50 Berkeley Square

This is 50 Berkeley Square, a rather bland, unassuming row house amid many others like it in historic London. Like most of those around it, 50 Berkeley Square was built in the 1700's. Unlike those around it, however, it's had a malevolent reputation for ages. For over two hundred years, people interested in the paranormal have included 50 Berkeley Square on their sight-seeing tours of London. Ghost stories about the building are almost as old as the building itself. However, unlike many ghost stories about frightful but innocuous specters, the stories all indicate that whatever haunts 50 Berkeley Square is violent and dangerous. Maybe even outright evil. Those who've seen it have reportedly died of fright or been driven insane by the experience.

A passage from Charles Harper's 1907 book, Haunted Houses, as quoted at London Walks:

Many theories have been put forward to account for the haunting of 50 Berkeley Square. Charles Harper reported that the house had once belonged to a Mr Du Pre of Wilton Park who locked his lunatic brother in one of the attics. The captive was so violent that he could only be fed through a hole, and his groans and cries could be heard in the neighbouring houses. When the brother died, his spectre remained behind to chill the blood and turn the mind of anyone unfortunate enough to encounter it. Another hypothesis holds that a Mr Myers, who was engaged to a society beauty, once owned the house. He had set about furnishing the building in preparation for their new life together when, on the day of the wedding, his fiancé jilted him. The disappointment undermined his reason, turning him into a bitter recluse. He locked himself away in the upstairs room and only came out at night to wander the house by flickering candlelight. It was these nocturnal ramblings that, so the theory goes, gave the house its haunted reputation.

Sir Robert Warboys was a frequent visitor to London from his seat, Warboys Hall, in Bracknell, Berks. He was a young man and was spending the day in company with his friend Lord Cholmondley, who introduced him to John Benson, who at that time owned No. 50 Berkeley Square. The subject of conversation turned to the hauntings of the house and Sir Robert said that he did not believe in ghosts. As a result a wager was set that he would not spend a night in the haunted room, even for 100 guineas. Sir Robert accepted the challenge.

Arrangements were made for a bell to be rigged up so that if he should require assistance he would be able to ring for it. Whilst his friends remained in the drawing room downstairs Sir Robert retired to bed in the haunted room, pistol in one hand and bell-pull in the other.

It was shortly before 2 am that the bell rang, followed a second time by a more urgent pealing of the bell. The gentlemen raced upstairs towards the room in which Sir Robert had retired to bed. They heard a shot ring out and as they entered they found him lying across the bed with his head almost touching the floor. His face showed the sheer agony of terror. The 30 year-old baronet was dead but there was no sign of a gunshot wound.

One of the most well known incidents involved two sailors who, after a night on the town, saw the house standing empty and broke-in to shelter until the morning. They chose a room on the top floor to sleep in. Soon they were disturbed by bangs and crashes - then footsteps that made their way to the room in which they were sheltering. The door opened and a ‘horrible shapeless object’ slid into the room. One of the sailors managed to escape past it. He ran down the stairs and into the street. Later he returned with a policeman to search the house. They found no sign of a ghost but discovered the mutilated body of the other sailor. He was impaled on the railings below the window of the haunted room, his neck broken and his features still reflecting the horror that drove him to jump to his death.

In January 1937, Mrs Mary Balfour, an octogenarian lady of a stately Scottish family, moved into a flat in Charles Street, which lies adjacent to Berkeley Square. One night Mrs Balfour's maid summoned her to come to the kitchen situated at the rear of the flat. The maid was staring intently through the window at the rear of a house diagonally opposite. It was the rear of Berkeley Square. The maid drew Mrs Balfour's attention to one of the rear windows of number 50, where a man stood dressed in a silver-coloured coat and breeches. He wore a periwig and had a drawn, morose ashen face. The two women thought he had been to some New Year fancy dress party, because his clothes were centuries out of date. The man moved away from the window, and Mrs Balfour and her maid were later shocked to learn from a doctor that they had sighted one of the ghosts of number 50 Berkeley Square. The doctor told them that number 50 was currently unoccupied, but workmen in the building two months back had seen the phantom of a little girl in a kilt on the stairs.

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