Museums are increasingly finding that hosting ghost hunts or tours is an effective way to boost revenue, raise their profile and attract new visitors.
Carl Smith, the marketing manager at Torquay Museum in Devon, says his venue held
a ghost hunt evening in spring last year after being approached by a local group that seeks out evidence of paranormal activity.
Following this they have now come to an arrangement: the venue is provided for free for the group to run paranormal evenings and profits from additional public ticket sales are shared, with the museum taking 80%. There are between 30 and 35 public attendees at each event alongside half a dozen members of the ghost-hunting group.
Visitors have not left disappointed. At one event, a photo was taken that seemed to show a ghostly female figure. And fingerprints were found on the inside of a mummy’s glass display case that had not been opened for seven years.
This news attracted unexpected media coverage and Smith says he “almost fell off the sofa” when he saw the museum featured on the BBC’s Have I Got News for You panel show.
This has boosted paranormal evenings at the museum – Smith already has 15 ghost hunts booked for 2016. These events are particularly effective because they don’t need many staff (usually one staff member and two volunteers) and can be marketed online, he says.
A typical evening runs from 8pm to 2am, and is restricted to people over 18, but the range of ages participating tends to be wide. Visitors are split into groups, which rotate through different activities. One of these is a museum tour, including a behind-the-scenes peek into a storeroom and a visit to the ancient Egypt gallery, which holds a mummy.
“If it introduces a different type of person to the museum, that can only be a good thing,” Smith adds.
Norfolk Museums Service is also seeing increasing interest from groups wanting to run paranormal evenings.
Andrew Smith, the operations manager for the service’s eastern region, says two locations in Great Yarmouth are particularly popular: the Tolhouse Museum (a former jail) and the Elizabethan House Museum (which it runs on behalf of the National Trust).
The venues are hired out to groups in the evening, with one member of staff supervising. Some areas that are usually off limits, such as the hold where prisoners were kept at Tolhouse, are opened up. The group itself sells tickets to the public.
“I make sure we give the groups good service,” says Smith. “They seem to enjoy
it and we get repeat visits. It’s a nice steady income stream.”
This financial year Smith has had 22 bookings, and there are already 12 for the next one. He works with six or seven groups, and one has booked eight evenings this year. They are careful to only publicise the events online so as not to encourage pranksters.
“We don’t want them being interrupted by someone walking along with a sheet over their head,” says Smith.
Apart from ghost hunts, other museums run ghost tours or walks recounting local stories. The Museum of London Docklands ran Halloween tours last year, focusing on paranormal reports associated with its building (a 19th-century sugar warehouse) and restarted them this winter. “The tours build awareness of the museum and draw different audiences,” says a spokeswoman for the Museum of London Docklands.
Whether visitors are seeking out ghostly activity or learning about legends, the public’s appetite for the paranormal shows no sign of abating and we can expect to see more museums providing for this.
Paranormal activity
We have had various ghostly reports over the years. There have been sightings of a woman in our local studies room.
We’ve also had reports of goings-on in the storeroom where we housed aboriginal remains. A lot of this has been viewed with scepticism by museum staff but some events have added spice to the ghost hunts. I don’t want to sensationalise anything but if something happens, we won’t shy away from publicising it.
I’m a healthy sceptic but some odd things have happened here.”
Carl Smith is the marketing manager at Torquay Museum, Devon
Carl Smith, the marketing manager at Torquay Museum in Devon, says his venue held
a ghost hunt evening in spring last year after being approached by a local group that seeks out evidence of paranormal activity.
Following this they have now come to an arrangement: the venue is provided for free for the group to run paranormal evenings and profits from additional public ticket sales are shared, with the museum taking 80%. There are between 30 and 35 public attendees at each event alongside half a dozen members of the ghost-hunting group.
Visitors have not left disappointed. At one event, a photo was taken that seemed to show a ghostly female figure. And fingerprints were found on the inside of a mummy’s glass display case that had not been opened for seven years.
This news attracted unexpected media coverage and Smith says he “almost fell off the sofa” when he saw the museum featured on the BBC’s Have I Got News for You panel show.
This has boosted paranormal evenings at the museum – Smith already has 15 ghost hunts booked for 2016. These events are particularly effective because they don’t need many staff (usually one staff member and two volunteers) and can be marketed online, he says.
A typical evening runs from 8pm to 2am, and is restricted to people over 18, but the range of ages participating tends to be wide. Visitors are split into groups, which rotate through different activities. One of these is a museum tour, including a behind-the-scenes peek into a storeroom and a visit to the ancient Egypt gallery, which holds a mummy.
“If it introduces a different type of person to the museum, that can only be a good thing,” Smith adds.
Norfolk Museums Service is also seeing increasing interest from groups wanting to run paranormal evenings.
Andrew Smith, the operations manager for the service’s eastern region, says two locations in Great Yarmouth are particularly popular: the Tolhouse Museum (a former jail) and the Elizabethan House Museum (which it runs on behalf of the National Trust).
The venues are hired out to groups in the evening, with one member of staff supervising. Some areas that are usually off limits, such as the hold where prisoners were kept at Tolhouse, are opened up. The group itself sells tickets to the public.
“I make sure we give the groups good service,” says Smith. “They seem to enjoy
it and we get repeat visits. It’s a nice steady income stream.”
This financial year Smith has had 22 bookings, and there are already 12 for the next one. He works with six or seven groups, and one has booked eight evenings this year. They are careful to only publicise the events online so as not to encourage pranksters.
“We don’t want them being interrupted by someone walking along with a sheet over their head,” says Smith.
Apart from ghost hunts, other museums run ghost tours or walks recounting local stories. The Museum of London Docklands ran Halloween tours last year, focusing on paranormal reports associated with its building (a 19th-century sugar warehouse) and restarted them this winter. “The tours build awareness of the museum and draw different audiences,” says a spokeswoman for the Museum of London Docklands.
Whether visitors are seeking out ghostly activity or learning about legends, the public’s appetite for the paranormal shows no sign of abating and we can expect to see more museums providing for this.
Paranormal activity
We have had various ghostly reports over the years. There have been sightings of a woman in our local studies room.
We’ve also had reports of goings-on in the storeroom where we housed aboriginal remains. A lot of this has been viewed with scepticism by museum staff but some events have added spice to the ghost hunts. I don’t want to sensationalise anything but if something happens, we won’t shy away from publicising it.
I’m a healthy sceptic but some odd things have happened here.”
Carl Smith is the marketing manager at Torquay Museum, Devon