Interview with Jeff Baham: Doombuggies.Com Creator

When I wanted to write a story about the 40^th Anniversary of Walt Disney's Haunted Mansion, I knew the first person that I was going to go to for information and insight. Jeff Baham is the creator and administrator of the extensive Haunted Mansion fan site, "Doombuggies.com". He's an expert on the history of the ride and is, of course, a big fan himself.

While the article is something I'm still working on, the interview that Baham was gracious enough to give me yielded some entertaining and informative answers that didn't make the final cut. Only for space reasons, of course. I was lamenting the fact that I wouldn't be able to share his answers with Disney and theme park geeks everywhere, so I thought I would take the opportunity to publish this unused interview excerpt and encourage you to go visit his incredibly thorough online documentary, www.doombuggies.com

AB: Why do people still care so much about a theme park ride that is 40 years old?

JB: The "magic lantern" (a gag in the mansion) was already used to project illusions on walls as early as the late 1700s. "Pepper's Ghost," a stage trick involving reflections, was used to create living, transparent ghosts in the 1800s. Disney's own space-age robotic "audio-animatronic" technology came to life in the mid-1900s, and digital projection and computer-controlled effects have just entered primetime this century - and all of these techniques are used with great impact throughout the Haunted Mansion. It utilizes the best special effects techniques from the history of modern live entertainment, so it's no surprise to me that it still appeals to anyone who loves being amazed and impressed by great feats of imagination.

AB: Why the ride is relevant to geek culture?

JB: Well, when you go back and look at the attraction's history, you can see a lot of the forefathers of today's wired generation involved in the creation of the ride. I'd suspect that many of the first WED Imagineers might feel at home in the geek culture, were they part of this generation. You had arguably the world's finest animator designing the gags for the ride in Marc Davis (the creator of Disney's Tinker Bell), and then there's the genius of the early Imagineers, like Rolly Crump and Yale Gracey, a duo who would lock themselves in a warehouse and engineer mechanical illusions so hair-raising that the cleaning crews would refuse to go into the room. In the early days during which the Haunted Mansion was created, WED Enterprises was composed of an intimate group of thinkers, forging their way without precedent. I think geek culture is reflected in that set of circumstances.

AB: Why is this ride seemingly more popular than so many of the other rides at Disney theme parks?

JB: I'm not certain that the Haunted Mansion is more popular than the other ride, but I think it distinctly appeals to a wide cross-section of folks, and it definitely appeals to a variety of vocal and active fan groups. I think the fact that the Mansion takes so many bits from the history of entertainment technology is probably one of the most intriguing aspects of the ride to geeks.