Disney’s Haunted Mansion Was Supposed to Be Very Different—Here’s the Real Story Of What It Could Have Been

The Haunted Mansion has been one of the most beloved Disney attractions since its opening at Disneyland in 1969. Decades later, this immersive ride is still one of the best rides at the park, filled to the brim with impressive detail, hidden stories, and memorable spooky scenes.

We have delved into the many secrets of Disney's Haunted Mansion in the past, but some may not know of the ride's extensive history. The making of the ride spanned a significant number of years, with the earliest concepts dating back as far as 1951. In the development of this iconic ride, there were some interesting (and much darker) visions for it that never came to fruition.

Let's dive into the history of the Haunted Mansion that never came to be…

Original Concept Artwork for Haunted Mansion

The Haunted Mansion was a very long time in the making. Its first concepts date back even before the park's opening, and it would be nearly two decades before the idea would come to complete fruition. Disney Legend Rolly Crump said that “Walt had always wanted a haunted mansion since the conception of Disneyland.”

According to The Walt Disney Family Museum, as far back as 1951, an illustration from Disney Legend Harper Goff included “a creepy, bat-infested ‘haunted house' high on a hill overlooking a country church and graveyard.” You can see this concept artwork above shared by Walt's Folly.

Should the Haunted Mansion Look Haunted from the Outside?

In 1957, Disney animator Ken Anderson was tasked with coming up with a concept for the mansion. He designed it in the style of an early 1800s southern mansion to blend into the New Orleans section planned for that area of the park, and the original design featured the exterior in a state of deterioration.

According to Imagineer Claude Coats, everyone thought the building should look “old and dilapidated” as you would expect for a haunted house, but instead, Walt stated, “We'll take care of the outside. The ghosts can take care of the inside.”

Artist Sam McKim made Anderson's sketch into a full-color painting of the mansion, which looks quite familiar to the exterior that exists today.

Ken Anderson's Concept for the Haunted Mansion-“Bloodmere”

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According to The Walt Disney Family Museum, Anderson's original plans were for a walk-through attraction, with 40 guests at a time going through the haunted house guided by a butler or maid who would share “the tragic fate of the mansion's original owners.” The tour would start with a recorded introduction by Walt, written by Anderson.

The original text for this recording, detailing the mansion's backstory, is quite interesting. So the story goes, the mansion, called “Bloodmere,” was built around 1800 near New Orleans and was transferred to Disneyland intact. Having been empty for a while, it was in a state of disrepair, but each day's work to repair it was destroyed overnight, and the night watchmen started reporting strange things like “eerie sounds and weird lights.” Additional watchmen, tasked with catching who was responsible, witnessed “weird and frightening apparitions.”

Then, it is revealed that the house had “a tragic and bloody history of unlucky owners who died sudden and violent deaths, which resulted in their unhappy ghosts remaining behind to fulfill the uncompleted missions of their lives.” Disneyland has now managed to make the house “safe enough for a visit” under the expertise of a trained guide.

The house remains dark and haunted, as “it has rotted so long in the dank fastness of its lost hiding place in the swamps that not even the Southern California sunshine or the best efforts of electricians and illumination engineers can dispel the dimness of the bayous… it mysteriously remains always night within the house… the night in which all ghosts are condemned to live in.”

Anderson developed a script and map for the walk-through experience which included “a ‘lonesome' ghost host, and a bride and ghoul wedding scene as a climax to the action.” Visitors to the haunted house would exit “by walking out the family tomb, and up through open graves into the cemetery behind the house.”

Creepy Illusions in the Walk-Through Format of the Attraction

Work continued on various concepts for the mansion in the following years, when Rolly Crump and Yale Gracey came into the picture. Rolly Crump describes how one of his first assignments was working on concepts for the Haunted Mansion. He said that he and Gracey went through previously created sketches for the mansion, which “took an ‘old spook house' approach—where you had eyes that followed you, and you’d hear weird sounds and stuff. Yale and I took a different approach and basically started thinking about, and developing, the idea of illusions.”

While the Haunted Mansion was still a walk-through attraction, they had developed certain illusions in this format involving ghosts appearing and disappearing right in front of guests. Crump describes this in more detail: “There was one illusion that Yale and I had developed where, right after you were brought down in the elevator, there would be a gateway with a cosmic thing behind the gate. You would hear the Ghost Host voice talking to you, and then suddenly have a ghost appear from thin air, walk out through the gate, and appear in front of you as a human person.”

It's interesting to think about the possibilities that could have existed if the Haunted Mansion had been a walk-through attraction, especially with the inclusion of live actors. This could have been a very different and arguably higher-stakes experience as a walkthrough attraction “because when you're in a car, you're safe,” as Crump put it. This version of the attraction would doubtlessly be much physically scarier than the one we know today. Crump discusses another scary illusion they had developed for a walk-through format…

Sea Captain Illusion in the Walk-Through Attraction

One of the illusions they created had to do with an old sea captain who used to live in the mansion, who had murdered his wife and “bricked her up behind the fireplace before going out to sea.” As karma would have it, he also came to an untimely death as his ship sank. The illusion Crump describes is that the sea captain would gradually appear in the room.

Crump describes it more: “When he finally appeared, he was covered with seaweed, and wearing the rain slickers that captains wore, with the hat and boots and everything, but he was a skeleton. He had seaweed hanging on him and water dripping off of him, and all of this was done offstage. We had another room to the side where we lit him up very slowly, and actually had a shower, pouring over the top of him so that all the water kept dripping off of him… and little by little, he would become more solid.

And just as he was starting to become a solid form, the ghost of his wife would appear behind the fireplace. She's just a skeleton, and she has a shroud on her; and she charges out of the fireplace, screaming, flying out of there just to attack him. And just as she gets to him, the two of them disappear. It ran about two minutes long, and it was a beautiful illusion.”

According to The Walt Disney Family Museum, one big issue with the walk-through format was the flow of traffic, as a large number of people would have to be moved through the mansion every hour in order for the idea to work. Crump commented that another concern was potential vandalism in a walk-through format. Ultimately, the walk-through attraction became a ride utilizing the Omnimover system, with the now-iconic “Doom Buggies” taking guests through the experience.

The Haunted Mansion Exterior Completed 6 Years Earlier Than the Ride's Opening

The exterior of the Haunted Mansion was finished in 1963, though the ride itself did not open until 1969. As work on the attraction was paused due to the New York World's Fair, the mansion sat empty and closed away behind gates, and guests were curious about what was within.

The Haunted Mansion episode of Behind the Attraction on Disney+ shares how Disney Legend Marty Sklar wrote a plaque that was placed outside of the mansion. This amusing advertisement from the “Ghost Relations Dept.” at Disneyland stated that they were currently accepting applications for a type of afterlife retirement community. The sign read…

“Post-lifetime leases are now available in this Haunted Mansion. Don't be left out in the sunshine! Enjoy active retirement in this country club atmosphere in this fashionable address for famous ghosts, ghosts trying to make a name for themselves…and ghosts afraid to live by themselves! Leases include license to scare the daylights out of guests visiting the Portrait Gallery, Museum of the Supernatural, graveyard, and other happy haunting grounds. For reservations send resume of past experience to: Ghost Relations Dept. Disneyland. Please! Do not apply in person.”

That sign served as marketing for all those years that the mansion sat empty and drove interest among guests.

Conflicting Visions for the Mansion

After the 1964-1965 World's Fair, Disney Legend Marc Davis came to the project with the task of moving the Haunted Mansion in a specific direction. In the Haunted Mansion episode of Behind the Attraction on Disney+, Marc Davis said of the attraction, “We didn't know whether you were gonna ride through this thing, walk through it, or what.”

Disney Legend Claude Coats was also art director on the Haunted Mansion. Former Imagineer and Disney Legend Orlando Ferrante reflected on Coats' work: “He was amazing. Good architect. Good designer. Walt would use him…in my eyes…when he saw one of his attractions starting to fall behind.”

Marc Davis was known for taking a humorous approach, while Claude Coats wanted to lean into the scary aspect more heavily. In the Behind the Attraction episode, Disney Imagineer Daniel Joseph commented, “So we have on one side, Marc Davis saying, I want this funny, gag-driven haunted house. These are happy haunts that live here. And then on the other side, you have Claude Coats, who's saying, ‘You should go in and feel the hot and cold running chills as you go through this mansion.'”

This question of whether the mansion was meant to be genuinely scary or lean more into humor would be an interesting point of disagreement throughout the attraction's development. This leads us to arguably some of the scariest concepts of them all, developed by Rolly Crump…

Rolly Crump's Bold Concepts for the Haunted Mansion

 

After the New York World's Fair, Crump dove back into his concepts for the attraction with some bold concept artwork. One of his inspirations was Jean Cacteau’s Beauty and the Beast from 1946, which depicted some creepy imagery like human arms in the hallways carrying torches and human heads on the sconces surrounding a fireplace. He wanted this idea of “architecture created out of human parts,” and so he drew the sketch of “the candle man,” a depiction of a melting man with his fingers on fire. There was also the idea that a chair with a face projected onto it would speak to guests as they went by.

According to SFGATE, in addition to the candle man, Crump also conceptualized “another whose body was made from different animal parts.” There was also “a Maleficent-inspired Mistress of All Evil who would fly over guests’ heads” as well as “chairs that would eat people and chandeliers made of body parts.”

The idea of “the candle man” is specifically featured as part of the design of the Haunted Mansion bar on the Disney Treasure. A sculpture, modeled in the likeness of Rolly Crump, is a tribute to the Imagineer with a design featuring his face melting like a candle.

Crump's Museum of the Weird

The Imagineers worked together on a presentation of concepts they could show to Walt Disney. Rolly described that Claude Coats's presentation was on the right of the table and Marc Davis's right in front. Rolly's work was tucked away in a corner of the room behind Walt. However, this didn't stop Walt from seeing it, as after the presentation, his interest was piqued.

Crump describes that the next morning, “I got into work at 7:30 and Walt Disney was sitting I my chair, at my desk…!” Walt told Crump how he “didn't get an ounce of sleep last night” because of his designs, but he had an idea for how they could be used for the Haunted Mansion.

According to Crump, Walt said, “‘We’re going to do a ‘Museum of the Weird.' We are going to have our Haunted Mansion, but when you exit it, we are going to advertise that we’ve gone around the world and have found everything we can find that is weird to display in that exit area.'”

SFGATE describes how this museum would have been attached to the mansion and would function like “an interactive ride queue, but after the ride.”

“Walt Disney’s Wonderful World of Color” Preview

Concepts for the Haunted Mansion were revealed in an episode of Walt Disney's Wonderful World of Color in 1965, “Disneyland 10th Anniversary.” In a tour of WED Enterprises with Walt and Julie Reihm, the first Disneyland Ambassador, a segment included a sneak peek at the Haunted Mansion.

Marc Davis explained some concepts that should sound very familiar to fans, as they manifested in the final version of the ride we know today. Davis showed a portrait of Medusa and explained, “We're doing a lot of portraits that change right in front of your very eyes, and a matter of fact, one of our paintings here is based on Greek mythology. This is Medusa, a very beautiful girl, she offended the goddess Athena, and as a result, Athena turned her into a gorgon, and as you may know, if you looked at a gorgon, a gorgon would turn you into stone.”

Davis also showed a model of the stretching room with stretching portraits in the episode, pulling down a slider to reveal the artwork that is featured in the stretching room of the Haunted Mansion.

Museum of the Weird in “Walt Disney’s Wonderful World of Color” Episode

The focus then moved over to Crump and his Museum of the Weird. “We're going to have man-eating plants, and we're going to have a coffin clock here that we're working on right now.” Crump displayed an assortment of creepy objects in the episode that were “things collected from all over the world, just the weirdest things we could find.”

In the episode, Walt reveals a scale model of the mansion and explains how “you've seen this many times, but we haven't got the ghosts in there yet. But, we're out collecting the ghosts. We're going to bring ghosts from all over the world. And we're making it very attractive to them, hoping, you know, they want to come and stay at Disneyland, so we're putting in wall-to-wall cobwebs, and we guarantee them creaky doors and creaky floors.”

Rolly Crump's Impact on the Haunted Mansion

While the Museum of the Weird did not come to be in the final version of the ride when it opened, some of Crump's ideas did manifest in the Haunted Mansion we know today, including sconces of hands holding torches, the disappearing and reappearing organist “inspired by a disappearing skeleton playing an organ from his design,” and the eye wallpaper in the hallway scene, which was adapted from one of his Museum of the Weird designs, according to SFGATE.

Crump mentioned to SFGATE how the “museum has had a cult following” over the years. “We knew that it was popular. If Walt had lived, we would have done it.”

Walt's Passing Raised Questions About How to Move Forward

When Walt passed away in 1966, the Haunted Mansion faced another road bump as Imagineers struggled over whether the tone of the attraction should be darker or take a lighter approach. One camp argued for more levity, while the other side argued that guests should expect to be scared by what was being advertised as a haunted mansion.

Walt's absence left them in a sticky spot where they would have normally relied on his advice. Marc Davis said, “There were too many people. I think we had a lot of confusion because Walt had not been gone all that long. I think there were a lot of great ideas, but when you have too many people of equal clout, nobody's about to say, ‘Hey, wait a minute! Let's do it this way,' which Walt would have done in a moment.”

Ultimately, the final version of the attraction contained a balance of both scary and humorous elements. While there are parts of the ride today that are ominous and bone-chilling, there is merriment and humor in equal measure, making it the perfect spooky yet family-friendly ride.

Haunted Mansion Opening and Legacy

The attraction finally opened in 1969, and was, according to Imagineer Tom Fitzgerald in the Haunted Mansion episode of Behind the Attraction, “one of Disneyland’s highest attendance days ever. Obviously, with all those years of waiting…”

Since the Haunted Mansion’s long-awaited debut, it has developed a remarkable legacy. The Haunted Mansion opened in Magic Kingdom in 1971 and at Tokyo Disneyland in 1983. Other versions of the Haunted Mansion opened overseas with Phantom Manor at Euro Disneyland in 1992 (now Disneyland Paris) and Mystic Manor in Hong Kong Disneyland in 2013.

There are also two movies that have been based on the iconic ride in 2003 and 2023, and the story continues to grow with recent additions like the Haunted Mansion bar coming to the Disney Treasure and Disney Destiny and the Disneyland Haunted Mansion grounds expansion building on the lore of the attraction.

Though Disneyland's original Haunted Mansion went through some interesting iterations on the way to its final product, we can safely say that the result was worth the wait. After several decades, the Haunted Mansion is still one of the most memorable and beloved rides at the park.

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