Yale Gracey working on the original Hatbox Ghost in the Haunted Mansion.
I love the Hatbox Ghost. He’s such a great example of Disney fans making mountains out of molehills.
I’m working on something that at this point is somewhere between short story and novella, about a thinly-veiled Disney park analogue where it turns out there is a demon trapped under the park, and I couldn’t resist throwing in a reference to the Hatbox Ghost in one of the characters’ litany of Park Ghost Stories.
I. NEED. THIS. STORY. NOW.
(Or whenever you finish it no pressure you are an artist and you work at your own pace and I appreciate everything you contribute goodbye)
LOL I appreciate your understanding! I figure I can share a bit.
Here’s the semi-reference in question (I’ll be redacting the actual Disney names later but for now it’s easier to keep them). Our protagonist is having dinner with someone who works in marketing for the Disney dining program.
***
I stared at him. “There are real ghost stories about the Haunted Mansion?”
He nodded. “There’s one. The Fishbowl Ghost.”
“The what.”
“If you watch old promo videos for the park from before it opened, you can see footage of the mansion.” He dug at a bit of steak stuck in a tooth. “There’s three ghosts in a row emerging from a pond. One of them is covered in seaweed, like some kind of fifties horror creature, you know the type?”
“Sure.”
“Second one is hauling a sea monster’s tail behind him.”
“Okay.”
“There’s a third one that’s got no head, but he’s carrying a head in a fishbowl in front of him.”
“Jesus,” I said.
“Right? Anyway, the fishbowl ghost shows up in the promo footage, but isn’t in the ride itself. It never was. There’s footage of opening day and it’s clearly not there.”
“So they took it out before the ride was opened – they do stuff like that, right?”
“Well, yeah, that’s the real story. The rumor is that he comes and goes as he wants – you can see the fishbowl ghost on amateur footage of the park sometimes. Like, even as late as last year someone posted some video taken on the ride that showed him. Sometimes he just pops up.”
“That’s gotta be a shop though, right? CGI?”
“I mean, I don’t know if anyone cares enough to prove it is or it isn’t. Disney ghosts should be fun anyway, you know? There’s nothing truly menacing about a mannequin that comes and goes.”
I thought about this. “There….there isn’t?”
“Nah. The harder you try to make people buy a mannequin as reality, the less people even do. Everything in this park is a soft sell, and that’s why.”
Mooncustafer 