With all the hubbub over Paranormal Activity I remembered a scary ghost story I read years ago about the dangers of falling asleep in a haunted house in London. It was presented as a true story, and I remembered enough details to find it on the web. Though I can’t remember the book I read it in, the following, from the website alienbodies, is close to word for word what I remember reading.

In 1943, two sailors from Portsmouth, Robert Martin and Edward Blunden, after having squandered their lodging funds on an evening of drunken ribaldry, broke into the then abandoned Berkeley Square home in search of a night’s rest. Discovering that the lower levels of the house were uncomfortably damp, the sailors migrated upwards, finally settling down in the now infamous room.

Blunden, presumably the more sober of the two, expressed the anxiety he felt upon entering the room, but these fears were promptly dismissed by his shipmate, who used his rifle to prop open a window to allow for a breeze. It wasn’t long before the two men were huddled on the 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.

Martin and the officer ran up the stairs, but found no sign of Blunden in the 4th floor 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 an image which would scar them for the remainder of their lives.

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 were wide with unimaginable horror, and his face frozen in a grimace of twisted terror.

That’s a hell of a story. Is there any truth to it? Certainly not in this form. While there is a long tradition of ghost stories at 50 Berkeley Square, where this story is supposed to have taken place, it wasn’t abandoned in 1943. It was a booksellers. This is also a very odd ghost story, in that the ghost is described in almost science fiction terms. It could be alien or a mutant that the sailors saw.

There is a parallel tradition of this story where it’s set farther back in time and with a more conventional ghost. For example, there’s this version, which is set in 1887 and ends with the sailor being found dead outside the house, impaled on a fence because of ghost-caused defenestration.  Here’s another version, set in 1843, with a conventional ghost but the non-mangled body being found in the cellar. It seems unlikely any of these could be true stories because they include many elements that should have left copious evidence in the public record (the names of the sailors, where they were from, the involvement of a police officer, and of course a dead body to be explained), yet no newspaper I could find reported on any of this. I assume the Berkeley Square story has its origin as some piece of fiction that accidentally leaked into the “real” annals of the paranormal, but I have no idea when or how that happened.

This week’s two-hour long Nova, titled “Darwin’s Darkest Hour,” was really excellent. The exposition was occasionally (OK, frequently) heavy-handed, but probably out of necessity. But the settings were gorgeous, the acting was good, and it was very historically accurate. True, Darwin is suspiciously handsome, but I suppose that’s to be expected. Also (coolness), they present some scenes set at London’s Natural History Museum that were either filmed there, or are very accurately recreated. And, when Darwin meets with John Gould, a couple of the cases displayed in his office appear to be very recognizable currently-exhibited NHM cases displaying quite extraordinary Victorian collections of exotic birds.*

(The movie also features an awful lot of cetaceans and penguins jumping majestically out of the sea–but I assume that was mostly for Joël’s benefit.)

I’m writing this while watching – Darwin just puked in the Andes. Historical verisimilitude! And, for some reason, he’s dressed like Doctor Who.

I don’t know enough about the actual historical record, and, given that it’s the Victorian age, maybe it’s an accurate portrayal, but Emma Darwin is presented as a bit of a flighty sounding board for the brilliant man to bounce his ideas off of. “Can you explain that to me? I’m just a woman.” She does have a certain strength that shores him up, but there’s something grating about her naïvety. It gets a little old.

They (the Darwins) do have a practice of giving a daily beer to their mailman, of which I must heartily approve. I also like the abundant in-jokes, like quotes from the Origin, an edge-of-screen shot of the B-tree, and the inclusion of Linnaean Society president’s comment that “The year… has not, indeed, been marked by any of those striking discoveries which at once revolutionize… the department of science on which they bear” – it’s like a goddamn comic book movie for evolution nerds.

OK, still watching it – Emma Darwin is literally kneeling and praying by her bed, after having her spiritual world rocked by the Big D., when he gently knocks on the door, enters, and starts making out with her (in a very sexy Victorian nightgown) (Emma, not Charles)! Creepy.

But why, why did they have to begin the program with the disclaimer:

The following program contains material that may be considered offensive.

Offensive?! Well, I suppose that make-out scene was a little offensive. And I guess it’s the best that can be expected from a local affiliate these days – at least the show itself didn’t pull any punches.

*The cases themselves are beautiful works of art, and the contents are stunning. But the specimens are displayed in that singularly disturbing Victorian death-in-life style, akin to death photography, that seems to have fueled Tim Burton’s nightmares. The best part of those (and similar) display cases in the Natural History Museum (including the one holding the dodos) are the little attached notes, which say, effectively, “Yes, these are all very rare, very beautiful animals that were killed, stuffed, and returned to England for public display. We’re very, very sorry, but that’s how they did things back then. And, since they’re already dead, we may as well and go ahead and display them, right? Also, here’s a nearly-extinct stuffed tiger.”