I may or may not have seen the ghost of Anne Boleyn at the Tower of London.
This was back when I was in high school, and one of the places we stopped on the UK tour was the Tower of London. Totally touristy, I know, but it was definitely an experience. I will say I believe I appreciated more when I returned ten years later. Here’s what went down that day. Make of it what you will.
My classmates and I were waiting in line to see the Crown Jewels. My eyes and attention wander all the time (thank you ADD!) and I caught sight of a woman leaning against one of the buildings. She was dressed in period garb, and on the shorter end of the spectrum. I’m basing this on the people around her who were passing by, and also how tall she appeared compared to the stonework she was standing near. I’m 5’9, and I would estimate that this lady was several inches shorter than me, maybe 5’3 at the outside. Her dress was dark, either very deep charcoal gray or black. The way the sunlight was hitting it makes me think more gray.
(I should note that people in period dress are not actually common at the Tower…that should have been my first indication of something odd)
Nobody seemed to see or notice this lady, which struck me as strange. I also thought she looked ill, like the look one gets when coming off of a really bad bout of the flu. Pale, thin looking, like she had lost a bunch of weight a little too fast. I couldn’t see eye color at my distance, but I swear that I could make out some hair under her French hood, and it looked like either red or auburn. The way she’s leaning against the wall, I’m starting to get a little concerned. Is this lady going to pass out, or worse, collapse somewhere where she isn’t going to be found quickly and get seriously hurt?
My group went in to see the Jewels shortly after I saw the woman, and she wasn’t there when I came back out. I scanned the area looking for her, and even poked my head around a couple of buildings in the area to see if she was there. No luck. Still, I thought I should at least make some of the guards aware of her. I approached one of them, and told him what I saw. I basically said there appears to be a sick lady in period dress on the grounds, and here’s where I last saw her. Could someone check on her to make sure she’s alright? At this point, I was working under the assumption that she was a reenactor or Tower employee.
The guard asked me to describe the lady. I did, down to her height and what she was wearing. Then the guard got a really weird expression on his face. He said they would look into it, and walked away. So now I’m thinking ‘okay, you all clearly don’t seem to care that there is a very ill woman wandering the Tower grounds…just what is wrong with you?’ I left that encounter more upset for the sake of the woman than anything else.
Fast forward a number of years…
I strongly suspect that the woman I saw was Anne Boleyn, second queen of Henry VIII of England. She was also one of the ones he ordered beheaded. From all of the lore of the Tower, Queen Anne is sighted quite frequently on the grounds. One of the most common spots is not too far from where I saw her. From everything I’ve read, she’s not malevolent, though she can and does scare people sometimes. I don’t think she’s doing it to be mean, but I do think she wants people to notice and remember her. Of all of Henry VIII’s queens, she is the one I would most have liked to sit down and have a cup of coffee with, though Catherine Parr (wife number 6) isn’t far behind.
Unfortunately, there are very few contemporary images of Anne Boleyn. After her execution, her piece of crap husband had most of the images of her destroyed. A few were salvaged, including a medal (which is cited as about the only confirmed image of her from her lifetime). There’s also a couple of sketches of a woman who is very likely Anne Boleyn by the artist Hans Holbein.
Both of these sketches show a woman with reddish colored hair. The one confirmed portrait of her sister Mary also shows a woman with red or auburn hair, and Anne’s daughter Elizabeth was famed for her red-gold hair. Is it possible that Anne had dark hair? Yes, genetically speaking…it’s possible for a dark haired mother to have a red haired child, and the Tudor line as a whole was known for that hair color.
Like I said, make of this story what you will. If it was Anne Boleyn I saw, she’s not happy. But then, if you were married to a grade-A jackass like Henry VIII, would you be? History debates how much say she actually had in that relationship at any stage, and how much was orchestrated by her father (another grade-A jackass).
Here’s a final note. There is an amazing Youtube channel and website called Royalty Now Studios. The lady who does the reconstructions, Becca Segovia, does a phenomenal job. The one she did of Anne Boleyn, while recent, gels with the woman I saw at the Tower over twenty years ago. Below is the link. Scroll down to the very bottom. The reconstruction is VERY similar to the lady I saw, though her cheeks were a bit more sunken and she was somewhat more pale.
https://www.royaltynowstudios.com/blog/anneboleynthenewevidence