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

Ghosts of the British Museum examines reported supernatural encounters connected with the museum’s collections, drawing on testimonies from staff including security guards and curators. Noah Angell links these accounts to objects taken through imperial and colonial collecting, including sacred items and human remains held in galleries, cases and underground storage.

Blending ghost stories with folklore, history and hauntology, the book presents the museum as a place where questions of ownership, repatriation and memory become part of the haunting. Its focus is not simply on apparitions, but on how stories about restless objects reflect violence and unresolved conflicts surrounding a national museum whose collections were gathered across the British Empire.