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The Nameless Thing Of Berkeley Square

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Anonymous

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Hi, can anyone help me?

Has anyone heard the following story:
A household in London hired a new maid. This new maid went to bed, up in the attic. The next morning, she emerged, insane. She never regained her sanity before dying.
The house was then abandoned and two sailers, on shore leave, broke in to find somewhere to sleep for the night. They somehow found themselves drawn into the attic where they were scared out of their wits. They saw a huge shadow moving towards them and one of them jumped out of the window and impaled himself on the fence outside. The other man managed to escape but was never seen again.

This story is quite well known to people who watch programmes such as Ghost Hunters and is called but its number and street name. I need to know those name so I can research the case on the internet. I think it was 5 (or10) ________street, London.
If anyone can help, please reply to this message or if you know where I can find any information about this case, please contact me.
 
What immediately strikes me is, if one sailor died at the scene and the other was never seen again, how do we know what they saw? Or did he stop to tell someone before he fled? Sounds fascinating though, I'm surprised I haven't heard of it, being a Londoner.
 
We DON't know what they saw, that's what makes it so fascinating.
 
Had you considered contacting the program directly? Quite often, they will give a toll free phone number, e-mail address or an actual address to contact them at the end.

I seem to remember seeing this program, but all I remember about it was that the street was very old. Does Taylor Street sound familiar?
 
i know this story too, i can tell you its supposdley true, the house name has escaped me as im tired, but i did read about it on this website but cant find it in the archive.
 
Yeah, that's right. Thanks a lot. I wanted to read up on it a bit because it's my favourite mystery- it really interests me.
 
Neil Bowick said:
We DON't know what they saw, that's what makes it so fascinating.

But in the OP you said that "They saw a huge shadow moving towards them and one of them jumped out of the window and impaled himself on the fence outside. The other man managed to escape but was never seen again."

How do we know they saw a huge shadow? If one jumped and impaled himself, and the other was never seen again, how do we know they saw a huge shadow?
 
Glensheen'sGirl said:
But in the OP you said that "They saw a huge shadow moving towards them and one of them jumped out of the window and impaled himself on the fence outside. The other man managed to escape but was never seen again."

How do we know they saw a huge shadow? If one jumped and impaled himself, and the other was never seen again, how do we know they saw a huge shadow?

i think the second guy was found, because his story is well documented in the UK, because its in every half decent ghost book and ive seen a reconstructin so i assume he was found. its next to a very exclusive and very haundted book shop too.
 
Well, that would make more sense. It's the "never seen again" that has me confused...
 
More on 50 Berkeley Square, and other London Ghosts, here, the site of the Merciful Order of St George.

Hang on, the text on the one I linked above is identical to the one on ghosts.org.

Different site, same text. Is one author making lots of friends, or money, or is one site about to be done for plagiarism?

Same author, Tony Ellis.

He gets about a bit. Still, the merciful St George mob are quite good as a source. Anyone know anything about them, BTW?

Are they twelve foot lizards:p
 
I don't think Berkeley Square is haunted anymore - it is now an old bookshop or something and was featured on HAUNTED LONDON recently on UK Horizons. However, one of the men who works there has felt and seen a misty presence in one room.
 
50 Berkeley Square was the ghost story of the Victorian Age. Victorian Tourists used to walk through the square to see the haunted house and the homes of ex-prime ministers.

Jack Hallam offers a more sober account of Berkeley Square in his book "Ghosts of London" and offers a likely cause to the sightings in the form of a recluse called Mr Myers.

The first reports of the ghost happened about 1840 when Miss Curzon, who died in 1859 aged 90, owned the house. Miss Curzon must have contacted Jessie Middleton, who then wrote about the "girl in the kilt" in her "Grey Ghost book".

It wasn't until after Curzon's death that 50 Berkeley Square achieved notoriety when the building was leased to a Mr Myers, whose eccentric conduct caused him to be referred as "an odd cross between Scrooge of Christmas Carol and Miss Havisham of Great Expectations"

In 1873, the local council sued Myers for not paying taxed or rates. He didn't appear in court, but the judge summed up "the house in question is known as a 'haunted house' and has occasioned a good deal of speculation amongst the neighbours."

A writer in 1880 said that Myers had leased the house for his impending marriage and began to furnish the house, when his wife-to-be left him.

"This disappointment is said to have broken his heart and turned his brain. He became morose and solitary, and would never allow a woman to come near him" said the writer.

Myers, to escape society lived in the famous top room of the house and would often walk around the house at night to see what should have been the scene of his happiness bathed in candlelight. His midnight wanderings could have laid the foundations for ghost story.

Hallam also writes that in 1907, ghost author Charles Harper revealed "The secret of the house, according to Mr Stuart Wortley, was that it belonged to Mr Du Pre, of Wilton Park, who shut his lunatic brother in one of attics. The captive was so violent he could only be fed through a hole. His groans and cries could be distinctly heard in the neighbouring houses."

So could it be the nocturnal wanders of a jilted recluse or the insane cries of violent lunatic spurned the stories of a lurking murderous ghost? Or may be the house was damned, haunted by angry ghosts, hell bent on revenge on the living.

Today, world famous antique booksellers, the Maggs Brothers, occupy the property. Over a hundred years after the first incidents, the tourists still ask if the house is haunted but after 30 years of occupation, the business has seen no evidence of a ghost.
 
Does anyone know about what was once the "most haunted house in England"? I'm not talking Borley Rectory (although any or stories about Borley Rectory are most welcome.) I'm talking about a house in London, now a book shop dealing in old and rare books.
I've heard many stories about this place and about something so terrifying in the attic room that anyone who sees it goes mad or dies of fright. ...

Thank you in advance.
 
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50 berkley suqare. London also claims to be the most haunted house in britain. it has some interesting story's behind it. but i'm not sure about it being the most haunted.

also the book shop in question hasnt had a gost report in many years, so i dont think that would be the most haunted either!

Give NEIL a pm he will might be able to sort you out with a documentry on it!
 
The Berkley square business has been rather controversial for years. The story had achieved apocryphal overtones even by the early twentieth century, when MR James mentioned it in 'A School Story'. Anyone know if FT have ever covered this in any detail? If not, there's an article idea going begging.
 
50 Berkeley Square

Berkeley Square was the place to visit during Victorian times. It was the home ex-politicians including, ex-prime minister, George Canning. Then along came the ghost stories from number 50.

"The house in Berkeley Square contains at least one room in which the atmosphere is supernaturally charged, fatal to mind and body. A girl saw, heard and felt such horror in it that she went mad, and never recovered sanity enough to tell how or why. A gentleman, a disbeliever in ghosts, dared to sleep in it, and was found a corpse in the middle of the floor, after frantically ringing for help in vain. Rumour suggests other cases of the same kind, all ending in death" Mayfair Magazine, 10 May 1879."

Jack Hallam offers a more sober account of Berkeley Square in his book "Ghosts of London" and offers a likely cause to the sightings in the form of a recluse called Mr Myers.

The first reports of the ghost happened about 1840 when a Miss Curzon, who died in 1859 aged 90, owned the house. Miss Curzon must have contacted the author Jessie Middleton, who wrote about the "ghostly girl in the kilt" in her book and popular magazines. It wasn't until after Curzon's death that 50 Berkeley Square achieved notoriety when the building was leased to a Mr Myers, whose eccentric conduct caused him to be referred as "an odd cross between Scrooge of Christmas Carol and Miss Havisham of Great Expectations"

In 1873, the local council sued Myers for not paying taxed or rates. He didn't appear in court, but the judge summed up "the house in question is known as a 'haunted house' and has occasioned a good deal of speculation amongst the neighbours."
A writer in 1880 said that Myers had leased the house for his impending marriage and began to furnish the house, when his wife-to-be left him.

"This disappointment is said to have broken his heart and turned his brain. He became morose and solitary, and would never allow a woman to come near him" said the writer.

Myers, to escape society lived in the famous top room of the house and would often walk around the house at night to see what should have been the scene of his happiness bathed in candlelight. His midnight wanderings could have laid the foundations for ghost story.

Hallam also writes that in 1907, ghost author Charles Harper revealed "The secret of the house, according to Mr Stuart Wortley, was that it belonged to Mr Du Pre, of Wilton Park, who shut his lunatic brother in one of attics. The captive was so violent he could only be fed through a hole. His groans and cries could be distinctly heard in the neighbouring houses."

And when I recently contacted Maggs Brothers, the bookshop that has been trading there for over 50 years, there hasn't been one clue to that the house was haunted.
 
The explanation in the old Unexplained magazine was that the
house had been the den of criminals who did not mind if its weird
after-hours noises were interpreted as ghosts.

The explanation sounds suspiciously like Arnold Ridley's Ghost
Train which sounds suspiciously like one of R. L. Stevenson's South
Sea Tales. And no doubt like an ancient Japanese legend as
recounted by Lafcadio Hearne.

But to return to the place in question. One lady, sitting in a house
next door reported that she had received an electric-type shock
through the wall! :eek:
 
chockfullahate said:
i vaguely remember a story i read when i was young of a house in london somewhere, were someone was challenged to stay the night in a haunted house and was found dead in the morning.

BUGGER!! Yes. Oh bugger...I can't remember now.....is it above a printer's shop or something? It was an apartment over a shop, wasn't it? Two sailors or soldiers or otherwise macho guys agreed to take the dare. One jumped out the window and died afterwards. The other was found dead inside, twisted in agony with rictus sardonicus plastered across his face.

Oh bugger. I've got that address somewhere...
 
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that's of the real "classic ghost stories", and versions vary a lot. It seems like some kind of myth to me.
 
would the two sailor story be from the house in Berkley Square?(sp?).
I'm sure i have some very dubious info on it in a book around here,i'll try to dig it out
 
chockfullahate said:
i vaguely remember a story i read when i was young of a house in london somewhere, were someone was challenged to stay the night in a haunted house and was found dead in the morning.

Ah yes, the Nameless Horror of 50 Berkeley Square.

I've always found it chilling and I think it spawned the oft-used story of a man spending the night in a haunted room with only a bell to ring if he needs to. Inevitably the bell is rung and, once help arrives, he is alone but dead. Or mad. Or both.

A decent account by historian Richard Jones can be found here:

"The plain Georgian exterior of 50 Berkeley Square belies an interior that still retains much of its 18th century grandeur. Sweeping stairs, high plaster ceilings, over-mantle mirrors, and marble floors and fireplaces, lend the building a decidedly Dickensian air. For over fifty years it has been the premises of Maggs Bros, Antiquarian Booksellers, and the ceiling high rows of heavy mahogany bookcases that line the walls are stacked with shelf after shelf of leather bound tomes by long dead men of letters - some famous, many forgotten. Yet there is nothing in the yellowed pages of the thousands of books on display that comes close to matching the sinister happenings that were once an everyday occurrence within these walls. Happenings so terrifying that, for much of the 19th century, 50 Berkeley Square was known simply as “the most haunted house in London.”

Charles Harper in Haunted Houses, published in 1907 stated that “… It seems that a Something or Other, very terrible indeed, haunts or did haunt a particular room. This unnamed Raw Head and Bloody Bones, or whatever it is, has been sufficiently awful to have caused the death, in convulsions, of at least two foolhardy persons who have dared to sleep in that chamber…” One of them was a nobleman, who scoffing at tales that a hideous entity was residing within the haunted room, vowed to spend the night there. It was agreed, however, that should he require assistance he would ring the servants’ bell to summon his friends. So saying, he retired for the night. A little after midnight there was a faint ring, which was followed by a ferocious peeling of the bell. Rushing upstairs, the friends threw open the door, and found their companion, rigid with terror, his eyes bulging from their sockets. He was unable to tell them what he had seen, and such was the shock to his system, that he died shortly afterwards.

As a result of its dreadful reputation, no tenant could be found who was willing to take on the lease of “the house” in Berkeley Square, and for many years it remained empty. But its otherworldly inhabitants continued to be active. Strange lights that flashed in the windows would startle passers-by; disembodied screams were heard echoing from the depths of the building; and spookier still, the sound of a heavy body was heard being dragged down the staircase. One night, two sailors on shore leave in London, were seeking a place to stay, and chanced upon the obviously empty house. Breaking in they made their way upstairs, and inadvertently settled down to spend the night in the haunted room. They were woken by the sound of heavy, determined footsteps coming up the stairs. Suddenly the door banged open and a hideous, shapeless, oozing mass began to fill the room. One sailor managed to get past it and escape. Returning to the house with a policeman, he found his friend’s corpse, impaled on the railings outside, the twisted face and bulging eyes, grim testimony to the terror that had caused him to jump to his death, rather than confront the evil in the room above.

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(ED ACCENT NEEDED OVER THE e AUTH) 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.

Whatever the events, tragic or otherwise, that lie behind the haunting of 50 Berkeley Square, there is no doubt that the building has a definite atmosphere about it. Indeed, it is said that the fabric is so charged with psychic energy that merely touching the external brickwork can give a mild shock to the psychically inclined. Nor are the ghosts, as is often claimed, consigned to the buildings past. Julian Wilson, a bookseller with Maggs Brothers, was working alone in the accounts department, which now occupies the haunted room, one Saturday morning in 2001, when a column of brown mist, moved quickly across the room and vanished. That same year a cleaner preparing the house for a party, felt the overwhelming sensation that someone, or something, was standing behind her. Turning round she found that that the room was empty. A man walking up the stairs was shocked when his glasses were snatched from his hand and flung to the ground. In October 2001 I was asked to appear in a BBC documentary on Haunted London, and we were fortunate enough to film inside 50 Berkeley Square. Part of the programme entailed the soundman and myself having to stand in the dark in the haunted room for about five minutes, waiting for the signal to switch the lights on and off. Although nothing actually happened, I can honestly say that I found it a truly frightening experience, and we were both glad to be able to rejoin the rest of the crew in the street outside.
"

Brr.
 
That's the one! That's a relief. I couldn't find it yesterday. It's been bugging me. I thought it was Berkley something, but then my grasp of geography is only slightly worse than my grasp of quantum mechanics!
 
I suppose this could go in Ghosts or Cryptozoology, but it seems like more of an urban legend sort of thing to me...

http://www.americanmonsters.com/monster ... rticle=186

I've never heard about this from any other source, and it does sound a bit suspiciously like a Lovecraft-pastiche horror story... it has got me wondering, however, if any of it is corroborated by any sources to be found anywhere else (for instance, if the ookshop referred to is real)...

Smells a bit fake to me, but if anyone else has heard of it, i'd be interested to know...
 
It's fairly well known in ghost story circles, but I don't know offhand what the origin is, fiction or urban legend.
 
The Unexplained part-work had a chapter devoted to this case. It suggests that the story was circulating orally for some time before it turns up in poetry and fiction. The works cited are Kipling's poem Tomlinson, puiblished in 1884 and Bulwer Lytton's story The Haunters & The Haunted.

The latter is not dated in the article but an online text here:
http://gaslight.mtroyal.ab.ca/gaslight/haunters.htm
gives the date as 1859 with the following note: "a longer version of this
novella exists as The haunters and the haunted; or the house and the brain." Notably the online version does not seem to set the tale in Berkeley Square but on the "North side of Oxford Street".

Another site gives the date of this tale as 1857 and it's unclear to me when it was revised and shifted to Berkeley Square. This page:
http://pluto.scs.ryerson.ca/~monica/bulwerlytton.htm
has the comment:

"Bulwer-Lytton's story The Haunters and the Haunted was described by H.P. Lovecraft as one of the best short haunted-house tales ever written."

so nataraja's reference to Lovecraft makes him one of those writers who creates his own antecedents! :D
 
I work quite near Berkeley Square and am occasionally forced to go out there (they also have a lovely big Sainsburys nearby, urban supermarket fans) and have strolled around looking for the bookshop. I couldn't remember the number but couldn't spot any bookshops I'm afraid, only a rather lovely Indian restaurant and some cheesy and expensive bars.

The Haunters And The Haunted is undoubtedly influenced by the tale but as far as I was aware this was one of the most cast-iron examples of ghost story in action - in a "spreading like wildfire and being added to" style - that existed. It was even mentioned in the Hallowe'en edition of Time Out last year. If I recall correctly it's also mentioned in an MR James short story, perhaps A School Story, I'm not entirely sure.
 
I think the bookshop is Maggs Brothers

http://www.maggs.com/

There's a virtual tour of the shop on that website :D

Which is still there. It's on the left if you pass through Berkeley Square heading for Oxford Street. More or less opposite Jack Barclay's über-posh car showroom.

I passed it the other night. I daren't look in the windows though!
 
of course, i meant bookshop, but that typo seems strangely appropriate... :lol:

so nataraja's reference to Lovecraft makes him one of those writers who creates his own antecedents!
ah, but that's the genius of Lovecraft - he took many elements from different (and mostly now much less well known than him, altho some eg James and Poe are of course equally well known) authors, plus already existing "real life" myths and legends and real mysteries/antiquities, and wove them all into something coherent and creepily almost-plausible, in part because of all its "hidden" antecedents - when i first discovered this Fortean forum, i was amzed at the number of things that were scarily reminiscent of, and could even plausibly fit into, the Lovecraft mythos...
 
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