Disney Imagineers Explain the History and Creation of Disneyland's Haunted Mansion Attraction

Disney’s Haunted Mansion movie hit theatres this weekend, and in the spirit of the beloved Disneyland attraction that the movie is based on, we’ve got a little history for you about the creation of the ride. In a recent interview with /Film, the Disneyland Imagineers explained that Walt Disney had always imagined the inclusion of a haunted house in his park.

In the 1950s, during the early development days of Disneyland, Imagineer Harper Goff sketched a design for what would eventually become the Haunted Mansion. His sketch, which featured a house on a hill overlooking Disneyland's Main Street, looked like "really looked like the quintessential haunted house that you would see in movies at that time," Imagineering's executive creative director Kim Irvine told me — a somewhat raggedy, overgrown manor that appeared to be run down. Irvine is well-versed in the Haunted Mansion and has a special connection to it: Her mother, one of Disney's first female Imagineers, served as the model for Madame Leota, the fortune teller character whose head appears in a floating crystal ball during a séance scene near the midpoint of the ride.

But Walt Disney thought the idea of a shoddy-looking building clashed with his vision for a more pristine theme park. He preferred the juxtaposition of the building having a nice exterior which contained spooky elements inside. As for those spooky elements, the actual narrative that visitors to the Haunted Mansion would experience shifted multiple times in the planning stages. As Juleen Woods, a senior project coordinator in the Imagineering department, explained, some of the early concepts for what the attraction might entail included the Headless Horseman from "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow," or the legend of a sea captain named Captain Gore who murdered his bride after she found out he was a pirate. Gore's wife's ghost haunted him to the point where he hung himself from the rafters — a distinctive image that actually made its way into the final version of the attraction.

Walt and Imagineers like Harper Goff, Ken Anderson, Yale Gracey, Rolly Crump, Marc Davis, and Claude Coats decided to create a fully original storyline for the Haunted Mansion. But they initially envisioned the experience of visiting it in a totally different way than how it ended up.

"For so long, the attraction was going to be a walkthrough," Woods told me. "Even at one point, the raven that you see throughout the attraction was going to be your 'Ghost Host' and talk to you as you went through and walked through. But then luckily, the World's Fair — even though it put the Haunted Mansion project on hold from 1963 to 1969 — one of the great things that came out of the World's Fair was we learned about the Omnimover [ride system], which is what the Doom Buggy is. And we were able to take that technology and find a different way to tell the story, which is you're on this Doom Buggy, which is such a better way because it really shows you where to focus your attention."

One of the biggest takeaways from riding the Haunted Mansion is the way the attraction transitions from being somewhat spooky to having more of a fun, funny atmosphere as it progresses through the mansion and into the (still-enclosed) graveyard in its backyard. But that balance of scares and humor didn't come easy.

"There was a lot of controversy, quite frankly, between the Imagineers that were leading up the concept at that time as to whether it should be scarier [or] funnier," Kim Irvine said. "I think it went back and forth quite a few times before it landed in where it is now. It's a combination of all of their personalities mixed in. But the humor definitely came from Marc [Davis] being from animation and creating all those wonderful funny characters from the cartoons. He wanted it to have a sense of humor, and I think the balance of it is really wonderful."

"I think the original Imagineers had so honed their storytelling skills producing the early Disney movies, so many of which blended humor into the mix, that they understood how well that would work with the Haunted Mansion at Disneyland, where Walt Disney wanted children to be able to have fun with their parents," said John Gritz, a principle concept designer at Walt Disney Imagineering.

Juleen Woods pointed to the musical transition as being an essential reason why the balance works so well. "It's this perfect balance of the grim and grinning, as the song says," she quipped, referring to "Grim Grinning Ghosts," a classic song written for the attraction. "It's a celebration of ghosts and music, and I love that the music changes the mood throughout the whole attraction. So whatever scene you're seeing, it's the perfect music for that scene. It's the balance of haunts and humor."

The Haunted Mansion is a total blast, and a favorite of park-goers decades on. I am looking forward to the movie as well, as it looks like an Easter Egg-filled homage to the attraction. Disney’s Haunted Mansion is in theatres now.