The Other Side

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Story 1.

The Ghost of UB65

It has long been theorised that ghostly manifestations are the echoes of human souls, whose lives were cut unexpectedly short, forever anchoring them to a fixed place.

But what happens when that place is a mobile instrument of war, capable of travelling halfway around the world?

This week, we bring you the ghost of UB65.

At the outbreak of World War One, the military mindsets of the two opposing powers could not have been further apart.

For the Allied nations, warfare remained a somewhat gentlemanly and traditional affair, where combatants lined up to expose their might before engaging in organized and decisive encounters.

To the Central Powers, superior technology and rapidly evolving battlefield tactics would be utilized to to win the war by the quickest means possible.

It didn't take long for Great Britain and her compatriots to feel the cost of their short-sightedness.

As poison gas flowed over European battlefields and German zeppelins peppered London with incendiary firebombs, the Allied generals frantically demanded urgent ideas and innovations to combat the German wonder weapons.

And nowhere was this more evident than on the high seas.

Britain had entered the war with the world's mightiest navy, unrivalled in terms of numbers and pedigree.

Her admirals believed that bigger was better, constructing gigantic steel behemoths equipped with unstoppable firepower.

But her ships were aging, and in some cases obsolete, a point which the Imperial German Navy were keenly aware of.

They knew that to engage the Royal Navy in open combat would have been suicide, so instead invested in a new form of naval technology, the undersea undersea boat, or U-boat.

Germany was by no means alone in the development of submarine technology.

Indeed, the 24 operational U-boats she possessed at the opening of hostilities were dwarfed by the 80 submarines of the Royal Navy.

But the British admirals viewed the submarine as a cowardly and underhand weapon.

They constructed these vessels out of a feeling of necessity, with little idea how best to operate them.

What followed were a series of tragically misguided attempts to adapt submarines to fight as a component of the main fleet, rather than giving them the freedom to operate in isolation, as the German Navy allowed.

The British Admiralty would stand by and watch in horror as a series of daring attacks decimated their outdated forces.

On the 22nd of September 1914, The 7th Cruiser Squadron, under the command of Rear Admiral Arthur Christian, encountered the German submarine U-9 in the North Sea.

Two hours later, three British cruisers had sunk forever beneath the waves, taking 1,450 sailors with them.

The following spring, the cruise liner RMS Lusitania was torpedoed and sunk by U-20 as she approached the Irish coast, claiming 1,198 lives, many of whom were neutral American citizens.

Over the next six months, more than a million tonnes of shipping would be destroyed by U-boat activity, with the Royal Navy seemingly powerless to fight back.

At its height, the U-boat fleet consisted of 142 operational submarines.

Their commanders were viewed as the mavericks and aces of the German armed forces.

In August of 1917, UB-65 joined their number.

She was designed to operate in close proximity to coastlines.

with 10 torpedoes to expend on her opponents before returning to resupply.

But even before her hull had touched the water, she would gain a terrifying reputation as one of the most unlucky vessels to ever be put to sea.

Like most of the submarine fleet, UB-65 was built at the Vulcan shipyards in Hamburg, but unlike her sister ships, she experienced an unusually high number of accidents during her time under construction.

Whilst the keel was in the process of being laid, two dock workers were crushed underneath a falling girder.

One was killed immediately whilst the other remained trapped under the huge metal component for two hours.

His agonised screams echoed around the shipworks before he eventually succumbed to his horrific injuries.

Another incident would occur after the boat's engine had been installed and was scheduled to be tested for the first time.

Three engineers were unaccounted for at the end of the working day.

They were later found lying dead in the motor room, having been overcome by diesel fumes leaking from a fault in in the engine.

Matters failed to improve even when the submarine did eventually leave dry dock.

On her first test run, a sudden squall manifested out of nowhere and washed one of the lookouts overboard, never to be seen again.

Alongside these tragic and unexpected deaths, the vessel was also plagued with technical difficulties.

During another test run, one of the ballast tanks malfunctioned, sending the vessel crashing down onto the seabed.

The crew desperately spent the next 12 hours trying to coax her up from the bottom, before they finally resurfaced.

On a subsequent sea trial, a further ghastly claimed the lives of two more crewmen.

By their very nature, sailors are a superstitious breed, and the submariners assigned to sail aboard the newly commissioned boat quickly formed the opinion that the vessel was cursed.

Their young captain, Martin Scheller, was determined, however, that nothing would stop UB-65 from being cleared for duty.

The tide of war was slowly turning against the U-boats, as the Allies developed methods to counter them, such as Q-ships and improved depth charges, requiring the Imperial Navy to make every possible submarine operational.

As the German commander relentlessly drilled and trained his crew, he remained quietly confident that the thrill and excitement of finally stalking the enemy would focus their minds.

But fate had other ideas.

On the eve of UB-65's maiden voyage, a small party were in the process of loading the torpedoes when one of the devices detonated without explanation or warning.

The submarine escaped with relatively minor damage, but five sailors were seriously wounded, including the ship's second officer who had been in command at the time.

Lieutenant Richter would later die of his injuries, and it would be another two frustrating weeks before the repairs were completed and replacement crew members were found.

Finally, in October of 1917, the submarine slipped her moorings and silently made her way into the North Sea.

Her first mission proved a great success, with Scheller successfully sinking five enemy vessels, including the British corvette HMS Arbatus.

For a time, it seemed that the crew had been wrong in their assessment of the vessel, until a string of unnerving incidents began.

One evening, Scheller was in his cabin poring over charts when one of the crew knocked on his door and informed him there was a situation on the submarine's deck.

The captain made his way through the control room and up into the conning tower, where he found the duty lookout cowering on the floor.

His anger rising, Scheller demanded that the sailor, a man called Peterson, explain himself.

The terrified lookout recounted that he had been up in the conning tower, looking out across the waves, when he had realised there was someone standing a few feet away on the ship's bow.

Peterson described the figure as an officer, dressed in a great coat and cap.

When he had called out for the officer to identify himself, the man that turned to face him was none other than the deceased Lieutenant Richter, who then disappeared into thin air.

Scheller berated the sailor, accusing him of everything from drunkenness to outright cowardice, and warned Peterson that if he caught him spreading rumours of ghosts to the rest of the crew, there would be harsh consequences.

But news of the incident had already travelled throughout the boat and as he walked back to his cabin, the captain could feel his men regarding him nervously.

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Several days later, the morning's peace and tranquility were broken by screaming coming from the control room.

The boat had been on the surface for most of the evening, venting and recharging her batteries.

As the morning lookout had clambered up into the conning tower to do one final sweep of the horizon before the ship submerged, he had felt a tap on his shoulder and found Richter standing behind him, smiling.

Falling backwards down the ladder and into the control room with a shriek, The lookout had managed to break his leg.

As crew members had scrambled to help him, two of them swore blind they had seen Richter staring impassively down at them from the Conning Tower hatch, before disappearing.

Scheller again made threats of taking disciplinary action against the men involved, but this new incident had left him feeling more than a little apprehensive.

The hauntings continued into the submarine's second sea patrol, increasing both in terms of volume and intensity.

Two engineers stated they had been working on a piece of machinery one evening and looked up to find Lieutenant Richter surveying surveying the control panel behind them before he proceeded to walk straight through a nearby bulkhead.

No enemy ships had been sunk during this patrol and the captain suspected that his frightened crew were rapidly becoming incapable of carrying out their duties.

Scheller had been determined to keep the issue from his commanders, worried it would reflect badly on his reputation, but now he saw little choice besides requesting a new crew.

As the submarine headed back for their home base at Wilhelmshaven, another tragedy occurred.

A torpedo man working in the bow compartment looked up to see the dead second officer walking past him, disappearing through the steel hull.

The terrified crewman screamed and fought his way through the boat, leaving chaos and confusion in his wake.

Before he could be detained, he had clambered up the Conning Tower ladder and had hurled himself into the churning sea.

As Scheller stood helplessly on the deck, along with several other crewmen, he turned to see Richter stood amongst the others, staring back at him before fading into nothingness.

The reaction of Scheller's superiors to the young officer's patrol report and the request for crew reassignments was a predictable mixture of amusement and anger.

The corroborating testimony provided by his junior officers and the rest of his crew, however, proved compelling enough for the commander of the Flanders submarine fleet to launch an investigation.

Eager to make the matter go away, and in order to prevent the story spreading to other ships at the base, a Lutheran pastor was asked to conduct an exorcism of the boat, and the majority of the crew were quietly replaced.

The next two patrols passed without incident, but on the evening of the 10th of July 1918, the tragic tale of the haunted submarine would come to a short and violent conclusion, just off the Cornish coast.

An American submarine, L2, was hurrying to assist a Portuguese freighter, which had been torpedoed near Padstow, when she had encountered UB-65 sitting motionless on the surface.

As Lieutenant Augustine Grant prepared to give the order to sink the unsuspecting enemy vessel, he paused momentarily.

Through his binoculars, he could see that the German submarine was already listing heavily to one side in the water.

He could also make out the shape of a solitary officer standing up on the ship's deck, apparently staring out to sea.

Before his excited men had even finished loading their submarine's torpedo tubes, Grant observed UB-65 suddenly shake, violently as if she had been hit by a huge explosion, before she sank beneath the waves.

For the next hour, the American vessel sailed back and forth, searching for survivors, but there were none.

The haunted submarine had taken her entire crew down with her to her grave, and almost 90 years would pass before she was ever seen again.

UB-65's remains were discovered in 2004 by a documentary crew working for a British television company.

The wreck was inspected by renowned nautical historian Dr.

Innes McCarthy, who could find no obvious signs of damage or any indication that she had been sunk by enemy action.

The ship's aft hatches were open, which seemed to indicate that at least some of her 37 crew members had tried, but failed, to escape during the sinking.

So, was UB-65 haunted by the vengeful spirit of her deceased second officer, and did his spectre play a hand in her demise?

Captain Scheller certainly believed so, which is why he took the unprecedented step of bringing the matter to the attention of his superiors.

Perhaps unbelievably, It is not the only mysterious incident to have befallen a U-boat of the Imperial German Fleet.

Two months prior to the loss loss of UB-65, on the 30th of April 1918, HMS Curiopsis encountered UB-85 off the coast of Belfast.

The submarine was half-flooded and sinking fast, and only the arrival of the Royal Navy vessel saved the crew.

Under interrogation, her captain Günther Kreck would later astound his interrogators by claiming that his vessel had been sunk after an encounter with a sea monster.

Kreck explained that he had ordered the ship to surface for the evening to recharge her batteries, when something had emerged from the water and climbed up onto the decking.

He described the creature as possessing horns and red glowing eyes.

Its bulk had quickly pulled the bow under the waterline, causing significant flooding through the hatches that had just been opened in order to ventilate the ship.

The panicked Krek had called every available man to arms.

Unable to use the deck gun, as the beast was now coiled around it, the crew had opened fire on the monster with their sidearms.

Eventually, after a steady barrage of gunfire, the creature had crashed back into the water, causing further damage as it went.

The Germans had spent the next few hours working tirelessly in an effort to slow the flooding, until discovered by their eventual captors.

Despite ridicule and accusations that he had invented the story to cover for his own shortcomings, Krek maintained to his dying day that it was a paranormal enemy responsible for the sinking of his boat, rather than a human one.

The wreck of his submarine was discovered in October 2016 by a telecommunications company laying internet cables across the Irish Sea.

Again, no obvious cause of the sinking could be determined.

There is also the account of George von Frostner, commander of U-28.

In 1915, Having torpedoed the British steamer Iberian, he and his crew had watched in amazement as a huge sea creature had been hurtled out of the sea and up into the air when the ship's engines exploded.

Commanding a U-boat was one of the most arduous and difficult tasks across either of the two world wars.

Confined beneath the waves in cramped, unsanitary conditions for weeks on end, it was immensely taxing on both a sailors' physical and mental health.

Death was only ever an explosive detonation or leaking bulkhead away, with little hope in the way of survival or rescue.

Operating under such torturous conditions, struggling from the pressures of fighting for victory whilst trying to preserve the lives of their crew, could it be that the minds of the German commanders began to wonder, that they bought into superstition, generating some form of mass hysteria, which spread throughout their ranks?

In the case of UB-65, this feels unlikely.

The men knew that by openly talking about the spectre that was tormenting them, they they were opening themselves up to both ridicule and abuse.

But it seems that this was preferable to remaining on such an unlucky and haunted vessel, and the sailors who were punished or transferred off the ship for talking about the ghostly activity would ultimately end up being the lucky ones.

Is it possible that these maverick German commanders, who were afforded the freedom to roam when and where they pleased in pursuit of their prey, encountered circumstances that most other sailors never would?

The sea remains a vast and underexplored place, which almost certainly still has secrets yet to be revealed, but ships continue to disappear under mysterious circumstances, even with huge advances in safety and communication systems.

These are occurrences that were witnessed and verified by entire crews, not just individual members, and it can be argued that the sailors who made these reports had nothing to gain from fabricating them.

They would only face ridicule.

Examination of their wrecks seems to confirm that it was not the enemy that claimed their vessels,

but something altogether more mysterious.

We will never know if it was indeed the ghost of Lieutenant Richter that the American captain witnessed in UB-65's final moments.

Whatever answers may have existed with regards to her fate remain sealed inside a steel coffin, which now sleeps on the sea floor, solitary and undisturbed.

Her wreckage, a monument to the daring and bravery of the men who once sailed within her.

May they rest in peace.

Story 2 The Nameless Horror of Berkeley Square

The affluent London borough of Mayfair has long been associated with grand hotels and gourmet restaurants, but hidden amongst the art galleries and international embassies sits an innocuous Georgian property that was once known as one of London's most haunted houses.

What was the nameless horror of Berkeley Square?

The idea of a building or place that is plagued by paranormal and inexplicable occurrences is to be found throughout all of the different geographies and societies that span the globe.

From the ghostly forests of Mount Fuji in Japan, to the horrifying deaths at Australia's Monte Cristo homestead and the Myrtles Plantation haunting in Louisiana, all cultures throughout the ages feature at least one site deemed hostile and harmful to those electing to venture inside.

We have already featured some of these cases, including the mysterious happenings at Borley Rectory and Seleneus Rathaus.

The events that took place at number 50 Berkeley Square are just as disturbing, and much like the incidents witnessed at the aforementioned properties, just as impossible to resolve using conventional explanation.

Throughout the 19th century, the house would claim the lives of at least four of its inhabitants, as well as a number of other lives that have not been officially verified.

The story of vengeful spirits, arcane rituals and demonic entities populated the pages of London's newspapers, attracting both paranormal investigators and foolhardy thrill-seekers.

The property itself resembled any other traditional townhouse until the tragic demise of one of its residents in 1789.

A young lady by the name of Adeline was found dead on the pavement outside.

She had either fallen or was pushed from the second floor bedroom window, possibly whilst attempting to escape the abuses of her overbearing uncle.

Soon after, The local constabulary began receiving reports of a female figure desperately clinging to the same window ledge before screaming and disappearing into thin air.

Subsequent residents encountered a spectral female figure walking the corridors.

Another ghost of a young girl murdered by her nanny was also reported.

Furniture moved of its own accord and strange smells emanated from upstairs.

One former Prime Minister, George Canning, purchased the address in 1800.

In his diaries, He made reference to hearing unexplained sounds and loud bangs whilst living in the property.

Following Canning's death in 1827, the house was rented out by the new owner, Elizabeth Curzon.

Bizarre rumours circulated throughout high society in relation to one of her lodgers, Thomas Myers.

The dysfunctional son of a Tory MP, Myers moved into the address with his bride to be.

When she jilted him at the altar, Myers became a recluse, never seen outside save to open the door for his servant.

Unable to tolerate the rejection, Myers took to sleeping in the daytime and was only glimpsed moving around by candlelight during the hours of darkness.

He could be heard shouting and making strange noises at night by his neighbours, and the rumour began that he was using the cellar to dabble in the occult, attempting to win back his fiancée.

The cellar features in the story of another lodger, Mr.

Dupree.

It is alleged that Dupree's brother was mentally unstable and was imprisoned in the lower floors rather than being committed to a local institution.

He remained cut off from society until his eventual death, fed meals via a hole cut into the cellar door.

But as disturbing as these torrid tales are, they are trifling compared to the property's most notorious house guest, a sinister entity that became known as the Nameless Horror of Berkeley Square.

The first incident attributed to this murderous creature occurred in 1840.

A 20-year-old student named Robert Warboys was drinking at a tavern in the neighbouring borough of Holborn when the subject of the infamous townhouse was discussed.

It's unclear if it was morbid curiosity or some form of drunken dare that spurred Warboys to act, but he subsequently arrived at the front door of 50 Berkeley Square in an intoxicated state, demanding to spend the night inside.

Through a combination of sheer personality and financial incentive, the drunken Warboys overcame the reluctant landlord's protests, but was only permitted to sleep in the second floor bedroom under two strict conditions.

The first was that he remain armed at all times, with a pistol that was thrust into his hands.

The second was that if he saw anything unusual, he was to pull a cord hanging beside the bed.

This was connected to a bell that would summon assistance.

Accepting these terms, he headed to the upper floors and settled in for the night.

An hour passed before the deathly silence of the house was broken by the frantic ringing of the bell, immediately followed by the deafening report of a pistol shot.

It took seconds for the landlord to sprint up the stairs, where he found Warboys in an incomprehensible condition.

The traumatised youth was backed into a corner, the empty pistol still raised in self-defence.

There was a hole in a nearby wall where the shot had impacted, but the landlord could see no one else inside the room.

Despite repeated efforts, Warboys was unable to explain what had occurred, and after a short time, he rushed from the house into the darkness of the night.

More than 30 years would pass before another soul dared to sleep in the upstairs room, with similarly horrifying results.

The man was Lord George Lyttelton, and he took the precaution of bringing his own gun with him.

Littleton was an outlandish character, a former MP and Privy Council.

He was once offered the Greek throne by the government.

An accomplished writer with an obsession for all things paranormal, in 1872 he announced his intention to explain what was happening inside Berkeley Square.

Armed with a hunting rifle, he was allowed to stay in the same room which Warboys had occupied many years before and settled in for the night.

The aristocrat was woken in the early hours by a strange noise, and he immediately reached for his weapon.

Exiting the bed, Littleton looked for the source of the sound, tracing it to a darkened corner adjacent to the bedroom window.

The sound stopped, and then, something suddenly sprung at him from the shadows.

Littleton caught a glimpse of a disgusting brown mass of tentacles rushing towards him, akin to some deformed sea creature, before he fired.

Blinded by the flash and smoke from the rifle's barrel, He immediately retreated and reloaded, but when he regained his sight, the creature was gone.

All that remained was a gaping hole in the wall, cartridge casings, and some form of sludgy residue.

Six years later, the property was purchased by a new owner with two teenage daughters.

The family employed a local girl as a maid, and it was eventually agreed that her fiancée, a naval captain by the name of Kentfield, could also move in.

The maid set about preparing the top floor bedroom for her and her betrothed to live in before a tragedy struck.

One afternoon the house was filled with the sounds of terrified screaming.

The occupants ran upstairs and found their maid shrieking in the bedroom.

Her eyes were fixed on one corner of the room and she was repeating, don't let it touch me, over and over again.

The family were unable to calm the girl down and after a doctor arrived, she was committed to the local sanatorium.

Despite this, the anguished Kentfield resolved to spend that night in the bedroom, taking his service pistol for protection.

As the restless occupants later tried to settle, there was a shout of terror from upstairs, followed by the sound of a single gunshot.

Kentfield was found lying in the middle of the bedroom, having apparently committed suicide.

It was confirmed the following morning that the maid had also passed away that same evening.

By far the most graphic and haunting description of whatever was stalking the upper floors of the house came in December 1887.

A warship, HMS Penelope, arrived in Portsmouth for refitting.

With her crew given leave, the majority of the sailors gravitated towards London for the festive season.

As the capital's bars and taverns closed their doors on Christmas Eve, two enlisted men, Robert Martin and Edward Blunden, found themselves without a place to stay.

The drunken and meandering route they took through the city just happened to lead them through Berkeley Square, where number 50 stood, by now abandoned and vacant.

Having broken in, the two sailors fatefully elected to spend the night on the second floor, due to the damaged condition of the lower levels.

They settled down and slipped into a deep sleep, assisted by the alcohol they had consumed throughout the evening.

At some point during the night, Blunden awoke suddenly.

As he looked around the room, he noticed a shapeless form, making its way across the floor, heading for Martin.

As it slowly and deliberately moved towards the sleeping man, the creature left a trail of slime behind it and made a soft squelching noise.

The terrified sailor's eyes desperately darted from side to side, catching sight of a metal poker lying on the floor just beyond his reach.

As the strange intruder closed on Martin, Blunden grabbed for the rusty tool.

In a heartbeat, the creature launched across the room, dodging the waving poker and lunging for Blunden's face.

Martin woke to panicked screams, seeing Blunden desperately trying to free himself from something wrapped around his neck.

In the ambience from the outside streetlights, Martin witnessed tentacles tightening around his crewmate's throat, attached to a sinister, bulky form that pulsated and twitched.

His nerve broken, the sailor abandoned his struggling friend and fled the building.

encountering a patrolling police constable a few streets away.

When the two men returned to number 50, they found Blunden's lifeless body lying outside the front door.

Some newspapers reported that it was impaled and torn on the metal railings.

In others, it was twisted and broken as a result from falling from the second floor.

The terrified Martin was arrested and interviewed, but ultimately released without charge.

Like the stories of so many other iconic haunted sites, As the technology and means to effectively document them evolved, the reported incidents at the location quickly petered out.

With the advent of photographic and audio recording equipment, sightings of the nameless horror ceased.

The house was sold to the British Petroleum Company and then on to an antique book dealership.

And whilst the current owners have confirmed that strange bangs and odd noises could still be heard, there have been no visual sightings of ghosts or cryptids.

So what was the malevolent force that stalked this seemingly ordinary Mayfair townhouse for a century, and even claimed some of the occupants' lives in the process?

There was no shortage of speculation in the press at the time of the incidents, ranging from the straightforward to the outlandish.

Naturally, as is usually the case in these situations, the most grounded and logical reasoning provided by sceptical commentators was that there never really was anything supernatural taking place at the address.

The more fantastical elements included in the recounting of each incident were merely excuses used to cover up more sinister events.

The drunken young man who could not face up to losing a bet, who manufactured an impossible situation to get himself out of it.

The fading novelist, sensationalising a publicity stunt in order to sell more books.

Two sailors involved in a fight that ended badly.

The survivor concocting a horror story to mask his misdeeds.

Further still, it has been suggested that many of the incidents were completely fabricated to begin with.

Over the years, the house became a dilapidated ruin, its broken windows and gloomy interior preying on the imaginations of passers-by and those willing to concoct stories about a cursed past.

Moving on, past the idea of deliberate falsehoods and mistruths, there is also the possibility that the established stories and myths already surrounding the house might have had a severely negative effect on those who dwelt within.

In the case of both Warboys and Lyttelton, Both men were actively seeking some form of otherworldly experience, and so they may have misinterpreted or imagined some of the things they thought they were seeing.

The same applies to Blunden and Martin, who like warboys, were severely intoxicated during their brief stay at the address.

In the half-darkness, it is possible that some rodent or semi-domesticated animal may have been mistaken for something more sinister.

And in the case of Kentfield, could the grieving naval officer have been driven past the point of sanity by the apparent loss of his fiancée, leading him to visualise horrors that simply were not there in in the room with him.

If these events really did take place, then given the lengthy time frame over which the incidents occurred and the diverse range of people that were involved, not everyone is so quick to embrace such a straightforward explanation.

Fear and trepidation alone could not have resulted in the tragic and senseless deaths of Kentfield and his fiancée, and the descriptions of the nocturnal attacker detailed in the accounts of the survivors are remarkably similar, despite their encounters occurring many years apart.

One of the more sensationalist ideas put forward by the media was that arcane activities conducted by the likes of Myers and Dupree had opened a doorway to another world, allowing demonic creatures or entities the ability to enter our world via a gateway in the basement of the house.

It would be another 50 years before author H.P.

Lovecraft would first describe the demonic being Cthulhu in his works, and the Berkeley Square entity bears an uncanny resemblance to the ancient European myths and writings he would use to describe his creation.

The fact that people from different levels of the social hierarchy were involved in such identical occurrences further minimises the possibility of collusion or deceit.

How could it be that the description of the beast offered by Lyttelton, a former government minister and member of the aristocracy, could be so similar to that of two drunken working-class sailors, conscripted off the streets to fight for their country?

Another theory examined by reporters of the era also bears merit, offering the possibility that the creature was some form of cryptid, or an exotic variety of cephalopod that had arrived in the city via one of the many boats travelling up and down the Thames.

This invasive species could either have been hideously deformed by the high level of pollutants in its new environment, or was naturally repulsive in appearance.

The intruder eventually accessed the house via the city's labyrinthine sewer system, aggressively defending the new home it had found.

Finally, it may also be possible that over the years, the people living at the address each succumbed to psychotic episodes, induced by some form of chemical or material that had been introduced into the premises.

Could such an item have been brought into the house by the likes of Thomas Myers and secreted away somewhere in the proximity of the second floor bedroom, its effects slowly seeping into the household over time and affecting people exposed to it.

Merely setting out to discredit the players involved in these stories, though, does not fully hide the fact that something very strange and very sinister was occurring within the property, if indeed these events really took place.

The number of deaths and suspicious incidents certainly unnerved the local police enough to place a sign within the household forbidding anybody other than the owners from accessing the top two floors.

The sign remains at the property to this day, a sad testimony to the human suffering that has become part of the building's history, whether genuine or not.

Given the lack of available evidence, save for the testimony of those involved, it proves problematic to hypothesise precisely what took place inside the house.

We can never know for certain if there was indeed something tangible and malevolent lurking within the walls of the building, or if it was the cumulative effect of so many years of ghost stories and strange rumours associated with the house, causing a significant level of hysteria in visitors, clouding their thoughts and judgment, often with tragic consequences.

Whatever the case, the anguish and suffering that took place at 50 Berkeley Square remains a cause for great sadness, and we can only be grateful that whatever force was at work has now seemingly come to an end.

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