50 BERKELEY SQUARE “The Most Haunted House in London

I. BACKGROUND

            I choose this topic about 50 Berkeley Square because I’m just curious about the most haunted house in London. So, I’m looking for the source in the article by internet to expose the truth of the story. For the last few months I have been researching the history of No. 50, Berkeley Square - better known to Victorian Londoners as the home of the 'Nameless Horror. There were reports of "supernatural" noises coming from the house, which was often empty and deserted for long periods.

More than 100 years ago, something terrible happened in Berkeley Square. 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.

Horror on the second floor

In that year, Sir Robert Warboys new 20-year-old heard the rumors about the building was haunted. Raised as a scholar, Warboys despise rumors and looked at only as an urban legend. Warboys colleagues who disagree with that view immediately challenged him to spend the night on the second floor of the building. With arrogance, he accepted the challenge. “After successfully convincing the guard building, Warboys given a room on the second floor, just above the guard room”.
Later, the room will be referred to as one of the most haunted room in the UK.

Then Warboys climbed into the bedroom armed with a pistol and a candle.

Forty-five minutes later, the guard woke up from sleep. He heard a noise in the room upstairs, the rooms are inhabited Warboys. A few seconds later, a gunshot sounded. With haste, he immediately got up and ran toward the top. Arriving at the door of the room, he immediately broken open by force.What he saw will never forget for life.

Conditions in the room was almost unchanged. However, at the corner of a dimly lit room, Sir Robert Warboys motionless clutching his pistol that still smoke. He was not dead anymore!

What is more appalling is the facial expression of Warboys. His teeth were tightly shut, and his eyes bulging as if to jump out of her skull. Looks like he had seen something terrible that has killed him instantly. There are no clues about what has caused Warboys died tragically. The guards just found a hole in the wall due to a bullet fired from the gun. What has been shot? What is certain "something" horrible.
Some twenty years later, "something" that comes back. This time, he was seen by witnesses who are alive!

II. HISTORY

50 Berkeley Square is a reportedly on haunted town house Berkeley Square in Mayfair, in the West End of London. In the 1900s it became known as "The Most Haunted House in London."

Nameless Thing of Berkeley Square was a nickname given to the mysterious entity that seen in the 18th century and 19 in a Victorian era building named 50 Berkeley Square in the UK.

The building is haunted. The story of this mystery centers on a housing complex called Berkeley Square. Berkeley Square Complex, built in 1740 by an architect named William Kent. This complex was once the residence of prominent figures, among them Winston Churchill 48, who lives in the building. Then, George Canning, British prime minister in 1827. He lived in the building No.50. And in this building, this mystery begins. During the subsequent Victorian Era, it was the location of reported apparitions, screams and noises. After the death of its ninety-year-old occupant in 1859, the house

Was unoccupied until 1880.

No one knows exactly when and how the building earned a reputation haunted. However, strange events that accompany this building actually began in the late 1700s. It is said that according to legend, a daughter who lived in the building murdered by a sadist by caregivers. The ghost of the

 little girl often seen crying on the floor above. But only in 1840, this building successfully built its reputation became one of the most feared building in the UK.

According to Charles Harper in his book Haunted Houses, published in 1913. The haunted house in Berkeley Square was long, one of those things that no country cousin come up from the provinces to London on sightseeing bent, ever willingly missed.

Harper goes on to say that “But truth to tell, its exterior is now a trifle disappointing to the casual seeker after horrors. Viewed in the afternoon sunshine with a milkman delivering the usual half pint, or quart, as the case may be, is just as respectably commonplace as any other house of similar late Georgian period, and even at the weird stroke of 12, when the midnight policeman comes and thrusts a burly shoulder against the front-door, and tries the area-gate or flashes a gleam over the kitchen windows from his bulls-eye, there is nothing at all hair-raising about it”.

But there was a time, Harper continues “When number 50 wore an exceedingly uncared for appearance. Soap, paint, and whitewash were unused for years, and grime clung to brickwork and Windows alike. The area was choked with wasted hand-bills, wisps of straw, and all the accumulations that speedily made a derelict London house. The very picture of misery; and every passing stranger stopped the first errand-boy, and asked various questions, to which the answer was, generally, "haunted house" or if the question happened to be "Who lives there?" the obvious reply was "Ghostesses..."

It should noted, however, that Harper himself, begins his article with the warning that "the house is no longer haunted, nor even empty."

He goes on to say that "there are those who declare it was never haunted, and that the story "...was, indeed, invented by a popular novelist of years ago.."

Harper's dismissal notwithstanding, the house certainly acquired something of a sinister reputation and visitors to London still make the pilgrimage to Berkeley Square to seek out what they often refer to as "the most haunted house in London."

Number 50 Berkeley Square was once the home of George Canning, a former Prime Minister, until his death in 1827. It was then leased by a Miss Curzon, who lived in it up to her death at the ripe old age of 90.

It was then occupied by a Mr. Myers and it was with his tenancy that the house's sinister reputation apparently began.

The story goes the was due to be married and had furnished the house in a manner befitting his forthcoming and changing domestic circumstances. But, shortly before the wedding, his bride to be jilted him and the heartbroken Myers became a recluse

he moved into a tiny room at the top of the building where, alone with his memories, he lived day after day never seeing a living soul and only ever coming out at night to walk through the rooms by candlelight.

The flickering flame of the candle cast a dull glow from the house's Windows by night as he drifted from room to room.

In 1873 the local council sued him for failing to pay his rates. He failed to appear in court but the magistrate excused him on account of the fact the house in which he lived was known as ”the haunted house”.

Berkeley Square - Present
Since 1938 until now, the ground floor of Berkeley Square building has been used as a rare bookstore called Maggs Brothers.

Although there are no more sightings were reported over the past few decades, it should be noted that the bookstore employees were not allowed to go upstairs. According to them, since the 1950s, police have put a warning sign on the wall inside the building.The warning mentions that the top floor of the building may not be used, even for warehouse though.

Although in a case like this it is difficult to separate truth from legend, one likely reason that there have been no recent encounters with this beast is the fact that (if this creature indeed has oceanic roots) it has, in all likelihood, returned to the fathomless depths of the sea, or — more chillingly — it and its offspring may still be lurking in the labyrinth of centuries old tunnels, which weave their way beneath Great Briton’s capitol city, feeding on rats, waiting to crawl back up from the sewer to claim more human victims.