Ghosts of the Tower of London

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 Ghosts of the
Tower of London

G. ABBOTT

Yeoman Warder (retd)

HM Tower of London
Member of Her Majesty’s Bodyguard of the
Yeomen of the Guard Extraordinary

Verses by Shelagh Abbott

 Contents

Introduction
Hauntings in the Tower
‘Ghosts!’
The ghostly hand at Traitor’s gate
The Phantom of Waterloo Block
Mystical Miasma
The Threshold
The Middle Tower
The Outer Ward
The Bloody Tower
Tower Green
The Beauchamp Tower
The White Tower
The Martin Tower
The Salt Tower
Conclusion
Bibliography
 Foreword

Ghost stories have a certain fascination for most people, whether

or not they believe in them, and it is difficult to imagine a more
appropriate habitation for ghosts (if they exist) than Her Majesty’s
Tower of London, with its nine hundred years of eventful and, at
times, grim and violent history.
Over the centuries, and indeed in recent times, people have
reported inexplicable sights and sounds in the Tower. Yeoman
Warder Abbott is to be congratulated on his carefully researched
collection of these experiences, made additionally interesting by
the inclusion of historic details of the Tower and of the victims
whose ghosts are said to haunt their erstwhile prison.
I am confident that the reader will find this little book both
interesting and instructive.

Field Marshal Sir Geoffrey Baker

GCB CMG CBE MC
Constable of Her Majesty’s
Tower of London

October 1979
 Acknowledgements

Grateful acknowledgements to the Constable of Her Majesty’s

Tower of London, Field Marshal Sir Geoffrey Baker, GCB, CMG,
CBE, MC, the Resident Governor 1971–79, Major General Sir W. D.
M. Raeburn, KCVO, CB, DSO, MBE, MA, and to his successor,
Major General Giles Mills, CB, OBE. Also those of my colleagues,
past and present, without whose experiences this book would
have been a spiritless effort indeed!
The verses at the beginning of each section were written
especially for this little book by my wife Shelagh, to whom I am
deeply grateful both for them and for so much besides.
 DEDICATED
TO MY COLLEAGUES
THE YEOMAN WARDERS
OF
HER MAJESTY’S TOWER OF
LONDON
 When the merry wag doth hush his voice
And cower … then shall ye know
That ghosts do walk within this ancient Tower.
Fact or fantasy, truth or tale,
As shadows shorten and the skies grow pale,
Can ye with certainty stand and claim
That voices called – but no man came?

Shelagh Abbott
 GHOSTS OF THE TOWER OF LONDON
by Geoffrey Abbott, Yeoman Warder (retd.)
(Note; this article was based on the author’s researches while
living in the Tower during the 1970s and 80s, a period when the
threat of possible terrorist attack within the castle was ever-
present; lest it be thought that some of these ghostly visitations
could have been carried out by practical jokers, it should be
remembered that at that time, all night patrols of the grounds
were carried out by armed sentries).
The Tower of London, that stone time-machine whose walls
have witnessed so many horrific scenes of torture and execution,
must surely lay claim to be the most haunted group of buildings
anywhere. This royal palace, the oldest Norman castle in the
country, has not only been a royal residence and court, a place of
extravagant splendour in which Tudor kings and queens regaled
themselves, and from where the coronation processions set out
for Westminster Abbey, but also a State prison in which were
incarcerated those accused of treason and conspiracy.
Behind its embattled walls, violent death in all its many forms
snuffed out the lives of the famous and the infamous. The sword
ended the life of Queen Annne Boleyn, the axe slew Queen
Katherine Howard, Lady Jane Grey, Margaret Pole, Countess of
Salisbury, and Lord Hastings. Griffin, Prince of Wales, fell to his
death from the high windows of the White Tower, and the Duke
of Clarence was drowned, plunged into a butt of malmsy wine. A
fatal disease struck down Judge Jeffries, the ‘Hanging Judge’, in
the Bloody Tower, and Lady Arabella Stuart died insane in the
Queen’s House. Headless corpses of those decapitated in public
on Tower Hill were buried in the Royal Chapel of St Peter ad
Vincula within the castle, and enemy spies of both World Wars
faced military firing squads in the Tower, thereby paying the price
for their crimes.
But even violent death came as a merciful release to the many
who were tortured within these grim walls; men like the Jesuit
priest John Gerard, the Gunpowder Plotter Guy Fawkes and his
fellow conspirators, and Protestant Cuthbert Sympson, were but
a few of the many, women too, who suffered on the dreaded rack
and by other instruments of inhumane persuasion in the vaults
beneath the White Tower.
Is it any wonder then that the intensity of their agonies should
imprint itself so strongly on the aura of the ancient castle as to
echo down the centuries, the restless spirits seeking to remind us
of what they endured in the Tower? And who should be more
aware or such eerie visitations than the yeoman warders and
their familes who live in the Tower, and the sentries on their
nightly patrols? And it was just such one of those soldiers who,
on duty at the Main Gate during World War I, saw a small
procession approaching him from Tower Hill, the ancient site of
the public executions. Two men carrying a hurdle were escorted
by others dressed in long black gowns and, heedless of the
sentry’s instinctive command that they halt, the macabre group
noiselessly proceeded into the Tower, passing so close to the
soldier that he could see the corpse which lay prone on the
hurdle, the head lying by the side of the body. The guard was
turned out, the whole area searched, but nothing untoward
found. On subsequent nights the same sentry again witnessed
the grim cavalcade, the man eventually having to be rostered to a
different shift of duty. Coincidentally, similar sightings were
experienced during World War II, the dress of the funereal
escorts then being reported as identical to that worn by the
Sheriff of London’s men during the Middle Ages.
Betwixt Tower and Thames, the Wharf provides a cobbled
roadway lined with ancient cannon and green lawns. Deep
beneath the Wharf are other, more modern installations such as
drains to carry rainwater into the river. And in 1973 a workman,
having descended into the shaft to inspect the area, suddenly
heard a deep voice eching along one of the tunnels, Distinct yet
distant, the words “Oh dear!” came to his ears and, even as he
peered apprehensively into the gloom, a deep and prolonged
sigh came from the tunnel which stretched behind him.
Frantically he scrambled out, and nothing would induce him to
enter that particular shaft again!
 Inexplicable voices also alarmed the residents of the Devereux
Tower in the 1920s. This tower is situated on the inner ballium
wall, a bulwark honeycombed with passages leading to other
towers once used for more sinister purposes. It was while the
family of an Army NCO was having a late meal when they
suddenly heard loud knocking and moaning noises coming from
the thickness of the wall beneath their apartment. They checked
the cellars, but to no avail, and the matter was reported to the
colonel of the regiment. Similar sounds were frequently heard on
later occasions but, as so often happens in the Tower of London,
such occurrences become part of the way of life there and,
unless particularly alarming or distressing, are actually missed
when they cease.
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