British Museum
Ancient Egyptian mummy curses and mysterious apparitions haunt the world's oldest national public museum.
The British Museum, home to over eight million artifacts spanning human history, has accumulated more than its share of ghost stories since opening in 1759. The most persistent legends center around the Egyptian galleries, where staff and visitors have reported unsettling encounters near the mummy cases. Security guards working night shifts have described hearing unexplained footsteps echoing through empty halls, while some claim to have witnessed shadowy figures moving between the ancient sarcophagi.
The museum’s most famous haunting involves the so-called “Unlucky Mummy” - a painted coffin lid of an unknown priestess of Amen-Ra that allegedly brought misfortune to all who possessed it. While the mummy itself has been debunked as a curse, staff members have reported feeling watched and experiencing sudden temperature drops near the Egyptian collection. Several witnesses describe seeing a figure in ancient Egyptian dress wandering the galleries after hours, only to vanish when approached.
Beyond the Egyptian wing, paranormal activity has been reported in the Reading Room, where the ghost of a Victorian scholar is said to still study among the books. Museum employees working late have heard phantom footsteps in empty corridors and witnessed doors opening and closing on their own. The sheer age and cultural significance of the artifacts housed within seem to have created an atmosphere ripe for supernatural encounters, making the British Museum one of London’s most haunted cultural institutions.