The Quicksand Men live in the Stretching Room. The picture starts out with a relatively happy man in a bowler hat, arms crossed at his chest. As the haunted room actually stretches (or is it just your imagination?), visitors find the man is seated on another man’s shoulders. The second man is in turn on a third man’s shoulders. Alas, the third man is sinking into quicksand (a problem many of us older people thought would have been more prevalent in real life).

Some have proposed that each man lower on the proverbial totem pole is dressed more shabbily than the man above him, which could lead one to believe that this is a social commentary as well as a picture. Not being an expert in the fashion depicted in the painting, this could be true, or it could just be one’s imagination. I, for one, am not going to risk the quicksand to find out what the men in picture think.

If you want more Haunted Mansion and creativity, get my book “The Haunted Mansion Is Creativity.” If you want a different kind of Haunting fun, check out “When Hauntings Collide,” the story where you are the star.