Today I share my review of ‘Ghosts of the British Museum’ by Noah Angell, which I read over Christmas and New Year.

This author seems to have two agendas: 1) to share a vast array of ghosts and spirit experiences at the British Museum and 2) to decry those cultural thieves and looters at this august institution, and shame them into giving all their artefacts back to their original owners and dismantling the entire museum.  A rather bizarre dual motive, but it still makes for a fascinating and highly readable nonfiction book.

I often found the author’s stance political and highly partisan, and some may consider him to have an ‘over-developed sense of the dramatic’, but it comes across as a crushing attack on the whole ethos of the British Museum. However, many would not consider his claims – the presence of numerous aggrieved, unquiet ancient spirits – as a reason to empty the place and close it down. At one point he correlates the macabre enjoyment of tourists today viewing the mummified human remains in the Upper Egypt Galleries, to the mindset of those who used to go for a fun day out to watch the public hanging.

I found the book a mixture of annoying, shocking, fascinating, and always captivating. I have to give it five stars for gripping me throughout and also inspiring me with new ideas on how to research a nonfiction book. He interviews museum workers past and present in person and on the phone, corresponding with some by email and chatting with others in the local pubs and cafes. He cites seminars, websites, books, news reports, unpublished MA theses, journals, YouTube videos, museum talks, TV programmes, archival documents, online articles, Ghost Club Minutes, museum catalogues, traditional songs, sermons, the quarterly statement of the Palestine Exploration Fund, and the British Medical Journal.

Packed with his own strong opinions and backed up by numerous detailed first person testimonies gathered from museum workers, curators, warders, cleaners, and night security staff, this book is thought-provoking, engaging and controversial and cannot but provoke an emotional response on the subject from readers, one way or another.

I feel sure the readership must be divided between those who are now fired up anew to visit the British Museum again as soon as possible, and those who resolve never to go near the place again… or just stick to the occasional special exhibition in or off The Great Court (as in my case).

Noah Angell knows the collections, galleries and rooms of the British Museum extremely well and I was very impressed by that. He also succeeded in chilling me with his information about a vast number of uncatalogued items lying in mournful Storage on the levels well below the museum’s public halls. His style is highly colourful and imaginative, and very readable.

From the paranormal point of view, depending on your own worldview, you could find the contents of the book disturbing, creepy, deeply unsettling and sad, and feel angry about injustice and the misuse of power. Others may just find it amusing and intriguing.

Such comments are included as ‘The Director of the British Museum plays prison keeper to the house of spirits’ and ‘The colonial museum must be dismantled; it is a colonial-era relic, a  cursed object, unfit for sacred presences… It is the ghost of a bygone age, a ghost that deserves to be put to rest.’

Unfortunately for his avowed intentions, his book may well serve to greatly increase the numbers visiting the museum, thus supporting and validating their ethos and continued success and prosperity even further, regardless of the feelings of the aggrieved ancient spirits.

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