The Ravenmaster
The following information was provided by the Press and PR Office at the Tower.
The earliest known sighting of a ghost at the Tower of London was that of Thomas a Becket in the mid thirteenth century. He appeared during the building of the inner curtain wall, apparently reducing the work to rubble by striking it with his cross.
One of the best known and saddest haunting at the Tower is that of the Little Princes (12 year old King Edward V and his 9 year old brother Richard, Duke of York) who died in suspicious circumstances in 1483. They have occasionally been seen in the Bloody Tower dressed in white nightgowns standing silently, hand in hand, before fading back into the stones.
Perhaps the grisliest haunting at the Tower is that of the 70 year old Countess of Salisbury – “The last of the Plantagenets” – executed by Henry VIII for political reasons. She refused to put her head on the block like a common traitor and, running from the executioner was pursued by his hacking axe until he had hewn her to death. The haunting has been seen as both a re-enactment of this gruesome scene and the shadow of a great axe which falls across the area.
