé himself, I must refer the reader to Mr. Owen's book. Its marked resemblance, in some respects, to Mr. Swifte's narrative induced me to 'make a note of it.

JOHN PAVIN PHILLIPS.

Until now I have been very sceptical in matters of this kind, but I must confess this strange account by Mr. Swifte has impressed me with considerable interest. It was too circumstantial to attribute the appearance to optical delusion, and the depth of the window recesses, and the closed dark cloth curtains, forbid the possibility of the action of a magic lantern or phantasmagoria. Will Mr. Swifte oblige me, and through me several interested friends, with further information?

1st.-Was Mr. Swifte's son old enough to understand the vision, or to be impressed by the circumstance?

2nd.-What was the impression of the sister-in-law respecting the affair, as evidenced by the horror and expressions of Mr. and Mrs. Swifte?

3rd.-How did the phantom disappear, and did it assume any other form?

It must truly have made a profound impression upon the family, and haunted the imagination continually. Very few would have had the courage to continue the residence. The warders tell of a spectre said to flit about Sir Walter Raleigh's apartments. 

GEORGE LLOYD

When the catholic page of Notes and Queries was opened to my story, I became bound to satisfy its correspondents upon every personal and local circumstance. I, therefore, readily answer Mr. Lloyd's reasonable and seasonable questions :—

1.-My son had nearly closed his seventh year; and was endowed with more than the ordinary intelligence of childhood. Assuredly, he was not terrified with what he did not see; but he was exceedingly scared at his mother's outcry and my agitation.

2.-His aunt, to whom likewise the phantom had been invisible, and who knew nothing of its presence till she heard it described by her sister, treated it as our joint hallucination; contenting herself with the chaplain's logic--that the illusion which possessed one person's mind could as readily possess another's.

3.—It did not assume any other form; but, in the moment of my wife's exclamation and my striking at it with my chair, it crossed the upper end of the table and disappeared in the recess of the opposite window.

4.-That unforgettable night was continually discussed among us (my boy alone excepted, to protect his young mind from its impression), until he and they had quitted this world of realities wherein it is still my surviving mystery.

The preternatural transcends my philosophy; and the doctrine of chances does not, I suppose, deal with impossibilities. Nequeo monstrare, sentio tantum. I forbear, therefore, comment or inference, hardly expecting that my most absolute pledge of veracity shall ensure what I might claim in sublunary matters.

Sir Walter Raleigh, and the other Eidola of the Tower, may be left to its officials' traditionary snowball.

Professor De Morgan has made me, for the first time, aware of Dr. Gregory's publication. His account of this strange incident was not obtained "directly" from me, seeing that I never had the pleasure of his acquaintance, and his indirect details, as alluded to by Professor De Morgan, present a curious assemblage of errors. I have already stated that I' heard the ill-fated soldier described in the Tower guard-room by his fellow-sentinel, not as singing a minute or two before the occurrence,but as immediately before it, awake and alert on his post, exchanging with him some casual remark. Of the serjeant's comment, that 'such appearances were not uncommon,' I am as unaware as of the summary '&c.' wherein Professor De Morgan includes Dr. Gregory's other reminiscences; or of the court-martial,' whereat I did not attend, and of course bore no testimony to his wakefulness. Let Professor De Morgan be assured that the 43 winters which have since that date blanched my head have not added one single flake to his traditional snowball--the gatherings of which, whatever may be their increment under Dr. Gregory's manipulation, are to me an unknown quantity.

Of the military title attributed to me, I have hitherto been equally unconscious, my only martial experience having been during 1796-1803, when I bore arms in Ireland as a member of the Lawyers' Corps-a service which I would right gladly resume in 1861, with whatever spirit and strength might then be abiding in me.

EDMUND LENTHAL SWIFTE.

Enclosed is the story of an apparition in York Castle, alluded to by Mr. Swifte. The appearance, it will be seen, was not similar to that which caused the death of the soldier in the Tower. The preceding story about a witch is not worth quoting:

"One of my soldiers being on guard about 11 in the night at the gate of Clifford Tower, the very night after the witch was arraigned, he heard a great noise at the castle, and going to the porch, he there saw a scroll of paper creep from under the door, which, as he imagined by moonshine, turned first into the shape of a monkey, and thence assumed the form of a turkey-cock, which passed to and fro by him. Surprised at this, he went to the prison and called the underkeeper, who came and saw the scroll dance up and down, and creep under the door, where there was scarce an opening of the thickness of half-a-crown. This extraordinary story I had from the mouth of both one and the other.” Memoirs of Sir John Reresby, p. 238. "H."

All those who were interested by Dr. Gregory's account (received from Sir David Brewster) of supernatural appearances in the Tower of London, are much obliged by Mr. Edmund Lenthal Swifte's authentic statement of his personal knowledge of the occurrence, and by his correction of some Dr. Gregory's account of it. But there are two particulars in that account which are neither confirmed by Mr. Swifte in his own narrative, nor denied by him in his rectification of Dr. Gregory's statement, with which statement he appears to be acquainted only through Professor De Morgan's allusion to it, where those particulars are not mentioned.

Perhaps, then, Mr. Swifte, in addition to the interesting information he has already given upon the subject, will have the goodness to reply to the following queries:

1.-Is it true, as stated by Dr. Gregory, that Mrs. Swifte perceived a form, apparently not perceived in the cylindrical tube by Mr. Swifte?

2.-If so, what was her description of the 'form' perceived only by herself?

3.-Is there any truth in Dr. Gregory's statement of an immediate failure in Mrs. Swifte's health, consequent upon the supernatural appearance, and terminating, though not so rapidly as in the case of the soldier, in a no less fatal result?

The serjeant's comment, of which Mr. Swifte declares himself to be unaware, was probably made to the colonel of the regiment, who, in Dr. Gregory's account, appears to be confounded with the Keeper of the Regalia, the eye-witness of the indoors apparition.

Some readers of Mr. Swifte's narrative have not gathered from his expression, 'following hard at heel,' that the apparition to the soldier occurred, as stated by Dr. Gregory, on the same night as that within the Jewel House. But a collation of the narrative with Mr. Swifte's reply to Mr. Offor seems to leave no reasonable doubt that the same night is indicated by that expression.

"M. P."

While reading the case of Baron de Guldenstubbé, the Spectre of the Brocken rushed into my mind, and further reflection convinced me that two apparitions so closely resembling each other as those of Mr. Swifte and the Baron must be due to natural causes. The latter case also resembles one which recently occurred at Bonchurch, and was described in the Times. I would ask, Is it known whether the figure seen by the Baron in the column of vapour resembled himself? Whether the external air was very damp? and whether there had recently or ever been a fire in the stove in front of which the ghost appeared? It seems to have kept the line between the Baron and the fireplace, and the doorway was in a line also. As a faggot is mentioned, I suppose the fireplace in the saloon was an open one. Although unskilled in such matters, I venture to offer this hint, feeling very strongly that it is not reverent to refer to supernatural agency anything that can be solved by natural causes; and my reason tells me that the similarity of these two visitations is strong evidence against their being supernatural; while we have the testimony of the tourists, &c., on the Brocken, the gentleman at Bonchurch, Ulloa on Pichincha, and the host of Scotch 'second-sight' seers as to such effects in the open air. Then why may not the same have occurred in a column of fog descending a damp chimney.

Mr. Swifte's case is more difficult to account for, particularly as regards the sentinel; still, I think, if one case can be solved the other may, the clue once given,

One word as to the Baron's electric shocks. Can these be accounted for by atmospheric causes? His frame seems not to have been in a healthy state, as he could not sleep. Were they not simply those twitchings of the muscles, or prickings in the veins, which are not uncommon in ailing persons? We know how a state of semi-sleep magnifies every sound and feeling, and hence I think the truth of the Baron's 'electric shocks' may be doubted. “F. C. B."

In reply to the queries of F. C. B., I may mention that the apparition seen by the Baron de Guldenstubbé in his apartments in the Rue St. Lazare, at Paris, in no wise resembled himself, but presented the semblance of a "tall, portly old man, with a fresh colour, blue eyes, snow-white hair, thin white whiskers, but without beard or moustache, and dressed with some care. He seemed to wear a white cravat and long white waistcoat, high stiff shirt collar, and a long black frock coat, thrown back from his chest, as is the wont of corpulent people like him in hot weather. After a few minutes the figure detached itself from the column, and advanced, seeming to float slowly through the room, till within about 3 feet of its wondering occupant. There it stopped, put up its hand as in form of salutation, and slightly bowed.' The figure then returned to the column, as previously related, and gradually melted into the cylindrical vapour, until it was no longer perceptible. Upon the following morning the baron met the wife of the concierge, Madame Mathieu, and inquired of her who had been the former occupant of his room, adding:

His reason for making the enquiry was that the night before he had seen in his bedroom an apparition. At first the woman seemed much frightened, and little disposed to be communicative, but when pressed on the subject, she admitted that the last person who had resided in the apartments now occupied by the baron was the father of the lady who was the proprietor of the house, a certain Monsieur Caron, who had formerly filled the office of mayor in the province of Champagne. He had died about two years before, and the rooms had remained vacant from that time until taken by the baron. Her description of him, not only as to personal appearance, but in each particular of dress, corresponded in the minutest manner to what the baron had seen a white waistcoat coming down very low, a white cravat, a long black frock coat-these he habitually wore. His stature was above the middle height, and he was corpulent, his eyes blue, his hair and whiskers white, and he wore neither beard nor moustache. His age was between 60 and 70. Even the smaller peculiarities were exact, down to the high-standing shirt-collar, the habit of throwing back his coat from his chest, and the thick white cane, his constant companion when he went out.

Madame Mathieu further confessed to the baron that he was not the only one to whom the apparition of M. Caron had shown itself. On one occasion a maid-servant had seen it on the stairs. To herself it had appeared several times, once just in front of the entrance to the saloon; again in a dimly lighted passage that led past the bed room to the kitchen beyond, and M. Caron had dropped more than once in the bedroom itself. down in the passage referred to in an apoplectic fit, had been carried thence into the bed room, and had died in the bed now occupied by the baron. She said to him, farther, that, as he might have remarked, she almost always took the opportunity when he was in the saloon to arrange his bedchamber, and that she had several times intended to apologise to him for this, but had refrained, not knowing what excuse to make. The true reason was that she feared again to meet the apparition of the old gentleman. The matter finally came to the ears of the daughter, the owner of the house. She caused masses to be said for the soul of her father, and it is alleged-how truly I know not-that the apparition has not been seen in any of the apartments since. Up to the time when he saw the apparition the Baron de Guldenstubbé had never heard of M. Caron, and of course had not the least idea of his personal appearance or dress ; nor, as may be supposed, had it ever been intimated to him that any one had died, two years before, in the room in which he slept.--Footfalls on the Boundary of Another World. English edition, pp. 284-5.

In my former communication on this subject, I only copied as much of the Baron de Guldenstubbé's narrative as served to mark its likeness to the apparition seen by Mr. Swifte. The whole story is very well told, and will amply repay perusal.

JOHN PAVIN PHILLIPS.

Appropriately enough, Swifte had the last word:

I readily respond to M. P.'s queries:

1 and 2.-My wife did not perceive any form in the cylindrical tube, except the cloud or vapour which both of us described at the time, and which neither had ever described otherwise.

3.-Her health was not affected, and her life was not terminated by the appearance--be its cause what it might--which then presented itself to us.

I cannot supply the precise date of the sentinel's alarm. If 'following hard at heel' be a synchronism, then must Hamlet's mother have married his uncle on the day of his father's funeral; the 'morrow,' whereon I saw the poor fellow in the Tower guard-room, had reference to his visitation, not to ours, which I submit to F. C. B., is of the twain the more difficult of solution.

The Bonchurch and Pichincha cases have not come within my knowledge; the appearance in the Jewel House did not suggest to me the Brocken spectre; and the Guldenstubbé phantom fails in its parallel. We were not favoured by any portly old man, detaching himself from any vaporous column and resolving himself into it again; no 'electric shocks' or 'muscular twitchings' had predisposed us; and the densest fog that ever descended a damp chimney could hardly have seized one of us by the shoulder.

The only natural cause which has occurred to me is phantasmagoric agency, yet to say nothing of its local impediments in the Jewel House, the most skilful operator, with every appliance accorded him, could not produce an appearance visible to one-half the assembly, while invisible to the other half, and bodily laying hold of one individual among them. The causation of non-natural, preternatural, or supernatural effects passes my scholarship; and the anomalies of a formless, purposeless, phantom, foretelling nothing and fulfilling nothing, is better left to the adepts in psychology.  Davus sum, non Edipus.

EDMUND LENTHAL SWIFTE.