The New Hatbox Ghost in Orlando

As everybody in the Mansionite universe knows by now, the Hatbox Ghost made his debut in the WDW HM on November 30, 2023.

After:

Before...

RIP to the "Donald Duck" chair. It now resides at the Walt Disney Studios in Burbank:

Michael Arant

UPDATE (March 2, 2024). The obvious question is why he was installed here and not just outside the attic like he is in Anaheim, only a few yards from where the original HBG stood. At first glance, it looks like the WDW location is a deliberate movie tie-in. As most of you know, in the 2023 movie the HBG makes his first appearance in the Endless Hallway:

And my eyes may be playing tricks, but it does look to me like the animation in the face of the new HBG makes him look more like the movie version. If so, it's quite subtle.

Not only that, but the knick-knacks on the shelf over Hattie's head (which is there

to camouflage the top of a new access panel) are actual props from the 2023 movie.

Peyton Cloudman

HOWEVER, I've been assured by extremely reliable sources that this really is an amazing coincidence and no more, that the location has nothing to do with the movie. I'm not at liberty to say much more about the actual reason why he wasn't put into the same spot as he is in the DL ride, but I am assured that it's rather humdrum stuff having to do with things like structural upgrades and building codes, prohibitive costs, and blah blah blah. At the same time, there was nothing that required he be put HERE rather than somewhere else like the ballroom or graveyard. If it had been up to me, and the attic and porch were ruled out, I'd have put him where the Caretaker is and moved the Caretaker across the track into a newly-created vantage point among the trees on your right side as you descend.

FURTHER UPDATE (March 24, 2024) I now have confirmation that (1) the announcement that HBG was coming to WDW was a complete surprise to WDI East; (2) their pleas to put him by the attic (like DL) or somewhere in the graveyard were ignored, because (3) Top Men at WDW gave WDI a minimal budget to do the install, and the structural work necessary to put him on the roof outside the attic would have broken the budget. He's heavy, and in order to do repairs on the figure, they have to be able to pull him backwards into a work area. That's why there's that open door and room behind him at DL and a camouflaged door behind him at WDW. The necessary structural work at WDW would have included a bigger area than you might imagine.

Anyway, he's where he is because WDW didn't want to spend the money needed to put him where he should be. And this location is an abomination. One of the eeriest and most hypnotic tableaux in the entire ride now has a three-ring circus inches away. No one can deny that the Endless Hallway is thoroughly upstaged and the atmosphere is destroyed. That alone is reason enough to hate this thing.

The Three-Act Play (Again)

The other problem, of course, is the violation of the 3-Act show that is the Haunted Mansion. That 3-Act thing is NOT "backstory." It IS the story. It is simply an outline of the actual show that is there. But you guys know all that. If anyone needs a more in-depth introduction to the 3-Act play, go HERE. The only thing I would add to that is the caution that even Imagineers and other HM experts have routinely gotten the outline of the three acts wrong.

Act One is everything before Leota.

Act Two is Leota.

Act Three is everything after Leota.

Here's Jason Surrell's discussion, but he's not the only one who can't find the correct break between Act Two and Act Three:

You can find evidence for the 3-Act structure in the early 70's. If you read attentively this Vacationland article (Fall-Winter, 1974-75), you can detect the 3-Act outline underlying its description of the ride:

The same team of Imagineers who gave us the 2015 HBG gave us the 2023 version as well, but I don't hold it against them personally. They have to do what they're told to do, and if they don't like it but want to keep their jobs, they have to shut up. What is abundantly clear is that the team was well aware that no ghosts are supposed to be visible before Leota. The official excuse is that the HBG is an "unhappy haunt" and can materialize whenever and wherever. He has no need of Mdm L's assistance.

This is weak tea, of course. After the Ghost Host has explained that the place is a retirement home for ghosts and calls them "happy haunts," it quickly becomes apparent that they are not happy at all. In the original monologue in the Corridor of Doors, the GH concedes the point:

"All our ghosts have been dying to meet you. This one can hardly contain himself."

"Unfortunately, they all seem to have trouble getting through. Perhaps Madame Leota can establish contact. She has a remarkable head for materializing the disembodied."

All. They're ALL "unhappy haunts" until Leota does her thing. Saying that the Hatbox Ghost is an U.H. doesn't really distinguish him much, does it? These lines, by the way, have an interesting history. They were there in the beginning. I distinctly remember them from August 14, 1969. But you don't have to take my word for it. Keith Murray rode the ride at the press preview August 12 and published his review in the Pasadena Star News on Wednesday the 13th. In it, he quotes some of these lines from memory:

The later history of this COD monologue is most curious. They were in and out and in and out:

    1) Aug 1969—ca. Sept 1969........................................Lines are in (less than a month)

    2) ca. Sept 1969—Sept 1995.......................................Lines are out (26 years)

    3) Sept 1995—May 2006............................................Lines are in (11 years)

    4) May 2006—Jan 2008.............................................Lines are out (2 years)

    5) Jan 2008 and Jan—June of 2012............   .. ....... .....Lines are sorta... kinda... (See below)

Things were weird during Jan 2008 and between Jan and June of 2012. You need to know that the GH monologue is repeated every three doombuggies, and during these two time periods it would sometimes be the case that a triad of doombuggies would omit the earlier, "We find it delightfully unlivable..." spiel but include the "All our ghosts ... contain himself" line, while the following triad of buggies experienced exactly the reverse of this! And none of them included the Leota lines.* It all had something to do with a fluky problem during the switchover from HMH back to the regular HM show. Either that or pranky spirits. Since 2012 (as far as I know), the COD lines have been out.

Someone during the major 1995 rehab apparently said, "Hey, why were these lines deleted? Let's put them back in." A stern email went out in May of 2006 from the very top of the food chain at WDI with the "request to permanently delete" the COD lines, and this—ahem—"request" included a warning: "If there is an incident where someone intentionally or accidentally reactivates them ... we will be forced to remove them entirely." Yikes. The next day they were out, so the leaked email was no hoax.

Even though they've now been utterly gone more than a decade, virtually all of the ride-thru souvenir CDs and whatnot that have been sold over the years include them. Every Mansion freak knows about them. They're "canon," if you want to use that term, and they ought to put to rest any doubts about whether the 3-Act play is really the story of the ride.

Shoehorning in the Hatbox Ghost

The 2023 team had to make lemonade out of the lemons the Top Men handed them. The best they could do is declare him an U.H. independent of the predicament Leota and she alone can solve. They have also gone out of their way to make it as clear as they can that the HBG is an intruder in the ride, an interloper, a party crasher, an uninvited guest. His luggage has been dumped unceremoniously in the Endless Hallway (there's a trunk there, not just extra hatboxes), and there are muddy footprints indicating that he's come in the side door, dropped off his stuff (a hand truck with extra hatboxes, like at Disneyland), and he's returned to the door and turned around to look at you. The footprints are already there in the concept art:

But they're more conspicuous in the ride, and the double-tracking (back and forth) is also clear.

pic by travel__time

The whole thing is theoretically possible, story-wise, because the nature of the problem that only Leota can fix is never explained. Some kind of curse, perhaps? In that earlier LF article, I offered my own explanation, which I still think makes good sense, but nothing in the ride is explicit on this point, so yes, it can be argued that the HBG has managed not to get stuck in the Act One predicament. Evidently he has evaded the problem because he was never invited to join the retirement home of happy haunts and has barged in anyway. That must mean that the retirement home invitation had a metaphysical flaw in it that turned the Mansion into a trap. Once they moved in, they found that they could not materialize.

All of this opens doors to more unwanted and unnecessary backstory, of course. Many HM fans will be thrilled at the prospect. Me? I thought the WDW HM was ruined in 2011, so this is just one more reason to continue thinking so. The Endless Hallway scene has been spoiled, and they had to have known it would be spoiled. Anyone with two functioning brain cells could have foreseen that. But they went ahead anyway. That alone tells you all you need to know. Sorry for being such a downer, Floridians, but that's my honest opinion.

*A big hat tip to bigcatrik at Micechat for this info.

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The Hatbox Ghost that Never Was

We've had two of them.* First of all, there's the original 1969 model, the legend, he concerning whom there is still a lot of misinformation bruited about. Here are the facts. Clip and save: 

• He was there for the soft opening on August 7th, seen only by Cast Members.
• He was immediately pulled out because you could still see his face after it had "disappeared."
• He was still missing two days later at the unofficial official opening on August 9th, which is why so many people who rode the Mansion on that first day reported later that he was not there, and that's why the story got set in concrete that he was never seen by the public. It took a long time and a lot of jackhammering for that concrete to get broken up, but the claim still crops up now and then.
• There is a credible report that he was already reinstalled by the very next day, the 10th. Whether he remained there over the next few days we don't know, but he was certainly there on Thursday the 14th. (That's the day I saw him, kids.)
• For the next several weeks (not days) Hattie either stayed in continuously or was in-and-out while they tried to get him to work successfully, unsuccessfully. (I think the latter scenario is the more likely.) No one knows for sure when the plug was finally pulled for good, but probably in September.

And then there's the brilliant 2015 rediscarnation. Of course, we know all about him.

(Since ghosts are not incarnate to begin with, having no flesh, they technically can't be reincarnated, can they? Now, if you're not incarnate, what you are is discarnate. That's the correct term. So if you're a ghost and you cease to exist but are subsequently brought back into existence, you've been rediscarnated.  Don't look at me like that. You think I don't know what I'm doing?)

Jolly good, but what about the Hatbox Ghost that almost, but never, was?

Ah, how quickly we forget. *puffs pipe wistfully* It's a historical episode that for some of us seems almost too recent to merit a Long-Forgotten post, but when I consider that (1) these things need to be chronicled before memories start turning hazy (which doesn't take long) and that (2) there are oodles of young doombugs running around and chattering away at the HM fan sites, some of whom were in kindergarten when this all happened, it becomes obvious that someone needs to put together a record for posterity.

Because yes, we came THISCLOSE to getting a new Hatbox Ghost at Disneyland in 2009.

2004—2005

We could begin the story back in the 90s, when the whole "bring back the Hatbox Ghost" movement felt its first stirrings, especially with the publication of photos of the original HBG in 1999, but the real beginning of this particular chapter in Mansion history is in 2004, when the first plans were being drawn up for Disneyland's 50th anniversary the following year. Among the ideas proposed at WDI for enhancements to the Haunted Mansion was bringing back the Hatbox Ghost. This was also when plans for Constance and her five hubbies were in development, and originally Hattie was going to be George, Connie's fifth husband, the poor sap with the hatchet in his head on the widow's stretching portrait. (I have to wonder how they intended to deal with the fact that the HBG has no handlebar mustache.) As if to test the waters, a Hatbox Ghost "big fig" was released by WD collectibles in 2005 and was a smash hit. If you're a HM fan at all, you've no doubt seen these figures or pictures of them. They command high prices these days, if you can get one at all.

One particularly interesting feature was the certificate of authenticity that came with the figure.

It including some tantalizing tidbits of backstory information about this particular ghost.

Other Disney souvenirs featuring the Hatbox Ghost trickled out over the next few years, and he sometimes

appeared in Disney artwork in various venues. Hmmm. Were they trying to tell us something?

2006

The Constance version of the attic debuted in May of 2006 with Hattie nowhere to be seen, but a month earlier, at the beginning of April, word had already begun leaking out that the Hatbox Ghost may be coming back. Something must have happened 'round about April 24th, because a number of reports came out over the following couple of days confirming that a new Hatbox Ghost was definitely on the drawing board. According to one source, an early prototype was rumored to have already been built in Glendale. At this point he was still identified with George, Connie's fifth husband.

2007

In 2007 a completely different concept was proposed, and according to a reliable source it almost made it to reality. The idea was to forget about the attic and bring back Hattie somewhere else in the Mansion, like the Ballroom or Graveyard. He would be hidden in the darkness somewhere and would only make a sort of cameo appearance when briefly lit up. No time for the vanishing head gag. Not only that, but only Annual Passholders would see him, and even then only once per visit. During the regular part of the year, when the HMH was gone and the Fastpass area was idle, a special sticker on a Fastpass ticket would be dispensed for AP holders only. The sticker would be read by a sensor as they got in their buggies, telling the ride to light up the HBG when that buggy went by. Whether this idea survived into 2008, I can't say, but needless to say it was scrapped. The one good thing about it was that it would have preserved a sort of mystique about the character. He'd still be "missing" to most people. On the other hand, it smelled like a dirty trick to get more people to shell out $$$ for the AP.

2008

In preparation for the Mansion's upcoming 40th anniversary, the Merchandizing division and WDI began working in coordination with each other. This is EXTREMELY rare. Normally these guys can't stand each other, but sources are adamant that this time they did indeed work together. In truth, I don't think the input from Imagineering went much beyond tipping off the Merch guys that they were planning on bringing back the Hatbox Ghost for the 40th, and that it was a big deal. That was enough. The Merch guys went bonkers, especially the Pin people. When 2009 arrived, they were ready to pounce.

2009

And pounce they did! Suddenly, Hattie was everywhere. The overexposure was nauseating. They made him a "real estate agent," the host and mascot for the whole 40th celebration.

Pins, pins, and more pins . . .

Note the triptych, with Hattie on left and Connie on right. And these are just some of them. A box set of pins was marketed with Hattie standing right in the doorway of the Mansion, and he's even listed as one of the characters "found inside the attraction," as if his comeback were a fait accompli. Subtle as a hand grenade. 

They even had the poor guy writing copy for them:

One thing that came out of all this was a clue that the storyline had been changed. It seems the Hatbox Ghost was no longer George but apparently was going to be introduced as a sixth husband (or fiancé). It's not explicit, though.

Haunted Holidays

As if all of this weren't enough, Disney put together a "Haunted Holidays" website featuring a CGI Hatbox Ghost, voiced by Cory Burton, doing his best Paul Frees "Ghost Host" impersonation.  Say what? So...the Hatbox Ghost is now the Ghost Host? Never mind. Once Merchandising gets ahold of things, nothing needs to make sense. He isn't the GH any more than he's Cousin Huet (see that gravestone prop above). Some of the Connie pins jumbled characters around in impossibly silly ways, too. This sort of thing is why I suspect the "coordination" with WDI was rather limited.

Enter Kevin and Jody

Another big deal during 2009 was a project by model-builders and Disney artisans extraordinaire Kevin Kidney and Jody Daily. They created a replica of the original Hatbox Ghost to be sold at the D23 auction on September 9th. The figure was remarkably accurate in every way and put on display before the auction for several days.

Kevin&Jody

Ricky Brigante

It sold for $9400, which was less than I expected, actually. Today, I'm sure it would fetch a lot more.

But that's not the most interesting part of this story. It occurred to someone that it would be fun to install the Kidney-Daily figure in the attic of the Mansion for the big event on September 9th, as a surprise to Mansion fans riding that evening. Just think of it. You would see an exact replica of the original Hatbox Ghost in his original spot! And think of the enhanced value to the figure as an auction item. Kevin and Jody thought it was a great idea.

But it didn't happen. Union rules stated that items for auction had to be on site two days before the actual event, so the figure had to be at the convention center on the 7th. No, I don't understand it either, but Union rules are Union rules. Too bad! It would have been one of the coolest Mansion events evuh.

photoshop by Darkfairy

What this also shows is that the actual HBG figure WDI had been working on was not going to be ready for the 40th anniversary no how, no way. Plans were quickly changed. The official word now was that he would be there in January 2010 after the HMH overlay came down. They even had the CGI Hatbox Ghost at the "Haunted Holidays" site tell viewers in December that he would "see them again in January."

2010

Oh no he wouldn't. January came and went, and again, disappointment. It was all hush-hush, but already by the time of the convention in September plans for the new HBG had been scrapped. We are told that the cancelation was at the last minute and that the reason given was that they needed the funds for the Space Mountain "Ghost Galaxy." It's true that it was "last minute" (as Al Lutz reported at Micechat in May of 2010), but only if you mean "last minute before the big convention" and not "last minute before the January installation." At any rate, the HBG project was postponed indefinitely. Tony Baxter, who had been shepherding this project all along and who had been an early and enthusiastic Hatbox booster was not happy about this, let me tell ya. He was very much looking forward to seeing the new HBG installed in January, which in itself is evidence that the figure was ready to go or very nearly so.

What Did He Look Like?

The special effects wizard in charge of bringing Hattie back to life (or afterlife) was John Gritz, by all counts the right man for the task.

We know that some of the same technology that had recently enabled the floating Mdm Leota at WDW to go to an inner-projection system was going to be used. Daniel Joseph (creator of the 2015 HBG) confirms that a working figure was indeed made. It was very clever, he says, but it took a lot of room and also did not allow the figure to move without a very complex arrangement. As for his appearance, we have one clue, and you will have to judge for yourself how much to make of it.

We saw how the Pin people just went crazy over the Hatbox Ghost when WDI told them about their plans. Well, one of the products they came up with was a limited edition HBG figurine housing two pins, and there's something mighty weird about him.

You immediately notice that stack of stuff underneath the hatbox. Nothing quite like that has ever been seen, before or since. For some reason the Pin people also posted at their blogsite what looks like a schematic drawing of the figure, including front and side views, and it doesn't even show the pins. Furthermore (and not to get too picky), the resemblance to the actual figure, although very close, is not exact.

I may be wrong, but I suspect that the schematic drawing was something given to them by WDI and may actually represent the Gritz figure in production at the time. It is easy to imagine a "Pepper's Ghost" illusion with a tilted glass inside the main hatbox reflecting a head directly below it in the stack, facing upward. We could be looking here at the only publicly-released depiction of the Hatbox Ghost that never, but almost, was.

* Three, of course, as of November of 2023, but the WDW HBG is merely a clone of the DL 2015 HBG.

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With Each Beat of His Bride's Heart

.
No big deal, but I have sometimes wondered just how quickly the original Hatbox Ghost's head was supposed to flash back and forth between his shoulders and his hatbox.  It seemed to me that there were two realistic possibilities: a faster pace and a slower pace.


The Fast One (Options A and B)

The heart beats  LUB-DUB . . . LUB-DUB . . . LUB-DUB . . .  It could be that each LUB and each DUB signaled a switch. So the head appeared in the box every LUB, and on every DUB it appeared on his shoulders. That's Fast One Option A. It could be reversed, of course: With Fast One Option B, you get LUB (shoulders), DUB (box), but that one has never seemed likely to me. The heartbeat tempo is of course uneven, so the time between DUB and the next LUB is longer than the time between LUB and DUB.  It's always seemed more natural for the head-on-shoulders phase to be the longer one:

   box-and-back . . . pause . . . box-and-back . . . pause . . . etc.
   LUB      DUB                           LUB      DUB



The Slow One

Does that sequence seem too quick?  Sometimes I have wondered whether the swap occurred only once with each LUB-DUB.
You get a kind of swinging rhythm that way:

LUB-DUB (head is in the box) . . . LUB-DUB (head is on his shoulders) . . .


Like I said, it's not exactly a burning issue. But still, for what it's worth, is there any way to decide the question? The other day I was looking again at the now-famous film of the original HBG, taken in August of 1969, footage I've watched who knows how many times, and I noticed for the first time that you CAN see the head inside the hatbox flashing on and off. (Maybe some of you noticed it long ago?) Look very closely at the upper-back part of the hatbox, which is darker, and at one point you can clearly see a light spot turning on and off. Gotta be the head lighting up. You can see the back-and-forth at least twice, just enough to determine that the hatbox head was indeed off longer than it was on. The home movie film seen in its entirety shows people walking around. Judging from that and other considerations we may be confident that the speed of the film is correct, so it's definitely not the Slow option.

Verdict: The head in the box flashed on with each LUB and off with each DUB.

Fast One, Option A it is.

LUB                                               DUB

Another cool thing is that you can actually (but just barely) make out the head in the hatbox at one point:

What about the head on the shoulders? That light seems to be turned off altogether, which jibes with the memories of some eyewitnesses. According to "Todd Hackett":

The hatbox ghost was probably my favorite figure in the HM. I got into a lively debate with Jack Janzen of the E Ticket trying to convince him that the HG existed. He even published a letter I wrote about it in the E Ticket years ago. Fortunately Chris Merritt found those pics to confirm it. The HG was positioned just right of the exit of the attic. The first time I saw the HG his face would disappear then would flash into the hatbox. The next time I saw it the effect didn't work right and I remember at one point his face was lit and the head in the hatbox flashed on and off. Then they painted his head black, and the other head in the hatbox flashed on and off  (our emphasis).

I wonder whether they actually painted the face black or simply doused the lights on it. In any event, my own memory from August 14 matches Todd's second description: head on shoulders lit continuously, hatbox head flashing on and off. All the available evidence suggests that they were frequently fiddling around with him during his short sojourn in the attic. 

(Maintenance record uncovered by Tony Baxter proving that the figure

was in use long enough to be a check-off item for the maintenance guys.)

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Nothin' fancy, folks, just squeezing some old lemons and finding out that there is still juice in there.