A quarrel broke out between a British pub and a Chinese artist after a Chinese man allegedly stole a ghost who lived in a drinking establishment, according to The Huffington Post.
The owners of The Ye Olde Man & Scythe, which was founded in Bolton as early as 1251, claim that the ghost of James Stanley, the seventh Earl of Derby, lived there. Stanley was executed right in front of the pub in 1651, and since then his ghost has settled there.
In 2014, the pub owners posted a video footage of this ghost:
However, recently the ghost disappeared, and, according to the owners of the establishment, the Chinese artist Lu Pingyan is to blame for this, who stole it for his exhibition. In principle, they do not mind lending the artist a ghost, but only on the condition that after the end of the exhibition, Count Stanley returns home.
Pingyan wrote on his website that he caught a ghost in a pub as a "symbolic response to the colonization of other countries by the United Kingdom, which led to the loss of cultural and material values."
Also in an interview with the British newspaper The Bolton News, the Chinese said that the ghost had agreed to be caught. The return of Earl Stanley to his homeland will depend on himself. Maybe he will enjoy being a part of the exhibition so much that he will decide to stay with the Chinese and travel the world.
It's not very clear why the pub was so offended by this theft - there is information in the media that as many as 25 guests from the other world live in it, so sacrificing one of them for the sake of art would not be a big loss.