• Twitter
• Facebook
• Google
• Instagram
• Spook Show Podcast Feed

Prologue (or "What's a bad house like you doing in a nice park like this?")

Haunted Houses are anomalous places; curious locales, often abandoned Victorian monstrosities... places which attract the curious souls among us. The idea of a home pestered by a cranky spirit extends back as long as tales have been told, as does the human spirit's innate desire to connect with what lies beyond. In fact, the word "haunt" itself comes from the old French word "hanter," meaning home. The juxtaposition of the creature comforts we associate with our homes and the cold chill we associate with ghosts and spirits creates an emotional conundrum, to which some folks cotton, while others recoil.

When discussing the "why" behind horror, many would look back through literature and mythology to find 19th century tropes given a 20th century make-over. But author David J. Skal, writing in his book "The Monster Show," makes the case that there is a particular American archtype that might specifically address the late '60s monster boom out of which the Haunted Mansion emerged. "Fairgrounds and carnivals were the original laboratories for entertainment that thrilled and frightened, from the freak show to the roller coaster to the ghost-train, and even the nickelodeon prototypes of the motion picture itself," Skal writes. Following the European Phantasmagoria shows of the early 19th century, the Grand Guignol horror shows in Paris of the early 20th century, or Germany's cinematic revelation found in "The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari" (1920), America found itself in a "westward expansion of horrors," or, as Skal puts it, "a manifest destiny of the macabre." Walt Disney's found himself smack dab in the center of this moment in history.

In 1964, Disneyland Records defined the quintessential American haunted house as a stereotypical "delapidated old mansion," which would stand "high on a hilltop," though still be "near your home," as if every citizen across the land might be aware of a local odd structure, abandoned and shoved aside by the neighborhood, seemingly long forgotten by the area residents, though whispered about late at night.

So then - why a haunted house in Walt Disney's Magic Kingdom? We can (and will) discuss mankind's historical psychic need for visceral thrills in a moment, and we will inspect some possible haunting influences on Walt Disney later, but suffice to say, the Disney Studio, in its quest to provide products that provided a fully dramatic experience, did not shy away from the mysterious and supernatural under his leadership. In fact, Walt's first synchronized-sound "Silly Symphonies" cartoon was "The Skeleton Dance" (1929), which featured bones etherealizing and rising from their graves to join in a graveyard band - an idea Walt would return to in one of the very last projects of his life, that being the "Haunted Mansion." And by the way - the stretch from Walt's success on film to a more visceral, reality-based theme park experience is not that far. "Even cinematically, there's much more of interest in Disneyland than one could have conceivably found on the set of "Can-Can" at the Fox studios," wrote Jonathan Rosenbaum in a 1971 issue of Film Comment magazine. "In the Haunted House here - one of the undisputed masterpieces of the park - the programmed effects are nearly all heightened developments of cinematic possibilities and principles."

It should be pointed out that Walt's haunted house goes far beyond the simplistic macabre. In its plain weirdness, Walt's haunt points us to communal moments. "The Haunted Mansion has become a melting pot of lifestyles and misdeeds," wrote reporter Todd Martens in the Los Angeles Times. "It's a fete that contains an assortment of humanity's self-centered tendencies - our lust for wealth, our idiocy to engage in gunfight duels - and tempts us with them."

Ghostly influences

We will also look at the ghostly influences on Disney's artists and Imagineers in due time, but note that the era of Walt Disney was replete with supernatural instances in both the news and entertainment media, so there could have been no shortage of possible influences on the research and design of Walt's proposed haunted house. For example, the Imagineers would have been well-acquainted with an infamous photograph taken in 1936 of "The Brown Lady," a ghostly figure descending an old oak staircase in England's Raynham Hall. (In fact, in the earliest concepts for the Haunted Mansion, Imagineer Ken Anderson sketched some ideas based directly on the photograph taken at Raynham Hall.) The American '50s and '60s were also chockablock with monster movies, horror comics, and a new generation of kids who idolized Universal's monster flicks (which were also influences on some of Imagineer Ken Anderson's earliest ideas for the Haunted Mansion.)

The early output of the Walt Disney Studios had continued to focus on supernatural subject matter not infrequently, from Mickey Mouse's run-in with "The Mad Doctor" (1933) or his ghost-busting in "Lonesome Ghosts" (1937 - pictured), all the way to a dark encounter with evil incarnate in "Fantasia" (1940) to the shock ending to "The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad" (1949). Much of this material indirectly (or directly, as we will see) paved the way for Walt's house of nightmares.

In fact, mid-century amusement park haunted houses were abundant, and guests loved to experience the familiar jangling of their nerves followed by the rush of relieved laughter. So judging by the culture of the time, a haunted house attraction seemed a natural addition to Walt's park. But the Haunted Mansion is a far cry from a carnival dark ride. The themes are meatier; the scale grander; the atmosphere more eerily authentic. The entire experience inspires more dread and sardonic humor than the cathartic laughter of the carnival. What else might be behind the installation of Walt Disney's behemoth fright factory?

A deeper, darker dive

By the late 1960s, the American public was ready for an immersive spooky experience. During the long development of the Haunted Mansion, many hauntings were being reported as fact, some of which may indeed have helped form the continually evolving attraction, which opened in 1969 after more than a decade of development. In 1964, NBC took its news cameras overseas to film a television special about famous haunted houses. Titled "The Stately Ghosts of England," the show featured interviews with people who purported to have actually encountered haunted manors, such as the 16th century Longleat home of the Marquess of Bath (which featured a story of a murderous duel, resulting in the death of the lady of the house due to a broken heart - themes harmonious with the various storylines bandied about during the development of the Haunted Mansion.) But the spooks were not limiting themselves to centuries-old European manses. Back in America, actress Elke Sommer moved into a modern Beverly Hills home in southern California on July 6, 1964 which immediately started to show signs of possession, such as dining room chairs moving around overnight, the sounds of ghostly dinner parties, and mysteriously opening and closing doors and windows. Both Walt Disney's Imagineers and vistors to Disneyland would be well aware of such hauntings in the media, both far from home and near at hand.

Fictional tales of hauntings were also undergoing a sort of renaissance during the time of the Haunted Mansion's development. Shirley Jackson's gothic novel "The Haunting of Hill House" (1959) would have been well known amongst the public, as would Robert Wise's "The Haunting" (1963), a film based on Jackson's story that was another direct influence on Disney's Haunted Mansion. Television horror-hostess Vampira made a splash in the 1950s, and the rival Addams Family and Munsters TV shows (1964-1966) connected their modern audiences with the familiar trappings of gothic haunted houses. "Quentin's Theme," a song from the top-rated gothic horror-soap opera "Dark Shadows" soundtrack, hit number 13 (yes, thirteen!) on Billboard's Top 100 list in August of 1969, just a week before the Haunted Mansion would finally open its creaky doors. The monster-loving public was definitely ready to take a deeper dive into this particular swamp.

Safely scaring the public since 1955

While it's not a complete answer, there is fundamental truth behind the simple fact that Walt Disney wanted to provide safe scares to a public hungry for this burgeoning mid-century genre. "The reason Walt Disney built Disneyland was because he hated taking his little girls to run-down amusement parks, with scary rides operated by men wearing spotted t-shirts and chewing on cigars," wrote reporter Pete Beal in the Bucks Country Courier Times in 1977. The day Disneyland opened in 1955, it included a "haunted house"-style dark ride called "Snow White and her Adventures" (which was later renamed "Snow White's Scary Adventures," to more carefully warn young riders of the spooks within.) While the ride had the trappings of a traditional carnival spook house, it reflected Walt's desire to keep the scares inside the ride, rather than outside.

Embedded above is a videotaped ride through the Walt Disney World version of "Snow White's Adventures," which was installed in 1971 under the direction of WED Imagineer Claude Coates to be even scarier than the original Disneyland version, though it was redesigned in the 1990s to be slightly more friendly (as was Disneyland's version with the "new" Fantasyland overhaul in 1983.)

While "Snow White" clearly took the place of the expected dark scare ride, Walt wanted more - perhaps hoping to capture and re-tell stories and experiences from his own youth - and this desire would eventually lead to The Haunted Mansion. As an aside, Beal confirms Walt's success: "Some people astound me by visiting Disneyland and not seeing Pirates of the Caribbean or the Haunted Mansion. It is akin to visiting Paris and not climbing on the Eiffel Tower - only worse. For pure effects, the Haunted Mansion wins... it's funny, not scary, but very realistic. Now when Walt Disney makes a ghost, he makes a ghost. It is not some hokey piece of skeleton on a wire. Instead, it is a 3-D illusion, a fog sculpture. It looks exactly the way a ghost is supposed to look, except with a smile, of course."

Dancing on the grave

So what is it about a haunted house that we, the guests, find so compelling? And, to be more specific, what is it about Disney's haunt (which refers to death - even suicide - and finally, a communal afterlife celebration) that we find so enticing?

In tracing the roots of mankind's preoccupation with matters of horror and the supernatural in the world of entertainment, historian Maria Warner probes some of the historical metaphors and media that have preceded Disney's haunt. In her book "Phantasmagoria," Warner wonders if Madame Tussaud's "Sleeping Beauty," a wax sculpture of a young woman "suspended for all eternity like an effigy on a tomb awaiting the resurrection," could provide a pivotal moment; prior wax museum displays were intriguing likenesses, but in this case - sometime around the turn of the 19th century - the perpetually slumbering maiden was given a mechanical feature, and her "clockwork breast was electrified. The waxwork image of this sleeping woman, automated to look as if she was alive, was presented as the vehicle for communal dreams." A century and a half later, Walt Disney's Imagineers would revolutionize robotics, and are continually bringing more of the illusion of life to their automatons to this day - but as Warner posits, our human "communal dreams" remain the same as ever.

Warner traces the history of what she calls "subjective perception" as society hungers for a connection to the supernatural, being willing to suspend disbelief for a progression of eidetic experiences, many of which move through history pursuing the latest technological feats - stretching back to the "magic lantern" of the 17th century and other proto-cinematic machines, through the era of the Phantasmagoria horror shows of the 19th century and a general moment in history when there was a "lack of distinction between revelation and illusion," as Warner claims. This material "occupies a transitional zone between the sublime and the gothic, between the solemn and the comic, between seriously intended fears and sly mockery of such beliefs," Warner writes. "Its aftertaste lingers in much of today's popular entertainment."

But again - we can trace the historical pathways, but what is it that constantly compells humans to grasp at shadows, and wonder about the supernatural? The answers to such questions are probably as specfic as the personalities asking the questions, but making peace with death is something that humanity always pursues, both in serious and frivilous ways. And as humans, we tend to seek community to engage in a process that psychologists call "terror management," or the blend of denial, self-soothing, courage and fatalism that human beings constantly deal with as we face our own mortality. The Haunted Mansion offers its guests a sense of community, both during the riding of the attraction and, in a larger sense, as a family of like-minded fans. A 2002 study from Illinois Central College demonstrated that people who share allegiance to a specific group or worldview exhibit less anxiety about death than people who find themselves in search of a family of like-minded cohorts. So maybe the Haunted Mansion is much more than just a spook house.

Maybe the Haunted Mansion provides a means to laugh in the face of our own mortality. Foolish mortals, indeed.