Early on in my esoteric research, many moons before I first heard the Barghest Wyrd howl, I imagined myself as something of an adventurer. Spurred on by a love of Hellblazer and the unusual exploits of Mulder and Scully I spent many an evening exploring abandoned and supposedly haunted sites all around London. Indeed it was inevitable that I would seek out urban legends in the shadows between the streetlamps. The Highgate Vampire, Spring-heeled Jack and the Goose at Crossbones Graveyard, England’s capitol has more than its fair share of tall tales spread from west to east like pawprints upon the age worn flagstones.

While there may be truth hidden like diamonds in the mountains of coal that formed the capital’s folklore, the Beast of Berkeley Square is sadly one of the least believable. For a long time it was my one that got away, a terrible supernatural horror that had killed on multiple occasions and unless confronted may well do so again. Erroneously believing myself skilled enough in the occult arts to try and banish the entity in those heady days when I first began dabbling in the necromantic, I kept an eye out for a ghost hunting group that would be allowed into the antiquarian booksellers then occupying the building.

This quest ultimately failed, however, as it seemed that Maggs Bros. Ltd were not only disinterested in the paranormal aspects of their weekday home but also hostile to any talk of ghosts and ghouls on the premises too. While this attitude was ridiculous to me at the time it is understandable in hindsight, especially in light of the research others have done towards debunking the case. Plus allowing mere commoners the chance to tramp around the premises by torchlight would be unseemly for a company that specialised in procuring rare documents by appointment to the Queen herself.

Sadly despite the many and varied reports associated with the case, the fact remains that the entire narrative is built on some very shaky ground. Indeed the only thing elevating this tallest of tales above the standard urban legend territory was the continued interest of a few notable authors as well as the tabloid rags of their period. Obviously the existence of The Beast remains doubtful at best, though as with much the realms of Forteana, and indeed the flash bang eye of the Barghest Wyrd, the story itself has value as a memetic vector if nothing else. Still, there is more of gravy than of grave at work here.

So no, it seems less and less likely that an aristocrat died of fright in the master bedroom, nor can any evidence of a maid having a nervous breakdown when something conveniently indescribable tried to pry beneath her petticoats be found outside of the suspiciously modern accounts given by the kind of low effort AI slop popular on YouTube in the post truth era. Little in the way of Lovecraftian horror to be found within the walls of Number 50 it seems, and yet the location continues to raise discussion even now. There is a glimmer of hope, however, as couple of reports may have a small basis in fact.

     Then few people questioned the truth of its once having been really haunted, the stories told about it were generally accepted as facts, and not, as what many people now consider them, fabrications. There is still much diversity of opinion as to the origin of the reports of the hauntings.
     Some think they arose from the fact that the house was for some time occupied by a very eccentric hypochondriac, who shut himself up there and saw no one, inhabiting one room only and letting the other rooms go to wrack and ruin. Sometimes he wandered around them at night, a lighted candle in his hand, and this, it was surmised, led his neighbours and people passing by to believe that the premises were haunted. Moreover, as the recluse was tall and haggard, the fitful light from the candle, accentuating his pallor, made him appear eerie and spectre-like; and thus it may have been that the report got about that the house was haunted by a very terrible-looking apparition. 
     Other sceptics with regard to the superphysical were of the opinion that the story of the hauntings was merely an invention on the part of some caretaker, who wanted to prevent people, by scaring them, from buying or renting the house, in order that he (or she) might go on living there. [1]

First, we have the above case of a Mr Myers who, having been abandoned by his fiancée mere days before their marriage is thought to have became unsound of mind, living like a recluse in the upper floors of the building and admitting no visitors. During this period the ramshackle state of the property and drifting candlelight behind darkened windows would have sent a chill down the spine of any but the hardiest of Dickensian gentlemen and kept the tall tales flowing along with the gin in East End tap houses way after sundown. And then, perhaps more spectrally, there is the account of the Lord Lyttleton of that era.

Staying in the supposedly fatal room on a bet during the tenancy of a Miss Curzon, he appears to have insisted upon bringing a pair of blunderbusses loaded with a mixture of normal shot and silver sixpences to his midnight vigil. It was these firearms that is said to have saved his life when, later that same night, he fired both weapons directly into the centre of a jet black shape that jumped across the room at him. Accounts vary as to what happened next, of course, but it is safe to assume from his later political exploits that he did indeed survive the encounter relatively unscathed despite what some books claim.

     Stories continued to generate. A Mr Bentley took the house with his two teenage daughters, who complained of a musky, feral smell, as if an animal was prowling the house. A maid found one guest, a Captain Kentfield, screaming 'Don't let it touch me!' as he cowered in horror in his bedroom, and later, after foolishly returning to the room, he was found dead of fright. Later stories include the wraith of a sobbing child either tortured or frightened to death in the nursery, and the ghost of a woman who fled the embraces of a lecherous uncle by throwing herself through the window.  
     Another dating from the 1920's told of sailors breaking in and being frightened to death by the same ghost, usually described as being formless and smoke-like.[2]

Everything else that is said to have occurred beneath that once leaky roof in Berkeley Square is equally, if not more, questionable than even Lord Lyttleton’s possibly posthumous account. Window jumping sailors impaled on railings or found dead with necks broken at the basement door. Caretaker couples willingly locked in the parlour for the evening while the actual owner visited the building and did who knows what in an upstairs room. The aforementioned maid gasping nonsense before the light died in her eyes. More evidence of the muddy paw prints that the Barghest Wyrd leaves in the cultural group mind.

As for the monster itself, it has always been multiple choice. A ghost is the preferred culprit, usually misty black with snaking tendrils of shadow. Demons get a mention, especially in relation to the ritualistic intentions of that occasionally visiting owner. Poltergeists are cited, as are particularly annoyed owls. Some claim that the beast was a squid like cryptid living in the pipework of the house, killing to protect its territory and in doing so bringing a whole new meaning to the term ‘Thomas Crapper’. And while I no longer believe in the validity of the case from a paranormal point of view I do still find that last idea highly amusing.

The urban legend as a concept is not a modern invention. Tall tales filtered through society long before the terminology existed to explain their spread. Some of the reasons for the notoriety of Number 50 are obvious in hindsight of course. Monetary in the case of publications that derived much needed income from outlandish claims of the macabre, and philosophically in the case of those witnessing the strange lights or odd noises after dark. We have long added monstrous glosses over what seems strange, even in supposedly enlightened times, and the haunted house as a trope has been intimately tied to language for millennia.

Ultimately what we have here is hearsay weakly supported by the testimony of a few learned men, paperback authors and unscrupulous potboiler journalists too. Remember this was a London that, while yet to witness the horrors of Jack the Ripper, was still terrified from living with the ever present fear of Spring-Heeled Jack. Fertile ground, regardless. Maggs Bros. Ltd left the building a while ago, with talk of turning both 49 and 50 Berkeley Square into a wellness retreat in the heart of the city now. But just how easily the new owners manage to shoo the Barghest Wyrd away post renovation remains to be seen.

[1] Elliot O'Donnell, Ghosts Of London, Philip Allen, 1832, Pages 26 - 27.
[2] Roger Clarke, A Natural History Of Ghosts, Penguin Books, 2012, Pages 289 - 290.