The Unauthorized Story of Walt Disney's Haunted Mansion

by Jeff Baham

  Due to the detail of Anderson’s test instructions that were developed for this scene, it’s likely that he, with the assistance of Mattey, constructed the set at the Disney Studios on a sound stage as a demonstration for Walt Disney. The entire set would be backed by a cyclorama—a concave curtain backdrop—upon which clouds could be projected, simulating a stormy night. A moon projected onto the night sky would also be reflected in the waters of a simulated bayou, created by projecting the “reflection” into an actual pan of water. A lightning flash and projected bolt would complete the stormy backdrop. Another effect proposed by Anderson, and used in the Haunted Mansion today, was a magic lantern-type effect, which entailed the projection of moving ghosts onto semi-transparent scrims hanging in front of the cyclorama, giving the scene some depth. Electric fans placed out of view would simulate the wind blowing prop branches and moss in the trees, and also give the water pans the necessary ripple.

  Anderson was extremely careful with the lighting of the scene. After describing the broken plaster and deconstructed nature of the salon room, Anderson found ways to light the room via muted, colored fluorescent light overhead, wall sconces, and subtle spotlights. The background music was to be dramatic as well—in Anderson’s view, the sprightly march from Disney’s The Skeleton Dance Silly Symphony cartoon (1929) would fit the bill perfectly, along with assorted stormy night, howling wolf, and galloping horse audio loops.

  Finally, the Headless Horseman arrives, first as an animated figure projected against a scrim off in the distance, then seeming to rapidly approach the salon via clever sound effects, and finally bursting into the scene behind the trees and shrubs in the foreground, his cape billowing in the wind as he storms off the set. A wolf’s howl sends skeletal ghosts flying out of their graves into the night sky, and a brilliant flash of lightning and a booming thunder clap bring the entire scene to a dramatic conclusion.

  Ken Anderson labored on the ghost house project until 1958, at which time he went back to animation to work on Sleeping Beauty , a task which complemented his skill set. Disney had hired artist Eyvind Earle, who had already had a measure of success in the art world, to work in the animation department back in 1951, and, after Earle won an Oscar and an award at Cannes for Disney’s Toot, Whistle, Plunk and Boom short, Disney decided to make him the stylist for Sleeping Beauty . This move, which entailed a complete shift in thought for the animators, forced them to abandon the softer, fluid “illusion of life” artwork they were used to creating and pressed them into a more rigid, design-based architectural style. Anderson’s previous experience, along with his architectural background, made this assignment a natural fit, and he helped Earle achieve his vision for the film. “We set out to create the most beautiful picture we could do,” Earle recalled. “We all loved each other’s work. Ken Anderson and [production designer] Don DaGradi drew hundreds of sketches of the scenes taken from the story boards. I would take those drawings and turn them into paintings with my style…there was only absolute harmony and enthusiasm between [Anderson] and myself.” [20] This successful collaboration suited Anderson after his struggle to discover the secret to completing the ghost house project, so he continued in the animation department, never turning back to the haunting attraction he had worked so hard to produce.

  As Anderson continued with animation, he conceived of the look of 101 Dalmatians , which utilized the Xerox process to create both cels and background images, greatly reducing the costly inking and background aspects to the film—though Disney didn’t like the rough-looking end result, which caused a rift between Anderson and Disney that went on for about a year once the film had been released. [21] It’s probably safe to assume that despite Anderson’s best efforts throughout 1957 and into 1958, his ghost house proposals simply didn’t capture whatever it was that Walt Disney was looking for. Still, Anderson’s seminal work on the ghost house remains instructive to many Imagineers today, and it’s intriguing to ponder what might have been. Imagineer Eric Goodman, musing over Anderson’s early ghost house storylines and scenes, said that “there’s this feeling that you’re kind of sneaking in. You’re hiding and watching it all happen in front of you. It’s a very scary kind of feeling, you know. Almost voyeuristic.” [22]

  In 2007, the Walt Disney World Haunted Mansion was re-worked, or “refurbished” in Imagineer-speak, to add an M. C. Escher-inspired endless staircase that seems to float in space inside of the Mansion, with animated glowing footsteps climbing every which way, in a scene very reminiscent of a concept that Ken Anderson had designed for his ghost house, which provided guests a ghost’s-eye view from the balcony down to the floor of a music room, which also contained animated footsteps moving along the floor toward an old pump organ, ready to play a ghostly refrain from unseen fingers. “It just goes to show you how often we return to our own heritage. [Anderson’s work] was very influential,” Jason Surrell said, in a discussion of the 2007 enhancements. [23]

  “The fun thing about the Haunted Mansion is that its very multi-level,” added Imagineer Jason Grandt. “[Anderson’s sketch] was the first drawing where you get to see a view from a balcony looking down, which was a precursor to the ballroom scene. When you look at this, you’d much rather be on the balcony than on the ground floor, at least from a story-telling perspective.” [24]

  “Ken Anderson is one of the biggest unsung heroes of the Haunted Mansion,” said Surrell.

  Judy Tells Some Tales

  The WED Imagineers had many origins for their stories and ideas. Some of the origins are obvious. Some may have been long-forgotten subliminal inspirations. And some seeming origin stories may just be coincidental, as there’s no way to know if the Imagineers had referred to certain works or not.

  One such potential inspiration that makes an entertaining aside is found in a weekly comic paper published in England in the nineteenth century called “Judy, Or the London Serio-Comic Journal.” In the Dec. 13, 1876 edition, a spooky feature titled “Haunted Lodgings!” was published in the annual Christmas double issue (which was sold for twopence, including postage.)

  Subtitled “Setting forth the experiences of six ghosts and a half,” the spooky feature was divided into numerous chapters detailing the spectral residents of a mysterious manse, described as “not an ordinary haunted house, such as you may find any number of all over the country, with one paltry ghost belonging to it. [This one] was literally choke (sic) full of ghosts—so full, there is no understanding how so many of them...ever managed to live under the same roof without any scratching or biting.” One of the things that sets Walt’s ghost house concept apart from most historical house hauntings is exactly this: the idea that rather than a single poltergeist or spirit roaming the halls, the Haunted Mansion is stuffed full with 999 haunting residents.

  Further in the story, we are treated to a number of ideas that ring with familiarity. One such is a tale of two sisters - one “whose heart beat gently with simple faith and childlike trust,” as she fell in love with a suitor whose manner was “so imperious, so cold” to everyone except this girl, toward whom he was only gentle and tender. The other sister, racked by “a jealous hatred...and a wild, wicked passion,” was the eldest, who also had her sights set on the gentleman’s affection. Upon the inevitable engagement of her fairer sister to the man one Christmas eve, the wicked woman hatched a scheme. The man, apparently a sea captain, was to be sent to India for a year, after which time he would return to marry his love. In the meanwhile, however, the wicked sister intercepted his letters and “poisoned her (sister’s) mind and forged a letter purporting to be from him, asking to be released from his engagement.” As the younger woman read the cruel lie in the very room where her suitor had asked for her hand in marriage, “she gasped for very breath, and then with a long-drawn terrible sob, like a deer stricken to its death, she fell down dead! Her heart was broken.”

  Without feeling a bit of grief, the older sister waited for the man to return home “placidly... with a quiet smile.” After c
ounting down the days for the ship to return, she finally received word that his ship had gone down in a storm, and every soul had perished, including the man because of whom she had willed her sister to death. The cruel sister’s fate was an eternity of haunting the very room in which her deception had killed the young betrothed due to a broken heart. The story of innocent love lost and tragedy at sea is a theme that Ken Anderson also visited in his concepts for Walt’s ghost house.

  In the midst of these haunting tales which resemble the stories of the Haunted Mansion, there is also a stand-alone cartoon which pays tribute to famed professor and director of the Royal Polytechnic institute John Henry Pepper, who just years prior to this publication, had adapted inventor Henry Dircks reflective ghost illusion and marketed it to the world. As we will discuss later, the “Pepper’s Ghost” effect plays an important role in the Haunted Mansion itself, well over a century after Pepper designed and popularized it as a theatrical technique.

  The perhaps-coincidental haunted similarities to Walt’s ghost house continue throughout the story in theme and atmosphere, but perhaps no more so than in the tale of “The Cobweb Bride,” another ghost who, “like the lady in the room upstairs, had (died) waiting for one who had never come.” She is described as having clear mournful eyes “full of sad but silent reproach, arrayed in bridal attire...with cobwebs gathered thickly o’er her mocking” bouquet. Interestingly, the story also describes “the wreck of a bridal feast, that only the rats and mice had partaken of.”

  The tale eventually describes many of the house’s ghosts, and ends with the storyteller stumbling across a “woe-begone black cat—not a ghost, but only half-way there as yet...with wistful eyes.” The storyteller decides to flee the haunted house, as a voice reminds us that we will, of course, forget him soon, because “how soon are living men and women, once very dear to us, when they have passed away—forgotten!”

  This "Cobweb Bride" died while waiting for one who would never come.

  Chapter Three

  Geppetto the Tinkerer

  Walt Disney, still excited about his haunted house, wasn’t waiting for a final script before he started to discuss the project publicly. In 1958, he mentioned the upcoming spooky attraction in an interview overseas with the British Broadcasting Corporation. John Hench, one of Disney’s long-time story artists and an Academy Award-winning effects designer for the Studio before becoming an Imagineer, recalls hearing Disney discuss the haunted house in the interview:

  The first I’d heard about the [project] was in Walt’s talk on the BBC—and some of the things he said that really surprised me I didn’t even know. He must have had a book, or he boned up on several terms. I wasn’t too familiar with them—poltergeist, and some other things and kinds of psychic phenomena. He used that opportunity with BBC while he was on the air to invite them, the disenfranchised ghosts. He said they had plenty of them [in England], and their old houses were torn down and they’d have no place to go, and he wanted these ghosts to come to California.

  He [said] some other surprising things. He said ghosts really need a place. They need to perform [for] a certain length of time, they needed to pay for their crime by going through it so many times, and they needed an audience—ghosts actually require an audience—and he guaranteed them the best audience in the whole world right here at Disneyland!

  Hench said that in response to the interview, Disneyland actually received many responses and “ghost applications” from various countries throughout the world. “It was really a quite clever way of talking about what he wanted to do,” Hench said. “He was explaining a place that could house a great number of ghosts…I think most haunted houses have one or two, and that’s it. But Walt thought [the ghosts] would do well together.” [1]

  However, Ken Anderson’s ghost house didn’t get the green light from Walt Disney. For whatever reason, Anderson’s haunting creation didn’t push the boundaries far enough. Perhaps his effects were too theatrical and not technological enough, or perhaps the scenes he built at the Studio as demonstrations didn’t astound to the level Disney desired—or, perhaps Anderson was just too valuable in his role at animation during the last push to get Sleeping Beauty finished to continue on at WED. For reasons unknown, Anderson never returned to the project. But his original concepts didn’t disappear with him. Rather, they continued to inspire the project as new blood was brought on board.

  By 1959, Disney had assigned a new team to the haunted house project. Yale Gracey, a WED Imagineer who came from animation, as did many, was tapped to lead the new search for the best illusions and methods for portraying a realistically haunted piece of architecture. Gracey, a layout artist before being moved to WED, was a known tinkerer, and it’s likely that Disney knew that the special effects research and development would best be carried out by someone willing to create something new from scratch rather than rely on traditional theatrical techniques, as did Anderson’s climactic meeting with the Headless Horseman.

  Along with Gracey, Disney also brought WED Imagineer Roland “Rolly” Crump to the project to assist Gracey. Crump, who also cut his teeth in the animation department, had originally come to Disney’s attention due to his own interest in three-dimensional design and kinetic sculpture. It’s quite clear that Disney decided that, perhaps as far as the haunted house project was concerned, two heads would be better than one, so he turned the duo loose on the project, and sent them back to the Studio sound stage to keep developing new demonstrations and illusions for the attraction. “Walt knew that I did little funky things, and Yale did little funky things, so he just put us together,” Crump said. [2]

  “Yale was so thrilled to be asked to come to WED,” Crump recalled. “He was an older guy, and came from animation and was ‘just’ a layout person. I don’t know how Walt picked him to come, but Walt was the best casting director that ever lived on the planet. So he decided that Yale and I should work together, but I didn’t know Yale from up. I knew who he was, but that was about it.”

  But Crump quickly got to know Gracey, and soon realized how much creative energy they had in common. “Yale was like a ‘Geppetto’—a little tinker-toy man who was always creating strange things,” Crump recalled. In addition to building models of haunting effects at WED Enterprises and then constructing life-sized demonstrations of those effects at the Studio, Crump and Gracey ended up spending lots of time together researching the horror media of the day, which included seeing monster movie matinees. So Crump spent a good amount of time visiting Gracey for their various research trips. “When you walked up to Yale’s house, he had these little rods that stuck up, about every three or four feet, and on top of the rods, he had these little salt shakers that the cap had been taken off of, and then there was a little light bulb inside of that,” Crump said. “So his lights were little salt-and-pepper shakers turned upside down.” Crump was fascinated by Yale’s penchant for invention, and his ability to find a purpose for an item that was intended for something completely different.

  At this point in the project, Gracey and Crump were still working with Ken Anderson’s story ideas and plot concepts, along with other ideas that had been tossed in the pot along the way. “Since Walt had wanted a haunted house in the park when he opened Disneyland, he had a lot of people in animation work on different crazy little ideas, but they never were much more than one sketch,” Crump said. “Yale and I got all those sketches and laid them out, and started looking at them, and…the interesting thing about it was that we didn’t know what we were doing.”

  Despite their seemingly haphazard methodology, some incredible ideas and effects started to develop from the Gracey/Crump collaboration, based on the conceptual work that had been done prior to their involvement. “We worked side by side on ideas, and just had a great time. But Yale was really the leading force in that,” said Crump. “I was really just helping him, building the boxes. I was actually learning from Yale.”

  Gracey and Crump produced all sorts of crazy effects and spec
tral illusions during their tenure working for the haunted house. Many were intricate technical designs, such as an “exploding” ghost, which was composed of numerous spring-loaded pieces that would fly apart when the ghost was targeted with an infrared beam. Some were fairly simple, such as the talking statue illusion, in which a static marble bust appears to speak simply by means of a projected, animated face. The pair tried some tricks from nineteenth-century stage magic acts. And some were simply “happy accidents,” as Crump calls them, such as the inverted face illusion, which makes an immobile stone statue appear to turn and stare directly at every guest in the room. In the case of the inverted face, a cast from a life mask of Abraham Lincoln happened to be sitting in the room at WED one day, and the duo noticed that when they walked by, the shifting shadows made the face appear to move. At one point in time, Gracey and Crump had their borrowed sound stage filled with these various creepy contraptions, and Crump likes to tell a story of how they frightened the cleaning crew one night.

  According to Crump, the duo had set up their exploding ghost with some other effects (both audio and visual) rigged to go off, and left them triggered for the night crew to discover. Upon returning the next morning, Crump and Gracey found their sets still operating in full “spook” mode, along with some abandoned janitorial supplies. However, the gag backfired, as the cleaning crew vowed never to return to tidy up that particular sound stage again.