Thursday, July 9, 2020

The Other Ken's Haunted House

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After all these years, our post on the tombstone epitaphs found in the Graveyard Jamboree finally reached completion only in the last month when Tom Morris helped identify the last, most stubborn holdout among the nine stones. Tom thinks that RESEER is a tribute to Larry Reiser, a project coordinator who may have done some project coordinating at the DL Mansion before heading to Florida, where he did most of his project coordinating. You can tell how much I understand these job titles.

To celebrate, let's take a look at a long forgotten project done by the man saluted in the NEKEESORF stone, one of the nine, found in considerable quantity throughout the cemetery. You will recall that NEKEESORF is a tribute to Imagineer Ken Forsse. We gave a little information about Ken in the "Nine Old Men" post and mentioned the fact that he created an elaborate haunted house model for a now-defunct amusement park, but the online source for that story is no longer available, so no can linky. That's a pity. It's a tale worth telling.

Mind you, we don't ordinarily concern ourselves here at LF with the outside projects of Disney Imagineers, but in this case we're performing a public service by rescuing something wonderful from the brink of extinction, and it's a haunted house project by a former Haunted Mansion Imagineer, so I don't think I'm going to take too much flak.


Young Ken:


The story and the photos which follow all come courtesy of Reed Savory, whom I wish to thank for his permission to share them here.

Reed and his wife Zahava paid a visit to Ken and his wife, Professor Jan Forsse, at the tail end of 2013. As he was ill and confined to bed, Ken was unfortunately not able to entertain visitors, and the Savorys didn't have a chance to actually meet him. It was Mrs. Forsse who shared the following with the Savorys. (Sadly, Ken passed away at the age of 77 just three months later, in March of 2014.)

Ken left Disney not long after his work on the Haunted Mansion, and in the early 70's he was contacted by the Sid and Marty Krofft organization about the construction of "The World of Sid and Marty Krofft," an indoor amusement park based on characters created by the Krofft brothers, to be built in Atlanta. They wanted Ken to design a haunted house for the park.

Ken worked nearly 18 months on the project, constructing a scale model filled with dollhouse-like props, all hand-made. Reed was able to take numerous photos of the huge model in the Forsse's basement, still in excellent condition after four decades.

"The World of Sid and Marty Krofft" opened in May of 1976 but closed after only six months due to poor attendance. I know what you're all thinking: "How could it miss with a whiz-bang name like that?" One of life's many mysteries, I suppose. Anyway, larger attractions, like Ken's haunted house, were never built. 

Forsse moved on and eventually struck gold in the 1980's with his Teddy Ruxpin doll, mentioned in the earlier post. That's what he's most remembered for. If not for the 2013 visit from the Savorys it's possible that all memory of his remarkable haunted house project some ten years before Teddy would have perished by now.

Feast your eyes.



Gotta love those lion's head knockers.



Looks like a pair of needle-nose pliers on the right. Helps to provide some scale.


In the photos, not many figures are visible inside the house, but there are some:




The details!


Yessss, an attic scene! All that incredible stuff, hand made.




Is that a coffin back there?


Those who knew him say Ken was an immensely talented guy. If we needed any proof, there it is.


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11 comments:

  1. Dan – I just wanted to thank you for bringing this information to the attention of the readers of your blog.

    Zahava and I were out for an evening stroll and literally had a chance encounter with Professor Forsse, whom we hadn’t previously met, and suddenly we found ourselves becoming the sole documentarians for information about her husband’s life, facts that were totally unknown to the world at large.

    Thank you for resurrecting my old blog article and pictures on this topic – Ken Forsse was a giant in his field, and his accomplishments should be known and celebrated.

    -Reed

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  2. Thank you for this article (and thanks to Reed Savory) - a very nice tribute to Ken Forsse. That model is incredible, I’m so glad that we can at least look at the photos (as you said: “The details!”). I’ve also been fascinated with “The World of Sid and Marty Krofft”, who doesn’t love a failed amusement park (see: Freedomland)? The perfect place for a Scooby Doo villain to lurk (wrong IP, I know). It’s intriguing to think of how the finished full-size house would have looked with dark, moody lighting, we’re seeing the equivalent of “flash photography” here.

    Do we have any idea if the haunted house attraction would have been a ride, or a “walk-through”? Maybe it was sort of a classic fun house. I fear that most (if not all) info has been lost, but I’ll bet there would have been a “Pepper’s Ghost” effect or two. Would they have gone for “funny” or for “scary”? Probably a little of both, I’d guess.

    The moment I saw that coffin in the last photo, I thought of the “Lemme outta here!” ghost from the Haunted Mansion. It does look like the lid is askew. H.R. Pufnstuf is trying to get out.

    How could you resist writing “Look at those knockers!” (as a nod to “Young Frankenstein”)?!

    I’m so glad to see new material on “Long-Forgotten”, thank you.

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    1. Looks to me like a walk-thru, which would have been mega-cool.

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  3. I was wondering the same things as the good Major. Also, I wonder if there was going to be a story involved or if it was going to be more of a typical "spook house?" I also wonder if the model still exists (or parts of it), what the layout was and if so where it is? A great ghost story always brings up more questions than it answers...

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    1. This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.

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    2. The model still exists.

      I spoke to Ken's widow Jan just a few weeks back (in early July 2020) to let her know that Dan had published this article, and she confirmed that it's safely in the possession of a family member.

      Jan had tried to find a museum or someplace such to take it back in 2013, but she tells me no one was interested. My wife and I tried to help, but I'm afraid we couldn't come up with anything either.

      She even tried posting it on eBay at the time, and didn't have even a single offer.

      I'd done some long-format article writing for boingboing.net, and had tried to get them to write up an article on it (kind of in their wheelhouse of "wonderful things"), but they also weren't interested at the time.

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    3. With the increasing interest in individual Imagineers that has been manifested in recent years, you would think that sooner or later someone will want to do something about this wonder.

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    4. That is a real shame. It needs to be in a museum where it can be appreciated and cared for. Hopefully when folks understand what it is, it will be.

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    5. Pennypickle's Workshop, a children's science museum in Temecula CA, has just been gifted Ken Forsse's haunted house that is referenced in this article. We are planning an event to celebrate it and the many inventions/accomplishments that Ken achieved. His widow Jan is helping us with information and artifacts. Please visit our website to get info about us - any contact email on the site goes to me. I am the founder and executive director of Pennypickle's Workshop. We're also on social media - look for us on Facebook and Instagram. We're humbled and honored to receive this amazing donation and we'd like to have a spectacular event with as many people invited who had the privilege of knowing/working with/being inspired by Ken.

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  4. Great post! I was one of the few people who got to experience the World of Sid and Marty Krofft. I was 13 years old in 1976 and a huge fan of the Krofft shows and even I was a bit flummoxed by the small size of the park. Yes it was cool, but there was so little of it. You could see everything in a couple of hours. My parents dropped my brother and I off and we had to just kill time there while we waited for them to come back from shopping. I would have loved to have seen this haunted attraction. The park might have survived if it had had more attractions like this.

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  5. I went to Disney World's Magic Kingdom in March 1985 and saw this very place while on Spring Break with college friends from UMass. It was amazing!

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