When someone mentions ‘ghosts’ what is the first image that springs to mind? A grey, white or opaque apparition, the ‘spirit’ of an identifiable person, such as Anne Boleyn, second wife of Henry VIII. The most ‘solid’ phantoms, particularly the rare ones in full colour, have been mistaken for living beings. So much so that those who witness them try to engage them in conversation! Yet not all apparations are so life-like. Some maybe wispy or swirling mists, others luminous floating ‘spheres’. The different forms result from the varying degrees of energy that ghosts have when forming. According to Joan Forman the "foggy" aspect is the earliest stage, and some apparitions are too weak to develop beyond that.
The following tale concerns a non-humanoid materialisation, yet having sufficient energy to apparently move of its own accord. It may shed some light on the mysterious blue-white ‘power’ of the enigmatic Device [see The Device] The scene is that foreboding fortress, the Tower of London in October 1817.
At that time the Crown Jewels were housed in the Martin Tower at the north-east corner, the residence of the Keeper and his family. Edmund Lenthal Swifte was having dinner in the Sitting Room with his wife, their young son, and Edmund’s sister-in-law. The heavy curtains were drawn over the two windows, all three were doors closed, and the only light two candles on the table. The story is best told in Edmund’s own words [the italicised words are mine]:
"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 [blue]...and incessantly mixing within the cylinder. This lasted about two minutes, when it began slowly to move before my sister-in-law; then following...the table, before my son and myself, passing behind my wife. It paused for a moment over her right shoulder [Mrs Swifte could see it in the mirror opposite]; instantly she crouched down [she collapsed on the table], and with both hands covering her shoulder,...shrieked out, ‘Oh Christ, it has seized me!’ Even now, while writing [he wrote it down in 1860], I feel the fresh horror of that moment."
Edmund’s immediate reaction was to pick up a chair and swing at the strange object, which then immediately vanished, never to return. But not everyone saw the cylinder that night:
As Swifte and his wife were the only ones to witness this bizarre manisfestation, clearly they were on the same ‘psychic wavelength’ as the apparition. If buildings do ‘record’ within their stones and bricks events that occur within their walls, then maybe any human ‘tuned’ to that particular ‘frequency’ will witness that ‘haunting’. A bit like a kind of ‘transmitter’ and ‘receiver’, I suppose.
Out Of The Blue In The Tower ... By JJ
"I had offered a glass of wine and water to my wife, when, on putting to her lips, she paused and exclaimed ‘Good God! What is that?’
"The marvel of all this is enhanced by the fact that neither my sister-in-law nor my son beheld this appearance."
