The Ghost Host spirits guests through their Haunted Mansion experience. From beginning to end, he makes the haunted Mansion come to unlife. Voiced by the imitable Paul Frees, without the ghost host to carry the story thread, guests would be lost in a series of tableaux.

Happy Halloween!

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Madame Leota holds a séance to “call in the spirits wherever they’re at.” She helps send guests’ sympathetic vibrations to the other side and calls in the swinging wake. Even before her crystal ball floated, she was a marvel to behold. The imagineer and perfectly named Leota Toombs gave a face to the medium. Eleanor Audley provided the voice. Later updates would use Kim Irvine’s face; Irvine is Leota’s daughter and an imagineer.

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Exiting the Graveyard, the Ghost Host returns to warn us of hitchhiking ghosts. It seems he forgot to mention them earlier. These ghosts will follow guests home and haunt them until the guests return to the Haunted Mansion.

The Doom Buggy floats by the ghosts and into a corridor with mirrors. The mirrors reflect the guests image and the ghost, who will follow them home, sits beside them.

Disney has updated the effect, which is fun, but nothing beats the experience of going through the Haunted Mansion as a child and having a ghost sit next to you, or on your lap. With three ghosts to follow you, the Haunted Mansion had built in reasons to go back.

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For a long time, the Hatbox Ghost was more legend than real. There was a whisper about a ghost that carried his head in a box. The effect didn’t work, and the Hatbox ghost dematerialized. Its legend, however, couldn’t be killed. Imagineers worked with the ghost on and off, and he rematerialized in 2015. Fans celebrated the ghost’s return.

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The Bride became Constance Hatchaway in 2006. This black widow beheaded her husbands and married into a higher tax bracket after every kill. In an attraction that features an executioner and his victim, a ghost that carries his head in a hatbox, and a body swinging from the rafters (which may be removed in the future), the Hatchaway storyline was seen as too violent. Constance was removed, and a technologically superior bride with a less violent background was installed.

Whether or not the change was warranted, Constance added bite to a relative tame Mansion about the dead. When she debuted, she was the killer the Mansion needed. “We said ‘I do’ and I did.” Hatchaway’s ghost still resonates with Haunted Mansion fans.

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Little Leota is the penultimate ghost (there is another ghost after her that many guests miss; that ghost didn’t make it on the list) at Disneyland’s Haunted Mansion. She stands on a mantle to the left as guests exit the attraction on the moving walkaway. “Hurry Back! Hurry Back! Be sure to bring your death certificate if you decide to join us.” She’s one last wonder before guests return to the land of the living.

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Another set of busts head up the celebration in the graveyard. Thurl Ravenscroft is among the busts that sing Grim, Grinning Ghosts. The other busts are thought to be the Mellomen, a barbershop quartet that Thurl was a member of. This appears to be untrue.

The four men filmed as Haunted Mansion busts are Verne Rowe, Chuck Schroeder, Jay Meyer, and Bob Ebright; the Mellomen are Bill Lee, Max Smith, and Bob Stevens.

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Providing the music for the swinging wake, Viktor the organist plays in the ballroom. The organ’s notes conjure spirits from the pipes, and the mood is set for a fun and spooky time. The organ is from Disney’s 20,000 Leagues under the Sea.

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The Haunted Mansion’s beginning scenes set the tone in dark and forbidding ways. Every part of the mansion is designed to feel eerie, and the bust at the end of the Portrait Corridor set the tone for the idea that the Mansion is watching you.

The marvelous effect was discovered when Yale Gracey and Rolly Crump viewed the reverse of an Abraham Lincoln mask. Now, the school marm and a man in a necktie follow your movements with their eyes.

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.