The Most Haunted House In London
50 Berkeley Square has had a haunted reputation for
so long that it was nearly impossible to find tennants
willing to have anything to do with the home. 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 Raw Head and Bloody Bones,
or whatever it is gas been sufficiently awful, to have
caused the death, in convulsions if at least two fool-hardy
persons who have dared to sleep in that chamber"
Apparently one nobleman, brave enough
to show that there was nothing to fear decided to spend
the night in the haunted chamber. His friends found him
rigid with fear, his eyes bulging from their sockets
and unable to speak and tell them what happened. He died
shortly after.
Another story tells of two sailors on
shore leave were looking for a place to stay, and seeing
the obviosly empty home broke into it and as bad luck
would have it picked the haunted chamber to sleep in.
They were awoken during the night by lound banging footsteps
coming up the stairs. The door to the room then flung
open and a shapeless, oozing, hideous mass started to
completly fill the room. One of the me was able to get
around the mass and ran out of the home and returned
with a policeman, only to find that his friend was impaled
on the iron railings outside. It appears that he jumped
out of the window to his death rather than face the hideous
creature that was inside.
How the house became haunted in the first
place is not known but Charles Harper believed that the
house was once owned by a man named Mr. Du Pre of Wilton
Park. He has a lunatic brother and he kept him locked
up in one of the attics. Apparently, this insane brother
was so violent, so out of control that he was kept in
the room entirely alone and his meals had to be fed to
him through a hole as it was not safe to enter the room
at all. This lunatic brother would wail and scream so
loud that the sounds could be heard down the block. When
the brother finally died, his ghost remained behind,
just as insane was he was in real life.
Another thory is that a Mr. Myers owned
the home and he had it all done up for his new bride
to be. She apparently left him at the alter, and he was
so upset by being jilted that he locked himself away
in an upstairs bedroom and would only come out at night
and he would roam the house by candlelight and moan at
his sorryful life and this caused his ghost to remain.
For the past 50 years the building has
been occupied by Maggs Bros, Antiquarian Booksellers.
Although things seem to be a little more peaceful now
adays (no one is jumping out of the windows) Occasionally
a cleaner will sense that they are being watched or a
gray mist may appear in the haunted chamber where the
accounting department now resides, but other than that,
the worst that seems to have happened is someone's glasses
were snatched from their face and thrown to the ground.
Perhaps the spirits that haunt the building
are content with it being an antique bookstore and therefore
leave the occupants alone and at peace. |
