50 BERKELEY SQUARE

50 Berkeley Square was the most famous of London's hauntings in Victorian times. The house in Berkeley Square contained 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. 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." 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