Ghosts of the British Museum

A fascinating and illuminating account of some curious incidents at the greatest museum in the world. – Peter AckroydFilled with artifacts wrenched from graves and stolen from shrines, the British Museum is undeniably haunted. In this brilliantly delicate, pointed, shivery book, Angell reveals which of the museum’s many angry spirits have managed to be the loudest. 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 YorkWith its shelves of dusty fetishes, objects literally poisoned, conserved mummies, stone mirrors and giant recumbent deities, the British Museum is ripe for haunts both academic and supernatural. When I wrote A Natural History of Ghosts in the British Library both at the British Museum and its new home in Euston I made friends with many security guards who seemed to me more interesting about ghosts, more deeply involved in the emotion of them, than the librarians. Here is a book that actually gives them voice! Achieving the near-impossible of a marriage between paranormal pop-culture and developing folklore and the academic notations of hauntology, American scholar Noah Angell has a cultural predisposition for haunted objects and consequently understands the concept well. Where even the fakes are spooked-up, Angell has found an untapped resource - the unmediated haunt in a highly mediated environment. – Roger Clarke, author of A Natural History of GhostsAn absorbingly creepy travelogue through the shadowy corridors, echoing tunnels and musty basements of our most famous repository of cultural treasure. With Noah Angell as our guide, the British Museum seems less like a temple dedicated to ancient grandeur, more a haunted prison filled with imperial plunder and restless spirits clamouring for attention, insisting that we remember differently. Next time you visit, I guarantee you’ll be glancing over your shoulder, ears pricked up to catch the murmured laments of the dead. – Malcolm Gaskill, author of The Ruin Of All WitchesCome for the delicious ghost stories but stay for a complete takedown of the British Museum project… – Kathleen Jamie * New Statesman *Absolutely fascinating, thoughtfully told… Powerful and provocative, Ghosts of the British Museum creates its own unique energy and important voice. * Lovereading *I’ve never been to the house of horrors that is the British Museum, but Noah Angell has, and he’s done the Lord’s work in his book. It is the only tour, virtual or otherwise, that you’ll ever need. * The Continent *

Noah Angell is a writer and artist who works with orally transmitted forms such as storytelling and song. This work has led him to collaborate with the Polar Museum in the north of Norway, while working in North Carolina on a documentary film on gospel singer Connie B. Steadman, and in London, where he has collected testimony of the ghosts that haunt the British Museum.