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noahangell.bsky.social
museo_ghosts
@noahangell.bsky.social
1.4K followers 1.6K following 210 posts
Artist / Author of Ghosts of the British Museum, a narrative non-fiction book about the museum's many ghosts. Wayfaring North Carolinian. Represented by Zoe Ross at United Agents. https://linktr.ee/ghostsofthebritishmuseum
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noahangell.bsky.social
This past Saturday I caught @rhiannongiddens.bsky.social,
Justin Robinson & friends celebrating the life and work of Joe & Odell Thompson at the Mebane community center. An extraordinary performance. Here's a bit of "Dona's got a rambling mind." 🪕🪕🪕🔥🔥
October 13, 2025 at 7:39 PM
noahangell.bsky.social
Interesting note on Cold War-era CIA experiments on bilocation / remote viewing 🧐
photograph of a paragraph which reads: Another email came from a former CIA agent who had worked in the Stargate Project, which was about remote viewing. For two decades both the United States and the Soviet Union employed psychics to see what was on the other side of the Iron Curtain. They scored many hits, and therefore the program kept going for twenty years. Of course, there are people who say it was not for real. Anyway, he was also very happy to see one detail in my book, something he had experienced. photograph of a printed paragraph, which reads: When María of Ágreda bilocated to Texas, she could speak to the natives. She didn't know their language, and they didn't know her language, but they understood each other. This former CIA agent said to me in an email, "Sometimes when I was remote viewing, I would break through to the other side [i.e., Russia] and I could talk to people on the other side. They could talk to me, and we understood each other perfectly, and I can put you in touch with more people who have had this experience."
October 4, 2025 at 5:59 PM
noahangell.bsky.social
Ghosts of the British Museum is now available in Mandarin on the Taiwanese market (!!)

Thanks to everyone who's made this possible 🙏🏼🙏🏼🙏
Taiwanese edition of Ghosts of the British Museum, with a maroon cover and the Lost Caryatid with bright, glowing eyes.
September 13, 2025 at 4:22 PM
noahangell.bsky.social
Derek Walcott on storm season, reminding me that we're in the thick of it
Excerpt from poem: "In the grey vertical forest of the hurricane season, when the dirty sea returns the wreaths of the dead, all the village could do was listen to the gods in session,..."
September 1, 2025 at 2:17 PM
noahangell.bsky.social
"natural bridge blues"
A lush pine tree bent, as if frozen in a storm, over a pond on a summer afternoon in rural North Carolina
August 19, 2025 at 1:53 AM
noahangell.bsky.social
I clocked this one a few times in Berlin too - Independent trucks is a skateboard company that used to have a logo that resembles the SS's iron cross - they discontinued it, but the Neo-Nazis seek out the old tees.
Photo of a black Independent trucks skateboard tee with a logo that resembles the SS's iron cross.
July 30, 2025 at 5:20 PM
noahangell.bsky.social
Found in a friend's family archive. Reminds me of the old fiddle tune "Did you ever see the Devil, Uncle Joe?"
An old, faded black and white photo (circa 1940s?) of a man in denim overalls standing beside a dirt road in the mountains. A bandage wrapped over his nose obscures his face.
July 19, 2025 at 5:45 PM
noahangell.bsky.social
I saw this logo in Berlin a few times - it's the old logo of Independent trucks - a skateboard company... but these folks did not skate 👀
July 19, 2025 at 3:15 PM
noahangell.bsky.social
My swamp-dwelling people in Chapel Hill just sent this over
👀🙏🏼 #Chantal #ChapelHill #NC
July 7, 2025 at 2:42 AM
noahangell.bsky.social
Solidarity with staff smh
On 21 May, the museum’s director Nicholas Cullinan circulated an internal memo seen by MEE saying that when considering the request to hold the event, the museum management “looked at the fact that other embassies had held similar events here”. “We also considered our status as an arms length body (and each of our status as public servants) – which means that we cannot deviate from, or undermine, the UK government’s foreign policy,” he added. Kemi Badenoch, Nigel Farage and Jimmy Carr attend secret Israeli party at British Museum “I know that there are some who feel we should have consulted or informed staff in advance,” he said, citing “advice of police regarding security” for the lack of transparency in the run-up to the event.
June 28, 2025 at 4:47 PM
noahangell.bsky.social
"What would her freed soul do, without a body in which to exist? It would hurt in the windows until the living people said: what a windy day." -Clarice Lispector
excerpt from Clarice Lispector's The Apple in the Dark: ""What would her freed soul do, without a body in which to exist? It would hurt in the windows until the living people said: what a windy day."
June 28, 2025 at 4:08 PM
noahangell.bsky.social
Text excerpt from the article: "Not everyone in the DRC wants their abducted dead to be brought home. In 2018 the universities of Geneva and Lubumbashi signed an agreement for the restitution of seven ‘pygmy’ skeletons that were dug up in Wamba, in the north-eastern DRC, in the 1950s. But descendants of these dead fear that a physical restitution would bring on metaphysical disaster. At a colloquium on stolen remains in 2023, Wamba’s customary chief, Alexandre Medjedje, suggested that Geneva wanted to cast out the restless forces they embodied and repatriate them to Congo along with the bones. ‘Do these spirits not haunt you,’ he asked, ‘so that you decide today to bring these ghosts to us?’ "
May 30, 2025 at 11:14 PM
noahangell.bsky.social
📍Durham, North Carolina
A photograph of a white house as seen through a tangle of vines, from a distance you can see graffiti spray painted in black on the back of the house A closer shot reveals that the graffiti reads "Never fuck with the Dead bcuz the Living will come after you"
May 16, 2025 at 2:03 PM
noahangell.bsky.social
"MARIA EAGLE, UK Minister for Defence Procurement and Industry, gave a keynote speech celebrating the RAF's surveillance flights over Gaza which has provided key intelligence to Israel to enact their genocide in Gaza."

via Energy Embargo for Palestine on Twitter
May 15, 2025 at 4:50 PM
noahangell.bsky.social
Fascinating interview with @aestallings.bsky.social, I was particularly struck by the discussion of the future of the Duveen gallery, and Google Street view - I used Google Street View to visit the British Museum while writing my book, and there are many glitches worth exploring:
A kaleidoscopic, hall-of-mirrors-like image of various Native American baskets in the British Museum's North America galleries, taken from a screenshot from Google Street View.
April 29, 2025 at 12:12 AM
noahangell.bsky.social
Paperbacks arrived this morn, and I'm happy to report that they're beauties!!! 👻🏛️🌷🌸
April 1, 2025 at 3:33 PM
noahangell.bsky.social
Friends & future readers: After some delay, I'm told that a radio feature on Ghosts of the British Museum will debut tomorrow at 3pm EST on The World, airing across @npr.org stations.
Author Noah Angell standing in the British Museum's Great Court during a walking tour that focuses on the museum's many ghosts. Author Noah Angell leading a walking tour around the British Museum, telling a tour group of the ghost associated with the Mechanical Galleon, a 16th century nef from Southern Germany. Author Noah Angell in conversation with an anthropologist who is interested in questions of cultural heritage.
March 31, 2025 at 6:31 PM
noahangell.bsky.social
Very cool to see Beth Darlington-Bailey's review of Ghosts of the British Museum published in the Journal for the Society of Psychical Research 🙌🏼

A bit of a full circle moment as in the book I mention the SPR as the place where the "Stone Tape Theory" was first articulated.
March 23, 2025 at 5:07 PM
noahangell.bsky.social
Checked out a rural mall last weekend...
& honey I'm goin back again 🎶
Wall of (ornamental?) axes and swords in a retail setting with a sign that reads "PLEASE LIMIT HOW MANY SWORDS/KNIVES YOU ASK TO TOUCH."
March 9, 2025 at 5:53 PM
noahangell.bsky.social
On W Chapel Hill St. in Durham📍
Pauli Murray historic marker in Durham, North Carolina.
March 2, 2025 at 5:14 PM
noahangell.bsky.social
📍Durham, NC
3 crocheted watermelons & 3 crocheted Palestinian flags affixed to a schoolground fence
February 28, 2025 at 6:09 PM
noahangell.bsky.social
Friends and future readers, from now til Monday at midnight GMT, you can pre-order the paperback edition of Ghosts of the British Museum and get 25% off by using the code below. #WPreorder
February 22, 2025 at 5:00 PM
noahangell.bsky.social
no long goodbyes (except for the ghost deer who will surely follow me home...)
Mosaic at Zoologischer Garten train station in Berlin with ghostly-looking deer, whales and storks.
January 29, 2025 at 10:05 AM
noahangell.bsky.social
I'm reminded of the following tweet. I've heard of a few former employees who felt they were wronged & acted out in some way. Will be interesting if we get more detail.
screenshot of tweet with shot of the parthenon in athens which reads: "As a former employee of the British Museum of many decades, I've made my walk of shame to the Pantheon. Not that it's any consolation to the Greek nation, but the BM also treated their collections, myself and my colleagues with negligence and contempt. Vandals in many ways."
January 25, 2025 at 7:58 PM
noahangell.bsky.social
Missed this when it was first published, but what an incredible passage below 👀... this is quite close to how I've attempted to reframe the "repatriation debate" in my book. h/t @shokes.bsky.social

www.ft.com/content/af13...
quote from linked FT article: " “I hate politics, but what President Talon has accomplished in the past few years is incredible,” says the artist Romuald Hazoumè, sitting at a table on the terrace of his family home in Cotonou. “Do you know what a few people here are saying about the restitution?” Hazoumè looks at me expectantly. “They are saying that in the end it wasn’t the French government or the Beninese people that made it happen. They say it was the objects themselves that decided to come back, because they knew better than anyone who could take care of them.”
January 22, 2025 at 11:32 AM