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.

Author bio

Ghosts of the British Museum: A True Story of Colonial Loot and Restless Objects

Noah Angell

Octopus, Apr 11, 2024 – Body, Mind & Spirit – 320 pages

‘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.

About the author (2024)

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.

Born in the US, he was resident in London for over a decade and

My Thoughts

First thank you to the author and publisher and Random Things Tours for allowing me the opportunity to read this book and participate in this blogtour.

The intro had me hooked very quickly as who doesn’t love ghost stories I mean it was and is part of the earliest memories that I have from around the campfire. 

For me these don’t have the scary tinge to them just a bit of the spooky feeling.  I enjoyed the story but still felt that there was much left unsaid or left to our imagination. 

The author has a great style in writing and I want to see more of what this author is going to release.  I would definitely read more from the author.

I think that with a book such as this it’s a hit or miss. The style of writing plus the type of story that it is will lead to people either loving or hating it.

I do see that this was not packaged as well as what it could have been as it’s more historical than spooky but I still enjoyed it a lot.

I do believe that there are many things that would have taken my enjoyment to the next level.  However I think as more of a historical style this ticked many of the boxes that I always look forward to.

The writing was interesting and the style was not one I had really experienced before.  I think it helped a lot that we can see that the man loves what he does and doesn’t mind putting himself out there for others to see.