The Tower of London:
1,000 Years of Blood,
Ghosts, and Royal Secrets
There is a building in London that has been continuously occupied for almost a thousand years. In that time, it has served as a royal palace, a treasury, a zoo, a mint, a records office, and — most famously — a prison. Thousands of people entered it under guard and never came out again. Two of them were queens of England, beheaded on the grounds at the order of the king who had loved them. One of them was a thirteen-year-old girl who had been queen for nine days before someone decided she needed to die.
The Tower of London sits on the north bank of the Thames, its pale stone walls unchanged in their essential outline since William the Conqueror built the first version of it in 1078. Every British monarch from William to the present has some connection to this building. For many of them, that connection was the last connection they had to anything.
It is now one of the most visited tourist attractions in England. And at night, when the tourists are gone and the gates are locked, the Yeoman Warders who live inside its walls have learned not to walk certain corridors alone.
Anne Boleyn
Of all the ghosts reported at the Tower of London, the most consistently sighted over the longest period of time is Anne Boleyn, the second wife of Henry VIII. She was imprisoned in the Tower in May 1536, charged with adultery, incest, and treason — charges that most historians regard as fabricated by a king who had grown tired of her and wanted to remarry. She was executed on Tower Green on May 19, 1536. She was approximately 35 years old.
The executions on Tower Green were semi-private — attendance was limited to a small number of witnesses, as opposed to the public spectacle on Tower Hill outside the walls. The ax man required two strokes. Anne Boleyn's body was buried in the Chapel Royal of St Peter ad Vincula, inside the Tower grounds, in an unmarked grave.
She has been seen there ever since.
"I was making my rounds at approximately two in the morning when I saw a figure standing near the Chapel. Female, in period dress, with what appeared to be something carried under her arm. I approached. The figure did not move. When I was perhaps ten feet away, it was no longer there. I have worked here for nineteen years. I do not talk about this to visitors."
— Account from a Yeoman Warder, shared anonymously, 2018The earliest documented sighting of Anne Boleyn's ghost at the Tower dates to 1864, when a soldier named Henry Dundas was court-martialed for abandoning his post. His defense: he had encountered a white figure near the Queen's House, challenged it, received no response, and when he thrust his bayonet at the figure, it passed through without resistance. He fainted. Two other soldiers testified they had witnessed the incident from a distance. He was acquitted.
The Princes in the Tower
In 1483, two boys were brought to the Tower of London. They were Edward, aged twelve, and Richard, aged nine — the sons of King Edward IV, who had recently died. Their uncle, Richard of Gloucester, was declared their protector. Edward was to be crowned king. He and his brother were housed in the Tower in preparation for the coronation.
They were never seen again.
Richard of Gloucester was crowned Richard III. The boys had simply disappeared. What happened to them has been debated by historians for over five hundred years. In 1674, workmen renovating the Tower discovered a wooden box beneath a staircase containing the skeletal remains of two children. The bones were interred in Westminster Abbey by order of Charles II. In 2012, historians requested permission to DNA test the remains. The request was denied.
The two boys — known to history as the Princes in the Tower — have been reported as ghosts within the Tower complex since at least the 16th century. They are described consistently: two small figures in white nightgowns, holding hands, standing in the corridors of the Bloody Tower at night. They appear and disappear without sound. No one who has reported seeing them has reported feeling threatened. Several accounts describe instead an overwhelming sadness — not fear, but grief — upon encountering them.
One Yeoman Warder's wife, interviewed for a BBC documentary in 2009, said she had seen the two figures standing in the hallway outside her bedroom at 4am. She had initially assumed they were children of another family who lived inside the Tower. When she asked them what they were doing, they turned and walked into a wall. She said: "They looked lost. That's the only word for it. They looked like children who didn't know where they were supposed to go."
Lady Jane Grey
Lady Jane Grey was seventeen years old when she was executed on Tower Green in February 1554. She had been queen for nine days the previous year, placed on the throne by Protestant nobles after the death of Edward VI, before the rightful heir Mary I retook the crown. Jane had not sought the throne. She had been placed on it. She was beheaded for it anyway.
Her ghost is reported specifically on February 12th — the anniversary of her execution — and almost exclusively by guards and Yeoman Warders rather than visitors. The accounts describe a white figure on the battlements of the Salt Tower, standing motionless, visible for a short period, and then gone. In 1957, two guardsmen independently reported seeing a white shape on the battlements on February 12th. Their accounts, given separately, described the same figure in the same location.
The Ravens
Six ravens are kept at the Tower of London at all times, maintained by a Ravenmaster whose sole official duty is their care. The reason is a prophecy, or a legend, or a superstition — the origin is unclear — that if the ravens of the Tower of London ever leave, the Crown and the Tower will fall. Charles II is said to have refused to dismiss them even when asked to do so by his astronomers, who found their presence inconvenient.
The ravens are clipped to prevent flight. They are named. They have personalities. They live, on average, ten to fifteen years. When one dies, a replacement is sourced. The position of Ravenmaster is one of the most senior within the Yeoman Warders.
Whether the ravens sense something about the Tower that humans cannot, nobody says officially. But the Ravenmasters, when interviewed informally, tend to describe their birds as unusually attentive to certain parts of the grounds — the Chapel, the Bloody Tower, the area around Tower Green — in ways that differ from their behavior elsewhere. They gather. They watch. They do not approach.
- The White Lady — reported at the window of St John's Chapel, waving to visitors below. First documented sighting 1897.
- Sir Walter Raleigh — imprisoned in the Tower three times over decades. His figure is reported walking the Broad Arrow Tower, smoking a pipe.
- Thomas Becket — Archbishop of Canterbury, murdered in 1170, long before the Tower's construction. Legend holds he appears during times of national crisis to strike the walls with his cross.
- A bear — from the Tower's days as a royal menagerie. A sentry in 1816 reportedly died of fright after encountering what he described as a large bear emerging from a doorway. His death is documented in Tower records.