The Tower Monster #3: A Magnetism Account July 17, 2015
Author: Beach Combing | in : Modern , trackback
This account of the Tower Monster comes from an enthusiast for magnetism, William Gregory and was published in 1851, almost a decade before the Notes and Queries material.
At the trial of Queen Caroline, in 1821, the guards at the Tower were doubled, and Col. S., the keeper of the Regalia, was quartered there with his family. Towards twilight, one evening, and before dark, he, his wife, son, and daughter, were sitting, listening to the sentinels, who were singing and answering one another, on the beats above and below them. The evening was sultry, and the door stood ajar, when something suddenly rolled in through the open space. Col. S. at first thought it was a cloud of smoke, but it assumed the shape of a pyramid of dark thick gray, with something working towards its centre. Mrs. S. saw a form. Miss S. felt an indescribable sensation of chill and horror. The son sat at the window, staring at the terrified and agitated party, but saw nothing. Mrs. S. threw her head down upon her arms on the table, and screamed out, ‘Oh! Christ! it has seized me!’ The Colonel took a chair, and hurled it at the phantom, through which it passed. The cloud seemed to him to revolve round the room, and then disappear, as it came, through the door.
A few fascinating errors here: at least if we are to prefer the first-person account. There is no reference to the door being open. There was no daughter and the second woman could not see the cylinder. Why a pyramid? Is this mesmerism speaking? There is no reference to the chair passing through the ‘thing’, though that might be implicit in Swifte’s account. The two events – the cylinder and the sentry are much more closely linked in this account.
Col. S had scarcely risen from his chair to follow, when he heard a loud shriek and heavy fall at the bottom of the stair. He stopped to listen, and in a few minutes the guard came up and challenged the poor sentry, who had been so lately singing, but who now lay at the entrance in a swoon. The Serjeant shook him rudely, declared he was asleep on his post, and put him under arrest. Next day the soldier was brought to a court-martial, when Col. S. appeared on his behalf, to testify that he could not have been asleep, for that he had been singing, and the Colonel’s family had been listening, ten minutes before. The man declared that, while walking toward the stair entrance, a dreadful figure had issued from the doorway, which he took at first for an escaped bear, on its hind legs. It passed him, and scowled upon him with a human face, and the expression of a demon, disappearing over the Barbican. He was so frightened that he became giddy, and knew no more. His story, of course, was not believed by his judges, but he was believed to have had an attack of vertigo, and was acquitted and released on Col. S.’s evidence.
From here things get worse for the sentinel.
That evening, Col. S. went to congratulate the man; but he was so changed that he did not know him. From a glow of rude health in his handsome face, he had become of the color of bad paste. Col. S. said to him, ‘Why do you look so dejected, my lad? I think I have done you a great favor in getting you off; and I would advise you in future to continue your habit of singing.’ ‘Colonel,’ he replied, ‘you have saved my character, and I thank you; but as for anything else, it little signifies. From the moment I saw that demon, I felt I was a dead man.’ He never recovered his spirits, and died next day, forty-eight hours after he had seen the spectre.
There is then some muttering about other presences.
Col. S. had conversed with the Serjeant about it, who quietly remarked, ‘It was a bad job, but he was only a recruit, and must get used to it, like the rest.’ ‘What!’ said Col. S., ‘have you heard of others seeing the same?’ ‘Oh, yes,’ answered the serjeant; ‘there are many queer, unaccountable things seen here, I assure you, and many of our recruits faint a time or two, but they get used to it, and it don’t hurt them.’ Mrs. S. never got used to it. She remained in a state of dejection for six weeks, and then died. Col. S. was long in recovering from the impression, and was reluctant to speak of it; but he said he would never deny the thing he had seen.’
Of course, Mrs S did not die and Col S does not seem to have been particularly reluctant. The passage ends with Gregory’s theory that this was an odylic force. Beach has been trying to understand quite what that is. Any help: drbeachcombing AT yahoo DOT com
It is evident that, in this case, the fatal results were chiefly caused by terror; but the essential fact is, that something was seen, and that, too, by different persons, and that similar things had been seen before. It is worthy of notice, that what to some appeared as a horrible human form, appeared to others as a mass of grey smoke, and was not visible to others. Now, this is one of the characters of odylic light. Some. cannot see it; others see only a faintly luminous grey smoke ; others a more luminous and less dense vapor; and others a bright light; the differences being caused by various degrees of sensitiveness, and by the different distances at which the light is seen, as well as its various degrees of intensity. If it be asked, Could a mere shapeless luminous cloud or emanation assume a human form merely by the force of imagination? We must admit this to be possible. But we do not know that all odylic emanations are shapeless, when viewed at the proper distance; nor do we know that they may not, in some cases, possess the form of that from which they are derived.
Luckily Swifte was, during the Notes and Queries debate on the experience shown this passage. He responded that he had never met Gregory.
I have already stated that I heard the ill-fated soldier described in the Tower guard-room by his fellow sentinel, not as ‘singing a minute or two before the occurrence,’ but as, immediately before it, awake and alert on his post, exchanging with him some casual remark. Of the Serjeant’s comment, that ‘such appearances were not uncommon,’ I am as unaware as of the summary &c. wherein Prof. De Morgan includes Dr. Gregory’s other reminiscences; or of the ‘court-martial,’ whereat I did not attend, and of course bore no testimony to his wakefulness.
A newspaper in 1869 claims that Gregory got his account from Sir David Brewster.
20 July 2015: Chris S writes, ‘The Odic force was proposed by Baron Carl von Reichenbach back in the mid 19th century. It’s a vitalist concept, named for the Norse god Odin, with analogues in prana and qi but claiming a scientific basis in electromagnetic fields. His “Researches on Magnetism, Electricity, Heat and Light in their Relations to Vital Forces” noted the energy’s qualities. “(1) the Odic force had a positive and negative flux, and a light and dark side; (2) individuals could forcefully “emanate” it, particularly from the hands, mouth, and forehead; and (3) the Odic force had many possible applications.”Regarding the Tower Monster, I want to note the sacred geometry at hand. The Jewel House is near the White Tower, which is a place of power along the London Stone Ley. Central to this line is the London Stone, attributed to Brutus of Troy in 1862 in the journal Notes and Queries along with the suggestion as long as the stone is safe, so London will flourish. The London Stone is an essential element to London’s sacred geometry according to Iain Sinclair.The White Tower is built upon the white mound, Bryn Gwyn, where (allegedly) Bran the Blessed and Brutus of Troy are buried. One of the more famous superstitions surrounding the Tower of London center on the ravens. Should the ravens ever leave the Tower, then the crown shall fall and Britain will no longer exist.Perhaps the queer energies along this ley line sustain the Tower’s ghosts, providing agency for the unusual phenomena spotted throughout the centuries. Or the ancients were really onto something, realizing ley lines had resonance with telluric forces that would give rise to ball lightning, smoky outgassings, and triboluminescence which could be attributed to ghostly activity.
Cites:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Odic_force
