By Nancy Imperiale - Sentinel Staff Writer

November 22, 2003

You could say it's a dead giveaway.

When people visit Robin Sue Trimarchi's apartment, they see a bearded ghost mask on the wall. There's a miniature clock with red moving fingers, and a light-up play set of a haunted house. Such ghoulish trinkets make it easy to comprehend her obsession -- she's a fan of that venerable ghostly joy ride at Disney, the Haunted Mansion.

But comprehending isn't the same as understanding.

"Some people make comments like 'Oh really? Into the Haunted Mansion, are you?' Or they'll call you 'The Haunted Mansion freak.' " says the 29-year-old Kissimmee woman.

"I have a friend who just does not get it at all. She'll say 'You did all this stuff at the mansion? You bought all this mansion stuff?' Not everybody understands."

Foolish mortals.

With the Nov. 26 release of Disney's The Haunted Mansion movie, a new book devoted to the attraction, and an ever-growing line of mansion-related merchandise, the world at large may finally grasp what mansion aficionados have known all along:

They're not alone.

"There are tens of thousands of Haunted Mansion fans," says Leonard Pickel, editor of Haunted Attraction Magazine, a trade publication.

These are not casual fans but "people who have the memorabilia and who ride the attraction multiple times every time they go to the park. They're devoted."

For many adult fans, the Haunted Mansion is "like reliving a childhood dream," says Jeff Baham.

"One thing I hear over and over from people is that the mansion is meaningful to them because they remember it from childhood," says Baham, creator of fan Web site Doombuggies.com. "There is something almost mystical about being able to experience something over and over that hasn't changed a bit."

Named for the twirling black cocoons that shuttle visitors through the ride, Doombuggies .com was created six years ago. The site now gets 2,000-3,000 visits a day, Baham says, and has 6,000 registered users. Members often log in to debate issues like "Bride Ghost: Moving or standing still?" or simply post observations like "I distinctly heard the tambourine at the incorrect time on Tuesday last. . . ."

"It's amazing," Baham says, "to watch a thriving culture develop and surround an experience that many folks would just call, well, a ride."

Mansion-inspired merchandise now includes coffin purses, hearse pins, ghost bobble-head dolls and die-cast doombuggies.

But some homages are more personal.

Like the 41-year-old Pasadena man who had a giant Haunted Mansion tattoo needled onto his entire right thigh. The tattoo features the ride's trademark hitchhiking ghosts, a mummy, singing busts, a grimacing organist, all sorts of spectral fog and mist and the entire mansion facade.

"The graveyard band was eliminated early on in the process," says tattoo owner Jim Kocher, "because we ran out of room." (Kocher is reluctant to reveal how much the tattoo cost. But you can view his online tattoo diary, from conceptual drawing to completed cheeks, at http:www.2adults1child.com).

Fans from the start

Many fans trace their enthusiasm back to a 1969 record album, Story and Song from the Haunted Mansion released on the Disneyland label.

"By the time many children finally visited the mansion, they could already quote the narration of the ride word for word because of that record," Baham says.

What also unites mansion fans is their attention to detail. They thrill to the narration, to the lights, to every shaking door and flying ghost.

They look for the "hidden Mickeys" in the ride, of which there are two. (One is official, a shadow inside a specter's hand near the exit. The other is "unofficial" -- when ride workers push three plates together on the table in the ballroom, until they resemble a mouse head and ears. They're not supposed to do this, Disney officials say, but seem to delight in doing it anyway.)

"I think when some people ride it they just get on and then leave and say 'OK, that was entertaining.' But when I go, I sort of pay attention to the details," says 13-year-old Robert Koehler of Tampa. Since his first tour of the Florida Haunted Mansion at what he swears was age 2, Robert says he's "probably ridden it 50 times." (If you're doing the math, that's once every quarterly report card.)

"Every little painting and door handle and everything means something," he says. "You see the bride with the red beating heart. OK, why is the bride here? You sort of try to guess the whole story. I'm really excited to see the movie. 'Cause we get to see if our guess was correct."

Ah yes. The movie.

You'd think that Haunted Mansion fans would be thrilled to see their favorite attraction finally given its due alongside Pirates of the Caribbean as the inspiration for a feature-length film.

The two attractions share a special place in the Disney pantheon, lacking as they do the saccharine qualities of the "It's A Small World" ride and its ilk, or the earnestness of the "Hall of Presidents" genre. Pirates and the Mansion are rides with a wink-wink, nudge-nudge.

But when The Haunted Mansion arrives next week, many fans will put aside some of the winking and nudging for crossing of fingers.

"The fans are looking forward to the movie overall," Baham says cautiously, "although many of them are pretty guarded. . . . Early buzz was pretty negative purely due to Eddie Murphy being cast [in the lead]. . . . Most Haunted Mansion fans are a little more eccentric in their tastes. They might have preferred a Tim Burton film, rather than the genre suggested by Eddie's involvement."

"Some will love it and some will hate it. . . . Personally, I'm jazzed."

What would Walt do?

The fact that Walt Disney did not live to see any of the mansions completed has fueled discussions over whether he would have approved of the attraction's darker edges.

"Anyone can speculate on what Walt would have liked," says Jason Surrell, author of The Haunted Mansion: From the Magic Kingdom to the Movies. "I tend to think he would have gone on the side of less scary. Yet it's clear that Walt did want a haunted experience."

Surrell, 33, lives in Orlando where he works as a Disney "imagineer," writing and directing stage shows. He remembers being hooked on the mansion from the first time he saw it at Walt Disney World in 1975, at age 5.

He sought permission to write the mansion book because, as a fan, "it was the classic case of wanting to read the book that I wrote."

Surrell also has a history that gave him instant street cred with mansion fans -- he penned the epitaph for the tombstone of Madame Leota, whose eyes inside her sculpted head appear to watch visitors entering the mansion.

Surrell's 131-page book takes readers inside the iron gates, from Walt Disney's first visions of the mansion (He told a BBC interviewer he envisioned a retirement home for ghosts) to the numerous artists who contributed concept drawings and models. The book paints a compelling portrait of all the minds that contributed to the mansion and all their explanations -- from sea captains to doomed brides to Bluebeard-like husbands -- that were conceived of to explain the house's tragic past and haunted present.

Different visions

The tension between comedy and tragedy has been a part of the mansion since its inception.

In 1958 Disney animator Ken Anderson{CQ} sketched one of the first concept drawings for the original Haunted Mansion at Disneyland in California. (The ride would not open until 1969.)

The pencil sketch of the decaying antebellum mansion with bats circling was loved by everyone at the company, according to Surrell, except Walt Disney, who considered it too messy.

Disney didn't want any rotten-looking buildings in the theme park. Surrell says he issued a now-legendary decree: "We'll take care of the outside, and let the ghosts take care of the inside."

Today there are four mansions, each situated in different lands in the four Disney theme parks around the world. The California mansion has the Southern antebellum facade (but so well-maintained that early on it confused visitors, who didn't realize it was a scary ride).

Walt Disney World in Orlando and Tokyo Disney share a gothic facade.

In Disneyland Paris the house has been renamed Phantom Manor and revised with new music and effects. The Paris mansion is the most dilapidated in appearance, a ramshackle wooden Victorian. (In each case the facades are but a tiny portion of the ride, which is contained in a huge building hidden behind.)

'3-D storytelling'

The latter portion of Surrell's book focuses on the film, with behind-the-scenes photographs illustrating filmmakers' painstaking efforts to create an on-screen experience that would match what park visitors enjoy about the ride.

"The filmmakers said they never set out to re-create the attraction. You can't do that because film is a different medium," Surrell says. "But they felt beholden to the spirit of the Haunted Mansion."

Several pieces of the film's grand sets, including an ornate staircase, massive fireplace and pipe organ, were struck and shipped to Florida, where the film crew along with Surrell and fellow imagineer Theron Skees reconstructed them. Visitors can tour the "Making of the Haunted Mansion Movie" space at Disney-MGM Studios through March 2004.

Surrell says the mansion captivates because it's "3-D storytelling."

"This, along with Pirates, is truly virtual reality. You are in an environment that immerses you in another life."

Or afterlife. And that may be the biggest attraction of all.

"Ghost stories, as scary as they are, are also deeply reassuring," Surrell says. "They are telling us that there's definitely something after death."

Nancy Imperiale can be reached at nimperiale@orlandosentinel.com or 407-650-6323.

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