Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you Missed in History Class from house
Speaker 1: stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 1: And I'm Tracy Wilson, and today we are talking about
Speaker 1: subject admittedly very near and dear to my heart and
Speaker 1: one that I think it might startle people initially to
Speaker 1: think about. It is a history I don't but it
Speaker 1: really has quite a fascinating history all of its own.
Speaker 1: And that is Disneyland's Haunted Mansion. Where those of you
Speaker 1: at home, which is everyone, maybe not they might be
Speaker 1: on the go. Maybe so when people who are not
Speaker 1: here in the room with us, which is everyone but
Speaker 1: you and me and our producer Noel Uh, Holly has
Speaker 1: on a Haunted Mansion T shirt. I do. I have
Speaker 1: a my Hanta Mansion shirt, my Hantamasion ring. I really
Speaker 1: love the Honey Mansion. My house has a lot of
Speaker 1: Honey Mansion. Theming um and it is one of those
Speaker 1: things that when you read about the history of how
Speaker 1: this project came to fruition, it's a little bit enlightening.
Speaker 1: Uh and it's uh it sort of creates for me,
Speaker 1: I know, kind of a lens through which viewing, like
Speaker 1: some of the trials and tribulations that happened in like
Speaker 1: anyone's modern day to day work life and kind of
Speaker 1: a different way, and it gives a perspective of like, no,
Speaker 1: everybody has these issues, you know, like if you have
Speaker 1: a project that's taking forever, if you have like a
Speaker 1: thing that you want to do but you get excited
Speaker 1: and then it gets put away and it never comes
Speaker 1: to fruition. Those things happen all the time to everybody.
Speaker 1: And I think, uh, you know, we don't because the
Speaker 1: Disney Company has become so huge, we don't think about
Speaker 1: that ever having happened in the context of Disney, but
Speaker 1: in fact, it was happening all the time. Well. And
Speaker 1: I also love this story because of like the historic
Speaker 1: visual effects techniques that were used and how many of
Speaker 1: them still hold up and are and used today. So uh,
Speaker 1: for younger listeners, it's probably really easy to think about
Speaker 1: Disneyland and Walt Disney World as places that have been
Speaker 1: around forever, but they really haven't. Uh. Disneyland has only
Speaker 1: been around since the nineteen fifties and disney World open
Speaker 1: in the early nineteen seventies, but the ideas for those
Speaker 1: parks go back quite a bit further. One of the
Speaker 1: iconic attractions at all Disney Parks is the Haunted Mansion.
Speaker 1: And as any Disney file will tell you, each attraction
Speaker 1: in the parks has its own story, but the Haunted
Speaker 1: Mansion's history is particularly steeped in legends, partly because of
Speaker 1: the supernatural theming, which leads to all kinds of ghost
Speaker 1: stories and horror. Yeah, and as I was saying earlier,
Speaker 1: the story of Disneyland and the development of the Mansion
Speaker 1: is also a really good one to look at because
Speaker 1: it showcases how, um you know, even great success has
Speaker 1: a lot of failure along the way. I think, um,
Speaker 1: you know, Walt Disney has become so legend legendary as
Speaker 1: a visionary that a lot of the struggles that his
Speaker 1: projects went through, and a lot of the struggles that
Speaker 1: you went through trying to get things done, Uh, they
Speaker 1: get glossed over or they get overlooked completely. But he
Speaker 1: had a lot of bumpy rides, and regardless of whether
Speaker 1: you view him and the Disney Company in a positive
Speaker 1: or negative light, And that's like almost could be a
Speaker 1: podcast on its own, because there are people it's very
Speaker 1: polarizing for some people, but the sheer number of achievements
Speaker 1: that he managed in his life is really impressive. But
Speaker 1: when you actually look at how it all happened, a
Speaker 1: lot of the stories of that great success, they have
Speaker 1: nothing to do with luck or you know, blind good fortune.
Speaker 1: They're really like the result of hard work and perseverance
Speaker 1: and really pushing through, which I think is important to
Speaker 1: remember because again it's become such a huge company, we
Speaker 1: think of it as just being a powerful entity, and
Speaker 1: we forget that it there were baby steps in the beginning. Well,
Speaker 1: for many people alive today, Disney has always been a
Speaker 1: juggernaut for the entirety of their existence. It was not
Speaker 1: always a juggernaut, no, not at all, and even the
Speaker 1: project of the Hunted Mansion had many stops and starts, uh,
Speaker 1: both with them without Walt. So we're gonna first started
Speaker 1: off by talking about a quick overview of kind of
Speaker 1: the birth of Disneyland. In nineteen fifty one, Disney had
Speaker 1: an idea for a park to give families something to
Speaker 1: do to get together in southern California. His first plan
Speaker 1: was to make a park in Burbank, across the street
Speaker 1: from the Disney studios. Even in the first series of
Speaker 1: concepts sketches that Walt asked director Harper Goff to do
Speaker 1: there was always a haunted house and all of them.
Speaker 1: And it first started as a part of a group
Speaker 1: that also had a church in a graveyard. And on
Speaker 1: December sixteenth of ninety two, Walt Disney Incorporated was founded
Speaker 1: by Disney to build the park. UH. The name changed
Speaker 1: almost immediately to w E. D Enterprises. UH. Some people
Speaker 1: will say WED and the w E D stands for
Speaker 1: Walter Elias Disney, but today we actually know that entity
Speaker 1: as the as Walt Disney Imagineering. So it went through
Speaker 1: a few name changes, but it originally started in nine
Speaker 1: to build Disneyland. UH. And that new company was actually
Speaker 1: staffed up with a lot of the artists and the
Speaker 1: visionaries from Walt's movie studio, even though they had not
Speaker 1: worked on a theme park before. UH. And that higher
Speaker 1: to bring in movie industry people and animators may seem
Speaker 1: odd when you think about it, but Walt's whole idea
Speaker 1: was that they were going to be telling stories in
Speaker 1: three dimensions instead of two, and since story was always
Speaker 1: going to be the focus, professional storytellers to him, seemed
Speaker 1: like the exact right people for these jobs. These ideas
Speaker 1: quickly became way too big for the eleven acre plot
Speaker 1: of land that he initially had in mind, so the
Speaker 1: focus shifted to Los Angeles. In Walt hired the Stanford
Speaker 1: Research Institute to survey Los Angeles and the surrounding area
Speaker 1: for a hundred acre site that would be suitable for
Speaker 1: what he and the W E. D team had in mind.
Speaker 1: And that's how they found Disneyland's home. It was a
Speaker 1: hundred and sixty acre orange an Anaheim and this location
Speaker 1: met all of Walt's requirements. It had to be freeway accessible,
Speaker 1: adjacent to or within Los Angeles and affordable. Yeah. And
Speaker 1: you know, nowadays, the Disney Company is huge. That is
Speaker 1: so huge that it's really hard for most people and
Speaker 1: even me to think about it ever having shallow pockets.
Speaker 1: But at the time, it was a very different story. Uh.
Speaker 1: You know, Walt was really struggling to figure out how
Speaker 1: he was going to finance this huge vision of his
Speaker 1: and to build a theme park. And it actually led
Speaker 1: to the genesis of the television series Walt Disney's Disneyland. Uh.
Speaker 1: That show came out of the need for funding and
Speaker 1: Walt struck a deal with ABC in nineteen four that
Speaker 1: he would for host for them. This hour long weekly
Speaker 1: series which was about Disneyland and also about sort of um,
Speaker 1: you know, exploration of concepts in society and technology and storytelling. Uh.
Speaker 1: And in exchange for him hosting this, ABC was funding
Speaker 1: the construction of the theme park project. And just as
Speaker 1: a side note, ABC eventually became part of the Disney Company.
Speaker 1: UM decades down the road, so the partnership to start
Speaker 1: in the fifties, but went on for a long time
Speaker 1: and now now the same thing. They're all together. So
Speaker 1: once the funding and location were secured, construction started and
Speaker 1: went on at a really breakneck pace. They broke ground
Speaker 1: on July nineteen fifty four, and just a year later,
Speaker 1: on July fifteenth, nineteen fifty five, Disneyland opened to the public.
Speaker 1: It cost an estimated seventeen million dollars to build, which
Speaker 1: may not it sounds like a lot, but I think
Speaker 1: nowadays if a similar project were built, it would be
Speaker 1: in the billions and billions. Yeah, that was seventeen million,
Speaker 1: nineteen fifty five dollars, So it was a lot of money. Uh.
Speaker 1: And opening day any account you read of it, it
Speaker 1: sounds insane. Uh. There was so much anticipation leading up
Speaker 1: to the opening of the park because Disney at this
Speaker 1: point had a six sucessful animation studio. He had already
Speaker 1: made a name for himself in terms of entertainment, uh.
Speaker 1: And so many people were so excited at this thought
Speaker 1: of an entire park devoted to this concepts of you know,
Speaker 1: storytelling and animation that they were even using counterfeit tickets
Speaker 1: to get in. The park was overcrowded way past probably
Speaker 1: what was a smart capacity. The temperature was a problem.
Speaker 1: They were in the middle of a heat wave in
Speaker 1: California and it was a hundred and ten degrees Fahrenheits uh.
Speaker 1: And on top of it being super hot, there was
Speaker 1: a plumber strike going on, so not all of the
Speaker 1: water fountains had been hooked up, so people couldn't get
Speaker 1: a quick drink of water to help deal with the heat. UM.
Speaker 1: And there was fresh asphalts that had been poured as
Speaker 1: late as the night before the park open, and it
Speaker 1: hadn't all cured properly because of the heat conditions, and
Speaker 1: so there are stories of people's shoes sinking into the
Speaker 1: asphalts because it had this weird rubbery texture to it,
Speaker 1: but it was sticky even though uh. It was a
Speaker 1: bumpy opening day and was super overcrowded, and a few
Speaker 1: weeks after it things were still a little bit crazy,
Speaker 1: but the problems got ironed out and things picked up,
Speaker 1: and pretty quickly the park became really, really popular. But
Speaker 1: if you look at a map from those first days,
Speaker 1: you'll see that New Orleans Square, which is the area
Speaker 1: where the hand Mansion lives, is not there. That spot
Speaker 1: on the map the map is blank. So even though
Speaker 1: Walt had been interested in the Haunt House from the
Speaker 1: absolute earliest meetings with Harper Goff, it wasn't part of
Speaker 1: the initial launch, and it wasn't long before Walt's mind
Speaker 1: turned back to the Haunted House that had been part
Speaker 1: of the Disneyland original plan. Yeah, what's the park did
Speaker 1: get past those initial bumps, it really became apparent that
Speaker 1: it was going to have to expand quickly to meet demand. Uh,
Speaker 1: and so Walt went right back to that Haunted House idea.
Speaker 1: In seven, Walt put a studio animator named Ken Anderson
Speaker 1: in charge of the project. It because Ken had worked
Speaker 1: on Mr. Toad's Wild Ride and Snow White Scary Adventures,
Speaker 1: which are both kind of so called dark rides because
Speaker 1: they have a lot of low light trickery and effects.
Speaker 1: He was the natural choice to helm the haunting of
Speaker 1: what would soon become the New Orleans Square section of
Speaker 1: the park, and while Ken was working on research for
Speaker 1: this project, waltz Uh went public with the news of
Speaker 1: the expansion. He talked about all of the things they
Speaker 1: were going to add to this new New Orleans Square area,
Speaker 1: and he even told a BBC interviewer in that he
Speaker 1: was building a retirement home for ghosts who may have
Speaker 1: been displaced from their original haunts during the war. So
Speaker 1: he was kind of trying to contextualize the concept to
Speaker 1: um being as he was in Great Britain at the time,
Speaker 1: and say, no, you know all the bombings and everything,
Speaker 1: there are lots of ghosts sit down, have a place
Speaker 1: to go. I'm building them a place to go. Just
Speaker 1: kind of silly and odd, but also rearing. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: don't know how I would be all about that if
Speaker 1: I were living in Britain. I don't know how I
Speaker 1: would feel about it if I were the interviewer even right, like, wait,
Speaker 1: you're doing what but you know, let's talk about Hogwarts again.
Speaker 1: What if something happened to Hogwarts? Where would all those
Speaker 1: ghosts Yeah. So, while kept detailing his plans for a
Speaker 1: park expansion with various news outlets, including shops and restaurants
Speaker 1: that would join the Haunted House in this newly defined
Speaker 1: area of the park, and Ken kept looking for design inspirations.
Speaker 1: So they knew from the outset that they wanted to
Speaker 1: have this kind of old South Field to the area
Speaker 1: that would become New Orleans Square. And so Anderson sought
Speaker 1: out Louisiana plantation houses for design inspiration. Uh. You know,
Speaker 1: they knew they wanted this antebellum look. But it turned
Speaker 1: out that the house that really sort of provided the
Speaker 1: most inspiration for um, the Haunted Mansion that's in Disneyland.
Speaker 1: Other ones have different architectural styles. Uh. It was actually
Speaker 1: a house that is on North Charles Street in Baltimore, Maryland,
Speaker 1: called the Evergreen House. And this is a house that
Speaker 1: had been bequeathed to John Hopkins University in two Uh,
Speaker 1: and it really did provide the picture perfect image of
Speaker 1: what Anderson and Disney had in mind. And the Disneyland
Speaker 1: Haunted Mansion, there's a really strong resemblance to the Evergreen
Speaker 1: House in all artists concept sketches for the house up
Speaker 1: to the house was dilapidated and broken down with this
Speaker 1: sort of overgrown, unkempt landscape, which is really what you
Speaker 1: would probably expect for a haunted house. But this approach
Speaker 1: really didn't go over well with Walt. He couldn't reconcile
Speaker 1: having this broken down house in any kind of style
Speaker 1: settled within the otherwise christine surroundings of Disneyland. So there's
Speaker 1: a now famous quote which I also find so charming.
Speaker 1: This is from Walt, and he said, we'll take care
Speaker 1: of the outside and let the ghosts take care of
Speaker 1: the inside. Uh So, no matter how haunted the house
Speaker 1: was going to be, he was pretty insist stant that
Speaker 1: I have a perfectly groomed exterior, and there was disagreement
Speaker 1: about it. But rather than dig in on this issue
Speaker 1: of the exterior design, Kenny Anderson just figured he would
Speaker 1: move over and focus on interior for a while and
Speaker 1: they would kind of table that discussion. And I'm sure
Speaker 1: it will come as a surprise to none of our
Speaker 1: listeners to hear that one of the major inspirations for
Speaker 1: the Haunted Mansion was the Winchester Mystery House. Uh. Anderson
Speaker 1: had actually toured the Winchester House in San Jose on
Speaker 1: a weekend getaway while this issue of pristine versus ramshackle
Speaker 1: exterior had been debated, and you know, almost immediately upon
Speaker 1: the tour, uh, he realized that this was really what
Speaker 1: the inside of their Haunted mansion should kind of look like,
Speaker 1: with these ideas of rooms that don't go places and
Speaker 1: architecture that doesn't always make sense together because as we know,
Speaker 1: the Winchester House was built by Mrs Winchester constantly under
Speaker 1: construction in an effort to confuse spirits that might be
Speaker 1: angry about the Winchester family fortune coming from weapons that
Speaker 1: had killed them. So that's an interesting house. If anybody
Speaker 1: has not been there, I highly recommend the Winchester House.
Speaker 1: So we have an episode on it. We do, uh,
Speaker 1: And it is really clear if you've been to the
Speaker 1: Haunted Mansion that there's a link there stylistically. Shall we
Speaker 1: take a second, Yeah, let's let's talk about Hawes for
Speaker 1: a moment while we think about confusing ghosts and talking
Speaker 1: about our response or something that's not confusing at all.
Speaker 1: So let's get back to the Haunted Mansion. True to
Speaker 1: this initial concept that the theme park was going to
Speaker 1: be a way to just tell stories in three dimensions.
Speaker 1: The Haunted Mansion had to have a compelling story to
Speaker 1: go in the attraction. But it took a few hits
Speaker 1: and misses on this whole story to wind up with
Speaker 1: what guests are familiar with today, And even the ones
Speaker 1: that we're about to talk about are not really what
Speaker 1: guests are familiar with today. It took a lot what
Speaker 1: what our guests familiar with today? If people have never gone,
Speaker 1: are we going to talk about it? Then we'll kind
Speaker 1: of get there at the end. We won't dig too
Speaker 1: deep into that because you know, we've got experience it.
Speaker 1: It's super fun. Well it's but uh, but we will
Speaker 1: talk in a bit about how things kind of ended
Speaker 1: up having to change. So some of the discarded stories
Speaker 1: are really fun though. So Kenna Anderson, bless him, was
Speaker 1: just working his tail off. He first put together a
Speaker 1: story treatment that featured It was all centered around this
Speaker 1: sea captain named Captain Bartholome you Gore, and it was
Speaker 1: a walkthrough tour that was led by George Butler Beauregard.
Speaker 1: And this story centered on the captain who in some
Speaker 1: versions and in some notes um has the name Gideon
Speaker 1: Gorlea and then earned the nickname of Gore through his
Speaker 1: behavior because in these he brought his bride, Priscilla to
Speaker 1: the mansion. But Priscilla was apparently a curious lass and
Speaker 1: in this version that Anderson cooked up, her curiosity was
Speaker 1: her undoing. She foolishly opened this chest that she found
Speaker 1: in the attic and discovered that her beloved husband was
Speaker 1: in flat in fact Black Bart the pirate. Uh. And
Speaker 1: after she makes this discovery and has this revelation, she vanished. Uh.
Speaker 1: So in some versions of the story, poor Priscilla is
Speaker 1: bricked into the cellar by her husband, sort of cask
Speaker 1: of a Monteado style if you've read that a Groland
Speaker 1: Poe uh short story. And in other versions that Anderson
Speaker 1: worked on, she was either locked into a c chest
Speaker 1: or thrown down a well. Uh. And her haunting of
Speaker 1: the captain in this story uh in this plotline led
Speaker 1: him to hang himself in the house's rafters. And so
Speaker 1: all of this is part of what makes the Haunting
Speaker 1: of the Haunted House. The second version, which was also
Speaker 1: put together by Ken Anderson, featured this storyline that was
Speaker 1: intended to really draw guests in by marrying the real
Speaker 1: world with the mythology and in this version, the tour
Speaker 1: guide would explain to guests that the Disney Company had
Speaker 1: moved an entire plantation mansion, which was led mere manner,
Speaker 1: to Disneylands to create an authentic centerpiece for New Orleans Square,
Speaker 1: but trickster spirits were forever wreaking havoc on the restoration
Speaker 1: of the house. Also featured in this tale was a
Speaker 1: deceased construction worker who haunted the site, which was abandoned
Speaker 1: after his untimely death. That one didn't hit either. Back
Speaker 1: to the drawing board, and Anderson did a third approach,
Speaker 1: and this one was really a much lighter approach to
Speaker 1: the whole thing. It actually featured Walt Disney himself acting
Speaker 1: as a tour guide via prerecorded tape segments, and he
Speaker 1: was leading guests to a ghost wedding, so it was
Speaker 1: a much simpler storyline. But that way they could incorporate
Speaker 1: lots of ghosts without having to work up lots of
Speaker 1: backstory for each of them, because they were all just
Speaker 1: attendants at this wedding. His fourth story idea took its
Speaker 1: inspiration from the ninety nine Disney animated feature The Adventures
Speaker 1: of Ichabod and Mr Toad. The second part of the
Speaker 1: film was an adaptation of the legend of Sleepy Hollow
Speaker 1: and and and thought the story needed to have the
Speaker 1: headless horseman provide sort of fertile ground for this haunted
Speaker 1: mansion storyline. So a great deal of this treatment involved
Speaker 1: using folly effects to create the sound of the horseman's
Speaker 1: hoof beats following guests along their tour. I'm imagining it,
Speaker 1: like Monty Python, would not be funny or scary, it
Speaker 1: would be very silly. Well, that's scary and silly comes
Speaker 1: up yes later on. So the wedding concept was also there,
Speaker 1: and this idea and the guests were famous monsters like
Speaker 1: Frankenstein's Monster and Dracula. The bride Mademoiselle Vampire, would get
Speaker 1: a case of the jitters, not sure whether she wanted
Speaker 1: to marry most of your Boogeyman, And just as the
Speaker 1: chaos was reaching a fever pitch, a tour guide would
Speaker 1: escort the park guests outside to safety. And this fourth
Speaker 1: version of the story was the one that was approved
Speaker 1: to go forward, although if you are a fan of
Speaker 1: the attraction, you will note that that is not the
Speaker 1: story you see on the ride. No, uh, there's a
Speaker 1: part of me that wishes we could go to an
Speaker 1: alternate history and see that version, because it sounds really fun.
Speaker 1: They're just picturing this panicky vampire bride uh and allegedly,
Speaker 1: uh the escape was going to be through one of
Speaker 1: the fireplaces, which could have been a potentially really cool
Speaker 1: effects uh. Almost from the moment that Walt decided to
Speaker 1: expand Disneyland and build the Haunted Mansion, he had designers
Speaker 1: working on ideas for the detail elements of the attraction,
Speaker 1: while Ken Anderson focused on the structural design. Yeah, he
Speaker 1: had had lots of concept sketches being made throughout and
Speaker 1: as all of these different storylines were being put together,
Speaker 1: some of them were getting sketch treatments. But as they
Speaker 1: were settling on this fourth storyline of the wedding uh
Speaker 1: in nine, Walt put together what became a really famous
Speaker 1: two man team that generated many of the effects and
Speaker 1: moments that really make the Haunted Mansion a crowd favorite
Speaker 1: even today. Yale Gracie was a background artist and model builder,
Speaker 1: and Roley Crump, which is a nickname for Roland, had
Speaker 1: been working at the studios as an in between her.
Speaker 1: Crump had this fondness for creating kinetic sculpture, so odd
Speaker 1: mobiles and other kind of pieces of moving art. I
Speaker 1: love those, by the way. And the story goes that
Speaker 1: Walt thought these two had just the right crossover of
Speaker 1: interests to make an ideal pairing to create the illusions
Speaker 1: that a haunted house attraction would need. And Uh, this
Speaker 1: pair of artists spent basically all of nine hold up together.
Speaker 1: Uh they were in on one floor of a building
Speaker 1: just reading ghost stories. They were testing out illusions that
Speaker 1: they were coming up with together. And when Crump talks
Speaker 1: about it, he routinely credits Gracie as being like the
Speaker 1: idea man, and then he would start to embellish and
Speaker 1: expand on them, and they would refine all of this together.
Speaker 1: So it sounded like it was. It really was a
Speaker 1: very fruitful and pretty enjoyable pairing. I think that's clear
Speaker 1: from the story we're about to tell. The pair became
Speaker 1: really really well known for their fantastical exploits and um
Speaker 1: for their prankishness. Yeah, and Jason Cerell's book about the
Speaker 1: Haunted Mansion's history, Rolly Crump tells the story of an
Speaker 1: incident that was created by all of this experimenting combined
Speaker 1: with with pranking, Yale had all his ghosts and magic
Speaker 1: strown throughout the room. Once we got a call from
Speaker 1: personnel asking us to leave the lights on because the
Speaker 1: janitors didn't want to come in if it was dark. Well,
Speaker 1: we did, but we rigged the room. We put in
Speaker 1: an infrared meme and when it was tripped, the room
Speaker 1: went to black light and all the ghost effects came on.
Speaker 1: When we came in the next morning, all the effects
Speaker 1: were still running and there was a broom in the
Speaker 1: center of the floor. Personnel called and said, you'll have
Speaker 1: to clean your own room because the janitors won't go
Speaker 1: in there anymore. Those rotten boys. It is so like
Speaker 1: the pranks you would expect like a teenage kid. So
Speaker 1: one of the interesting things, uh and historically significant things
Speaker 1: about the work that Gracie and Crump were doing together
Speaker 1: is that even though they were put together to create
Speaker 1: cutting edge effects, most of the tricks that they were
Speaker 1: employing were really really old school. They both had an
Speaker 1: interest in magic tricks, and they used a lot of
Speaker 1: tricks that had been part of magic shows and theatrical
Speaker 1: sleight of hand for decades, including the illusion that is
Speaker 1: known as Pepper's Ghost, which is from the mid eighteen hundreds,
Speaker 1: and that's a setup where action that is taking place
Speaker 1: in an unseen area UH that the audience can't see,
Speaker 1: is reflected off a pane of glass that they can see,
Speaker 1: and it creates this look of translucent, floating images that
Speaker 1: look like ghosts. And they used that and that's still
Speaker 1: used in the Haunted Mansion today, like a lot of
Speaker 1: the ghosts that you see are doing the Pepper's ghost illusion.
Speaker 1: The year that Roally Crump and Yale Gracy spent together
Speaker 1: in ninety nine culminated in this demo show where they
Speaker 1: displayed a presentation of a version of the whole action.
Speaker 1: And the demo was a huge hodgepodge of tricks and ideas.
Speaker 1: And even though they were working with Anderson's fourth story
Speaker 1: plan involving the Ghoulish Wedding, they had brought in some
Speaker 1: elements from the abandoned plots as well, including the Sea Captain. UH.
Speaker 1: The Sea captain Is illusion is one that's talked about
Speaker 1: a lot. UH. This illusion that the pair created involved
Speaker 1: a rain soaked ghost showing up there was water, there
Speaker 1: was a flooding effect in the room. The Captain's doomed
Speaker 1: bride would materialize and the water would then recede and
Speaker 1: leave only these unearthly blobs of moisture behind it. And
Speaker 1: it is one of those super famous, often spoken of
Speaker 1: moments that the people who witnessed it will still in
Speaker 1: interviews kind of wax rhapsodic about it and how it
Speaker 1: was one of the most amazing things they have ever
Speaker 1: seen in their lives. Um, and with that, we're actually
Speaker 1: going to cliffhang you a little bit. The Haunted Mansion
Speaker 1: is rich, so we are taking two episodes rich and
Speaker 1: and the moment of that we're pausing. There's kind of
Speaker 1: its own cliffhanger. This whole thing got tabled for a
Speaker 1: little while. Yeah, and we'll talk about how that all
Speaker 1: came to be, uh in our next episode, which is
Speaker 1: a follow up. But in the meantime, you have some
Speaker 1: listener my own I do, indeed. Uh, this is a
Speaker 1: short one, but it was so charming that I have
Speaker 1: to read it. Uh. It comes from our listener Carissa,
Speaker 1: which I hope I'm pronouncing correctly, and she's it's about
Speaker 1: the Hope Diamond. She says, good afternoon, ladies. I just
Speaker 1: finished listening to the Hope Diamond episodes. So many fun
Speaker 1: facts in there. I saw the Hope Diamond when I
Speaker 1: was fourteen in two thousand five, and as you mentioned
Speaker 1: that many people are, I was a bit underwhelmed. In fact,
Speaker 1: I remember the surrounding cases of huge, raw uncut stones
Speaker 1: more if I have heard lots of other people say
Speaker 1: as well. But it's the surrounding portions of that gallery
Speaker 1: that they're really more blown away by than the Hope Diamond. However,
Speaker 1: she says, one of my favorite memories was overhearing two
Speaker 1: little girls behind me, I guess around age eight, admiring
Speaker 1: the Hope Diamond and one saying to the other, that
Speaker 1: must have cost a hundred, no a thousand dollars. Thanks
Speaker 1: for the continuous flow of learning material. I think that's
Speaker 1: so charming. Yeah, I love that kids. You know, I
Speaker 1: have no sense of money or value. They would think
Speaker 1: that the Haunted Mansion costs two thousand dollars to build.
Speaker 1: I don't even know. I think it probably cost that
Speaker 1: much just to run them a day to day basis
Speaker 1: minimum power. Uh. But yeah, We're going to come back
Speaker 1: to the the Hanted Mansion um in our next episode,
Speaker 1: and we will finish the story which continues to take
Speaker 1: some wild turns. This is mostly the fun lead up parts,
Speaker 1: but if you would like to write to us, you
Speaker 1: can do so at History Podcast at Discovery dot com.
Speaker 1: If you want to guess the value of anything that
Speaker 1: we talk about just for fun, you can also connect
Speaker 1: with us on Twitter at missed in History and on
Speaker 1: Facebook dot com slash history class stuff. We're also at
Speaker 1: missed in History dot tumbler dot com, and we are
Speaker 1: hanging away on Pinterest. Rest assured there's going to be
Speaker 1: lost upon a mansion pins. Uh. If you would like
Speaker 1: to learn more about what we talked about today, and
Speaker 1: particularly right here at the end of the episode, you
Speaker 1: can go to our website and type in the words
Speaker 1: Pepper's Ghost and you get an article called how do
Speaker 1: they make those projections of dead celebrities and politicians? Because
Speaker 1: they also use Pepper's Ghost, it's just a little more
Speaker 1: technologically tweaked. Yeah, which is pretty cool. I love that
Speaker 1: an old technology or an old theater trick is still
Speaker 1: used today and it blows people away and makes them
Speaker 1: incorrectly identify things as holograms. Yeah, they're not holograms, they're
Speaker 1: not their their reflections, but they're really cool looking reflections. Uh.
Speaker 1: So If you would like to do that or learn
Speaker 1: about almost anything else you can think of, you can
Speaker 1: absolutely do that at our website, which is how Stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot com for more on this and thousands of
Speaker 1: other topics. Because it has to works dot com m
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