Tower of London
The jewel-room of the Tower of London is reported to be haunted, and, in 1860, there was published in Notes and Queries by the late Edmund Lenthal Swifte, Keeper of the Crown Jewels the account of a spectral illusion witnessed by himself in the Tower. He says that in October, 1817, he was at supper with his wife, her sister, and his little boy, in the sitting-room of the jewel-house. To quote his own words: "I had offered a glass of wine and water to my wife, when, on putting it to her lips, she 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. This lasted about two minutes, when it began to move before my sister-in-law; then, following the oblong side of the table, before my son and myself, passing behind my wife, it paused for a moment over her right shoulder. Instantly crouching down, and with both hands covering her shoulder, she shrieked out, 'O Christ! it has seized me!'" "It was ascertained," adds Mr. Swifte, "that no optical action from the outside could have produced any manifestaion within, and hence the mystery has remained unsolved." Speaking of the Tower, we learn from the same source how "one of the night sentries at the jewel-house was alarmed by a figure like a huge bear issuing from underneath the jewel-room door. He thrust at it with his bayonet which stuck in the door. He dropped in a fit and was carried senseless. to the guard-room.... In another day or two the brave and steady soldier died."