The Nameless Thing of Berkeley Square

by M.P. Pellicer | Stranger Than Fiction Stories
​50 Berkeley Square is a 4-story, brick townhouse in London's Mayfair district. In the late 19th century it became known as one of the most haunted houses in London. 

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50 Berkeley Square has a long history of being haunted

The Berkeley Square district was designed by architect and painter William Kent before his death in 1748. When the actual structure was constructed is not certain, but originally the townhouse was rented out in those early years. When it developed its fearsome reputation is not known, but it gained momentum after the 1820s.

Next door to the Haunted House, is 48 Berkeley Square a property once the site of Sir Winston Churchill's childhood home. He was born at the townhouse in 1874, and his father leased it until 1879. The original house was built in 1830, and demolished in 1906. A 2-bedroom apartment, on one of the nine floors of the current building, went on the market in 2024 for £6.5 million. It is one of the last residential locations on the square, which is now predominantly occupied by businesses.

No. 50 Berkeley Square is said to be haunted by human and non-human phantoms. A murderous unnamed thing was said to be responsible for several deaths in the home, but there were other suspects mentioned throughout the years.

​There are stories of a ghost that haunts the 4th floor attic (others say the 2nd floor) of 50 Berkeley Square. The structure has been referred to as "the most haunted house in London".  Others argue it is not a ghost at all but an amphibious, predatory cryptid, reminiscent of Lovecraft's Cthulu's pantheon.

Whatever inhabited Berkeley Square remained unidentified, so it became known as The Nameless Thing. It left behind only weird clues to its identity. Unfortunately it also left in its wake several corpses. Described as monstrous, it appeared to have a predilection to claim humans as its prey.

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Illustration from “The Haunted House in Berkeley Square” by Edric Vredenburg pg. 7 c.1891

The first long term resident of the townhouse was George Canning who served as British Prime Minister for only three months. It's not known exactly when he lived there but he died in 1827. There are unverified stories that while he lived there he had unusual experiences.

An encounter with the "Thing" was recounted in the early 1840s. Sir Robert Warboys, 20, heard of strange rumors about the notorious Berkeley Square house while he wiled away the hours at a tavern in Holborn. Intrigued, but convinced he would lay the ghost and end the legend, which he referred to as "unadulterated poppycock". 

His drinking companions tried to disagree with him, and the evening ended with a challenge to spend the night on the second floor, inside the haunted room. Warboys a dandy and notorious rake, without a moment's thought, told those gathered around him, “I wholeheartedly accept your preposterous harebrained challenge!”

That very night he sought out the landlord and convinced him to let him spend the night in the haunted room. The landlord was reluctant, and accepted only if Warboys agreed to bring a pistol with him. The second condition was that if he sighted anything "out of the ordinary", he would use the cord attached to a bell in the landlord's room below.

Warboys got his way and as the clock struck midnight, he found himself sitting at a table with a single candle to provide lighting, waiting for the arrival of the "Thing". He didn't have long to wait.

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Sailors c.1840s

Less than hour later the landlord was yanked from sleep as the bell from the bedroom clanged with desperate violence. Right after a gunshot boomed from above his quarters. Spurred with terror, the man took the steps two at a time to where he left Warboys. He prepared himself to encounter a horrific tableau. Instead he found Sir Robert wedged in the far corner of the room. His lips were peeled back in a grimace, and his eyes bulged with fear. His hand, with bloodless knuckles gripped the pistol he'd fired a moment before. A bullet hole had been torn in the wall on the other side of the room. He was dead.

Three years after Sir Robert Warboys met his end at 50 Berkeley Square, two men met something inhuman and indescribable. Although the details of this narrative have varied in minor degrees from one retelling to another, the core of the account has always remained the same:

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In 1843, two sailors from Portsmouth, Robert Martin and Edward Blunden, after having squandered their lodging funds on an evening of drunken ribaldry, noticed a “To Let” on the then abandoned Berkeley Square abode and managed to break into a basement window of the dwelling in search of a night’s rest.

Discovering that the lower level of the house was uncomfortably damp (not to mention rat infested,) the sailors migrated upwards, finally settling down in the now notorious room.

Blunden, presumably the more sober of the two, expressed the anxiety he felt upon entering the room. He claimed that he felt a “presence,” but these fears were promptly dismissed by his shipmate, who used his rifle to prop open a window to allow for a breeze and built a fire in the long unused hearth with bits of broken furniture and rotting floorboards. It wasn’t long before the two men were huddled on the relative warmth of floor, fast asleep.

Sometime after midnight Blunden awoke to see the door to the room creaking open. Little by little a sliver of dim, grayish light crept across the wooden floor. Too terrified to move, Blunden managed to wake his accomplice. The two men sat up as they heard a strange, moist, scraping sound slowly approach them. Later, Martin claimed that it sounded as if something were dragging itself across the floor.

Suddenly, the terrified men leapt to their feet and came face to face with the abhorrent visage of what could only describe as a hideous monstrosity. The creature undulated between the sailors and what was their only hope for escape; the open door. Then, just as the trembling Blunden began to reach toward the rifle, which was still wedged in the window frame, the creature suddenly lunged forward, wrapping itself around the young sailor’s throat.

Seizing the opportunity, the panic stricken Martin ran from the house, screaming for help. Soon enough he stumbled upon a patrolling police officer. Although skeptical of the young sailor’s frenzied tale (and no doubt attributing it to the almost overwhelming stench of alcohol which permeated his uniform) the officer dutifully followed Martin back to Berkeley Square.

According to the account, Martin and the officer ran up the stairs, but found no sign of Blunden in the room. Martin reclaimed his rifle as the two men continued to search the house. Their efforts seemed to prove fruitless however, until the men entered the basement and were greeted to a ghastly image that would haunt them for the remainder of their lives…
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Lying at the base of the stairs in Berkeley Square’s moist, rock walled cellar was Blunden’s dismembered corpse. His body lay in a mangled heap, with his head wrenched viciously to the side. The officer reported that the young man’s eyes (much like those of Sir Robert Warboys) were wide with unimaginable horror.

Many unexplainable deaths were attributed to The Thing that stalked the halls of 50 Berkeley Square

There are accounts that whatever stalks the halls of 50 Berkeley Square is phantasmagorical, a man-like shadow with a deformity of both face and body. Its hands and feet are bird-like, tipped with sharp talons. It was this figure that strangled Blunden with "cold, misty looking hands."

Another version tells where Blunden was thrown from a window, and he fell on a spike from a wrought iron fence below.

Throughout the years, others survived and described something without form, slimy, which made a “gruesome sloppy noise” when it moves. One eyewitness said the creature snaked forward on tentacles; an octopus-like thing that belonged neither in the sea nor on the land.

Could the Thing be a mutated, freshwater octopus that uses London's subterranean sewer system which connects to the Thames? Once inside the house, it fed on rats and then found a drunken sailor was a more filling meal. 

Harry Price, the well-known investigator known for his involvement with Borley Rectory during the 1920s, disclosed how he came across a story from 1790, where the house was used by counterfeiters. His angle was that the counterfeiters used the tale to frighten off any curiosity seekers.

​According to him, another story told of weird noises, bells tolling, plodding footsteps and the sound of something heavy being dragged throughout the house. It was so loud the neighbors went inside, en masse trying to find the source.

He also came across an 1870 article published in the magazine Notes and Queries by W. E. Howlett, which stated:

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The mystery of Berkeley Square still remains a mystery. The story of the haunted house in Mayfair can be recapitulated in a few words; the house contains at least one room of which the atmosphere is supernaturally fatal to body and mind. 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 number 50 and was found a corpse in the middle of the floor after frantically ringing for help in vain.

Rumor suggests other cases of the same kind, all ending in death, madness, or both as a result of sleeping, or trying to sleep in that room. The very party walls of the house, when touched, are found saturated with electric horror. It is uninhabited save by an elderly man and his wife who act as caretakers; but even these have no access to the room. This is kept locked, the key being in the hands of a mysterious and seemingly nameless person who comes to the house once every six months, locks up the elderly couple in the basement, and then unlocks the room and occupies himself in it for hours.

The “Nameless Thing” said to haunt 50 Berkeley Square was something that dragged itself from the London sewers.

Harry Price described where 50 Berkeley Square was situated in one of London's most sought-after districts, but the house stayed vacant for years on end. He concluded by saying that perhaps the poltergeist that haunted during the early part of the 19th century, but had since been dispelled.

Other stories involving the attic room, surrounds the spirit of a young woman who committed suicide by throwing herself from the top floor window, after her uncle raped her. Her spirit is seen as brown mist, other times a white figure. 

A less known tale is about a man locked in the attic in total isolation, and fed through a slit in the door. Whether he was mad to begin with or not, in the end his mind snapped and he died there. The nexus of this story is a legend involving Mr. Dupre who was said to keep his violently insane brother on the top floor of the townhouse. He was so dangerous he was kept locked in the room, and his screams were often heard by neighbors. It is the phantom of the insane man, described as a figure with a white, chalky face with a gaping jaw who haunted 50 Berkeley Square. It is the top floor where he was secluded that is the most haunted.

The likely, real-life figures for this character is John Du Pre, who along with his wife Madeline hobnobbed with aristocrats during the early 19th century. The family had an estate in Buckinghamshire, which you would think would be a better place to stash an insane family member.

The attic is also the setting for the story of girl killed in there by a psychopathic servant. It appears these stories are several versions of the same haunting, but with different characters.

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50 Berkeley Square, London

In 1859, Lady Elizabeth Curzon, 91, daughter of the late Viscount Curzon, lived at 50 Berkeley Square. On April 14, she died there. Her housekeeper of 30 years, Sarah Jones followed her to the grave, October of the same year.

After Lady Curzon's occupancy is when Thomas Myers moved to the townhouse.

In 1873, a reference is made to him living at No. 50 Berkeley Square and neglecting to pay his taxes. The newspapers refer to the address as the "haunted house" and it "has occasioned a good deal of speculation among the neighbors." He was known to be well off, and his refusal to pay the taxes was ascribed to his eccentricity, a nice word for mad.

This is the backstory to Thomas Myers and his occupancy at 50 Berkeley Square. 

His father Thomas Myers sailed to India and joined the East India Company. In this he was assisted by a great uncle John Robinson. Even though he was only 17 years old when he left, he went on to become Accountant-General in Bengal.

When he was 36, Myers had made his fortune and returned to England. He was elected Member of Parliament for Harwich, and in 1802 married Lady Mary Catherine Nevill, 18, the daughter of the 2nd Earl of Abergavenny. She was also the granddaughter of John Robinson who had helped launch his career. They married at  his home, Wyke House in Isleworth.

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A warrant was issued against Thomas Myers for non-payment of taxes c. April 1873

In a foreshadowing of what was to come of the Myers marriage, Wyke House which dated back to the 16th century, would be made into a private lunatic asylum in the 1840s.

Lady Mary died in 1807 when she was 24 years old, and produced two children during her six year marriage. One of them was Thomas Myers, who would go on to live at 50 Berkeley Square, the other was a daughter named Mary.

Thomas Myers Sr. died in 1835, leaving his two children well off. His daughter Mary never married and died in 1888 at age 84. She lived at her father's house in Tilney Street.

Besides not paying the taxes, Thomas Myers allowed the house to become derelict, giving it an appearance of a haunted house. His goods were about to be seized for non-payment of taxes when he died in 1874. He left his sister the lease on the dirty house, with the stipulation that she was neither to sell it nor let it, and he hoped she would live there. Mary Myers continued to live on Tilney Street, and 50 Berkeley Square stood empty until 1884, when Mary Myers died.​​

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The haunted house in Berkeley Square was long, one of those things that no country cousin come up from the provinces to London on a sightseeing bent, ever willingly missed. [...] 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, 'aunted 'ouse; or, if the question happened to be "Who lives there?" the obvious reply was ‘Ghostesses...’
Charles Harper, Haunted Houses (1913)

Lady Dorothy Nevill c.1861

Lady Dorothy Nevill published her autobiography in 1906, and made mention that Thomas Myers was her relative. He had lived there there since 1859, and she described where after he had lost his fiancée, he behaved like a lunatic. His plans were to bring his bride to live at the house, but a few days before the wedding, she eloped with another man. He never left the house, and would ramble through the rooms at night making strange noises, which was the source of the supposed haunting.

She described him as "exceedingly eccentric, to a degree that bordered on lunacy."

Lady Nevill was born down the street from the house at 2 Berkeley Square to Horatio Walpole, 3rd Earl of Orford, and his wife Mary Fawkener.

Another story, which might be confused with what happened to Sir Robert Warboys, alleges that in 1872, Lord Lyttleton spent the night in the attic. He shot at an apparition with a shotgun he brought with him. He couldn't find anything, dead or alive, only his spent shells.

It seems the stories alleging the source of the haunting, changed throughout the years. In 1879, Mayfair Magazine told of a maid who lived in the attic, and went mad, only to die in an asylum. 

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"The Mystery of Berkeley Square" c.1882

Another story, very similar to other versions, describes a nobleman, who after spending the night in the attic, lost his power of speech. There is even a story of a ghostly child who wears a kilt.

For the ten years the house stood empty after Thomas Myers' death, there was a mystery as to who was paying the taxes . It was a well-kept secret, even though the most likely person would have been Mary Myers.

In June 1884, Lord Selkirk took up occupancy, despite the reputation the house still maintained as being haunted. He employed workmen who renovated the structure. He didn't enjoy his occupancy for long. In April, 1885, he died however he was at his residence at St. Mary's Isle, Kirkcudbright.

​But all was not death and doom at 50 Berkeley Square. In 1887, Lady Romilly. who was Lady Selkirk's niece, on behalf of the Working Ladies' Guild held a sale of knitting at the town house.

It seemed the Countess of Selkirk, had more to fear from the living then the dead. In December, 1902 she was robbed. A "dressing-case" containing valuable jewels was taken from her bedroom on the second floor. Inside were "a remarkably fine pearl necklace, several brooches, bracelets, rings, etc."

The robbery was committed by "remarkable cunning'.  At 8 o'clock in the evening a young man, of very ordinary appearance came to the door with a carboard box, wrapped in brown paper and tied with a string. He told the footman who answered the door the parcel was for the housemaid, and there was a letter inside. He had to wait for an answer. The footman asked him to step inside and he took the box downstairs to the kitchen where two servants were eating supper. The maid did not expect any parcel, and the only thing inside were yards of cheap silk, and no letter.  The footman returned to the hall and gave the box back, where the young man said he would let the sender know. One hour later one of the servants entered the Countess' bedroom and noticed the dressing-case had disappeared. Nothing else in the bedroom was disturbed.

The police believed the young man was the one who robbed the jewels, however the footman was positive he did not have the dressing case when he left the house. The police suspected the young man opened the door for someone else to search and take the jewels.

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50 Berkeley Square present day

In the 1930s, the Maggs Brother, booksellers, took over the house, and Lady Selkirk who lived there for decades, dismissed the stories told about it. There were rumors that employees were not allowed up on the top floor. Allegedly the police hung up a sign in the 1950s, instructing that the top of the structure was not to be used, even for storage.

​Peter Underwood included the house at 50 Berkeley Square in his book Haunted London (1975). Others have remarked a similarity between Edward Bulwer-Lytton's story, The Haunted and the Haunters and Berkeley Square.
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In 2017, the Maggs Brothers bookshop moved to Bedford Square in Bloomsbury.

Was No. 50 Berkeley Square truly haunted, or just a victim of well-told, convincing ghost stories perpetuated through every retelling? And if yes, who or what slinked through the structure, watching with vacant eyes the living come and go.

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