Through Disney's Haunted Mansion: A Chronicle of Personal Obsession

I am utterly obsessed with the Haunted Mansion at Disney World. For a while I tried to broaden the idea of this obsession. I started researching the mansions in my life, the intricate homes I've visited on tours, the mansions appearing in the films and comic books of my youth, and my natural curiosity toward anything having to do with large or old homes, in particular their potential for secret passageways and hidden doors.

I looked for real-life mansions with strange stories, bizarre histories, and architectural points of interest. But after all that research, all I really discovered was the fact that all of those little tributaries of personal interest flow from my original obsession, Disney's Haunted Mansion. Every house that I researched only served to remind me that the one Mansion I care about most isn't really a house at all, but is, in fact, a theme park ride. None of the real mansions I researched seemed to be able to live up to the staged one.

For the Haunted Mansion, I flew all the way to California for an anniversary party for a fan website once, on which I have written no less than four freelance articles in publications like Geek Monthly, Animation World, Orlando Attractions, and Haunted Attraction Magazine. For which I have tracked down noted voice over artists and authors like Corey Burton and Cory Doctorow to interview who have played a part in the ride somehow.

My house is full of mansion collectibles, books, toys, and pictures. I listen to the soundtrack from the ride at least once a week. I own the movie based off of the ride, and I watch it several times a year, usually spending hours on the special features afterward. I've even decorated my home to look like the Haunted Mansion, seeking out patterned carpets and curtains that look similar to the design of the ride, buying cast iron sconces and furniture with dark wood. As though decorating choices could fill a two bedroom apartment with Disney magic.

I could go on and on, but what I really need to do is walk through the mansion yet again, and this time, I'll take you with me. Room by room, I'll remember what turned this ride into such a fixture in my life.

The Foyer
"When hinges creak in doorless chambers, and strange and frightening sounds echo through the halls. Whenever candlelights flicker where the air is deathly still. That is the time when ghosts are present, practicing their terror with ghoulish delight!"

After standing in the outside queue for the Haunted Mansion, you will find yourself entering a foyer, just after you pass the small graveyard to your left by the main doorway, the one you just walked through. You may still be wondering to yourself, did the eyes on that last tombstone just open and close, or was it just my imagination? Dim chandeliers light the small room, where you wait with other park guests to enter the main house. You are squeezed into a small space, and ordinarily, this would bother you. All the sweat from the Florida heat on everyone's body, all the people talking at once, this would normally be too much to handle. But there's an electric excitement in the air, and you feel that for once you are grateful for the large crowd, and you know that everyone else feels the same way. You can tell by their nervous smiles and the way they glance around at the people in order to make reassuring eye contact that they are happy. Happy to be in this cool dark place, giddy to be taken on this ride, which seems so vastly different from all the others at the park. There's safety in numbers after all.

If you have never been on this ride before, you have no idea what is coming next, and you may find yourself surprised at how nervous you are feeling. Maybe you're even a little scared. Intricately patterned wallpaper, dark wood floors, and ornate oval mirrors populate the room. A maid with a nametag stands by the doors to the next room, someone is trying to chat with her, but she only glares at them. That's different, you think. Aren't Disney employees supposed to be overtly chipper? The air is chilled, thanks to the glorious air conditioning, but that may not be the only reason you get goosebumps as you stand and wait.

1989

I am seven when I first enter the mansion. I ride it with both parents, and my sisters are behind us in line somewhere close. We know that only three people can ride together, so we will ride first and wait for them outside afterward. Being a family of six, nobody ever has to ride anything alone, whether the ride vehicle seats one or three, we're ready, and we feel kind of good about this sometimes as we watch other families of uneven numbers struggle to come up with a strategy at places like Space Mountain.

I frequently bury my face in my mother's side while we wait, afraid that something is going to pop out of nowhere to scare me, despite my mother's reassurances. All I want is to see what's inside this house of secrets. And everything so far promises that this house has secrets. The sounds of whispers that play through speakers in the line, the veiled windows of the structure that I frustratingly can't see into, and even the fact that once we entered the line for the ride, suddenly we didn't feel like we were in Disney World anymore.

You can't see the rest of the park or hear any squeals of delight from any other rides. The illusion here is so complete, that I am sure there is a story that will unfold inside. This won't be just another disappointing carnival ride. Not at all like the ones I beg my parents to take me in when we're at the State Fair. The kind that have detailed pictures painted on their sides, but when you finally pay your dollar and go inside its all red light bulbs and rubber masks. This time, it's going to be the real deal. This time, I'm going to see something just as fantastic as what is inside my imagination when I am in bed at night, afraid of the dark. It's safe to know the truth about what's out in the darkness here, because I'm with my family, and everybody knows that the monsters can only get you when you're alone.

So far, all the houses that I have seen that look like this have been in movies, at home while my family sits in front of the television. And there is always a monster inside a house that looks like this. Always. It's Frankenstein or Dracula or a zombie or the skeleton of some long dead thing that refuses to go to the "other side".

There is something truly scary about the idea of going forward through these doors, and the one hesitation on my mind more than anything else is the fact that I see the doors leading into the house, but I'm not sure if there will be a way for me to get out if I change my mind once we're in. Nobody comes out of those doors; it's only people going in. If I need to get out when I finally see the monster, whichever monster it is...will I be able to?

The Stretching Gallery

"Your cadaverous pallor betrays an aura of foreboding, almost as though you sense a disquieting metamorphosis. Is this haunted room actually stretching? Or is it your imagination? And consider this dismaying observation: This chamber has no windows and no doors, which offers you this chilling challenge: to find a way out."

When the doors in the foyer finally breeze open, you will find yourself ushered into a hexagonal room with purple carpet and dark wooden walls. Higher up along the walls, there is striped wallpaper and four Victorian portraits, each of an individual. Stone gargoyles holding candles grip the walls with stone feet just where the wood meets the wallpaper. You have a host now too; a "ghost host", his disembodied voice begins to narrate your experience, welcoming you to this Haunted Mansion. The entire room seems to stretch and you sense that you may be dropping according to that fluttering feeling in the pit of your stomach.

The portraits on the wall begin to grow, and what once appeared to be normal paintings of average people are now revealed to be pictures of people in deadly peril. A woman holding a parasol is revealed to be standing on a tight rope over an alligator snapping at her heels. A man standing with his thumbs in his suspenders appears to be standing on a lit barrel of dynamite. The joke, of course, is that for us fragile mortals, peril could always be just around the corner and things are never exactly as they seem.

1989

My entire family, my Mom and Dad and three sisters have traveled long for the spectacle of Disney World. We never go a summer without a theme park; this year is no different, though just a little more special. We pack up the giant red station wagon, and my parents somehow manage to find the money to take a road trip all the way down to Orlando. My Dad drives through the night, and I sleep on a makeshift bed in the back on top of all the luggage while my teenage sisters nod in and out of consciousness with only each other's shoulders for pillows. I feel so safe, with all of us in the car, everyone together. I wonder to myself as I drift to sleep to the rhythm of the tires on the road, why we don't live like this all the time? My sister is always telling me the gypsies left me on the doorstep, why shouldn't we just be our own band of roving gypsies. All we need is each other anyway, and we could see the world like this.

Limbo

"Actually, we have 999 happy haunts here, but there's room for a thousand. Any volunteers? If you insist on lagging behind, you may not need to volunteer...And now, a carriage approaches to carry you into the boundless realm of the supernatural."

Limbo is the area that takes you from the stretching gallery to your ride vehicle, known as a "doombuggy" inside the Haunted Mansion. You wait in line for a few minutes more in limbo, then you will be beckoned by a maid or butler to step onto a people mover and they will point to you which doombuggy is yours. A doombuggy is the dark black ride vehicle that will take you on your travels through the mansion. It looks like a large and yawning mouth ready to swallow you whole. Ambient sounds play in this dimly lit area, wolf howls, rushing winds and eerie music. The ride attendants here, again, are not as chipper as they are in the rest of the park; they are encouraged to stay in character. Dressed as maids and butlers with dark circles under their eyes, they never smile at you. It gives you the impression that they know what's coming, and you don't.

1989

On the same vacation when I am seven, when we board our doombuggies, it's not even questioned what the seating order will be. I am seven, so I get to sit in the middle. I guess that fifth birthday party at Chuck E. Cheese taught my parents a valuable lesson. If animatronics are going to be involved, it's best to be over-prepared for a panic attack. But I don't panic. With my parents promise to point out the illusions to ease my fears, I am safe enough to have a good time and brave enough to keep my eyes open as our doombuggy moves forward into the darkness of the ride that is the unknown.

1992

I visit Disney World again when I am eleven as part of a whirlwind Spring Break road trip in 1992 with my mother, an aunt and uncle and my cousins. I have no memory of visiting the Haunted Mansion on this trip. It just isn't that important to me as far as rides go, I'm more concerned this trip with, "It's a Small World" and, "Peter Pan's Flight". At this point in time back home, my Mother has become an expert in haunted houses. She's thrown two, one as a benefit for the fire station and one as a fundraiser for the elementary school. Both were massive efforts, both of which I was recruited for. Once I was a skeleton that popped out of a pirate's trunk and scared passersby. Once I was a magician's assistant being cut in half with a sword in a staged magic trick gone awry, my Dad was the magician. So to be honest, I'm a little "haunted" out.

Our lives are full of everyday magic. My mother runs a singing telegram business, so there is always makeup and rehearsing and music. She does lots of tricks, turning plain water into blue water or red water in a cup before people's eyes, pulling scarves from nowhere, and performing countless card tricks. Disney is just now beginning to turn the wheels of its animation program again, while my entire generation is becoming acquainted with their special brand of fairytale entertainment and "make your dreams comes true" branding . My family is full of creativity, so we go in for this all the way.

We see Peter Pan at the drive-in together, I see Cinderella in the theater with my Mom. New movies come out. The Little Mermaid in the theater is the first time I hold hands with a boy, Beauty and the Beast is the first time anyone ever hears of something called CGI... new Disney cartoons are always huge events for us. There is no internet, so we gossip about them with anyone who says they know something about the films before they come out.

My oldest sister, Shannon, has a particular obsession with this animated revival despite the fact that she is in college. She buys animation trading cards, gets stock in Disney...one share, and drives me to the Disney store in Indianapolis frequently, where she makes reservations to buy things like limited edition snow globes and lithographs. We get up early on Sunday mornings and watch VHS tapes of the films that are already out, singing along to them on cold autumn mornings. Disney is a part of our life, a part of who we are, and a part of our relationships with each other. We are addicted to the magic.

The Grand Ballroom

"The happy haunts have received your sympathetic vibrations and are beginning to materialize. They're assembling for a swinging wake..."

You have already passed many scenes on your ride. This was the last ride that Walt Disney was working on when he died, and what he wanted more than anything else was for riders to feel like they were living their own movie. He designed the ride vehicles to frame your vision, just the way it is framed when you are at the movies. He created vignettes of scenes instead of a more realistic house setting; he gave you a narrator and music, color and light. So far, you have seen a conservatory with a coffin laid out in a funeral scene, where skeletal hands try to open the coffin lid from within. You've seen a ghostly library where books move by themselves and stone statues follow you with their eyes. You've even seen the ghost of a medium giving a séance, her head trapped in her very own crystal ball.

Now you are looking down on a ballroom where many ghosts are having a party, gliding by in fluid motion. One is celebrating a birthday, two are swinging from a chandelier with glasses of wine, and many are dancing, swaying to the music provided by the ghost of an organist sitting at a large intricate pipe organ. The scene is not scary, not in the least. On the contrary, it's quite beautiful, and you are amazed at the effectiveness of the ghostly illusions. It looks like a party you'd like to attend, if you could only break free of your doombuggy.

1996

When I am fourteen, I go back to Florida with my grandmother on a plane. At the hotel where we are staying in Orlando, we meet an aunt and several more cousins. Second cousins, first cousins, half cousins. We're all there for one reason, to go to Disney World together. We all stay in one suite, spread out over cots, sofas, beds and floors.

My closest cousin and I intentionally get lost together anytime we visit a tourist location, and this trip is certainly no different. Any museum or theme park is just an excuse for us to explore without parents, and for some reason we never seem to get into trouble for this. Today, we're running around Liberty Square and we come to the open gates of the mansion, the ride line is completely empty.

It has just rained and the crowds are all hiding in souvenir shops trying to stay dry, suspicious that the rain will come again, as it so frequently does in the flash showers of Florida. We stand at the front of the green ride awning, debating whether or not to go in. I'm too scared to go, but I don't admit that it's the reason why I say we shouldn't ride. Instead I say that we should get back to the group so they don't worry about us. The truth is, the ride still scares me a little bit. Not the ride itself necessarily, but the idea that it might break down, that we'll be stuck inside that slightly claustrophobic space, and besides, I've never ridden the Haunted Mansion without two other people before, I'd be completely vulnerable on one side. I know it's illogical, but it makes a difference to me. I'm slightly superstitious too, and there's just something scary about the idea of mocking death. It just doesn't seem like a good idea to laugh at the possibility.

The Attic

The glorious beauty of the ballroom is in stark contrast to the cluttered dustiness of this re-creation of an unromantic storage place. Your ride vehicle gets so close to the scene that it almost feels wrong, like a malfunction. You're close enough to see fingerprints on the floors from maintenance people who come and go in the night when the ride is closed. If the Mansion is a movie that you live through, then this is the scene where you are driven toward an inevitable conclusion, trapped by the monster chasing you, with no way out. You've come up here to hide, behind sewing mannequins, old picture frames, and cobwebs; unsure with whom you'll be sharing this space as you try to evade your own personal monster.

2003

I haven't been to Disney World in seven years, but I'm desperate to get back. I've just been kicked out of college for not having tuition money. I'm thousands of dollars in debt, living in my first apartment with six other girls, and I am waiting tables for a living trying desperately to get ahead financially. But there's no way I can ever hope to make enough money to survive and pay off my school debt and save for tuition. I'm stuck. Everyone asks me why I don't just move home to save up money, but I can't face "home". My parents have been divorced for a few years and my oldest sister Shannon died in a car accident. Home doesn't feel like home anymore at all. It's lonely now; the house is quiet when once it was loud. There is tension between all of us, as we're still grieving...still pointing fingers from an unpleasant divorce and the death of our oldest sister, daughter...life of the party. So I stay away.

I spend long hours up in the middle of the night on a roommate's computer in the living room of our shared home, looking for jobs at Disney World or auditions for entertainment positions, even though I have no money to relocate myself. I want to start a new life, and this seems like the most logical place to begin.

I also look for news on the movie they're making about the ride, "Pirates of the Caribbean" and on a fan website dedicated to the Haunted Mansion, Doombuggies.com. I want to know everything about it, especially after I see an old magazine article in a National Geographic of workers inside the mansion after the park has closed performing maintenance.

I find out who designed the ride, how it came to be, and I start networking with other people who are obsessed with it as well. For some reason, it becomes my focal point. Not just the park, but the Mansion specifically. It's a place I can daydream about getting back to while I spend long hours in the restaurant feeling completely derailed. I want to become an expert; to know all that there is to know about this place.

One day, with my last five dollars in my pocket, I drive to the closest gas station. I buy a road Atlas. I go home and using a red marker, I trace the route from Muncie, Indiana to Orlando, Florida and I stash the Atlas in my back seat, daydreaming of a windfall that could send me packing any minute. Later, when I'm on the phone with my Father, sharing my new obsession and all the details and behind-the-scenes information I now know, he reminds me that I, "...come by it honestly," in his own words. "If there was one place in the world where your mother could go at any one point in time, it would be Disney World." Maybe it's genetic.

The Graveyard
"When the crypt doors creak and the tombstones quake,
Spooks come out for a swinging wake!
Happy haunts materialize, and begin to vocalize.
Grim Grinning Ghosts come out to socialize!"

The graveyard is different than anything you've experienced in the house. You descend into the graveyard from the attic in a sharp downward slope, so you feel as though you're floating down. In most scenes, you will find your eye drawn to one main focal point, one gag, or one character. But here, there are endless places to look. Ghosts are popping up from behind gravestones, many graves have humorous epitaphs to read, the smell of fog fills the air, everything is glowing iridescent, and happy music plays. Everywhere you look there are characters, individual ghosts with personalities who are no longer just disembodied whispers, but individuals with traits all their own.

2006

I'm married now. Jake and I (that's the husband) are both working in jobs we don't exactly love, feeling the sting of early adulthood and living out the mission of an early twenty-something. "Who am I, why am I here?" He is an assistant manager at a video game store, and I am a part time communications coordinator for a worldwide church headquarters.

Lately, I've been listening to an internet radio station in my cubicle that plays only music from the Haunted Mansion at work. An odd contradiction for sure, listening to gothic haunted house radio while working for a church. But thank goodness for my forward thinking boss, who lets me slip out every day for a few minutes to go make a hot cup of tea in the break room, who lets me listen to my Haunted Mansion music and who may or may not have caught me looking at the Disney vacation planning website a few times and looked the other way. I've been stealing glances at it for months.

After several months of languishing at these jobs, chasing money that will never be enough, Jake and I decide that we don't much care for this boring suburban existence. We're going to take turns going back to graduate school and try to do what we really love for a living. Our art, film, and writing, though we don't know exactly how this will go. All we know is that when we were dating, we were creative imaginative people, then when we got married and had to start living a "real life", everything felt wrong. We put on the "grown-up" clothes and started being mature. And it backfired. We need to re-connect with ourselves, with something that's been missing even though we don't know what. So while we're making plans to return to school, we also decide to take a vacation. A good old fashioned, rent a car vacation. He's never been to Disney World. It's on.

We consider it a second honeymoon. Because we couldn't go anywhere the first time, we were far too broke. Jake is not only patient with my Haunted Mansion and Disney obsession, he likes this about me. He pushes me to follow it down the rabbit hole; we're both looking for something, anything, to tell us where to go or what to do next. How to get across this great chasm of boring adult monotony to the other side where we can be creative for a living, where we can be ourselves.

We plan the trip months in advance, making reservations for a week before he will begin graduate school. We buy tickets, park hopper passes that will allow us to go to all four parks at Disney World, hotel reservations so we can have an all-inclusive experience. After we've made our reservations, we're looking at the Disney World website and we find a spot that says, "ride updates". We click it, only to discover that the Haunted Mansion will be closed when we are there. It's so devastating that I cry. All these years of thinking and dreaming about this one beloved ride, this strange place that I can't seem to stop thinking about...and even though I'll be able to stand before the looming ride again, I won't be able to enter.

But we go anyway, and the trip shakes something loose in both of us. Going to this place where thousands upon thousands of people work in creative ways every single day, whether it's in performance or engineering or writing...it makes us realize that there's just no reason to languish. Ever. We're justified and inspired to move forward with our lives, as creative people, going to this place has refilled our stores. But I'm devastated I can't take him through the Mansion...

The Hitchhiking Ghosts

"Ah, there you are, and just in time! There's a little matter I forgot to mention. Beware of hitchhiking ghosts! They have selected you to fill our quota, and they'll haunt you until you return!"

Just as your doombuggy swivels away from the jubilant graveyard scene and you are gliding away thinking you just witnessed the finale, this house has one more trick up its sleeve. You are faced with three hitchhiking ghosts trying to thumb a ride. You move past them, thinking you have escaped this last little trick, until you find yourself gliding along facing a wall of mirrors. When you look in the mirror, you see not only your own reflection, but also one of the hitchhiking ghosts sitting between you and your fellow rider.

2008

I find out that Doombuggies.com, the fan website I've been haunting for so many years is having a lavish ten year anniversary party at Disneyland in California. Jake and I mull it over for a few days, but there's no real question. We're going to go. I pitch the trip as an article, since I'm now a freelance writer. I find that writing for a living gives me a very convenient excuse for doing things that I want to do so that I can, "turn them into a story". It feels like a scam, but it's not, and it works. Someone buys the idea, and it's my job now to go and document the event, take pictures, and turn in a feature story about the experience to a magazine.

We fly to California, where neither of us has ever been before. We feel eerily at home upon landing. We spend a day at Disneyland together, stumbling around in awe, half because of the lack of sleep and half because the park is so much more amazing than we had any idea it would be. It's nice to do something new together. Sure, I've been a Disney freak since I was a child. But Disneyland holds no bittersweet memories or my happily married parents or my long gone sister. Now Disneyland can be our place.

We finally ride the Mansion with a crowd full of people, for the first time together. We saunter right up and onto the ride, hardly any wait at all. As though all these years that I've spent trying to get back to the mansion never happened. As though the ride has been waiting for me all along. Like I just had the wrong state. It's his first time, and I'm a little worried. If he doesn't like it, I may have to do some serious soul-searching about the man I married.

He does love it, thank goodness. After all these years, the ride still delivers in every way. I enjoy the way he is so impressed, not knowing that the ride would be so intricate, so detailed. I feel a strange sense of pride. I have aged, but the Mansion has stayed the same. Even though I've never been to the Disneyland Haunted Mansion, only the ride at Disney World, it still feels like coming home.

The anniversary party is the next day and it's epic. Many people who designed and worked on the ride with Walt Disney are in attendance, they spill all the inside information about the process of creating the ride. We have a nice dinner at the Blue Bayou restaurant inside the Pirates of the Caribbean ride as we listen to them share their knowledge. When dinner is over, we make our way over to the Haunted Mansion as a group. The park is now closed and we are the only guests still in attendance, a once in a lifetime opportunity. There are photo ops arranged for us with costumed performers made up to look like the Hitchhiking Ghosts (Gus, Phineas, and Ezra, in case you were curious.), and we'll all get to ride. They're putting us through no more than six people at a time. It turns out to have a somewhat surprising result. It's terrifying.

Being inside the mansion with just a few other people makes it seem so much more foreboding. Like a different place than it was yesterday, riding happily during daylight hours amidst a crowd of guests. Seeing nothing but empty Doombuggies following behind you is extremely eerie and gives the ride a nightmarish expressionist quality. Half of the fun of the experience is usually hearing the shrieks of nervous laughter coming from other tourists, seeing people "ooh" and "ah" over the illusions, and feeling safe that you are having a shared experience. Being alone on the ride, just Jake and I, those old nervous feelings come flooding back. I'm wondering, what if something goes wrong, what if the ride shuts down and we're stuck in here? And suddenly again, the jokes about death are making me slightly uncomfortable. Death is less appealing, even in joke form, now that I have so much to live for.

On our way out of the park, we are handed gift bags full of ideal goodies for the Haunted Mansion geek. There are replicas of tombstones from inside the ride, a signed copy of the ride's signature song, "Grim Grinning Ghosts" from the Disney Imagineer who wrote it, and even our very own death certificate, assuring us re-entry to the mansion upon death. Putting that thing in my suitcase for the flight home is not the easiest thing I've ever done...

The Exit
"If would like to join our jamboree there's a simple rule that's compulsory. Mortals pay a token fee. Rest in peace, the haunting's free; so hurry back, we would like your company. Hurry back, hurry back, be sure to bring your death certificate. We've been dying to have you. "

As the ride comes to an end and you de-board your Doombuggies, you follow a tunnel out back into the sunshine of the park. People all around you are laughing and talking, and occasionally a parent will be comforting a crying child who wasn't so amused by the grim grinning animatronics.

2009

Jake and I are in Walt Disney World filming a webisode series for the Theme Park Channel, set to launch in the Spring of 2010. We can't film inside the Mansion, because it's too dark for the camera to pick up any footage. We try anyway.

Later, as we're editing the footage, we stop and let it play instead of rushing to cut it up into appropriate sized pieces. Because we want to live the experience again. We laugh at the sound of my bossy voice encouraging Jake to keep the camera trained on some paintings on a wall just as we board the ride. Over the images dancing on our computer monitor, we can hear my voice and see my finger pointing. "Stay on those pictures."

Jake responds, "It's no use babe, you can't see them, not enough light." Who does he think he's talking to?

I counter, "There will be, trust me. Just shoot the pictures." A second goes by, Jake points the camera at the pictures. Lightning flashes, perfectly illuminating the portraits. "See? I told you." You can almost hear the smug grin in my voice. Jake laughs. He should've known better, I know this place inside and out. The rest of the footage is us laughing and singing along with the music, reciting ride lines. At the end of the ride, when it comes to the Hitchhiking Ghosts, the reflection in the mirrors shows a ghost sitting between the two of us, and for just an instant, I recall being in this exact same place years and years ago as a small child. For a second, I swear I can see the reflection of my parents and hear the laughter and chatter of my sisters as we de-board. The magic may be over for us as a group, as a family, but it's just beginning for Jake and I.