Most Haunted Mayfair
50 Berkeley Square was the most famous of London’s hauntings in Victorian times. Often families would take a detour to look at the house, during tours of the houses of heroes such as William Pitt, Earl Grey and Clive of India. At the time, Prime Minister, George Canning lived two doors away from No.50 until his death in 1927.
Mystery Magazine has detailed the Victorian’s love of the macabre in the Spring Heeled Jack and Victorian Ghost sections of this website. Popular newspapers and magazines of the day would excite the imaginations of the populace with stories such as the following about Berkeley Square:
“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.
In 1840, there were reports of “supernatural” noises coming from the house, which was often empty and deserted for long periods. Jessie Middleton in her Grey Ghost Book wrote that a little Scots girl in a kilt haunted the house. The child was supposed to have been tortured to death in the top-most room of the house. Another of Jessie’s stories suggests a girl called Adeline jumped from the top floor window to escape from her lecherous Uncle and since has haunted that room.
Charles G Harper, also investigated No 50 in his book “Haunted Houses”:
“There is quite a literature accumulated around No.50 and even in the staid pages of Notes and Queries the questions of “haunted or not haunted?” and if so, “By what or whom?” have been debated. It seems something or other, very terrible indeed haunts or did haunt a particular room. Whatever it is, has been sufficiently awful to have caused death, in convulsions, of at least two fool hardy persons who have dared to sleep in that chamber. The story is told of one who was not to be deterred by the fate of an earlier victim. He was sceptical and practical as well. Before retiring to bed he gave some parting instructions to those who occupied the rest of the house. “If I ring once,” said he, “take no notice, for I might be only nervous, without due course; but if I ring twice come to me.”
They bade him good night. When the clock struck twelve they heard a faint ring, followed by a tremendous shout. On opening the door they found the unfortunate man in a fit. He died without ever being able to reveal what it was. A shuddery pendant to this story is that which tells how, a dance being given next door, a lady leaned against the wall dividing the Haunted House from its neighbour, and distinctly felt an inexplicably dreadful shock.”
The Mayfair magazine wrote about the house many times, in its May 1879 issue it published “The very party walls of the house, when touched are found saturated with electric horror. It is uninhabited save by an elderly man and woman who act as caretakers, but even they have no access to that room. This is kept locked, the key being in the hands of a mysterious and seemingly nameless person who comes to the house every six months, locks up the elderly couple in the basement, and then unlocks the room, and occupies himself in it for hours.”
Elliot O’ Donnell further intrigued the nation in his book “Phantoms of the Night”, writing in a hand that wouldn’t seem out of place in a Barbara Cartland novel, Elliot describes an incident that happened at Berkeley Square. Two sailors were scared out of their wits when a “shapeless and horrible something” appeared. One of the sailors leapt to his death; the other arrested for his murder, claiming that a ghost had pushed his friend out of the window.
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”. 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.
In the late nineteenth century, mainly due to a great deal of press coverage, 50 Berkeley Square was known as the most haunted house in London. Years before, it had been rented by a Mr. Myers. The man had become an eccentric recluse after he was jilted by his 50 Berkeley Squarebride-to-be, and took to wandering the house each evening by candlelight. The peculiar behavior of Mr. Myers attracted the press, and gradually the tale of the ‘haunted house of Berkeley Square’ began to emerge.
The room in which Mr. Myers was reputed to lock himself away in during daylight hours was said to have a terrible, chilling atmosphere, although since the building has been converted for business purposes there have been no reports of untoward happenings.
A maid living in the house after Mr. Myers was found rigid with fright in the upstairs room. It appeared that something there had caused her to go mad with fear. A skeptical guest asked to stay in the room for the night, and promised to ring the servant’s bell once if he was comfortable and twice should he become ‘disturbed’. That night the bell rang out clearly, and after a pause, a second, more frantic ring was heard. when the residing family rushed to his assistance, they found his lifeless corpse in the bed.
These are not the only strange occurrences within the walls of 50 Berkeley Square. Many other occupants have allegedly gone mad or died suddenly. Others have told tales of a ‘shapeless, slithering, horrible mass’, which has left them terrified and repulsed.
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