The Nameless Horror of Berkeley Square

 

The nameless horror of Berkeley Square is the most Lovecraftian thing I've heard of that wasn't written by Lovecraft himself or his circle of writers. The name of the thing even sounds Lovecraftian. Yet these events predate Lovecraft's writing. Most of them happen before he was even born.

The nameless horror is intrinsically tied to it's location, 50 Berkeley Square in London England. It is known as one of the most haunted buildings in all of London. The building itself has a long history being built in 1740. Not long after it already was reported to be haunted. The first stories about specific spirits started in 1789. Adeline, a woman who had lived in the house, was found dead outside on the pavement. She had jumped from the upper floors to escape abuse from her uncle. After her untimely death people started seeing her apparition as a ghostly woman in white wandering the hallways, and disconnected crying from an unseen woman.

Another early ghost from the 18^th century was a small girl. This child had been killed by one of the maids or her nanny. Although her name and the year this happened has not been remembered. In this early history of the house the monster of the nameless horror had yet to appear and the hauntings were more typical. The strangest events occurred after 1827. During this time the second floor was rented by a man named Thomas Meyers. Meyers became a recluse after his fiance left him at the altar. He slept during the day and could be seen moving about all through the night. Rumours spread that Meyers was practising occult magic in a bid to get his fiance back.

By 1840 Meyers was gone and the house was owned by a different landlord. It had also gained a reputation for being one of the most terrifying haunted buildings in London. Thomas Warboys and his friends had been out drinking for the night. After leaving the bar they dared him to spend the night in 50 Berkeley Square to test his bravery against the spirits. Warboys bribed the landlord to let him stay the night in the haunted second floor bedroom where Meyers had once lived. The Landlored allowed this on two conditions, that Warboys keep a pistol with him that the landlord provided him and that Warboys ring a serving bell at the first sign of anything unusual happening. Warboys agreed to these terms and entered the second floor bedroom.

It was only an hour later that the landlord heard Warboys frantically ringing the bell and has he ran up the stairs he heard the pistol being fired. When the landlord got to Warboys he found him panicked to the point of hysteria. Warboys had unloaded the entire round of bullets at the wall. A trail of black sludge leading deeper into the house had been left by whatever Warboys had fired at, but the entity itself was gone. Warboys ran off into the night, never giving the landlord and explanation of what he saw.

30 years later in the 1870's, Lord George Lyttleton visited the house. Among other accolades and careers he was a writer on the paranormal and wanted to investigate the house, as it had gained a terrifying reputation by this time. Lord Lyttleton spent the night in the same room as Thomas Warboys, armed with a shot gun. In the middle of the night he was awakened by a strange noise, like a wet body flopping and pulling itself across the floor. It entered from the side door and moved to a darkened corner of the room. Lyttleton saw an incoherent mass of brown tentacles, oozing out foul liquid. The thing jumped at him to attack. He fired his shot gun and in the flash of light the thing vanished. The creature was not seen escaping in any direction, it was just gone. Yet the sludge it had oozed while entering the room had remained, proving to Lord Littleton that the monster was not a mere hallucination.

A few years later the house was sold to another landlord. This landlord had a maid and her fiance staying in the infamous bedroom on the second floor. One night everyone in the house was awoken by the maid screaming in terror. When the Landlord intervened the maid was curled up in the corner yelling “Don't let it get me.”, over an over again. She could not be consoled and remained in a state of shock for days. Because of this she was committed to a mad house. A few days later, her fiance was found dead in the same room. He had killed himself with a gunshot to the head.

December 1887, two sailors, Robert Martin and Edward Blunden, from the warship HMS Penelope stayed a night in Berkeley Square. The house was abandoned at this point and had fallen into disrepair. The two sailors were late returning to their ship or barracks and had no place to stay at night. So they broke into the abandoned house with the intent to sleep there overnight. They found the ground floor to o wet and mouldy to stay in. However the second floor was in better condition, so they slept up there. At some point in the night Blunden awoke to the sound of something moving in the room. He saw a small, dark and shapeless mass heading for Martin. Blunden grabbed a metal fire poker in the room and hit the shape with it to defend the still sleeping Martin. The shape lunged at Blunden. Marten woke to the sounds of Blunden and the monster struggling. Blunden screamed as the monster tried to strangle him with tentacles. The creature tried to drag Blunden further into the dark recesses of the house. Martin tried to pull his friend away but couldn't get a grip on him. When the tentacled mass reached for him too Martin ran out of the house and into the night. He returned to the house in the early hours of the morning with police. They found Blunden's body outside the front door, positioned in a way that suggested he fell from the window. Blunden's injuries were more extreme then what would be expected from a two story fall and looked like he had been mauled by a wild animal. Martin was arrested and interrogated for Blunden's death, but was later released and no charges were filed for this event. Nor was an explanation ever found for what happened to Blunden.

For whatever reason, the worst of this being has only ever been encounter on the upper floors of this building, from the second floor upward. It's unknown why. The ground floor still experiences normal haunting activity, but nothing that has inflicted the same mental and bodily harm as the entity on the upper floors. Furthermore no one can agree on what sort of being the tentacled monster is. Ghosts, cryptids and demons have all be suggested. The monster is quite different from normal hauntings. Furthermore the encounter with Blunden and Marten suggests a being that can be hit with physical objects. A demon is also a possibility. Thomas Meyers may have summoned the monster during his occult rituals. Yet, as bizarre and wild as demons are often depicted, they usually are not associated with tentacles and cephalopods, or at least they weren't before Lovecraft's writing. The last idea is that the monster is a cryptid, some kind of unknown freshwater octopus which lives in the sewers of London. The idea is this individual had crawled out of the plumbing and made it's home in the house. Although why would an octopus climb up to the second floor, especially when the house's lower floors were far wetter during its abandonment? The nature of the monster remains elusive. Considering how bizarre this haunting or creature is we may never understand it.

In the 1930's the Maggs Bros Book store moved into the building and ran their business out of the ground floor until 2015. During that time the business has tried to downplay the haunted reputation of the location. They've also boarded up the second floor and have not allowed anyone up there, even employees. Many people have criticized the legend of 50 Berkeley Square because the hauntings abruptly stopped and there's no modern evidence. But with the book store owners stopping any access to the second how would any new evidence be collected? Additionally employees of the book store have reported more normal haunting behaviour on the ground floor, things such as poltergeist activity, disconnected voices and misty figures, although nothing of the creature has been seen. The building is currently for sale. So in the future more tales of hauntings may appear from this property with new ownership.

*A note on how floors are labelled in the UK. The level right on the ground is called the ground floor and the floor above that is the first floor, not the second floor. So the events of these stories take place on the 3^rd floor according to American floor labelling. I wanted to make this clear as some people have claimed these stories are fake because the book store had a second level, this is the first floor.