Spoilers ahead for Haunted Mansion, in theaters now.
Disney’s newly released second attempt at a Haunted Mansion movie is definitely more representative of the theme-park ride it’s based on than the 2003 film featuring Eddie Murphy. For starters, neither the Disneyland or Walt Disney World ride has any discussion of the subprime-mortgage boom, and that’s like half the plot of the 2003 movie. But if that earlier Haunted Mansion took liberties with the source material, 2023’s film is almost slavish to the ride’s lore. The plot hinges on urban legend turned animatronic entity the Hatbox Ghost, as well as the effort to secure the mansion’s 1,000th ghost. The film references never-realized concept art, the ride’s original proposed story line, and the names of Imagineers. Like, a lot of Imagineers.
The Disney Parks are designed, manufactured, and decorated by Imagineers, a name that combines imagine with engineer to illustrate how the job is equal parts kooky creativity and practical science. The Imagineers are the namesakes of heroic Haunted Mansion characters like Harriet and Madame Leota. But they’re also the inspiration behind the film’s antagonist — satanic serial killer Alistair Crump. That’s weird, right? A giant corporation naming a fictional mass murderer after a former employee?
To understand how an Imagineer became the namesake of a Jared Leto–voiced skeleton man, you have to understand how long it took for the Haunted Mansion ride to become a reality. Walt Disney had conceived of a haunted-house attraction back in 1951, when the plan was to make a small theme park in Burbank. The haunted house wasn’t a part of Disneyland v1.0 in 1955, but space was made for it in 1963. Even then, the ride shell sat empty for nine years. Nobody could agree on what the ride was supposed to be.
Three generations of Imagineers, one World’s Fair, and one company founder’s death later, and the Haunted Mansion finally opened in August 1969. (The same weekend as the Tate-LaBianca murders, oddly enough.) Eighteen years of Imagineers worked on the Haunted Mansion, and they signed their work. Most references to them are in the prop graveyard outside the mansion, inscribed in all those gag tombstones. There are other references throughout the ride, however, and some of them trickled into the 2023 movie. Not all are the most thoughtful remembrances. Below are the Imagineer Easter eggs in 2023’s Haunted Mansion and the stories behind them.
Master Gracey
Nobody could have foreseen what happened to Yale Gracey, namesake for the Haunted Mansion’s Master Gracey (played by J.R. Adduci in the 2023 film). Gracey and Rolly Crump were the two Imagineers in charge of Disneyland’s Haunted Mansion project in the mid-’60s. While Crump focused on trippy objets d’art that would later get sidelined in a failed “Museum of the Weird†restaurant, Gracey devoted himself to incorporating the best of 19th-century magician tricks into the ride. He worked tirelessly on the Pepper’s Ghost effects (an elaborate set of optical illusions that make ghosts appear and disappear before guests’ eyes), figured out how to use projectors to create Madame Leota (the talking, floating head in a crystal ball) and the singing busts, and there’s a tombstone dedicated to him in the graveyard. It reads “Master Gracey, Laid to Rest, No Mourning at His Request, FAREWELL.†This gag tribute took on a different tenor after Gracey was murdered in 1983, shot in his sleep inside his cabana at the Bel Air Bay Club. His murder remains unsolved to this day. Which is why it feels a little odd for a Master Gracey character to be tricked into suicide not once but twice in Haunted Mansion movies.
Alistair Crump
Perhaps even odder than the legend of Master Gracey is the 2023 Haunted Mansion’s treatment of Imagineer Rolly Crump. In the film, a man named Alistair Crump (Jared Leto) is behind all the hauntings and mysterious deaths. He killed party guests and servants alike in his own mansion, Crump Manor, until the staff revolted and chopped his head off. Crump’s ghost shows up in Master Gracey’s mansion after Leota accidentally summons him. He convinces Gracey to kill himself and becomes responsible for 66 deaths in Gracey’s mansion. He couldn’t be farther from his namesake, Rolly Crump. Rolly was an Imagineer whose most controversial opinion was that it was important to “Keep Disneyland Weird.†He helped design the façade of It’s a Small World, devised the spooky clock in the Haunted Mansion, and drew sexy dames and pro-marijuana posters in his spare time. He died earlier this year, so presumably someone asked his permission to be remembered in this movie as a malevolent, murderous spirit.
Madame Leota
The Haunted Mansion’s ghostly fortune teller was named after Imagineer Leota Toombs before the ride was even finished. Toombs first worked in Disney’s Ink and Paint department, where she met her husband, Harvey Toombs. After having two children, she began working in Imagineering in 1962, contributing to attractions Disney made for the 1964 World’s Fair. This was when Yale Gracey and Rolly Crump were the point men on the Haunted Mansion. Gracey asked Leota to pose for the crystal-ball effect because, in her words, “my eyes were the right distance apart to fit the test model.†To this day, her face is projected on the fortune teller’s ball with Cinderella voice actress Eleanor Audley reading the character’s lines. Jamie Lee Curtis performs both duties in the 2023 film.
Harriet
Tiffany Haddish’s character Harriet shares a first name with Harriet Burns, the girlboss of Imagineering. She was the first woman hired by Walt Disney Imagineering and had to contend with the company’s boys’-club mentality in the ’50s. She made miniatures of rides like Pirates of the Caribbean and the Haunted Mansion as well as Disneyland’s private club, Club 33. Fun fact: Burns based Pirates of the Caribbean’s Dirty Foot Pirate on her milkman, who had weirdly hairy legs. Did she regret that choice when she had to place each leg hair individually on a robot’s leg? Who’s to say.
Bruce Davis
Danny DeVito’s character Bruce Davis is likely a nod to Marc Davis, one of the last Imagineers to midwife the Haunted Mansion to completion. Davis butted heads with Claude Coates, who wanted the Mansion to be scary as shit. Marc Davis, on the other hand, wanted the Mansion to play host to his pun-inspired vignettes. The duo compromised with Coates overseeing more of the ride’s spooky beginning and Davis bringing the wacky to the back half. Davis managed to sneak in ghosts that were puns on “Mum’s the word,†“It’s not over till the fat lady sings,†and “Great Caesar’s Ghost.†He was a goofy-ass man, and it’s only right his character is portrayed by goofy-ass DeVito.