The 50 Berkeley Square House

Being as I'm an author of the paranormal and even ghost investigated myself, I've come to learn that one of the things people point to as the cause of a haunting is "a stain." Sometimes something so horrible happens that there is an "imprint" left behind. This imprint can be a haunting. Whether it is a residual (spirits reliving the horrid moment over and over) or intelligent (a true ghost that is aware) there can be a stain.

Momentarily I am going to explain what a stain is and how people think it happens. We are all made up of energy, right? When we die, whether we realize it or not, our energy returns to the earth. Honestly in many ways, but without going into detail I'll just use the example: as our bodies break down, other things use that to thrive and create new energy, such as plants. So it is believed in the paranormal community that the more "traumatic" the death the higher possibility of a "stain." (A transfer of negative energy to that exact spot.) So intense it appears to almost stain that location. Some also believe this explains numerous haunted murder houses and the residual, evil and intelligent hauntings that are often found inside.

I have written books about almost every paranormal phenomenon from Paranormal Pets to Haunted Murder Houses to name a few. These books include stories from people who have been haunted. From my experience interviewing people for my books, I do in fact believe "staining" to be highly plausible.

For today's article, I wanted to delve into an odd haunting. One that could likely be caused by a stain or multiple stains at that. Today we are going to learn about 50 Berkeley Square in London and why people swear that ghosts haunt it.

The legend of the house is that a young woman's spirit haunts the attic room after she committed suicide there by throwing herself out of a top-floor window. The woman had allegedly been abused by her uncle, and the spirit is said to be capable of frightening people to death. It is reported to take the form of a brownish mist, though sometimes it is seen as a pale white apparition.

In the 1840s, Lord Lyttleton took a dare to spend the night in a supposedly haunted upstairs bedroom. He went in with a gun and a candle, and a bell system for alerting the landlord, just in case. He never came out alive. Around an hour after the landlord had gone to bed, he was awoken by a frantic ringing of the doorbell, followed by a gunshot. He rushed to Lyttleton's room on the second floor, where he found the young man dead. There was a look of horror on his face and a bullet lodged in the wall opposite the body of Lord Lyttleton. He died from fright, though the cause was never determined.

The home was left vacant after a series of residents moved out, many of them with stories of hauntings. A second, better-documented incident occurred in 1887. On Christmas Eve, two sailors - Edward Blunden and Robert Martin - were looking for a place to stay. Because the house was unoccupied, the pair decided to use it as a shelter for the night. In the middle of the night, Martin was startled awake by an odd sound. As he listened further it sounded as if Blunden may be fighting with someone or something.

Martin went to investigate the noise. He found Blunden and a formless shape that had tendrils struggling. The tendrils appeared to be choking Blunden. Martin was so frightened and confused by the scene unfolding before his eyes that he fled the home.

Martin immediately ran to get a police officer upon returning he saw that Blunden had been thrown from the second story of the house. In the short time it took Martin to fetch help, Blunden's body was mangled and crushed on the street below. (However there are other versions to this tale, an alternate ending I have seen come up is Blunden being found at the bottom of the stairs deceased instead of being thrown out of the window.)

The house is still standing today, and it now houses an antiquarian bookshop on the first floor. However, by police order, no employee or customer of the store is allowed to explore the building's upper floors due to strange noises that have been reported coming from that area of the house.

The Mayfair Magazine ran an article that alleged that a woman who had stayed in the attic (a maid) had been found acting all sorts of crazy, and was taken to an asylum where she died the next day.

Another haunting account is in regard to a nobleman who spent the evening in the attic. Rumor has it that he was too frightened afterward that he could not even speak.

Since the late 1930s, when the Maggs brothers bought the house, no unusual phenomena have been reported. However, many contemporary media outlets have claimed that strange things have happened there. More recent investigators, though, say that nothing out of the ordinary has ever occurred.

What are your thoughts on 50 Berkeley Square? Do you think the building is haunted? If so, do you think any of the strange stories could be true? And if they are, could it be possible that the suicide left a stain on the home?