During the Victorian era, 50 Berkeley Square in London was the most infamous haunted house in London. In his Haunted Houses (1907), Charles Harper recorded it as “one of those things that no country cousin come up from the provinces to London bent on sight-seeing ever willingly missed”, though towards the Edwardian era it was losing its reputation as a place where few ever survived a night without dying or going mad because of its ghosts.
It is surprising with such stories that it never inspired a Hammer film – “The House that Scared People to Death”. The rumours circulating about Number 50 were detailed in that Victorian equivalent of the on-line research community, the scholarly Notes and Queries from 20 November 1872 onwards. From this extensive correspondence selective quotations and items have been taken and endlessly recycled over generations by practically every writer on London ghosts. This was despite the verdict at the time being that almost none of the tales were verifiable and with available evidence indicating the property was peacefully occupied from the closing years of the century. It was generally conceded that it was all a series of wild claims and yarns which got well and truly out of hand. While it is possible people can be scared to death, there was no proof of this ever happening to anyone inside it. [See ‘The most haunted house in London’ by Jan Bondeson, FT335:28-35]
Now 50 Berkeley Square has a rival in Mexico City, a property known as Casa Negra or ‘the Black House’, situated
