Everyone loves Disney for different reasons.
Some love the movies. Classic animated films like The Lion King or Fox and the Hound.
Others grew up alongside rising stars like Hannah Montana or Justin Bieber, imagining themselves as future Disney success stories.
For me though, my heart belongs to the Haunted Mansion.
I have probably been a few dozen times to the Magic Kingdom and every time I go I have made a beeline to the spooky attraction.
I told myself if I ever had my own kids I would definitely make sure they grew up with it too.
Unfortunately for me when I became an adult, life hit me hard with debt and work and Covid right as I was in the middle of college. Suddenly I was trying to find two jobs, juggle a relationship and stay healthy. There just wasn’t time for childhood fantasy anymore. Still, my girlfriend has been a bigfan of the House of Mouse her whole life too… only difference is she never actually has been to the amusement park.
I had promised Leah we would go to the mansion as soon as Covid restrictions were lifted… but that didn’t happen. Life, you know? I said we would get around to it, but honestly things weren’t looking great for that spooky getaway.
So you might imagine I was quite shocked when one day Leah announced she had discovered a house not far from where we live that looks almost exactly like the Magic Kingdom’s infamous manor.
She goes on mile runs with her best friend Sierra at least twice a week on this trail which goes pretty far back into the woods. It branches in a lot of different directions and this time she went as far into the backcountry as she could before coming across the house.
When she told me, I was immediately a bit skeptical. “Why is it all the way out there in the middle of nowhere? Are you sure about what you saw?” I said.
I hated to be the negative type, but it seemed very odd that something like this would be so close to us.
“I think I saw it being built a few months back and I just haven’t been back there. Maybe it’s sort of like in honor of the real one. It is almost Halloween so maybe someone made it as an attraction? Either way we should check it out!” Leah told me.
I decided to take the bait and went with her the following day on the trail. It was not easy to get back to the spot where she found the manor. In fact I had to admit it was a bit disorienting the way the woods weaved and twisted. Thankfully my sense of direction made me feel a little less panicked about being so far from the road.
“Are you sure there is anything out here?” I asked as we kept following the path. I didn’t want to be out here too late and the sun was already beginning to dip down below the trees. As much as I was confident that I could handle getting back to the road in the day, I didn’t like the idea of us being lost here at night.
“Don’t be so scared. This is definitely the way!” She told me.
Just when I was considering giving up, we found it. I have to admit, I was surprised to realize that Leah hadn’t been exaggerating about the way the place looked.
It was a New Orleans style manor that resembled the famous Haunted Mansion from Disney almost to an exact replica.
Now, I still kept a bit of skepticism for a few reasons. One because it’s been a few years since I have gone, so I wasn’t entirely sure if the design was a perfect match to the current manor.
And two, because the place looked even more abandoned than the actual mansion from the park.
“It looks like they were working on it and then just up and left,” I said as I approached the iron fence that encircled the house.
There was a pet cemetery with cute names for beloved animals not far from where we stood and I asked my wife, “You didn’t try to go inside did you?”
Leah shrugged and said, “I didn’t know if that was trespassing or not.”
We reached a gate that was open and I tested it, listening to the creaking metal as I called out to anyone that might be nearby. The woods echoed my words and gave the manor an eerie sense of dread.
“I don’t see any signs that indicate it’s owned by anyone,” I said.
I was so curious I felt the need to walk down the main stone path to the front door.
There were long dusty cobwebs across the windows and a few of them even boarded up, giving it that full feeling of a genuine haunted house. It really made me feel that whoever had created this place had been more obsessed with the Haunted Mansion than anyone I had ever known.
I reached for the door knocker, a gargoyle shaped head and used it to announce our presence.
To my surprise a voice that reminded me of the classic Ghost Host boomed overhead.
“Whoever enters this place is offered a reward for staying a single night. Face your fears and discover the secrets of our home and you may learn a thing or two about yourself!”
It sounded old and scratchy like it had been stolen off of a recording and I turned to my girlfriend and said, “Well, I guess we are here. Should we go in?”
I tried the door and it opened into a dimly lit dusty hallway that looked like it hadn’t been maintained in ages. The old carpet led toward a reception desk which even had a hotel bell on it with some portraits behind the desk that reminded me of the manor as well.
“They’ve really outdone themselves with the details for the place, haven’t they?”
Leah grabbed my hand as we looked about the empty room. I could hear Grim Grinning Ghosts gently playing in the background. Except this was almost a KidzBop version of the classic song.
“This place is huge… and I don’t like it here,” she admitted.
I also felt a strange chill in the air as I looked at the portraits, familiar nostalgia of being there as a kid haunting my memories.
“Look whoever made the place is clearly as big of a fan as we are, they can’t be dangerous. It’s all for fun,” I told her as I tapped the bell and heard the ring echo down the hall.
Almost immediately the Ghost Host monologue started up again.
“Honored guests, I admit that my initial greetings did not offer you the full truth of the situation. I promised that if you survive the night untold riches could be yours, but I did not advise of any warnings,” the voiceover continued to give the same spiel from the famous ride as I walked down the hall to where I guessed the Doom Buggies were supposed to be.
At first the room seemed vacant until the voiceover came to an end, then from one end of a shadowy corridor I heard a low cranking noise and the steel carriages emerged from the dark.
“This is pretty cool. We get to enjoy the show and not even pay admission,” I told Leah. She was still having second thoughts.
“Maybe we should figure out more about who built it… I think it’s mighty creepy,” she told me.
As the carriages stopped and the bars came up, I offered my hand to her, carefree of what might lay ahead.
“This is gonna be a blast, trust me!”
Leah stood there, frightened but unwilling to leave without me.
We got on the carriage and as soon as we were seated the bars went down. Then we were slowly propelled into the next shadowy corridor.
My memory of the ride itself was faint but I was excited to see if the builders of this replica did their best to include elements like Madame Leota or the infamous killer bride. Or perhaps even the Hatbox Ghost. I felt like a kid as gentle lights that were meant to represent spirits danced across our view. Leah clung to me, waiting for something to go wrong.
We slowed down as we neared a room that reminded me of a fortune teller’s tent. Immediately I realized this was meant to be where the infamous lady seer Leota would read our futures, a grisly reminder of the fate we had taken once entering the manor.
Unfortunately though, the area was empty. Apparently whoever was running the show hadn’t been able to afford any of the animatronic puppets yet.
“What’s that?” Leah said as she pointed to something emerging from the table. I recognized the sphere instantly.
“A crystal ball… looks authentic too, made of the finest jewels.” I said.
Leah pushed on the bars of the buggie and it propped open, allowing her to climb over to the table and touch the sphere. A light show glittered through the empty room as she picked it up.
“Is this the treasure that voiceover spoke about?” Leah asked.
“It was symbolic the real Ghost house doesn’t have anything… and with all the money they poured into the realism of the rides and locations, I doubt it’s much more than a prop,” I said. She took it and held it up.
“Maybe… but seeing as this place seemed abandoned it would be a shame to leave it,” she said.
“Leah! That’s stealing!” I whispered as I looked toward the next hall where there were caskets lined up as if they were meant to be beds.
“And who’s going to be bothered by it? You said it yourself, no one is here!” she argued.
Just as she finished speaking those words, a skeletal hand launched from behind the curtains and grabbed ahold of her wrist. Immediately followed by the face of what looked like a ninety year old woman, drawn back and hardly even alive anymore with her eyes swollen shut.
Her hair was hardly a few tufts in her head and her teeth looked like they were made of wood and barbs. This was a gruesome version of the familiar clairvoyant that Disney employed, but the purpose was the same.
Leah screamed and dropped the ball, or rather Leota snatched it back and a voice from overhead spoke in rhyme to curse us for attempting to steal.
“Are we going to be okay?” my girlfriend asked nervously as the Doom Buggies went to the next room and came to a halt. It was pitch black and I was definitely feeling we should turn around when a shadowy figure appeared amid the darkness. The only way i could discern what he was looking like was because of the velvet coat he wore that draped down to the floor, it shimmered against the shadows as he approached our ride, leaning just close enough for me to see human eyes.
I knew that Leota had clearly been some kind of animatronic… but this individual looked far more human. And not friendly at all.
I covered Leah’s and we stood there side by side, uncertain what to say or do as the figure stood up and clapped his hands, illuminating the room. There was a nearby animatronic band that started to play, their ghastly faces a terrible imitiation of Disney as I focused on the man in front of us. He was clearly flesh and blood, dressed to impersonate one of the Gracey family members, but none of the ones I recognized from my own rides at the manor.
“Well, then. I suppose I have a couple of trespassers on my hands,” he said, spinning his skull cane around almost playfully and leaning on it as he pretended to think about what he was going to do to us.
“Sir… we apologize… we had no one if anyone even used this place.” I stumbled over my words as I held Leah close. She was trembling.
The man nodded as if he understood, walking around the buggie and leaning back and forth. It was like he was debating if we were going to be punished.
“I can’t exactly have others know this place is out here. Not yet anyway. It’s not finished! I guess that means you will have to join the other spirits that rest here… possibly for all eternity. Or at least until I figure out what to do with you,” he scoffed.
He was taking a good long look at my girlfriend and nodding excitedly, mumbling to himself before he cackled “You just might do.”
I opened my mouth to make another plea for our safety when I saw that he leaned against a long thin lever and suddenly the seats beneath us slid down. Or rather, my side did.
He lunged for Leah, pulling her from the buggie as I fell into the darkness below.
I screamed and heard Leah do the same as I dropped into a mysterious shaft below the ride. For the longest time it felt like I was plummeting and then at last I struck a soft bottom.
I still felt bruised and defeated, confused about where I was and worried about Leah.
So immediately I got up and tried to get a glimpse of my surroundings. It looked like a boiler room or a crematorium. Worst of all, there were lined up coffins that were recently being put together meant for possibly victims, I realized as I saw the burning embers of an incinerator close by.
Was that going to be where I end up too when this is over?
I heard a muffled scream from nearby as I went rather into the tunnel. Not my gun!
Immediately I shouted out to Leah but then realized how foolish that was. She was far above me, taken by the insane master of this manor, I realized.
Instead as I listened I found myself near to one of the already finished coffins where the muffled noise came from.
I realized someone was inside it.
Frantically I began to look around the room for anything that might help break the coffin open, noticing a few stray tools on the right side of the room.
Slamming the sharp end of the hammer into the wood, I hoped to god that whoever was trapped inside was still alright.
But by the time I opened the lid and pushed away the splinters of broken wood, the man that lay within was almost as still as a corpse.
Had I been too late? I reached close to check for a pulse when his eyes popped open and he sat up, gasping for breath as he toppled out of the wooden cage.
I took a step back and waited for him to recover, my mind still racing to consider what had happened in the room above us. How many people were trapped here?
“Are you all right?” I asked once he finally regained his composure.
“I… I am now. Dear lord. Thank you so much. I was almost out of air…” he said as he looked about the dusty basement.
“So this is where I’ve been trapped eh? I guess he didn’t expect anyone to show up. Thank you so much.”
I took a moment to look at the stranger, it looked like he had been stripped of most of his clothes save for underwear and socks and his body was covered in powder like he had been attempting to be a ghost.
“You… worked here at this replica?” I guessed.
“Built it; actually. Took almost two damn years with the help of that idiot up stairs. And this is the thanks I get,” he retorted as he wobbled toward the nearby stairwell.
“That man upstairs… he worked for you? He’s psychotic! He has my girlfriend Leah. Can we stop him?”
The real host nodded and said, “We might stand a chance now that you’ve rescued me… come on.”
As we traveled through the basement and into a stone labyrinth, the man gave me a summary of the events of his life for the past two years.
His name was Christopher, and he had come into some money thanks to family right before Covid hit. Having always been a Disney fanatic, he decided to use it toward the renovation of an old manor that would serve as a sort of Midwest Haunted Mansion.
“Unfortunately I am not a young chap, so I sent out advertisements for help and Tim, the crazy guy who nearly killed you, was the first to answer. He worked with the vigor of ten men, and I realized I didn’t even need to hire anyone else.”
Tim, he said, was an even bigger fan of the Haunted Mansion than he had expected.
“So much so, that when I began to make some cosmetic changes to the manor, he was infuriated. He insisted it needed to be an exact and authentic replica. I told him that wouldn’t be possible. For example this labyrinth we are traversing now. I couldn’t simply toss it out! It was already part of a far older structure,” Chris told me.
I was a bit curious to find out what was the original story behind this strange place, but kept quiet as he insisted that he had to focus to find a way out of the maze.
“The test is somewhat history, Tim decided to use brute force and locked me down here sometime ago. He has been keeping me alive giving me food and drink but recently things changed and he forced me into that coffin. I think he realized I was close to escaping and reporting to the authorities.”
“So then you do know a way out?” I said hopefully.
“As long as he hasn’t sealed it, I do. To be honest I’m not sure what his goal here is. The man is a lunatic. Especially when it comes to Disney and this haunted attraction. He even was calling himself Lore Gracey before he attacked me and told me that he would soon fix the mistakes to my replica and have a full cast for the Dreadful ride to fit his needs…”
I paused as I realized why he had taken Leah.
“He intends to make my girlfriend a part of his attraction? That sick bastard,” I muttered.
“I’m sorry that you got roped into this, but now we are going to have to work together to surprise him and stop him before anyone else is hurt. I have a feeling that he wants to transform this place into his own private hell,” Chris said as we approached a wall.
I hesitated, thinking we were at a dead end and then he clapped his hands a series of times and the stones moved out of the way to reveal a modern elevator.
“This can take us to the unfinished portions of the replica. We might be able to sneak up on him from there,” Chris told me as we got inside.
I didn’t say a word, frightened by the possibility that the madman who had taken Leah was somewhere close by. I had no idea which parts of the manor he had access too, and despite Chris reassuring me that everything would be fine I was less than trustful of him either.
The sooner I was away from this Disney nightmare the better, I thought as we crawled through some of the unfinished upper floor. There were rolls of carpet and paint and props that Chris had bought online meant to evoke the same eerie feeling as the real attraction, but none of it mattered to me anymore.
Instead I was focused on the next room where I could hear muffled screams.
“We need to do this cautiously… Tim is an unhinged lunatic. He might think that killing your friend is the only way to permanently make her part of this farce,” the former host warned. That only made me more determined to try to save her.
I pushed through the next rickety door and looked down at the bridal suite, hardly believing how quickly the Disney fanatic had changed Leah’s appearance.
She looked just like the real Black Widow bride from the Haunted Mansion itself.
Her normal glow was replaced with pale skin. Her dark auburn hair was now completely blond with patches of gray in it. As if he had hastily tossed the splotches of dye on my girlfriend’s features.
The wedding dress looked like it was bought from a second hand shop, torn and bloody. Probably even with real human blood too, and at the moment the fanatic was trying to push her to the bridal bed and force a hatchet in her hands.
“You are meant to be my Hatchaway! The original attic ghost! Don’t you see how you can use this weapon to murder innocent husbands at whim? This is a role meant for you!” he said.
Leah was fighting back, trying to slam the ax into Tim’s face. “The only place I want this to go is in your damn skull!” she shouted.
I looked toward Chris for advice and he pointed toward the chandelier that swung above the bridal suite.
“We might be able to use that as a trap,” he whispered.
We carefully went to the other side of the rafters as the two struggled below. I was sweating profusely as I tried to get the massive decoration to fall, but nothing helped.
Until at last the murderous employee lost his focus on Leah and looked above toward where we were at. “How in the world did you escape that maze??” he shouted.
Leah used that moment to break free and started to run as the ax flung from her hands and hit the man in the belly.
“Jesus!” he shouted.
Chris fell into the chandelier to stop him, the man and the decoration tumbling down into the bridal suite as Leah screamed out.
The massive metal decoration must have broken several bones, and more importantly, it trapped Tim under it. “No!! No you can’t do this!” he screamed in agony as I managed to climb down.
“Tim please listen to me, this has to stop,” Chris as the other man tried to grab his foot.
“It’s Gracey! I am a Gracey!!” the crazed Disney fan screamed back.
Chris was standing there with the ax, seriously considering ending the man’s life. I stopped him and said, “We need to call the cops. Don’t stoop to his level of madness.” He was broken from his revenge and nodded, only a moment later to realize that his employee was already dead. Massive impact of the chandelier had fractured his skull, and the blood loss was too great, I realized.
“My god…” Leah whispered. I held her close and looked toward the host that had created this strange house.
“I think we will be going now,” I told him.
Chris understood our reasons and helped us to the front of the attraction.
“Now that this is behind me, perhaps I can actually open in earnest when Halloween comes. That was the original plan anyway.”
“Well; I hope you don’t take this the wrong way… but given what we just went through… we probably won’t be your first customers,” I told him.
He nodded sadly as he clutched the ax near the front door and said, “But you did at least think it was almost as authentic as the real thing?”
Leah gave me a glance and nudged me to placate the poor man.
“Sure. In my book it would probably be five stars,” I told him.
Chris smiled and nodded, stepping back to the front porch. “That makes me feel… like it was all worth it. Thank you.”
A moment later the man faded away into the ether. As I saw him disappear, a chill ran my spine as I grabbed Leah’s hand. The entire replica mansion disappeared as well, revealing just a hollow aged decrepit manor that hadn’t been touched in generations.
We both weren’t sure what we had just experienced but we ran from the woods and didn’t look back.
Since that time I have gone by that trail and seen the destroyed manor several times. No indication that it was ever used at all. But I do feel eyes upon me as I pass it. Sinister and benevolent, in many ways it has affected me in a greater way than the real attraction ever will.
And I think I’ve made a decision not to go to the Haunted Mansion.
I don’t think I can stomach the idea of becoming a part of Disney lore.