The Story Of The Haunted Mansion
October 31, 2012 9:05 PM   Subscribe

It's not too late for one more Halloween spook -- Thurl Ravenscroft narrates as Ron "Ritchie Cunningham" Howard and Robie Lester (Mrs. Kris Kringle, Disney Storybook narrator ["when Tinkerbells rings her little bells... turn the page"] encounter Pete Renoudet as the Ghost Host in Disney's 1969 adventure, The Story Of The Haunted Mansion. [25m]

Bonus material: The Ghost Organist, Eleanor "Maleficent" Audley performs Madame Leota's Incantation, and Grim Grinning Ghosts, Buddy Baker's immortal song, in its entirety.
posted by hippybear (5 comments total) 1 user marked this as a favorite
 
Serendipity! I ran across the CD on Amazon over the weekend and received it just in time for Halloween. We listened to it while carving pumpkins tonight. I haven't heard it since maybe 1980 but I still knew a lot of it by heart.

I kept saying "that sounds exactly like Ron Howard!"

And then as we made the rounds trick or treating tonight one of the neighbors had some sort of gadget playing Madame Leota's disembodied head in their front window.

And now this post. Thanks for the links! It almost makes me want to go down to Disneyland to spend a ridiculous amount of money to stand in line and see the haunted mansion again.
posted by DrumsIntheDeep at 9:36 PM on October 31, 2012


Obligatory link to the internet's only Advanced Haunted Mansion Theory blog
posted by anazgnos at 10:03 PM on October 31, 2012 [1 favorite]


It almost makes me want to go down to Disneyland to spend a ridiculous amount of money to stand in line and see the haunted mansion again.

I know people who regularly to to Disneyland to drop a half tab and do nothing but ride the Haunted Mansion over and over. Apparently it's a great way to spend a day.

The last time I was at DL I dropped a half tab and rode the (then opened just three weeks earlier) Indiana Jones ride over and over again. It was a great way to spend a day.

(Damn, that was a long time ago. I need to get some tabs and go to DL again one of these days.)
posted by hippybear at 10:23 PM on October 31, 2012 [1 favorite]


The first time I rode the Haunted Mansion I was five and spent the ride with my head buried in my dad's arms. When he said the ride was done I looked out and we had just reached the Hitchhiking Ghosts mirrors. He still claims he genuinely thought the ride was over and didn't know that part was coming. I spent the rest of the day being scared that a ghost was somehow attached to me and actually going to follow me home.

This made me look up Disney's Halloween Treat. The music starting up and the skeletons dancing made my heart thud with the memories of covering my eyes until the introduction was over because I loved The Sword in the Stone so much. It hadn't been released on VHS yet, so I would sit through 2 minutes of terror to watch a 4 minute clip. Fast-forwarding was out the question because I had to stand next to the TV to do that and the skeletons could have reached out and grabbed me.

Yeah, I was THAT kid.
posted by MaritaCov at 6:29 AM on November 1, 2012 [2 favorites]


Greetings from BoingBoing, hippybear.
posted by MonkeyToes at 5:49 AM on November 2, 2012 [1 favorite]


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