No, I'm not going to say, "Welcome, Foolish Mortals"

.
But welcome you are, foolish you may be, and mortal, more likely than not.

Let that slide.

For those of you who don't know the background to this blog, it started with a post on the MiceChat Disneyland discussion board back in 2007.  I was trying to discover whether anyone else remembered a short-lived special effect from the early days of the Disneyland Haunted Mansion.  Once the discussion began, it never ended.  Fans of the Haunted Mansions in the various Disney parks collected like flies on a No-Pest strip.  Many of them were and are quite knowledgeable (the fans, not No-Pest strips). There are even Disney Imagineers among the readers. Today the Thread is still not dead, with tens of thousands of posts.

I figure it's time to move this weird and wonderful phenomenon to a more stable format.  These days, what you need to know in order to blog has been dumbed down to the point where even a Luddite like moi can manage.  I think.

The "Long-Forgotten" thread is hardly a one-man show.  I am especially grateful to HM experts and collectors out there who have enriched the Thread with their photos and information, but I am grateful too for the energy and insights coming from all the other contributors, too many to name.  You guys know who you are.