Ghosts of the British Museum

A True Story of Colonial Loot and Restless Objects

De: Noah Angell

Narrado por: Noah Angell

'An absorbingly creepy travelogue through the corridors, tunnels and basements of our most famous cultural repository. With Noah Angell as our guide, the British Museum becomes a haunted prison filled with imperial plunder and restless spirits clamouring for attention.' - Malcolm Gaskill, author of The Ruin Of All Witches

'Fascinating and illuminating' - Peter Ackroyd

'Brilliantly delicate, pointed, shivery... You could read it as a guide to which galleries to avoid - or to where the push for repatriation should be most urgent.' - Erin L. Thompson, professor of art crime at the City University of New York

'Achieves a near-impossible marriage between paranormal pop-culture, folklore and hauntology' - Roger Clarke, author of A Natural History of Ghosts

'A heady cocktail of history and folklore that leaves a haunting aftertaste... Spine-tingling' - Lindsey Fitzharris, New York Times bestselling author of The Facemaker

What if the British Museum isn't a carefully ordered cross section of history but is in instead a palatial trophy cabinet of colonial loot - swarming with volatile and errant spirits?

When artist and writer Noah Angell first heard murmurs of ghostly sightings at the British Museum he had to find out more. What started as a trickle soon became a deluge as staff old and new - from overnight security to respected curators - brought him testimonies of their supernatural encounters.

It became clear that the source of the disturbances was related to the Museum's contents - unquiet objects, holy plunder, and restless human remains protesting their enforced stay within the colonial collection's cabinets and deep underground vaults. According to those who have worked there, the institution is heaving with profound spectral disorder.

Ghosts of the British Museum fuses storytelling, folklore and history, digs deep into our imperial past and unmasks the world's oldest national museum as a site of ongoing conflict, where restless objects are held against their will.

It now appears that the objects are fighting back.©2024 Noah Angell (P)2024 Octopus Publishing Group

Mixed feelings

So much to unpack here…. The ghost story element was great. I enjoyed it. You can tell the author has thought deeply about the subject- but hearing him narrate it sounds like he is bored out of his mind with his own writing. It drove me crazy.
Further, the author wildly swings between ghost stories, (as you’d expect) and then drawn out rants about the evils of colonialism and slavery….okay then. I can see why he included some of his thoughts, but after awhile you wish he’d just get back to the topic you thought you were going to hear about. By the end, I’m truly unsure if this book was ever really about ghost stories, or if it was just a convenient sort of bridge to his true passion, which apparently is critiquing the British History Museum. Were the critiques valid? Absolutely, I agreed with him on all his points, it just felt like maybe he should write a separate book on that topic. I don’t know, lots of mixed feelings!