The Tower Monster #4: A Short Story July 18, 2015
Author: Beach Combing | in : Modern , trackback
This is a further source for the Tower monster. It was taken from the Western Gazette, 28 Dec 1888, but the WG in turn had taken and abridged it from the Vanity Fair Christmas Supplement. Can anyone get the original and any letters from the January editions? drbeachcombing AT yahoo DOT com
The introduction makes a claim for truth, yet the story below is a long way from the one told so well by Swifte: two not one person dies, and the ghost resolves into ‘a gigantic man, clad in leathern Jerkin, stained, as seemed, with dark stains’! Thought that was a particularly bad clause… In the genealogy of the story this is based off the Gregory account and then joyfully elaborated.
This story is a true story, in which the names only of the persons concerned have been suppressed. Its main incidents were known to the late Sir David Brewster, who communicated them to the late Professor Gregory, in whose work on Animal Magnetism ‘they are noted as Case 60.’ But it is believed that no detailed account of the ‘Tower Ghost’ has been yet published. The origin of this apparition is quite obscure, and no probable cause for it has ever been assigned. The results were, of course, due to simple terror, and not to any destructive power possessed by the apparition. It is a curious fact in connection with this ghost that its appearance was not identical to everyone who saw it: that while to some it merely took the appearance of a mass of gray mist, to others, observing it at the same moment, it appeared a fearful human form while others, again, were unable to see it all. This has been explained as the result of degree of ‘sensitiveness’ which is possessed by different persons, and by the different distances from which appearance seen, as well as by the degree of its intensity at a given moment. And, in the absence of a better explanation, this may perhaps be accepted.
And here is the ‘true story’, what a shame that Swifte did not live to read it!
‘Well,’ said Colonel Blake, as he withdrew his cigar from his mouth and emitted a little cloud of tobacco smoke, the quarters aren’t bad, at any rate, and, ghosts or no ghosts, I mean to make myself comfortable here.’ ‘I don’t suppose you’ll be much troubled,’ responded the Rev. Mr. Orwin; but it is quite certain that half-a-dozen of the men here believe that they have seen this or vision, or whatever you like to call it and it is equally certain that many uncanny things have happened here – and do happen still.’ And, after a pause, he went on: ‘Only yesterday, I was talking to Sergeant McMurdo about it who is a stout fellow enough, and the last man to be frightened out of his wits by anything that has ever appeared to mortal eyes. He told me that the men get used to it after a time, when they find it doesn’t do them any harm. But they never talk of it; and recruits are left to find out its existence for themselves. However, you now know all there is to tell you, so let us change the subject.’ This conversation took place in a comfortable room in the Tower of London one evening the late summer 1821. The trial of Queen Caroline was in progress, and popular feelings ran high: for which and other reasons the Guards of the Tower had been doubled. Colonel Blake had just taken his quarters there as Keeper of the Regalia, and he had brought his wife and daughter and a young son with him. This was his first evening in his new abode, and the resident chaplain had dined with the new Keeper and his family. On the following day Colonel Blake, who was no believer in ghosts, made what enquiries he could to the stories which had been told him by Orwin. But he failed to learn much. He could hardly question the men personally, and though he closely interrogated Sergeant McMurdo, he could not get much satisfaction from him. He (the Sergeant) used to call it rubbish too, he told the Colonel, but he knew better now. He had not seen anything in particular himself, but he had heard queer sounds, and certainly there were many uncanny things seen there. The guard had often turned out at the sound of a shot, sometimes to find the sentry in a fit or a swoon; and always the same story when brought round. After a time the boys seemed to get used to the ghost – for ghost there certainly was – and then they paid no further attention to it, finding that their musket balls did not hurt it and that it didn’t hurt them. Still, they seemed to want a good deal of introduction to it before they reached that stage of familiarity which is supposed to breed contempt. ‘I never mention it to the men,’ ended the Sergeant, ‘and never take notice of their stories. It’s best that I should seem to know nothing of the ghosts. They do us no harm, and we do them none; so ‘live and let live,’ I says. Dr. Splinters, the medical officer, pooh-poohed this particular ghost, and all ghosts, after the manner of all approved scientists. He had never seen anything the existence of which he could not explain, except the spleen; and he didn’t believe in anything which he couldn’t understand. He admitted that he had been on several occasions called upon to attend sentries who had been found unconscious at their posts; but attributed their seizures to natural causes. ‘These fellows are too well fed here, you see,’ he told the Colonel ; ‘and their livers are consequently always going wrong. Then they get giddy, and think that they see things, and suffer from vertigo. Odd that many of them should taken bad? Yes, of course, it’s odd; but there is sure to be some natural explanation. River air not so wholesome as it might be. Ghosts all buncombe, anyhow. Smart chap, perhaps, started the story to get off punishment. Followed by less smart chaps – who couldn’t invent for themselves – ever since. They always pull round after a couple of blue pills. Nothing like a blue pill to clear away the blue devils.’ And the materialist medico laughed a short, dry laugh that was peculiar to himself.
Colonel Blake was obliged to wait upon events. He had done what he could. Though no believer in ghosts, he was yet no scoffer, for he knew that there were things on earth not comprehended in his philosophy. Yet, strangely enough, he became conscious of regrets that he had brought his family to the Tower with him, which increased rather than diminished as the uneventful days passed by; and once he felt an impulse to send his family from him, if only for a time. Still, he could not say that he felt any presentiment of coming evil, and the ladies had given no sign that they were aware of anything unusual; and soon he came to laugh at the idea that he might have sent them away, and lived the solitary life of unmarried officer. Yet Colonel Blake was destined to pass the remainder of his life of unavailing regret that he had not acted upon that almost momentary impulse. ‘Amy,’ said her father one very sultry evening, after the dinner things had been cleared away; ‘cannot you sing something for us? Or is it too hot for such exertion?’ ‘Oh, no, father,’ replied Miss Blake; ‘I will sing as much as you like.’ And she sat down at the piano and sang several of the most popular songs the day. She closed the instrument, and moved towards the open window. ‘It it warm tonight,’ she said, she seated herself opposite her father. ‘Piping hot, I should call it,’ emphasized her brother Ted, a boy of fifteen, as he laid aside the book which the gathering twilight rendered impossible to read. ‘Reminds me of Madras,’ added Colonel Blake. ‘Do you know,’ said Mrs. Blake, who was sitting the table in the middle of the room, ‘that while Amy was playing, seemed to to grow suddenly cold. I felt so chilly that I was just going to ask you if you would close the window, when the feeling seemed to pass off. Silly of me, is it not’ and Mrs. Blake shivered as she spoke. ‘Very strange,’ replied Colonel Blake, with concern ‘I hope, my dear, you are not going to be ill. To me it seems that this is the hottest day that we have had this year.’ And the Colonel thought, as the party relapsed into silence, that he would get Dr. Splinters to come over in the morning and look his wife. And so, for a time, the party sat in the warm twilight, listening to the regular tramp of the sentinels upon the terraces above and below, and the sound of their voices as they answered one another. The refrain of Amy Blake’s last song was heard from below, as the sentry the bottom of the staircase took up the air with a fine, though uncultivated, tenor voice. Right through to the end the man sang the song, which was one of those military compositions so much in vogue sixty years or so ago and as he finished, Mrs. Blake shivered again audibly. ‘Ted,’ she said, ‘will you shut the – ah – h’ and as she turned towards the door, which was open, she broke off suddenly.
Here we go…
Startled at the strained tone of her voice. Colonel Blake looked at his wife. An expression of wondering surprise, mingled with terror, was on her face, and her eyes were fixed on the open door. Following her gaze, the Colonel leaped from his chair as his eyes fell upon the door. For, rolling through it, into the room, he saw what seemed to be volume of dense smoke. ‘Good heavens!’ he ejaculated ‘there is something on fire.’ But as he spoke the smoke seemed to shapen itself into a pyramid of dark, thick mist, which revolved quickly round its own centre. ‘What do you see?’, he asked his wife, striving to speak calmly, and keeping his gaze fixed upon the shapeless mass, which now seemed to him to contain something working in its centre. But his wife seemed too terrified to speak. She and her daughter could only stare – as a rabbit may stare at the serpent whose prey he is to be – unable to move to speak. And all the time Ted, who saw nothing except the frightened faces of his mother and sister, looked on in wondering awe, unable to understand what was taking place. At last he cried out ‘Father, look at mother! What is the matter with her? Amy! Amy! What is it.’ But there was no answer, until a minute later Mrs. Blake threw down her head upon her arms on the table, and, finding her tongue at last, cried out in agony— ‘Oh my God, it has seized me!’ And, with a piercing scream, she swooned away. His wife’s cry aroused Colonel Blake, who seized a chair and hurled it at the phantom with all his force. It passed right through the figure and crashed against the sideboard behind it. And now the at first shapeless mass had evolved from itself the fearful form of a gigantic man, clad in leathern jerkin, stained, as seemed, with dark stains. In its hand the thing held the hair of a human head, which seemed to drop blood upon carpet as it was borne forward while in its left it grasped a bloody axe, such as the headsmen of the Middle Ages used to wield. And horrible as the thing was to look upon, its face was more dreadful still. Such a demoniacal, scowling grin the Colonel could never have imagined until he saw it: it passed all description. And this apparition, still enshrouded in the thick grey mist in which it first appeared, seemed to the Colonel to glide slowly round the room, scowling upon him with that frightful grin as it did so, until it reached the door again. Then it disappeared, as it had come, through the open door. Not till the thing had gone did Colonel Blake find himself able to move. After his one effort to rout the enemy, he had stood as though paralysed, unable to take his eyes from the phantom, whose fiendish look had almost frozen the blood in his veins. But Colonel Blake was no coward, and, as it disappeared, he rushed to the door to follow it.
Before he could so, however, the sound of a challenge from below, and a shot, followed a fearful shriek from outside, smote upon his ears. Then there was moment’s silence, and finally a heavy fall. The Colonel paused, horrorstruck, as he listened; and ere he could sufficiently recover himself to get downstairs the measured tramp of the guard approaching fell upon his grateful ears. He stopped to listen, and heard the poor sentry, who had so lately been singing challenged. But there was no response for the man was lying face downwards on the ground, utterly unconscious of his duty. The Sergeant shook him roughly, and, asserting with an oath that he had been asleep at his post, ordered him under arrest. Then, having posted a new sentry, he went on to complete his round. Colonel Blake drew his hand across his damp brow, and returned to the room where he had left his wife. There the sight of his son and daughter, bending over her lifeless form, seemed to bring him to himself once more. Raising his wife in his shaking arms, he bore her to her room, where, laying her on the bed, he left her with his daughter, whose terror at what she had seen had given way anxiety for her mother, when she saw her stretched upon the floor, to all appearances dead. Next he summoned the orderly, and sent urgent message to Dr. Splinters.
The rest of this true story is soon told. Dr. Splinters seemed impressed when he heard Colonel Blake’s story, but, after his kind, would admit nothing, and said little. Mrs. Blake returned to consciousness under the influence of such restoratives administered but as a perfect quiet was enjoined upon her, no questions were asked as to what she had seen. She was never herself again, and when, some days after that terrible evening, her husband ventured to allude to it, she shuddered so violently, and with such evident signs of real terror, that the subject was at once dropped. She was, course, removed from the Tower on the day following her attack; but though tended with the greatest care by her daughter, and prescribed for by the most eminent physicians of the day, they could not heal the mind diseased, and Mrs. Blake never rallied. She lingered on in state of extreme dejection for six weeks of apathy, and then she died, quietly—the doctor said of inanition. Perhaps it wasn’t the necessity of nursing her mother that spared Amy from a like fate, diverting her thoughts from what she had seen until the horror of that fatal evening had decreased, for the poor sentry who had been frightened at what he saw, was court-martialed on the next day for having been found asleep on his post. He declared that, whilst walking towards the stair entrance which led to Colonel Blake’s quarters, he had seen a gigantic form glide out from the doorway. At first he had taken it for a huge bear, and viewed it with surprise, wondering at the same time as to how such animal should be found in such place. But the thing had passed close to him, and leaning forward glared into his face as it did so with the expression of a perfect devil, as he described it, he had felt inexpressible dread come over him. Nevertheless, as it passed, he had raised his musket and fired into the figure; which, he said, had responded with a peal of unearthly laughter as it floated over the barbican. After that he remembered no more until he found himself under arrest. The Court, of course, refused to believe this story, though it could not doubt the man’s sincerity, so clearly was it impressed upon his hard white face; but Colonel Blake appeared on his behalf, and proved that the man could not have been asleep, as he had been singing, as his (the Colonel’s) family had been listening to him less than five minutes before. There was also in his favour the evidence of the discharged musket; and eventually the Court acquitted him, believing that been the victim of a sudden attack of vertigo. Colonel Blake who visited the poor fellow after his acquittal, was shocked by the change which he saw on his face. From the ruddy glow of robust health it had given place to a corpse-like pallor. ‘Cheer up, my lad,’ said the Colonel; ‘your singing got you off so well that time that you will be wise cultivate the habit.’ ‘Colonel,’ he replied, ‘I have to thank you for saving my character but there will be no more singing for me in this world. When that fiend grinned into my face as it passed, I knew that time had come.’ And, in spite of the efforts of his comrades to cheer him up and to rid him of his morbid fancies the man died within eight and-forty hours, another victim to the Tower Ghost. Colonel Blake was never the same man again. The impression, created in him by the events of that terrible night never wore off, and added to the loss of his wife, to whom he was devoted, made him a prematurely old man. To the day of his death, he was most reluctant to speak of the Tower Ghost, though, as he always said, he would never deny the thing that he had seen.
