Do You Remember Miss April-December?

 

As everyone knows by now, April returned with the reopening of Disneyland at the end of April, 2021.

 

I have decided not to change the original post, which reflects the kind of fan sentiment that ultimately led to her joyous restoration to the ride. The original post here follows:

I do.  So do many of you.  Now that the Hatbox Ghost has returned, April-December has the melancholy distinction of being the only prominent Mansion resident who has been removed absolutely, leaving no trace behind.  (Purply Shroud is another, and so are the attic popup ghosts, including the blast-up variety, such as you see directly to the right —>, but I don't consider any of those prominent ghosties, much as I like them and miss them.) Purply Shroud got a post. April certainly deserves one too. The more time that passes, the fewer there will be who remember these things directly.  Already there are young doombugs running around with no personal recollection of April, having seen her only in pictures and on video, if that much.  It's not too soon to put something more substantial on record before she too joins the ranks of the long forgotten.

April is unique to Disneyland.  She hung in the changing portrait hall there for 35 years, from opening day until the ride went down for the Haunted Mansion Holiday overlay in the fall of 2004.  When the classic Mansion returned in late January, the portraits had all been replaced with new ones employing more modern technology, and let's admit it, the new effect is better than the old one—better, I should say, if and when the light levels in the room are properly balanced.  The new set of portraits was also different in content.  Panther Lady was now Tiger Lady, April was missing from her place on the far left, Medusa had been moved from the middle to April's old spot, and "Master Gracey" had taken Medusa's former position.  Gracey was one of the original residents in Florida (and later Tokyo), where he continues to occupy a unique place of honor, but only now in 2005 did he make his Anaheim debut.

Just as "Master Gracey" finally came west to Anaheim, it's possible that at one point they were planning to bring
April-December east to Orlando, if we may judge by this concept sketch of the new WDW HM changing portrait
gallery. She's one of five paintings, the same five that had hung in the Disneyland Mansion from the beginning:

But when the new gallery in the Florida Mansion debuted in
2007, it had only four paintings, plus a table-and-mirror set.

(pic by Brandon "GRD")

Why was April replaced with "Master Gracey" at Disneyland?  I've heard more than one theory, but the simplest explanation may be that the word game couldn't be done very well with the new effect.  "April" would have had to be dark, while "December" would have had to be white.  Maybe they decided that that would have looked funny.  Perhaps this also explains why WDW got a table-and-mirror instead of April-December, assuming that there really were plans at some point to bring her to Florida.


The Fab Four

As pointed out in the previous post, April originally changed back and forth with December in a lightning flash, in the same manner as the other portraits.  This went to a slow morph effect early on.  I can't say exactly when, but it was within the first few years.  The current lightning effect is a return to the original mode of presentation.  (I'm aware that this has all been said before.)

Another thing we have said before is that April - December was originally going to be April - June - September - December, a four-stage show, but all such multiple-paneled portraits were reduced to just two stages, changing with the lightning, because it was believed there would not be time for the long versions.  I realize that even the first time around, these were familiar factoids, things many of you already knew, but in November of 2015 we learned something completely new. Before it was installed, the four panel set had actually been expanded to six before it shrunk to two. It seems that each group of guests was going to stop in the changing portrait hall and be treated to a distinct mini-show, much like the mini-show experienced in the stretching gallery.

(Adapted from digitally-improved images by Bair Pinuev)

Ironically, April-December was discovered missing in January of 2005.  That's right,

January, the next month past the end of the series.  I guess it was time to bury her.

If you think about it, what we have here is not an illusion but the shattering of an illusion.  With a typical portrait, you hear stuff like, "Ah, how splendidly the artist has captured the golden moment of youth on his canvas, preserving it there forever," blah blah blah.  But "forever young" is a fantasy, right?  Here is one portrait that follows the plain truth to the bitter end.

With the four-step original, the steady and inexorable progress of the aging process is itself part of the point:

Going directly from April to December doesn't make exactly the same point, and
indeed cannot.  It's the difference between a grim reminder and a brutal shock.

*********

I want to call your attention to Miss September in

those original Marc Davis concept sketches.

Why?  Because she's the only one of the four without any sort of afterlife in the Disney parks, and a ghost without an afterlife?  Tain't natural.  You see, not long after April was removed, a copy of her Marc Davis portrait appeared in a New Orleans Square shop on top of a bookcase, a poignant tribute to the lost character.  (It's now been joined there by Davis sketches of various stages of Medusa, which waters down the tribute, IMO.)  As for June, she finally made her Disney debut as part of the pirate swag on display at the temporary outdoor pirate stage where they had live entertainment for awhile.  Didn't last long, but at least June had her moment in the sun (literally).  And December?  She's always had a twin at WDW and Tokyo, one of the "Sinister 11," and as such she's still there.

So three of the four have enjoyed some sort of presence beyond the walls of the Mansion, but alas, no love for poor Miss September.  Consider this a corrective of sorts.  Let us propose a toast.  This one's for you, Miss S.  Cheers.

You know, in some ways, I think she has the most interesting face. What is she thinking? In April's case you might guess that she's not thinking at all, but that's impossible with September. She's lived too long not to have learned something.

The Spot

One reason I miss April is that for all those years she kept watch over what is for me the most magical spot in the entire attraction, and hence the most magical spot in the entire park.  (I hate to use the words "magic" or "magical" in this way, as they are surely the most overused words in the Disney lexicon, but in this case they happen to fit.)

Cue the atmospheric soundtrack

You're on foot, as the Mansion was originally going to be throughout.  The windows are

full of dark, stormy weather.  They're mesmerizing mini-masterpieces in themselves.

(pic by Old Grimm Guy)

The corridor before you looks longer than it really is, thanks to that favorite Imagineering trick, forced perspective.  The music is eerie, the thunder crashes, the paintings silently do their best to unnerve you.  At the end of the hall the busts are scrutinizing you in a most unfriendly manner, and down there you also see a corner to be turned, beckoning you onward to some place as yet unknown.

It's 2024, and a video clip of April from 1970 has surfaced.

 If you manage to be last in your group and lag behind (you naughty, naughty guest), letting all the others go around the bend, then you can sometimes have the hall to yourself for a few moments.  Mmm.  Mighty fine.  You stand there all alone in one of the most immersive atmospheres the park offers.  Big Brother is watching you, though, so don't overdo it.

Reluctantly you turn and begin again to approach that corner where you will make the turn.  Sorry if I've said it before, but if there's a place in the HM where you can almost make yourself believe it's all real, then surely this is that place.  It was April's place.  I like to think she's still there, unseen, and I have to admit to a little stab of resentment when I see Medusa occupying her spot.

Wanted Dead or Alive

The drastic abbreviation of the original changing portrait sequences affected some of their interpretations.  Most glaringly, what had been a ghostly Flying Dutchman manifestation became simply a nice ship getting ripped up by foul weather, as we have seen.  But April-December also underwent a change.  The full, four-panel sequence is clearly a statement on the brevity of youthful beauty, as a young lady's life is allegorically reduced to the span of a single year.  But that's not how I read it when the effect was new.  Contrary to what you might think, the word "December" was perfectly readable even in the lightning flashes, but by its very nature the effect in its original presentation disallowed you a good close look at the December phase.  I thought it was a corpse, and I thought the point of it all was that someone young and beautiful in the month of April could be (and in this case would be) a rotting cadaver before the year was out if Death should happen to pay an untimely visit.  "This was her in April, and this was her by December."

Funny thing is, even after you get a good look at December, I'm still not sure that that interpretation can be ruled entirely out of court.  The difference between Marc Davis's concept sketch of April and the portrait actually used in the ride (painted by Ed Kohn) is slight . . .

  . . . but the two Decembers are noticeably different. To me, Kohn's December looks more necrotic.

The WDW hag was given "living" eyes, so she's alive, no question.

But December? I'm not so sure.  In some photos I've seen, she

looks like she could represent a corpse as easily as an old lady.

(pic by Allen Huffman)

The fact that she's dressed and sitting up doesn't mean anything.  If December is in fact dead, it would make April-December a female counterpoint to "Master Gracey," who also winds up as a corpse at the end of the line, even though the skeleton is still maintaining the original posture.  This is prophecy and symbolism we're dealing with.

(Marc Davis's original concept artwork: MDIHOW 362)

And note that when April-December was evicted, what was it that took her place?  Might that be because "Master Gracey"
represents exactly the same idea?  In the Disneyland version, he flashes back and forth from panel one to panel six.

December's arms and hands, however, don't look very necrotic, so...I don't know.  "Questions remain," as one of my
profs used to say whenever he didn't buy your argument (which was often).  When it gets right down to it, I'm not
going to press the point very hard.  Let's just say Ed Kohn's December is probably alive, but it's possible she is not.

Parallels...Background...etc.

Well, let's leave off the speculations about December's health and turn to something more typically Long-Forgottenistic.  The direct inspiration for April-December used to be a wide open question, but a credible claim can now be made that April's prototype has in fact been found, so in this case, that question is, for many, closed. This includes your blog administrator. There are broader things to consider, however, than direct inspirations, like cultural parallels and such. LF stuff.

The pose is typical of Victorian portraiture, especially in photographs.

Young ladies and old frequently have their hands on a book (suggesting intelligence, education, and well-breeding), and you see heavy drapes, nice little tables, and dainty objects in the hand—all clichés.  These are fun to look at anyway.

(Look at those drape cords.)

This melancholy illustration from Quiver magazine (1889) is close to our theme.

A young lady appears to have painted a portrait of herself as an old woman.

(Hat tip to Craig Conley)

And this cartoon from the January 1880 issue of Punch is downright startling:

(Hat tip once again to Craig Conley for finding this one)

If I'm reading this cartoon rightly, the point seems to be that some beautiful young women (center) retain their looks quite well into middle age (left), but others . . . not so much (right), and it's hard to predict which way your particular belle may go.  (Yes of course it's sexist; it's 1880.) It does bring up an interesting question: does the particular poignancy of April-December derive more from her loss of beauty or her loss of youthfulness? The safe answers are (1) "both" and/or (2) "the two are inextricably mixed." But if I had to choose, I'd say "youthfulness," because September in Marc's original four is not particularly bad looking. She may not be a beauty queen any more, but she's certainly not a hag. Even December in Marc's rendering is just about average-looking for a woman in her late 90's (I've done part-time work as a Resident Aide caretaker in assisted living centers for years, and my own Mom is 95, so believe me, I know what women in their late 90's typically look like). "Loss of youth" makes the painting's statement more universal. As the Punch cartoon shows, some of us carry our years better than others, but eventually there's only one destination.


Life is But a Dream

Ed Kohn's rendition of April is lovely and fascinating.  I find her far more interesting than the girl who turns into Medusa.  That message is pretty straightforward:  Beneath a soft and feminine façade may lie something dreadful and deadly.  I use "feminine" advisedly, as Davis seemed to like the femme fatale theme quite a lot.  There's the Cat Lady down at the other end of the line, of course, and there are a number of other changing portrait ideas exploiting this general motif that were never realized (even if one of them did turn up among the "Sinister 11", minus the gag).

Incidentally, with the gorgon girl, look how skillfully Ed Kohn reduced Marc Davis's first two panels to one.  (Reportedly, he worked closely with Davis.)  He has reproduced the first panel, but with more unruly hair and the barest hint of a frown in the eyebrows, so there's a taste of panel two in it as well, just the faintest whisper of the monster to come.

Snakes.

Why 'd it have to be snakes.

 

But April is not a monster in waiting.  She's like "Master Gracey," but without the smugness that loses our sympathy.  What is she?  Look all you want:  Not only can't you tell what she's thinking, you can't even tell if she's thinking.  She could be sleepwalking through life, unaware, like the Tightrope Girl, but without the humor, without the surrealistic and cartoonish denouement following the introduction.  There's nothing funny here.  She's something like the unused "corpse bride" portrait, but without the suggestion of a specific and tragic background story.

The closest thing to an exact parallel is really the bouquet of wilting flowers (previously discussed HERE and HERE.)  But flowers have no soul.  No one wonders what they are thinking.  In the end, I think April is one of the most enigmatic characters in the entire Haunted Mansion. With the Hatbox Ghost back, April is now the undisputed mistress of that elite company of the elided.  She is a shade now retired even from that most ultimate of retirement homes, the most invisible of the invisible, presently present only in her absence.  And if I could think up some more clever descriptions, I'm sure she'd be those too. Let's face it...

April is the new "Hatbox Ghost."

Fare thee well, April, wherever you are.

Famous Ghosts, and Ghosts Trying to Make a Name for Themselves

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Ghosts.

That word covers a lot of territory, from Casper the Friendly to Hamlet's father, from trick-or-treat bag white-sheeters to the really scary ones in literature, cinema, and legend, to say nothing of reports of reputedly real hauntings.  One of the fundamental decisions that confronted the Imagineers who put together the Haunted Mansion was choosing which ghosts and ghoulies to put before the public.  It was like writing a recipe.  How much should the Mansion rely—if at all—on cinematic ghosts?  or Halloween decoration ghosts?  or established dark ride traditions?  The long gestation period of the Haunted Mansion and the conflicting concepts proposed by the many Imagineers who worked on it ensured that the recipe for the attraction would go through many permutations before it was finalized.  But Marc Davis's famous verdict to the effect that this particular broth was spoiled by too many cooks is refuted by the ride's growing and often passionate fan base.  Mmm-mmm good.  Mighty tasty, that recipe.

This post takes a look at some of the approaches they seriously considered but eventually rejected, and why.  Curiously enough, for anyone who is interested in this topic, there is a set of paintings that serves almost as an index of the Mansion's disused and discarded concepts:  The "Sinister 11" portraits.  These are found at WDW and Tokyo, but they were never used at Disneyland.

I'm sure that many of you are already aware that most of the Sinister 11 represent unused ideas for changing portraits.  Two of them did indeed become changing portraits at DL (Medusa and "December" from the April-December set); the rest became static paintings with "follow-you" eyes.  Until 2007 at WDW they were all in a nice neat corridor.  At Tokyo, that's still so.  Since 2007, most of the Orlando set can be seen in the load area, with a few placed elsewhere in the ride.  However, they no longer stare at you as you go by.  It's interesting enough to discover that many of these are really truncated changing portraits; it's even more interesting (to me, anyway) when you realize that they are, in several cases, signposts pointing to paths not taken.

Take Jack the Ripper.  He has the distinction of being—possibly—the ONLY fully historical figure in any of the Mansions.

 Good old Jack, always prepared to put his best foot forward.  He was a little more grisly in Marc
Davis's concept sketch (upper left).  In the upper right is Jack as he's seen today.   The bottom two
are from the eyes-follow-you days, an effect made possible through the magic of half a ping pong ball.

In 2019 a much better copy of the original Jack sketch was published:

MDIHOW 429

I say "possibly" because it has been pointed out to me by one of our readers that the Knight changing portrait was labeled "the Black Prince" on Marc Davis's original sketch, as GRD noted years ago.  If that refers to Edward, the Black Prince, then we have one other historical character.  What about "Great Caesar's Ghost"?  Sorry, he doesn't count, because it's uncertain which Caesar he is.  No doubt he's either Julius or Augustus, but since it isn't specified, he's technically a generic figure rather than a historical figure.  Same with the Mummy.  He's frequently referred to as King Tut, but without a scrap of evidence.

Jack is all that remains of Ken Anderson's and then Marc Davis's ambitious plans to use a variety of colorful historical villains in the Mansion.  Ken's 1957 show scripts included Anne Boleyn, Lucrezia Borgia, Anne Bonny, Jack the Ripper, and King Tut (not really a villain, of course, but fully historical and . . . sorta creepy).  From that list, Marc kept Anne Boleyn . . .

. . . and Mr. Ripper.  He also added a number of historical villains of his own, including Guy Fawkes and Ivan the Terrible.  (By the way, these were not going to be changing portraits but talking portraits, I am told.)  As an aside, it's always fun to speculate about the models Marc may have used in drawing his sketches—in these cases caricatures of historical figures.

Davis's rendering of Guy Fawkes (upper left) seems to owe something to more than one historical
portrait of the famous Gunpowder Plot conspirator.  The lower left sketch is by George Cruikshank,
a famous caricaturist previously mentioned in our discussion of the Phantom Drummer of Tedworth. 
It's very likely that Davis knew his work.  In the present case, note the feather in the hat.

Renderings of Ivan are so few that this 19th c. painting (above) can probably be identified as
a model, almost by default.  It's harder to say whether this other thing (below) was laid under
contribution.  I kinda doubt it, but then again, there's that helmet-like crown, so maybe . . . .
Well, it's pretty enough to justify putting it up on the board in any event:

Marc also planned to use Rasputin.  Believe it or not, Walt nixed this one himself, not because it was so weird but because he feared that relatives of Rasputin might still be alive (which was true) and might want to sue them!  Marc recycled some of his unused Rasputin portrait into one of the Sinister 11, the one sometimes referred to as "the ogre."

As for Marc's inspiration, who knows?  I mean, when doesn't Rasputin look like that?

Marc was still open to this approach at the time they were planning Tokyo Disneyland, and he did a concept sketch showing an animated crypt full of "famous villians" [sic], including Nero, the subject of a Davis sketch GRD got hold of.  Maybe the concept was for him to be a talking, moving statue.  Nero, that is, not GRD.  Whatever it was, this too came to nothing.

In the end, only one or two historical characters survived the sifting process.  And at Disneyland, there is no Jack the Ripper portrait, so Edward, the Black Prince is all you get in the Anaheim original.

When we turn to ghosts and creeps from literature and cinema, the story is much the same:  This was going to be a major source, but there is little evidence of it in the actual attraction.  Anderson scripted in cameos by Marley and Scrooge, Little Eva and Simon Legree (from Uncle Tom's Cabin), the Canterville Ghost (from an Oscar Wilde play by that name), Captain Hook (at that time, probably inspired more directly by the Barrie play than by the relatively recent Disney treatment of the character), Dracula, the Frankenstein monster, the Hunchback of Notre Dame, and the Phantom of the Opera.  Of these, Davis kept only Dracula, an obvious and easy choice for a changing portrait:

He survived as one of the Sinister 11, of course:

Upper left is the ride version, complete with ping pong balls.
Upper right is some impressive concept artwork.
Lower left, another example from the Sinister 11.
Lower right is a painter prepared Drac for Tokyo
Disneyland, from Eyes and Ears magazine (Mar
27, 1981), a very nice find by Master Gracey

But as usual, Davis proposed a few such characters of his own.  A couple were from classical mythology.  There's Medusa, an original changing portrait at DL (as she is also now at WDW) and an original Sinister 11 member at Tokyo and WDW.

 Marc also did work on a portrait based on the Apollo and Daphne myth;
unfortunately, the artwork has never been published — until this moment:

MDIHOW 351

(As of November 2015, we know that Daphne was expanded to six images at

one point and may have been a serious contender for inclusion in the Mansion.)

Just as the Sinister 11 "ogre" is actually a recycled design based on an unused Rasputin changing portrait, so also the S 11 "arsonist" is based on an unused changing portrait, this one depicting a wolfman.  It's not clear whether Marc's wolfman owes anything to cinematic or literary archetypes.  The same is true of Dracula, actually.  In fact, you cannot find any indisputable case of borrowing directly from the movies to provide a specific character for the Mansion.  The only example of this I can find anywhere in Mansion concept art is Ken Anderson's (Duane Alt's) Frankenstein, which is obviously molded in the moldy mold of Boris Karloff.

We need to mention again the following, even though it's a Poe example of the phenomenon.  Once upon a midnight dreary, characters and images from Edgar Allan Poe were going to enjoy a conspicuous presence in the HM, as we've seen in a previous post.  The Raven's dialogue was replete with "nevermore's," and a demonic, one-eyed black cat was going to pester you all through the ride.  But the Poe allusions were eventually taken out of the mix.

So are Dracula and Medusa really the only direct borrowings from literature and/or cinema that made it into the Mansion?  Almost.  You've also got the Bluebeard crypt.  But yeah, that's about it.

We find the same story yet again when we turn to the campy, hokey, orange-and-black world of Halloween iconography, another obvious source of ghost and haunted house lore.

Sheet ghosts, witches, skeletons, black cats, bats, spiders, jack-o-lanterns—all that stuff.  So little of this approach is in evidence at the Mansion that you may be surprised to learn how seriously some of the Imagineers contemplated using it.  You must admit that Herb Ryman's 1951 rendering of a haunted house, the sketch that started it all, really does look like something you'd see on a Halloween poster...

Ken Anderson also dipped his pen into this inkwell a few times.  One of his scripts called for a marriage between "Monsieur Bogeyman" and "Mlle. Vampire," and his sketch of the mansion exterior had an unmistakably Halloweenish black cat weather vane on it, faithfully preserved by Sam McKim and Marvin Davis in subsequent artwork and only traded in for the familiar schooner shortly before the final blueprints were drawn up.  

But it was Marc Davis who showed the most inclination to exploit Halloween iconography.  It's not known whether he just changed his mind about this approach, or if other Imagineers helped him see the error of his ways.  In a previous post, we saw that Davis apparently had a difficult time with the seemingly simple notion of putting a witch into the Haunted Mansion.  He veered back and forth between a "real" Black Sabbat type of witch and a Halloween decoration witch.  The "Witch of Walpurgis" (among the Sinister 11) remains the only witch in the HM, a compromise between the two approaches.  Marc also persisted for a long time with the idea of using stereotypical white sheet ghosts.  Like the witches, they're something right off of a trick-or-treat bag.

Marc carried this approach toward realization surprisingly far.  One of his hitchhikers ("Ezra") still had that icky "Casper the Friendly Ghost" look when he was done up as a maquette.  Of course, it's easy to dump on it because we all know that what took its place is so amazingly good.

Marc was big on the black cat thing, too.  (Lower right: dude, Ken's weather vane lives!)  But the only Davis black
cats that survived into the finished Mansion are to be found—surprise!—in a couple of the Sinister 11 portraits.

Is anything left of this?  Not much.  The fact that the seasonal Haunted Mansion Holiday feels like a complete transformation shows how little iconography from Halloween is in the original.  The only things in the finished Mansion that ever struck me as stemming from a campy Halloween milieu were those cheesy, orange, giant spiders.  [Edit: in the Comments, the Bat weather vane at WDW was mentioned, and I agree that it probably qualifies as another example of Halloween decor at the HM]

A few notes on the spiders:  They originally had one of these orange guys in the big web of the DL "Limbo" load area through which the doombuggies descended (which web has been gone since about 2001) . . .

.                                                                                         . . . but they eventually changed it to a more realistic color scheme.  I think it's a natural law:  all giant spiders gravitate toward the Mexican Orange-Kneed Tarantula look (you know, the one you always see in the movies).

The original orange giants persisted at WDW until 2007 in the area now occupied by the "Escher" staircases.

Tokyo still has spiders in that location, but they feature the more realistic, DL coloration.  They also move

their legs, which is cool.  If you really must do the giant spider thing, that's the way to do it.

  Though the Disneyland spider has been gone for many years, he lives again here at Long-Forgotten, in glorious 3D:

After this post was already written and in the can, lo and behold FoxxFur decided to take up the topic of Disney's giant spiders. How strange the workings of destiny. Anyway, if you want to explore Disney's arachnophilia further, check it out.

To sum up our study so far:  All that is left of specific historical characters in the HM are the Jack the Ripper and (probably) Edward, the Black Prince portraits.  All that is left of specific literary, mythological, and cinematic characters are the Dracula and Medusa portraits and Bluebeard's crypt.  In the style and manner of Halloween decor, all that is left are some giant spiders at Tokyo—assuming that is a valid categorization for them in the first place—and probably the bat weather vane at WDW.

Hey, how about traditional dark ride phantasmagoria?  Didn't they consider that approach?  Well, there are the popup ghosts, of course, widely understood as a hat tip to the HM's dark ride roots.

(left image from Laff in the Dark)

Addendum: August 7, 2015
You know, it may be possible to tip our hat to something more specific than "dark ride roots." Most of the HM graveyard popups pop up from behind tombstones (as above, right). As it happens, exactly this stunt can be found in The Haunted House, a dark ride at the Boardwalk in Ocean City, Maryland, run by Trimper's Amusements. It dates to 1964.

You can compare that with the Mansion versions:

. . . and again . . . 

The resemblance could be coincidental, of course, but it's worth noting that The Haunted House is a Bill Tracy spookhouse (one of only a handful still operating). We discuss Mr. Tracy's dark ride contributions elsewhere, so suffice it to say here that he was an acknowledged master of the genre, and it's likely that his rides were researched by the HM team. It's also quite possible that the popup-spook-behind-the-tombstone stunt was used in other Tracy dark rides as well. Once he got into his groove, he tended to stick to a tried-and-true menu of tacky tableaux.


Some would argue that the coffin guy is an adaptation of the coffin popper, or "Dead Dan" gag, a spookhouse perennial.  That's probably valid.  Maybe the hanging corpse.  Beyond that, I don't see much reliance on the haunted house dark ride tradition.

(Images from Laff in the Dark)

However, in contrast to the approaches discussed above, I don't know that the Imagineers ever planned to use the spookhouse template further than they did, so it probably doesn't belong in a discussion of approaches that have left a smaller footprint than originally contemplated.

Time for the big "so what?" moment.  Goodness knows, you've been patient long enough.

What is the common thread running through all of these ultimately rejected approaches?

All of them betray a basic insecurity, an attempt to borrow scare credentials from pre-existing, pre-packaged sources.  In rejecting these approaches, the Imagineers voted for originality.  The Haunted Mansion would stand on its own two feet, or it wouldn't stand at all.  No shortcuts, no quick and easy goosebumps by putting a Frankenstein monster in there or having a Pit and the Pendulum scene.  We have done a lot of posts ferreting out ghostly inspirations in myth, literature, and history for such things as the attic bride, the graveyard band, the hearse and coachman, the decapitated knight, and the mummy scene, just to name some of the more interesting ones.  In every case the inspirations are inspirations only.  The Mansion characters themselves are originals.  After half a century, they've made their way into the popular cultural consciousness, and you can speak of Madame Leota or the Hitchhiking Ghosts in the same breath as Frankenstein or Dracula, so familiar are they.  But at one time, they represented a creative risk. In other words . . .

In spite of Marty Sklar's famous placard, the Imagineers ultimately excluded

"famous ghosts" in favor of "ghosts trying to make a name for themselves."

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