The Tower of London Ghosts

About 4 min read

Few buildings in the world carry as much history in their stones as the Tower of London. Begun as the White Tower by William the Conqueror in 1078, the fortress on the north bank of the River Thames has served in turn as a royal palace, a prison, an armoury, a mint and the home of the Crown Jewels. It was inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1988 and is today cared for by the charity Historic Royal Palaces.

That long history is also a dark one. High-ranking prisoners were held within its walls, and executions took place both inside the fortress, on Tower Green, and just outside on Tower Hill. It is hardly surprising that the Tower has gathered more ghost stories than almost any other building in Britain — or that those stories are still being reported by the people who live and work there today.

The most famous of the Tower’s reported ghosts is Anne Boleyn, the second wife of Henry VIII. But she is far from the only one. The reported figures include a nine-day queen, two lost princes, a Tudor noblewoman and a sentry’s pale apparition that was once fired upon — and missed.

Table of Contents

A Fortress Built for Power

William the Conqueror ordered the White Tower built in 1078, a little over a decade after the Norman Conquest, to dominate London and assert his authority over a conquered city. Over the following centuries, successive kings added walls, towers and a moat, turning it into a concentric fortress and a royal residence.

The Tower’s role as a prison grew alongside its role as a palace. Its most famous prisoners were people of high status: future queens, archbishops, noblemen and royal children. Among them were the two young sons of Edward IV — Edward V and his brother Richard, Duke of York — who were lodged in the Tower in 1483 after their father’s death and were never seen alive again. Their fate remains one of English history’s great unsolved mysteries, and two small skeletons found in the Tower in 1674 are widely believed, though never proven, to be theirs.

Executions inside the walls were comparatively rare and reserved for people of rank, carried out privately on Tower Green rather than before a public crowd on Tower Hill. That privacy is part of why the stories attached to Tower Green feel so personal: the people who died there were named, known and mourned, and their burials took place a few steps away in the Chapel Royal of St Peter ad Vincula.

Anne Boleyn: The Headless Queen

Anne Boleyn was brought to the Tower on 2 May 1536, accused of treason, adultery and incest — charges most modern historians regard as a means for Henry VIII to end the marriage and marry Jane Seymour. She was held in the Queen’s House and executed on Tower Green on 19 May 1536 by a swordsman brought from France. Her body was buried in the Chapel Royal of St Peter ad Vincula, where a memorial now marks the place.

Reports of her ghost are the most persistent at the Tower. Witnesses describe a pale female figure in Tudor dress near the chapel and the execution site, sometimes complete and sometimes headless, sometimes carrying her head beneath her arm. The best-known early account dates to 1864, when a sentry on night duty reportedly fired his rifle at a pale figure moving towards him across the courtyard. The figure vanished, and the sentry faced a court martial until fellow officers confirmed that they too had seen it.

Later accounts follow the same pattern. Yeoman Warder Eddie Andrews described in the 1970s seeing a woman pacing the battlements of the Salt Tower with her head beneath her arm. Other warders have reported a procession of white-robed figures in the chapel, and visitors have photographed unexplained misty shapes near Tower Green. The anniversary of Anne’s death, 19 May, recurs in several of these accounts, though no systematic record confirms a seasonal pattern.

The Princes, the Nine Days’ Queen and the Haunted Gallery

The two princes are said to appear as small boys in white nightshirts, often holding hands, near the Bloody Tower — the building where they were lodged. Reports of the pair stretch back centuries, and the discovery of the two skeletons in 1674 is often cited as the moment the sightings intensified, though that connection is impossible to verify.

Lady Jane Grey was proclaimed queen in July 1553 and deposed nine days later by Mary I. Imprisoned at sixteen, she was executed on Tower Green in 1554. She is reportedly seen as a solitary figure in white, sometimes described as walking near the Salt Tower, where she was held. Like the Anne Boleyn accounts, the Jane Grey reports come largely from warders and staff rather than from a single famous incident.

Catherine Howard, Henry VIII’s fifth wife, is associated with the Haunted Gallery, the corridor she is said to have run along when she learned of her arrest. Visitors and guides report hearing a woman’s cry in the gallery, and the story is told on most guided tours.

What the Evidence Says

Documented: The White Tower was begun in 1078 under William the Conqueror; the Tower served as fortress, palace and prison; it is a UNESCO World Heritage Site (1988), managed by Historic Royal Palaces. Anne Boleyn was arrested on 2 May 1536 and executed on Tower Green on 19 May 1536; she is buried in the Chapel Royal of St Peter ad Vincula. The Princes in the Tower disappeared in 1483, and two skeletons were found in the Tower in 1674. Lady Jane Grey was executed in 1554.
Claimed, not proven: That the ghosts of Anne Boleyn, the princes, Lady Jane Grey, Catherine Howard and others appear at the Tower. The accounts are numerous and come from warders, soldiers and visitors over many decades, but none has been verified under controlled conditions, and no physical evidence of a ghost has ever been produced.
Proven false or disputed: The claim that the Tower’s ghost stories are a modern tourist invention is not supported by the record — written accounts such as the 1864 sentry incident predate mass tourism. Conversely, the popular image of Anne Boleyn carrying her head under her arm is a later folkloric detail with no basis in any contemporary record of her death.

What Remains Unknown

No one has explained why so many credible witnesses — including trained soldiers and long-serving warders — report similar experiences at the Tower, or why the reports cluster around the same handful of locations: Tower Green, the Chapel Royal, the Bloody Tower and the Salt Tower. Sceptics point to suggestion and the power of a dark, atmospheric setting. Believers point to the consistency of the accounts across centuries.