The REAL Ghost Behind the Haunted Mansion

three iconic words welcome foolish mortals they stayed with me throughout the years and I'm sure they've stayed with you the Haunted Mansion is one of Disney's most popular attractions of all time and it's easily my favorite from its long troubled history to the opening of the Haunted Mansion at Disneyland in 1969 two of the updates that they've made to it to this very day the pervasive mythology that surrounds the Haunted Mansion is something that not a lot of other Disney attractions have make no mistake this isn't your Snow White and the Seven Dwarves dark ride even though that one is also really terrifying and this one is a bit more grim and you all know that I've talked ad nauseam about the Haunted Mansion in the past from the history to the details to some of the ghost stories that surround the mansion today instead of looking at the mythology and folklore around the ride I wanted to look at the historical ghosts you can find inside the mansion and for others that may not exist in reality the mythology and the folklore that inspired them from Madame Leota to the hitchhiking ghosts all the way down to that weird floating light thing I will be leading you all through the dark hallways of the Haunted Mansion today and showing you the real ghosts behind the Haunted Mansion before its opening in 1969 Walt Disney said that the Haunted Mansion would be a collection of ghosts from all over the world and when you ride the Disney Land original or the Magic Kingdom original or the Tokyo Disneyland original it becomes obvious that there are ghosts from all over the world mummies Roman emperors and Victorian lords and ladies but let's focus on that first one for now The Mummy my absolute favorite character in the whole Haunted Mansion The Mummy can be found at the very end of the ride in the graveyard scene he's enjoying a cup of tea next to a nice little puppy and an old old man who's also a ghost now officially that mummy does have a name revealed in the tales from The Haunted Mansion book as prince aemond most the son of tut most the first unfortunately a men most never became Pharaoh because he died before his father did leaving him with some unfinished business here on earth making him a ghost and of course eventually a resident of the haunted mansion now next to Prince a men most stands an old man with a cone to his ear repeatedly saying Wow now while this old man isn't Egyptian royalty hekawis don't even know his name he's known simply as Father Time and unfortunately for him time has taken quite a toll because he cannot hear very well anymore this whole scene is a gag that kind of goes over some guests head that I've explained in the past essentially it's a reference to the spiritualist movement of the mid 19th century and to the seance summoning parties they used to have back then yeah they used to have parties where they just straight-up summoned ghosts sounds like a banger to me the alleged and usually not psychic mediums who would summon these ghosts would put a cone to their ear similar to father time and listened to the spirits that would sometimes speak to them sometimes maybe all of the time nothing would speak to them but they would pretend they would hear stuff and the joke here is that father timed has at long last managed to conjure up a ghost from the afterlife the ghost is finally speaking to the old man for real no illusions here except he's old and he can't hear the ghost talk after all that work but yeah originally envisioned as just a simple mummy muttering to himself we now know him as Prince Amend Mo's of Egypt residing forever now in a graveyard in New Orleans with his best friend Father time and dog hey so remember that spiritualism movement of the mid 19th century I was talking about just a couple seconds ago yeah well it's still pertinent here now we move on to one of the most famous scenes in the haunted mansion Madame Lee Yoda's parlor now Madame Leota is very obviously inspired by these seance parties where psychic mediums would ask the spirits to communicate in different ways whether that be rapping on a table it's time to respond send us a message from somewhere beyond or creepies crawlies toads and iPod and let there be music from regions beyond you get the picture they would cite incantations and summon these spirits to give them signs that they were present if you're interested in the history and the backstory of madame leota you can find it at the memento mori gift shop in the Magic Kingdom the story tells us of how Liotta was originally a real-life witch living in the town of Salem Massachusetts during the 1690s and if you're familiar with that time period and the city of Salem you know where this is going one day while summoning a spirit she was caught and inadvertently caused the notorious Salem witch trials and was forced to flee the state eventually coming to settle in a place depending which Park you're at either in the Hudson River Valley in New York or of course in New Orleans in Louisiana I'm a Disneyland stand through and through so I'm gonna be going with New Orleans from here on out in the rainy back streets of New Orleans Liotta opened a store called memento mori curios and two curiosities which sold supernatural relics potions and offered spirit photography we're back in those days it was a way to allegedly capture ghosts on camera and nowadays at the gift shop a way to get your picture taken and look like a ghost from the haunted mansion it is here where the stories diverge and I'm going to take a lot of creative Liberty here because there isn't a solid story set in stone over the years Liotta became friendly with the owner of a giant antebellum mansion that owners identity has been disputed but if we watched by video in the past I'm going to link it in the description we all know that the owner was Constance we'll get back to her in a second because she was such close friends with Constance she was able to move into the mansion in her very own parlor room to conduct seances eventually when Liotta passed away she got her very own grave plot outside of the mansion and would begin to haunt her old seance room her head now possessing her favorite crystal ball maybe Leona realizes she's dead maybe she doesn't I mean it's kind of weird a ghost is trying to summon other ghosts can't she just like talk to them it's claimed all around in various books that Leona doesn't know that she's dead but the Canon of the haunted mansion is really just in flux all the time although it's known that on very very rare occasions the spirit of Liotta will leave the house where she will regain her full body and summon the spirits in New Orleans square otherwise known as a cool quick little show for the 50th anniversary of the Haunted Mansion at Disneyland if you do some research and look up Marie Laveau on the internet you can see that Madame Liotta's character is very heavily inspired by the voodoo queen of New Orleans and essentially the reason her spirit is still roaming the balls of the Haunted Mansion is because her and Constance hatch away were best friends and speaking of the bride in the Attic the story of ghostly brides haunting their former homes or wedding venues is a very common one often stemming from stories of women killing themselves on their wedding night or before their wedding or the woman killing their groom to be Constance hatch away of course being a very very large of the latter stories like the headless ghost bride of the Old Faithful Inn at Yellowstone National Park which is very close to Constance s story and her look is very much inspired by the famous ghost picture of the Brown Lady of Raynham Hall this being the alleged ghost of Lady Dorothy Walpole the sister of the first Prime Minister of Great Britain now looking at pictures of this place I have no doubt in my mind that Raynham Hall is haunted I mean just look at the place if I were a ghost that's where I'd be but as to the photos authenticity I'm not quite sure there's lots of ghost pictures like this that have been debunked and to be quite honest I think this was a fake as well and when it comes to creepy locations in one's house your brain immediately goes toward the Attic the attic is a place where hardly anyone ever visits it's damp up there and dark and there's plenty of room for the imagination to run wild and hence that's a ghost favorite place to hang out is up in the attic where no one will bother them these stories of a murdered bride or in this case a murderous bride and the attic kind of start to make sense and is why we find the former master of the haunted mansion alone well sort of in the Attic heading back down to the graveyard now we visit with the hitchhiking ghosts as rut Gus and Phineas my third fourth and fifth favorite ghosts in the mansion respectively number two is the hatbox ghost there are you happy gosh I knew you guys were dying to know anyway Phineas seems to be a traveler or a doctor Ezra seems to be a very well-to-do fancy man and Gus as the very opposite end of the spectrum is an escaped prison convict now the story of hitchhiking ghosts or in this case the vanishing hitchhiker the ghostly hitchhiker or the phantom hitchhiker is a very popular and well-known urban legend so popular and well-known that I'm not even going to tell you about it okay I'm kidding here's the story mmm one dark rainy night a couple were driving their car down the winding back wood roads of the Louisiana bayou while the woman driving was focusing on the road her boyfriend often the passenger see spotted someone off to the side of the road he could see very faintly through the headlights of the car in short men wearing a top hat and holding a cane because people were a lot nicer and a lot less dangerous back in these days the driver stopped the car and asked if the man needed help getting anywhere the man with a hat box in one hand and a cane and the other said that he just needed a quick ride into town back to his house and because the couple was headed into town themselves they offered the man a ride the old wiry man accepted and took a spot in the back seat of the car the old man was visibly shivering so the passenger out of the kindness of his heart offered him his sweater which the man accepted as the ride continued long into the night the man would make small talk with the couple before eventually the passenger fell asleep and the driver was focused so heavily on the road that the small talk stopped upon arriving back into town the driver turned around to the man and asked where he would like to be dropped off the old man said oh the old hatch away manner down the road you can just drop me off at the gates there now the driver knew that that old mansion had been abandoned for years but maybe this old man was just the groundskeeper or maybe he lived nearby and he didn't want them to drop them off at his home for security safety whatever the reason the driver agreed to drop him off at the old abandoned mansion upon arriving at the gates of the old scary mansion the driver exited her car and opened the back door for the old man only to find that the mysterious hitchhiker had disappeared from the back seat without a trace investigating further she pushed open the gates to the mansion and entered the creepy front yard Cemetery and there in front of her draped over a tombstone with the engraving of a hat box was her boyfriend's sweater not even bothering to pick up the sweater she hopped back into her car and sped off into the night never speaking of it again and whatever the boyfriend would ask her what happened to that old man and where was his sweater she would respond simply don't worry about it and everyone is the urban legend of the hitchhiking ghosts pretty creepy right now I obviously made the ghost in that story the hatbox ghost from the haunted mansion but obviously in this case Phineas Ezra and Gus are the actual hitchhiking ghosts we're at the end of the attraction they'll hitch a ride with you follow you home and disappear mysteriously from your dune buggy as you disembark now there's one more real ghost that I want to talk about that you can find inside the haunted mansion or more appropriately and interestingly in this case outside of the Haunted Mansion now depending on how many times you've been standing on the outside of the Haunted Mansion in the past few decades you may have seen this effect from time to time certain guests would report a moving light moving from one side of the window to another almost as if a lonely spirit was walking behind the window and disappearing a short time after this effect is inspired by the variation of a ghost known as the apparition or the spirit orb either one but yeah we're getting super deep into the ghost lore here apparitions are the sudden appearance and then disappearance of ghostly figures in this case could be your grandma could be your dog it could be an orb of light oh yeah the orb orbs are usually specks of dust or bugs that are mistaken for spiritual apparitions and photos taken with the flash on okay but some ghosts are believed to appear as simply orbs of light as seen in the Haunted Mansion movie and you can see this in effect at the Haunted Mansion at Disneyland and Walt Disney World more frequently the effect has been turned on and off over the years at Disneyland but is more apparent at Walt Disney World and as my friend Mark covered in his video there are different reasons why this effect was turned on and off over the years at Disneyland so if you've ever seen a glowing light pass behind a window at the Haunted Mansion at Disneyland and then suddenly disappear and then go years on end without seeing that effect again a second time don't worry you're not crazy the effect was achieved by putting a light bulb inside of a rotating metal cylinder behind the window this giving the illusion of the moving light dimming in and out appearing more regularly at Disneyland though is the light up in the rafters if you're standing outside of the haunted look toward the very top where the ship weathervane is just below that there are a series of windows and inside these windows you can see a floating spooky ghostly orb again a reference to these tales of ghostly orbs and apparitions so what dare I ask is your favorite ghost story and does it have a representation inside of the Haunted Mansion maybe you enjoy zombies so you like the guy trying to bust out of his coffin or perhaps you're a fan of the poltergeist a ghost that moves things around like in the corridor of doors I want to hear your guys's favorite ghost story in the comments down below and remember if you are looking for a way out there's always my way or you can just take the chicken exit I mean that's also a viable way [Music] greetings foolish mortals and I hope you enjoyed this video on the Haunted Mansion it's been a while since I've done a Haunted Mansion video I've thought about saving them until Halloween recently but I really wanted to make this one because it was just so fun to talk about sort of this ghost history if you're interested in more haunted mansion videos and trust me I have a ton more ideas for haunted mansion videos just give this video a like let me know I could honestly talk about this ride forever and with Walt Disney World opening in just a few weeks here I'm very excited maybe to be getting back to it maybe all way to that we'll see what do you guys think you excited to get back to it and if you're not you know stay tuned here as always thank you so much for watching this video I will see you guys in the next video very exciting goodbye

Channel: Offhand Disney

Views: 126,173

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Id: ZsRYBpi2ZfE

Length: 14min 17sec (857 seconds)

Published: Thu Jun 04 2020