Haunted London (11 page)

BERKELEY SQUARE, MAYFAIR

Perhaps the most famous of all haunted houses in London is Number 50 Berkeley Square. The house had such a reputation in Victorian days that our country ancestors would not dream of a visit to London without a look at the ‘haunted house in Berkeley Square’, and with such notoriety it is not surprising that many unsubstantiated stories and legends have come to be associated with the house, which has been occupied for many years by Maggs Brothers Limited, the well-known antiquarian booksellers.

The house contains some beautiful Adam fireplaces and dates from the eighteenth century, and there are those who believe that the ghostly happenings date from soon after the place was built. By 1872, the house was famous and Lord Lyttelton seems to have been one of the few people brave enough to have spent a night alone in the haunted room on the top floor — and who lived to tell the tale, although he was always reluctant to do so. He had with him two blunderbusses loaded with buckshot and silver sixpences (the latter to combat evil forces) and during the night he fired at ‘something’ that seemed to leap at him from the darkness. He was aware of a vague shape falling to the floor ‘like a rocket’ but he could find no trace of any physical thing that he had shot. He wrote in
Notes and Queries
, following an enquiry as to whether the place was haunted, ‘It is quite true that there is a house in Berkeley Square said to be haunted, and long unoccupied on that account.’ Bulwer-Lytton’s famous ghost story,
The Haunted and the Haunters
, is supposed to have been founded on the Berkeley Square haunting.

In 1912, Jessie A. Middleton published
The Grey Ghost Book
and says that many years earlier she heard about a child ghost at the house that used to be seen in a Scots kilt. The poor child was said to have been frightened to death in the nursery at the top of the house, and the pathetic little ghost was seen so often, frequently sobbing and wringing its hands, that no one would live in the house. Another story concerns a young girl who threw herself out of the top-floor window to escape the attentions of her lecherous uncle. Her ghost haunted the house and would be seen clinging to the window-ledge, screaming and screaming, as she must have done before she fell to her death. Yet another story, which may have a grain of truth in it, is told of the house being occupied by a gang of counterfeit coiners who made weird noises at night and constructed strange sights to scare away inquisitive visitors. Such a story would tie in well with the sounds of furniture, or heavy boxes, being dragged across bare floors every two months or so at a time when the house was empty. Bells were heard ringing too, a window would be flung open and stones, old books and similar objects would land in the street at the feet of startled onlookers. Whenever investigations were made, it is said, the house was found to be deserted. In a later issue of
Notes and Queries
(2 August 1879) a correspondent stated that the house contained ‘at least’ one room where the atmosphere ‘is supernaturally fatal to body and mind’. He went on to say that a girl saw, heard or felt such horror that she went mad and never recovered sufficiently to relate her experience, whilst a man, sceptical of ghosts and haunted houses, arranged to spend a night in the same room and was found dead in the morning. Even the party-walls of the house, when touched, were stated to be ‘saturated with electric horror’. Certainly during the course of the enquiries that he made Lord Lyttelton discovered that people occupying the neighbouring houses were troubled by odd noises that they could not explain. Probably the story that did more than any other to enhance the reputation of the house concerned two sailors who found themselves penniless in London in the 1870s. Chancing to walk through Berkeley Square, they saw the ‘For Sale’ sign outside Number 50 and broke in to obtain a roof over their heads for the night, Settling themselves into a room on the top floor, they were disturbed during the night first by banging noises, like doors slamming, and then by footsteps that seemed to slither and slide up the stairs and approach the door of the room the two men were occupying. After a moment, the door handle turned and ‘something shapeless and horrible’ oozed into the room. One of the sailors dodged past the shuddering mass and fled down the stairs and out of the house, deaf to the screams of his terrified companion. Dashing into the arms of a policeman who chanced to be passing, the frightened man blurted out his story and the policeman proceeded to search the house. He saw no sign of any ghost but he did discover the body of the other sailor in the garden, with his neck broken. It appeared that he had fallen, or been pushed, from the upstairs window and was impaled on the spiked railings bordering the pavement.

Number 50, the famous ‘haunted house in Berkeley Square’ long reputed to be haunted by a frightful ‘appearance’ that caused madness and sudden death.

It is difficult to discover any facts about the haunting, and the basis of the whole story may well lie in the eccentric behaviour of a certain Mr Myers who leased the property in 1859 in readiness for his forthcoming marriage. But Mr Myers was jilted and the shock and sadness caused him to become a broken, morose and solitary man, who would never allow a woman near him. He existed for the rest of his life in the ill-fated room at the top of the house, only opening the door to receive sustenance from a manservant. Often, he would sleep most of the day and at night wander about the room, candle in hand, a sad and lonely man whose shadows on the curtains and movements at dead of night became part and parcel of a legend of haunting — a legend that still persists.

When I called there in June 1970, I learned that the occupants are still pestered by curiosity seekers as they have been for the past thirty years. During the Second World War, fire-watchers used the building (including the ‘haunted room’ — now used as an accounts department) and reported nothing untoward or inexplicable. Perhaps at long last the house is at peace, sobered by the down to earth staff of Maggs Brothers Ltd.

BROADCASTING HOUSE, LANGHAM PLACE

The British Broadcasting Corporation have a ghost that haunts the upper floors of one of their premises in Langham Place. The third and fourth floors harbour the ghost of a limping butler who walks the corridors, carrying an empty tray. The form has usually been seen in the early morning, and one engineer took the figure to be a real waiter, until it disappeared as he watched. Another member of the BBC staff described the form as completely lifelike but moving abnormally slowly, almost like a slow-motion film. A couple of years ago, broadcaster Brian Matthew told me that a room at Broadcasting House was occasionally visited nocturnally by a dark, bat-like creature that seemed to jump out of a wall. The old home of the BBC in Savoy Hill, off the Strand, was, and perhaps still is, haunted by the ghost of actress Billie Carleton, who died in her flat there in 1918. The doors of the flat have opened, silently and by themselves, literally hundreds of times in the presence of scores of people.

BURLINGTON ARCADE, PICCADILLY

There is a flat near Burlington Arcade that was the scene of a murder by strangulation over fifty years ago. Some people who spend a night at the flat find themselves awake at two o’clock in the morning in a cold sweat with the overpowering feeling that they have been almost strangled. The present occupant of the flat sleeps undisturbed but many visitors, who know nothing about the history of the place, say that they cannot spend another night in the flat. More recently, Burlington Arcade itself was the scene of apparent poltergeist manifestation when a leather-goods shop and a tobacconist seemed to attract the attention of ‘Percy the Poltergeist’. Four times in as many months objects in the leather shop were moved from shelves during the night. Once, three leather folios were found placed in a semicircle on the floor around an electric fire; the previous night, after everyone left for home, they had rested on a shelf five feet from the floor. Some weeks before other articles had been removed from shelves and arranged in circles on the floor. At the tobacconist’s shop three heavy pewter tobacco jars were removed from a shelf in the first-floor showroom and placed in a semicircle around a table. There was never any sign of forced entry and Scotland Yard could offer no explanation. Nothing was missing and nothing was damaged. There has never been a logical explanation, although I recall talking to a president of the Society for Psychical Research about the case and he said that he could not help but notice the extra trade that the publicity brought to the shops concerned.

Burlington Arcade, the scene of two poltergeist infestations. Nearby there is a flat where a fifty-year-old murder is re-enacted.

THE GARGOYLE CLUB, SOHO

This is one of the oldest clubs in Europe, and the building once housed a musketry school that belonged to Charles II. Among those who have lived here is Nell Gwynne. She might well have some sympathy and understanding for the strippers who once worked at The Gargoyle.

Several girls at the club experimented with wineglass and letters a few years ago, and they happened to hold the ‘séance’ in the Nell Gwynne Room. They obtained what appeared to be the beginning of a message when one of the club’s owners stopped the proceedings and told the girls they were foolish to play around with such a subject. Two of the girls were determined to carry on with the experiment and one night they hid themselves in the Nell Gwynne Room until everyone else had left the club. With only candles for lighting (the electricity had been switched off) they started another séance, and almost immediately obtained a name that could have been a misspelling of Nell Gwynne. Then the glass began to move about wildly. Suddenly frightened, the girls became aware of a presence in the room and one of them began to lose consciousness. The other became terrified as she heard senseless mumblings coming from the lips of her unconscious friend, and unaccountable scraping noises from the direction of a locked door that only led to a fire escape, and she rushed to a window and called for help. Soon the police arrived and rescued the frightened girls.

A former club owner, Mike Klinger, claimed that he and two other witnesses all saw a tall figure, cowled and shrouded, on the pavement near the Meard Street entrance to The Gargoyle, but the figure vanished into thin air as they watched. Dylan Thomas, the poet, told me that he found a unique and fascinating atmosphere at The Gargoyle. He was certain that the place was haunted and said he wouldn’t spend a night there for anything. Some witnesses have reported seeing a well-built young woman in a high-waisted dress and wearing a large flowered hat drift, rather than walk, across the floor of the club, and disappear near the lift shaft. The figure could well be Nell Gwynne herself.

Green Park has a haunted tree and the sounds of a 200-year-old duel at dawn.

GREEN PARK, PICCADILLY

Although formerly part of St James’s Park, Green Park has a very different atmosphere with its air of quiet mystery. Even on the brightest day there is a stillness, an air of expectancy, and a sensation of sadness along the shady walks and among the gnarled and ancient trees.