Haunting Museums [Paperback]

John Schuster (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 28, 2009

The spectacularly successful move A Night at the Museum was a fantastic look at the off-hours wonders of the American Museum of Natural History. However, some of the real behind-the-scenes stories are more fantastic than anything a screenwriter could dream up. Haunting Museums covers these overlooked bits of history including curses, mistaken dinosaurs, conspiracy plots of the founding fathers, spectral evidence of the afterlife, and other unsettling matters on full display.

Contents include: The Carnegie Sauropods, Or Bring Me the Head of Apatosaurus Louisae – the story of a dinosaur on display for close to a half a century with the wrong head.

What’s on that Broad Stripe with Those Bright Stars? – the quizzical mark on the flag that is known as the Star Spangled banner.

The 1897 Living Eskimo Exhibit – where living people were put on display and turned over to the taxidermist for “preservation" after they died

Man-eaters at the Museum: The Lions That Stopped a Railroad – the story of the Maneless lions made legendary by the movie the Ghost in the Darkness

So Where is Amelia Earhart? – the exhibit at the Smithsonian Air and Space museum of the most famous missing aviatrix of all time.

Along with many other entertaining and fantastic stories.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

No ghost story, this collection of museum curiosities is devoted to demystifying legendary exhibits like the 19th century Cardiff Giant and the worldwide array of shrunken heads. For many obscure subjects, Schuster's explanations provide an extensive history. Most of the second half of the book features niche museums covering everything from murder to medicine-including the "Lizzie Borden Bed and Breakfast and Museum" of Fall River, Mass. ("guests are treated to a breakfast similar to the one the Bordens ate on the morning of the murders") and Philadelphia's Mütter Museum of medical anomalies, which houses a tumor taken from Grover Cleveland's mouth and a post-autopsy plaster cast of famous conjoined twins Chang and Eng. More familiar topics, such as the Charles Lindbergh and Amelia Earhart exhibits at The National Air and Space Museum, get lengthy histories but little fresh insight; further, the first piece (on paleontologists' original reconstruction of the Brontosaurus) sets a rigorous academic standard that's never recaptured. As a guide to some obscure exhibits and venues, this is an amusing and informative read, but readers will likely find Schuster an inadequate curator for better-known subjects like the Smithsonian and New York's American Museum of National History.
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Review

"Every museum worth visiting is measured by its collections, because each of those specimens, objects, and artifacts has stories to tell.  The best stories instruct, inform, and inspire us, and Haunting Museums brings together two dozen of the more remarkable ones. They show wonder and mystery running amuck in 'the place of Muses.'"--B. D. Patterson, MacArthur Curator of Mammals, Department of Zoology, Field Museum of Natural History

"John Schuster's collection of weird, wonderful, and true stories from  museums all over the world is a must-read for anyone who (like me) is enraptured by the fascinating byways of history."--Michael Dobson, co-author of MacArthur's War and former staff member, Smithsonian Institution's  National Air and Space Museum

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 272 pages
• Publisher: Forge Books; First Edition edition (April 28, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0765322927
• ISBN-13: 978-0765322920
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.4 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,986,754 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars entertaining, May 6, 2009

By 

Harriet Klausner - See all my reviews
(#1 Hall OF FAME REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Haunting Museums (Paperback)

This is great fun as John Schuster explores some of the oddest exhibits; in many cases you will ask what were they thinking. These include the Carnegie Sauropods in which for fifty plus years experts pasted the head of a different dinosaur on the body of a different species. There is the Cardiff Giant and Lizzie Bordon B&B. At the Philadelphia Matter Museum of Medical Anomalies one can visit Grover Cleveland's mouth and then there is the infamous 1897 Living Eskimo Exhibit where people performed live and continued even after they died thanks to taxidermy. Curses abound whether they are Elgin Marbles or jewels taken from tombs while haunting are everywhere including at the Utah Museum. At times some of the entries can be verbose, but an interesting examination of the strange and uncanny on display whether it is DC, NY or Fall River. However, perhaps the strangest of all is the Darger art collection (read the artist's story to learn why).

Harriet Klausner

2.0 out of 5 stars Misleading Title, December 18, 2011

By 

Burgundy Damsel (Albany, New York) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Haunting Museums (Paperback)

I picked up this book looking for stories of hauntings (ideas for a museum Halloween event), which the title suggested it would have aplenty. Instead, I found a collection of decidedly non-haunting related "odd tales" about happenings at museums and rumors around museum exhibits.

Although some of them were interesting to read, most were written in a very skeptical, newspaper-like style which focused mostly on what was wrong with the stories and why they couldn't be true than on the mysterious, uncanny events themselves. I didn't understand why some were picked at all - the Eskimos used for a living exhibit were a sad story but there was nothing unusual, uncanny or mysterious about it. Other stories were so easily and completely explained away in the first paragraph that the rest of the collection of somewhat-related facts that spill across the remaining ten pages seem pointless and unnecessary.

This isn't a bad read, but be aware before you pick it up that it's not really about ghosts or enjoying the mystery; it's about busting the myths and picking up random, little-known historical facts along the way.