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padfootagain · 10 months

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Isle of Dogs (IV)

Chapter 4: Nightmares

Hello! Hello! Here is a new chapter for my wolfstar series! I hope you like it!

I have no idea why it turned so sad, I don’t know what came over me…

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Pairing: Wolfstar – Sirius Black x Remus Lupin

Warnings: Mentions of a car accident (through a dream), mentions of death and blood (through a dream too), Modern AU, tattoo artist x bookshop owner AU

Summary: Sirius and Remus have been kind of in love for a while, but are both too scared to confess their feelings. However, everything changes when their neighbourhood is threatened by a new real estate project. But if they might fail in their fight against the City, they could also find something sweeter along the way.

Word Count: 2327

Masterlist for the series – Main Masterlist

Sirius had no idea what had happened that afternoon between Martha and Remus. None of them were willing to discuss what was said, what they had done together. When questioned, Martha merely gave Sirius a wink filled with mischief and a bright grin.

“Nothing you have to worry about. I give the two of you my blessing. I like this boy. He’s sweet, although, I’m sure he’s more ruthless than he seems to be.”

Sirius blinked a few times, mumbled something about the fact that Remus was just a friend, nothing more. But he couldn’t refrain a smile at Martha’s validation.

Meanwhile, Remus merely gave Sirius a shrug.

“Nothing happened. We took a walk, and chatted. Nothing much, really. She talked about you.”

“About me?”

A fond smile tugged at Remus’s lips, but he didn’t look at Sirius, and averted his eyes instead.

“Yeah… a little bit.”

No more details were offered, and it was driving Sirius absolutely crazy.

What had Martha told Remus? And did Remus learn things about Sirius that he wasn’t ready to share yet?

But Remus was still the same when Sirius dropped by on Monday, right before lunch, under the pretence of buying some books. Wrapped in a warm jumper, looking comfy and dishevelled, and smelling of coffee and cinnamon rolls. Still the same inquisitive look in his eyes, filled with something infinitely sad.

So, Sirius decided to act as if nothing had happened. He offered Remus his usual crooked smile, buried his hands in his leather jacket. He was still the same, in his combat boots and torn-out jeans. Still the same wild look in his eyes, filled with something infinitely sad.

Martha didn’t want Remus to tell Sirius about their afternoon together. She had claimed she wanted to speak freely to him, that afternoon under the sun, near the donkeys wandering across the park. As Remus looked at Sirius from afar, stared at his tall frame bending in search of a title on the bookshelf, at the back of his small shop, he couldn’t help but hear Martha’s words.

It is not my place to speak about what Sirius has gone through, but he didn’t have it easy, for a very long time. Love isn’t an easy word for him to speak, or an easy emotion to feel. If you care about him, you’ll have to wait for him.

“Ha! Found it! For a moment, I thought you didn’t have this beautiful book! I would have asked for your bookshop to be closed, Remus! You would have been a shame to your profession!”

Sirius’s laugh rang through the shop, loud and a little too much, coming out of his chest and bending his whole frame. Head thrown back, like a kid.

Remus didn’t even notice that he was smiling at the sight, at the sound. But he reckoned that he agreed with Martha on this.

There was something broken that Sirius hid. Just like there was something broken about Remus that he enjoyed hiding. He understood the feeling.

It was okay. Remus would wait. He reckoned that Sirius was worth it.

Sirius was bored out of his mind. It wasn’t exactly surprising, though. Standing by the docks, handing over flyers, it wasn’t particularly an exciting activity. What was more surprising, though, was that Remus was all grumpy and as equally bored as Sirius.

“I thought you were all patience and calm, Lupin,” Sirius teased his friend, owning himself a glare.

“Very funny.”

“What’s gotten into you on this fine Wednesday morning?”

“Besides the fact that I’m freezing here, with you?”

“Ouch… that hurts… you should know better. Don’t you know my company is absolutely delightful?”

Remus mumbled something under his breath that sounded a lot like ‘delightful, my arse’, but Sirius couldn’t be sure.

“Come on, tell me! What’s wrong? You look exhausted.”

Remus shrugged, handing a flyer to a stranger, hoping they would read about the real estate project for their neighbourhood before throwing the piece of paper away.

“Nothing’s wrong, I just… couldn’t sleep last night.”

Sirius frowned.

“Insomnia?”

“Yeah… something like that.”

“Nightmares?”

Remus finally turned to the man standing next to him. He looked a little intimidating like this, with his long dark hair, his sharp cheekbones, his pierced ears, the tattoos on his fingers and the silver rings there too. Leather jacket, as usual. Still, when he looked at Remus, there was nothing but worry and something protective in his grey eyes. Something that made Remus think that maybe Sirius could understand…

“Yeah… something like that.”

Sirius nodded, slowly, his jaw clenching, making the muscle there jump.

“These always suck,” he merely said, and it wasn’t a great answer, but the way his glance saddened spoke the words Remus longed to hear.

I get it. I have those too.

“There’s nothing I can really do about it, anyway,” he shrugged.

“No, of course not,” Sirius whispered under his breath, averting his gaze.

It was strange to see Sirius like this, shifting his weight from one foot to the other, clearly uncomfortable. He was usually so smooth, so confident. Instead, now, he was shying away, his cheeks blushing.

He cleared his throat.

“Do you want to talk about it?”

The offer was hesitant, as if he wasn’t sure whether or not he was speaking the words Remus longed to hear. And to be fair, Remus wasn’t sure he liked Sirius’s response.

“The nightmares are always the same. I don’t think I need that,” he merely answered, in yet another shrug.

Sirius nodded, handing a flyer. He caught the way the stranger threw it away in a bin without even glancing at the paper.

He heaved a sigh.

“We’re wasting our time here. It’s not working. People don’t care about flyers.”

“What do you propose we do, then?”

“I don’t know. But this is… this is useless.”

“So what? You’re giving up on us all already?”

The words were too harsh, uncalled for, and Sirius frowned hard at the sound, staring at his friend again.

“What’s wrong with you? I’m not giving up on anything. I’m just saying that us freezing our arses here to give people flyers they don’t read is useless.”

“What do you propose then?”

“I don’t know… Why are you so damn angry, all of a sudden?”

Remus’s gaze dropped to the tip of his shoes. And he should have apologized, but he couldn’t. It was Sirius’s fault, after all, if he didn’t sleep at all the night before.

Still, even if he remained quiet, he felt guilty.

Sirius heaved a sigh.

“Come on, let’s get ourselves some tea, or a coffee, or… anything warm, really. I’m going to turn into an ice cube.”

Remus wanted to refuse. He wanted to go home, and lie awake staring at the ceiling, the way he had throughout the entire night. When he did, he didn’t see Sirius’s face through this windshield…

“Come on, Rem.”

Sirius’s touch was so gentle on his sleeve, barely there at all. An invitation, more than an order or even an encouragement. Remus could still walk away, if he wanted. He could still leave, go home, cry some more, drown in his worst fears, his nightmares, his painful memories. Sirius made him an offer he could refuse. It was his decision.

When he finally looked up again, fell into Sirius’s eyes, he didn’t even notice the way he leaned into the touch.

He could have gone home, and push everything and everyone away. He found that he was too tired to do so. Instead, he nodded, silently accepted Sirius’s offer, followed him, no matter where he was guided.

He tried to convince himself that he was making an effort by following Sirius, that he was being stronger than his fears, that he was being brave. It was a lie. He was being a coward.

Instead of facing what frightened him most, he avoided it. He simply longed to replace the vision of Sirius’s dead eyes by the ones filled with light…

By Friday evening, Remus was exhausted to the point where his head was spinning too fast for him to stand properly.

Third night plagued with the same nightmares. Always the same.

Headlights. The ones from his past. The ones from that night. Only, when he woke up crying, rubbing the tears and blood from his eyes, when he walked out of the car, he was an adult. He was the driver. And in the opposite car, there was a familiar face, one he always dreamt about, one he longed to see more than he would care to admit.

Sirius’s eyes wide-opened, blank. Lacking this fire in them, that wild look, that defiance that always shone through them. Lifeless…

In the darkness of his bedroom, Remus opened his eyes in a hurry, gasping for air. He couldn’t keep on falling asleep and watching the blood on Sirius’s cheekbones. He couldn’t…

He was too tired to think properly, too tired not to cry. It was the only logical reason for him to reach blindly for this phone on his bedside table. It was merely 10pm.

He dialled the number he knew by heart, pressed it to his ear, sniffing, waiting for the ringing to subside. It did.

“Hello?”

Remus let out a long, relieved exhale at the sound of this deep voice…

“Rem? Is that you? You’re okay?”

Music. It was banging into his eardrums, a background sound behind Sirius’s reassuring voice. He must have been in a club, or at a bar. Friday night, 10pm. Nothing surprising, coming from him.

“I’m sorry I bothered you,” answered Remus.

But Sirius didn’t let him hang up the phone.

“Rem? You’re alright? You don’t sound well.”

Remus sniffed, dried his cheeks on his sleeve.

“It’s stupid, I’m sorry for calling you.”

“Stupid…? Rem, are you crying?”

“No…”

“Where are you?”

“Home.”

“Alright, I’ll be here in twenty.”

“No, Sirius, that’s not why I called you.”

“Why did you call, then?”

But Remus had no idea. He wasn’t really sure himself, he reckoned, not with that much lack of sleep.

“Rem, stay where you are, okay? I’ll be right there.”

Before he could find an argument, Sirius had hung up the phone. And so, Remus followed Sirius’s instructions, he was too tired to get up anyway, and he remained lying there, staring at this one crack in the ceiling.

As promised, Remus heard the loud engines of Sirius’s bike growling outside, about twenty minutes later.

He went to open the door, found Sirius hurrying towards him, running his hand through his hair. He frowned at the sight of Remus’s reddened eyes, but he didn’t say a word, and merely stepped inside, instead.

He walked all the way to Remus’s flat, set above his bookshop. He didn’t ask permission to take off his jacket, throw it on a chair in the kitchen and reach for the whiskey hidden under the sink. He grabbed a couple of glasses, sat down, all the while wrapped in silence.

“Were you on a date?”

These were Remus’s first words, and they were stupid. He already knew the answer.

“Yeah, I was.”

“But you’re here.”

Sirius let out a breathy chuckle.

“You’re more important than one of my dates, Rem.”

And Remus was glad.

Sirius poured them a glass of alcohol.

“I’m sleeping on your couch,” he stated. “I’ll be too drunk to drive by the end of the night.”

Remus nodded, without giving any argument against Sirius’s decision. He didn’t want to argue, for as long as Sirius was staying.

He was handed a glass of whiskey by fingers littered with tattoos and silvery rings and black polish. He accepted the glass, reached for the hand before it could withdraw. He couldn’t look at Sirius while he held the cold fingers in his warm ones.

“Thank you. I’m glad you came.”

He didn’t see Sirius’s shrug, or embarrassed smile, or blushing cheeks.

“It’s nothing, Rem. You called, I answered. As simple as that.”

As simple as that…

“You had nightmares again, right?”

Sirius had guessed. Perhaps, considering Remus’s state of exhaustion, it wasn’t such a hard guess to make. Still, it felt like he understood.

Remus nodded.

“Well, I’ve never found a better treatment against that than to get incredibly drunk. So… let’s drink.”

“Doesn’t sound very responsible.”

“Rem, it’s me you’re talking to. When did you get the idea that I could be responsible?”

“True. My bad.”

Sirius’s hold on Remus’s hand tightened; a gentle squeeze, a reassuring one.

“Do you want to talk about them? The dreams?”

But Remus shook his head, and Sirius knew better than to insist.

“Alright, then. Let’s drink.”

“Is it really the answer to the problem?”

“No. No, it isn’t. You can’t drown your demons, on the contrary. They tend to thrive when you do. But… for a moment, it can help with the symptoms. And right now, you need to sleep a few hours, or you might pass out in an old lady’s arms tomorrow in your bookshop.”

Remus smiled at that, barely, just a tug at his lips, but it was something.

He emptied his glass in one gulp, and Sirius did the same. In the dimply lit kitchen, under the stars and the lamplights coming in from the window, the shushed buzzing noise of the fridge and the traffic, Sirius poured them another glass. They were still holding hands as they drank again.

It wasn’t a cure. Perhaps it would be enough for Remus to replace Sirius’s bleeding face with the smile and flushed cheeks he was offering him now. A little bit of peace. He could use some of that…

He looked at their entwined fingers. Sirius’s rough hands, clothed with cold metal, against his trembling ones coloured with scars. The two hands holding on each other. A hold that remained tight, steady, reassuring…

Perhaps, even for just a moment, it could be as simple as that…

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Taglist: @reg-arcturus-black @hells-escapees @omgrachwrites @wolfmoonmusic

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tomeandflickcorner · 6 months

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Haunted Mansion Double Feature

I decided to do something special for Halloween this year. For those of you who aren’t aware, the Haunted Mansion is one of my favorite rides in Disney World, and certainly my favorite in Magic Kingdom. If I had the opportunity to be a cast member at a Disney theme park, being assigned to that ride would be my first choice. For that reason, I thought it would be fun to review the movie that was based on the ride. Of course, unlike most movies based on Disney rides (such as Jungle Cruise from 2021 and the somewhat obscure Tower of Terror from 1997), the Disney company actually made two attempts at a Haunted Mansion movie. But which one is the superior version? Let’s venture into regions beyond and find out. Kindly step all the way in please, and make room for everyone. There’s no turning back now.

The Haunted Mansion (The 2003 Version)

The opening for this film is really creative in the way it tells a story without any dialogue, simply letting the music and visuals do the work. A masquerade ball is being held at an elaborately decorated mansion. With the help of some tarot cards that appear on screen at various points, we’re told how a love story met a tragic end, with a young woman writing and leaving behind what appears to be a suicide note for an unknown reason. Her horrified lover discovers it and takes off running to try and stop her, but arrives too late as she has already drank the poison-laced wine. In his grief, the man ends up taking his own life as well, hanging himself from the rafters (which obviously references the hanging man from every version of the ride, excluding the one at Hong Kong Disney, which arguably might not even count as a Haunted Mansion ride in the first place.)

It then cuts to the modern day. A young boy who appears to be delivering papers pedals his bike up to the now seemingly abandoned mansion. In hindsight, it seems a bit strange that this paper delivery boy decided to venture out to the mansion to begin with. As the audience, we already know that there’s nobody currently residing there (nobody living, that is), and I got the impression that the mansion is a bit off the beaten path, so it’s doubtful there are any other houses nearby who would be needing a newspaper delivered. Are we supposed to just assume he’s there on a dare? Either way, the boy is quickly scared off when a ghostly face bursts out from the mansion in a threatening manner, along with a disembodied voice ordering the boy to go away. In the paperboy’s haste to ride away on his bike, he drops some of his papers, including a stack of flyers for a real estate business called Evers and Evers, which is run by a husband and wife team, Jim and Sara Evers, played by Eddie Murphy and Marsha Thomason. The smiling face of Jim Evers printed on the flyer leads to a somewhat awkward transition to Jim in the middle of showing a house to a pair of prospective homebuyers, Mr. and Mrs. Coleman. Mr. Coleman is seemingly dragging his feet in regards to agreeing to buy the house, despite his wife’s approval of the place. So Jim ends up using a rather interesting tactic to convince them. His wife and business partner, Sara, calls him up in the middle of the house viewing to confirm their plans for later. It turns out that today is their wedding anniversary, and they have plans to go out for a nice dinner that evening. Jim, taking advantage of the fact that the Colemans can’t hear Sara’s half of the conversation, words his responses to Sara’s questions to make it sound like he’s speaking to someone else who is interested in buying the house. The very idea that someone else might buy the house they’re currently looking at prompts Mrs. Coleman to announce that they’ll take the house, overruling her husband’s handwringing, delivering a hard smack to his stomach in the process. (Somehow, I don’t see this marriage lasting for very long, but what do I know?)

We then cut to what looks like a Tiki bar somewhere, where Jim is delivering the signed offer to Mr. and Mrs. Silverman, who I assume are the couple who were selling the house in question. The Silvermans are, to put it bluntly, overly chipper to the point of being annoying. Jim is really trying to get them to hurry and sign the document indicating that they’re accepting the offer on their house so he can make it to the anniversary dinner with his wife, but they do not pick up on his obvious need to get going. Even when he directly tells them that he’s pressed for time and has to get home to his wife for their anniversary, they continue to waste his time by trying to sing a goofy little song. Finally, Jim gets them to sign, but as he’s making his way to the exit of the establishment, he’s stopped by another couple who overheard Jim finalizing the deal with the Silvermans, announcing that they’re also interested in buying a house. Because Jim apparently doesn’t believe in carrying around business cards to hand out, and didn’t think to simply give them his phone number so they could get in touch with him later, he ends up sticking around a bit longer to discuss what they’re looking for in a house. As you might expect, this results in Jim completely missing the anniversary dinner reservation, which naturally makes Sara upset. Not even Jim’s attempt to make it up to her by buying her a large teddy bear and expensive looking watch is enough to diminish her ire. She tells him off, reminding him that he didn’t just miss their anniversary. He also missed two birthday parties, a soccer game and a barbeque because of his determination to sell as many houses as possible. Jim, to his credit, is taken aback by this. And he announces on the spot that they’ll head down to the lake and spend the entire weekend there with the kids.

Okay, so, here’s the thing. Clearly, this movie is trying to use that whole plot trope with the workaholic father who needs to learn his lesson about how his family is more important than work. But the problem with that is that it doesn’t really work in this case. Because while it is apparent that Jim is dedicated to his job, he is clearly making an effort to be there for his family as well. Hence his impromptu decision to take the weekend off to spend quality time with them. Come to think of it, a lot of the movies I’ve seen that try using the workaholic father trope don’t really work, either. Take movies like Hook and Jingle All the Way for instance. In those movies, Peter and Howard both made the effort to leave work in time to make it to their son’s baseball game/martial arts graduation ceremony. Except they don’t manage to make it in time, arriving after the game or ceremony was over. While I don’t think it was ever established what Peter’s holdup was, the main reason why Howard didn’t make it in time was because he got stuck in traffic, which is hardly his fault. I don’t know; maybe I should simply add the workaholic father trope to the list of Hollywood plotlines I don’t care for. While I get where they’re coming from when they attempt to tell these stories, I think the people who tell them forget that if the father doesn’t go to work, he won’t be able to provide for his family. And speaking as someone who works a full time retail job, I can appreciate how the demands of work can keep someone from making it to family events, even if they wanted to be there. While I imagine it’s a bit different with desk jobs and other such office related work, it’s not unheard of for time off requests to be denied. And sometimes, things come up that prevent you from clocking out on time. Honestly, the only time I’ve actually seen this workaholic father trope work was with Mary Poppins, and that was because the movie made it abundantly clear that Mr. Banks was severely disconnected from his children and really didn’t make the effort to spend time with them, even going so far as to dismiss them.

Anyway, movie. Jim heads upstairs to inform their children, Megan and Michael, about their spur of the moment family vacation. This enables us to meet the two Evers children and gain an idea of what they’re like. Immediately, we learn that Michael has arachnophobia as he comes out of his room, screaming that there’s a large spider on his window. Jim makes an attempt to turn this into a teaching moment for his son about the importance of not being afraid and whatnot. He then proceeds to try and get Michael to kill the spider on his own with a rolled up magazine. But while they’re arguing over the matter, Megan, the older sibling, strolls up and takes it upon herself to kill the spider for them. Okay, so we got an arachnophobic son and a no-nonsense daughter. Unfortunately, that’s pretty much the only attempt the movie makes in establishing the personalities of the Evers children. Though the movie does make a point to show that Michael managed to smuggle Jim’s copy of Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue into his room, which is probably meant to make us view Michael as a typical 10 year old boy, as I imagine a lot of straight boys his age were starting to develop an interest in girls. Even so, that doesn’t really make these two very well developed characters. Then again, the kids aren’t really the focus of the movie.

On a side note, though, I do take issue with the anti-spider stance this scene took. I don’t much care for how the movie is low-key encouraging people to kill spiders that make it into the house. House spiders are actually very beneficial, and are largely harmless. (I say largely because there are indeed venomous spiders out there, but this movie is taking place in the US, so unless you’re dealing with a black widow or a brown recluse, you really have nothing to worry about.) While I can understand how some people might find spiders creepy to look at, spiders prey on insect pests, including the ones that transmit diseases like typhoid and malaria. Having a spider or two in your house can actually keep you safe from getting seriously ill, so do yourself a huge favor and allow the spider that made it inside your room to live. If you absolutely can’t stand having a spider in the house, simply catch them in a paper cup and release them into the wild. Maybe even into your vegetable or flower garden so they can dine on aphids and destructive caterpillars, and you don’t have to waste money on chemical pesticides that can contaminate your garden. Thank you for coming to my TED talk.

We then cut to downstairs, where we see the plot starting to pick up. Sara is in the middle of the phone call with a man requesting to set up a meeting to discuss selling Gracey Manor, an old house that the man’s employer is ‘eager to move on’ from. It’s slightly hard to make out Sara’s handwriting as she writes out the information, but it looks like the street address is 17400 Tarkin Avenue. Oddly, the only Tarkin Avenue I could find information on is a street in Las Vegas, Nevada. I doubt that’s what they were trying to place this movie, however, particularly when we later see that Jim and Sara’s car has Louisiana plates on it. So maybe there’s another street by that name elsewhere, or the movie writers were just making up street names. In any event, the man on the phone asks Sara if she’d be willing to come down tomorrow to discuss the matter, also requesting that she come alone. The reason he gives for this is that they got a copy of their flyer and the employer in question thought that only Sara looked trustworthy. (Obviously, by reading through the lines, we’re supposed to realize that the caller is referring to the flyers that the paperboy dropped earlier in the movie. So, yeah, there was a plot related reason for the paperboy to ride his bike up to the mansion, but it still makes little sense in terms of the movie’s reality.) Sara, in regards to the phone caller’s requests, states that she and her husband work as a team, and that she is unavailable to stop by tomorrow as she has plans that can’t be broken. That’s when Jim comes back downstairs after his meeting with the kids. When he sees the address Sara had written down, money signs instantly appear in his eyes. According to him, the houses in that location are all huge multimillion mansions. So if they could sell a house up there, it could be really beneficial to them in terms of their real estate business. Sara, however, reminds him that they already made plans to go up to the lake that weekend. To this, Jim decides to compromise. They’ll still head up to the lake for the weekend, but they’ll make a quick detour to Gracey Manor en route to the lake, stating that it would only take 20 minutes.

They eventually make it to Gracey Manor, and the first sign of weirdness happens right as they arrive, when the front gate, which was shown to be padlocked shut seconds before, opens on its own when Jim and Sara’s backs are turned. However, this doesn’t deter them or arouse their suspicions, and they venture up to the front door. As they’re looking around the grounds, discovering a vast cemetery in the backyard in the process (which leaves Megan flabbergasted that her parents would even try to sell a house with dead people), a clap of thunder is heard, and it suddenly starts to rain rather heavily. So the Evers family have to quickly make their way to the front door, which opens on its own, allowing them, and the viewing audience, to get their first look of the mansion interior. Admittedly, it doesn’t seem to resemble the interior of the actual Disney attraction. Yeah, it’s certainly has elaborate décor and is nice and dusty, with cobwebs lining just about everything. But it does simply look like a typical spooky house.

As they’re looking around the place, a sudden noise alerts them to the approach of Ramsley, the butler. And his introduction is appropriately ominous, from the way he slowly walks toward them to the lighting illuminating the dark corridor he’s walking down. Ramsley remarks that they were not expecting anyone except Sara to show up, but still decides to press on, stating they’ll simply have to add more place settings as the master of Gracey Manor wants to discuss the matter of selling the mansion over dinner. To this, Sara announces they can’t stay as she wants to get going with their family trip. Jim, on the other hand, pretty much waves off her objection, saying they shouldn’t be rude and that it couldn’t hurt to stick around for soup at the very least. So they make their way to the elaborate dining room, where they soon meet Edward Gracey, the owner of Gracey Manor. According to him, the mansion was built by his grandfather, who spared no expense. As dinner is being served, Edward Gracey and Ramsley explain that they normally wouldn’t have called them down on such short notice, but there have been ‘more disturbances’ lately, so time was of the essence. But before more could be established, Ramsley looks out the window and announces that the sudden storm has caused the nearby river to flood into the road leading to Gracey Manor. As such, the Evers family are essentially stranded there until morning and will have to stay the night. Sara once again states that they had plans and really can’t afford to stay any longer, but Master Gracy declares that there’s no other option. It’s also worth mentioning that during this whole sequence, both Ramsley and Master Gracey barely acknowledge Jim’s presence, even when he tries to offer a handshake in greeting. And Master Gracey, at one point, stares rather intently at Sara. It’s the kind of look that you really shouldn’t give a woman when her husband is sitting right there. Jim, while he does seem to notice this, apparently decides not to comment on it.

After Ramsley shows them to the rooms that have been prepared for them, Sara and Jim get into an argument. Sara yells at Jim, saying that they were supposed to go to the lake, but that he just couldn’t resist coming out there to look at Gracey Manor, and that the only thing he seems to care about anymore is work. Jim counters this by declaring that, as much as Sara complains about how much he works, she certainly doesn’t seem to mind how he is able to bring home expensive gifts for her. Sara, in retort to that statement, takes off the watch Jim had given her and tosses it aside before storming into the bathroom and locking the door. Yeah, as I said before, I can tell what the movie is trying to do in making Jim seem like a workaholic who takes his family for granted. But I think Jim made a fair point by pointing out how Sara didn’t seem to have any reservations about accepting the kind of lifestyle that came from Jim bringing home large paychecks and whatnot. (Though I can also see how it really wasn’t the best time for Jim to bring that up during the argument.) Besides, if Sara really had been against coming out to Gracey Manor, she probably should have put her foot down earlier. For instance, in an earlier scene when they were still driving to Gracey Manor, Jim gets a phone call from someone from his real estate office about another potential sale. While we do see Jim briefly consider coming home from the lake ahead of schedule so they could begin that new business transaction, we also see him nonverbally conferring with Sara, who responds with a look that makes it clear that coming home early is out of the question. So it’s not as if Jim is completely dismissive of Sara’s needs. I’m sure if Sara was really adamant against coming to Gracey Manor, Jim would have relented, or at least have agreed to postpone the trip there until they were on the way back from the lake. But that’s just me.

Despite Jim’s attempts to apologize to Sara for what he said through the bathroom door, Sara is standing firm in giving him the silent treatment. When Jim turns back around, however, he finds Ramsley standing right there behind him. Ramsley tells Jim that Master Gracey would like to talk with him, and he proceeds to lead Jim to the mansion’s library. While they’re down there, Jim admits that he doesn’t really believe in ghosts (despite what he said when Master Gracey mentioned the topic earlier), and we get Ramsley spouting out some more cryptic statements about how important it is for Master Gracey to ‘move on.’ Which does bring up a pretty big issue with this movie. Nobody really seems to react to things the way you’d think an actual person would. It’s obvious to the viewing audience that Ramsley and Master Gracey are ghosts. (If you hadn’t already figured that out, just look at the title of the movie.) So the things Ramsley is saying about Master Gracey moving on makes sense to us. But Jim has just admitted that he doesn’t believe in ghosts. So one would think he’s be a bit more puzzled by the vague things Ramsley is saying. But we never see him question it. Anyway, after a quick scene change so we can briefly check in with Megan and Michael, with Megan complaining about how there’s no cell reception and Michael wondering if the rain will stop, we see Jim puttering about in the library alone, indicating Ramsley must have left the room off camera. As Jim messes about in the library while waiting for Master Gracey to arrive, he inadvertently discovers a hidden doorway in the nearby bookshelf, which is triggered by moving a desktop bust. Jim, letting curiosity take hold, steps through the hidden doorway to check it out, but this results in him getting trapped in the secret passageway when the door closes behind him, and he can’t find a way to open the door from his side.

Now we get back to Megan and Michael, who are still awake for some reason. Granted the movie doesn’t really let us know what time it is at this point, but you would think we would at least see an indication that these kids are getting ready to go to bed. Either way, Michael decides to play around with some things he found on the nearby dresser, such as a large glass decanter of what I’m gathering is some sort of whiskey (which I personally wouldn’t trust, given that I have no idea how long it’s been in there, not that Michael is of legal drinking age) and a hairbrush. In the process, he discovers a still-working music box. As he’s inspecting the music box, he sees something reflected in the music box’s mirror and yells for Megan, who comes running out of the bathroom, stopping short and dropping her phone in shock. It quickly shows us that they’re seeing a spectral blue orb hovering in front of them. Michael is quick to identify the orb as a Ghost Ball, which is a rather random conclusion for him to make. Did we have any indication earlier that Michael had read books about ghosts? I don’t remember seeing anything to suggest such a thing when we saw his bedroom. Unless we were supposed to conclude that from the fact that he has a poster of Harry Houdini on his wall, since Harry Houdini spent much of the 1920s trying to debunk psychics and mediums, and before his death, he’d promised his wife that if it was possible to communicate from beyond the grave, he would send her a message with a secret code that they agreed upon. But even that’s a rather flimsy connection. As the children watch, the orb begins floating away and passes through the bedroom door. Megan, with no noticeable provocation, comes to the conclusion that the orb is not only sentient, but that it wants them to follow it. So Megan ventures out into the hallway to follow the orb, with Michael quickly deciding to go with her out of a reluctance to be left alone. Megan and Michael follow the spectral orb up into the mansion’s attic. It’s there that the children discover an old portrait of a woman who bears an uncanny resemblance to their mother. At that moment, Ezra the footman and Emma the maid also appear on the scene. Ezra immediately starts to scold the children for being there, saying that the fact that they’re in the attic in the first place is unspeakable. (And I refuse to believe that I’m the only one who’d wanted Ezra to use the word inconceivable instead, considering Ezra is portrayed by Wallace Shawn. It was such a wasted opportunity.) Emma, on the other hand, seems to be more accommodating to Megan and Michael’s presence, offering them cookies and telling them that the portrait was of a woman called Elizabeth. Before more could be said, however, they hear a floorboard creaking, and Ezra and Emma urge Megan and Michael to hide. The moment the children find a hiding spot, Ramsley appears on the scene. He questions the two servants as to the whereabouts of the children, as he’s discovered that they’re not in their rooms. However, Ezra and Emma feign ignorance, so Ramsley instructs them to bring the children to him once they find them, as he’s not willing to allow anything to disrupt Master Gracey’s plans.

I probably should mention that there was a deleted/extended scene that takes place around this part. In the deleted scene, after giving the children their cookies, Emma reveals to them that she and Ezra are both ghosts, going on to explain that the mansion has been under a curse for 112 years, ever since the woman in the portrait, Elizabeth, had died. When Megan and Michael address the fact that Elizabeth looks just like their mother, Ezra explains that there’s a possibility that they’re one and the same, though Emma voices her skepticism, saying that Sara might not be Elizabeth at all. I’m not entirely sure why this scene was cut, though, as it really helps piece the story together. At least we can still see it in the DVD’s bonus features.

Meanwhile, Jim has found his way out of the secret passage, which has brought him into another section of Gracey Manor. He begins to make his way through the unfamiliar corridors, and in the process, he walks past a few Haunted Mansion Easter Eggs, such as the Changing Portraits (which are slightly different from the ones you see on the ride, but I’ve read that the portraits seen here are actual historical paintings, or at least replicas of them) and the Watchful Busts. He eventually comes across a door that seems to be breathing, but Jim dismisses this as a sign of termites and ventures through the door. After some more padding, which includes a rather confusing moment when Jim answers a ringing phone, only to have Ramsley, who was on the other end of the call, hanging up without a word (why exactly did Ramsley call the phone in that particular room? Did he know Jim would be there? Was he trying to lure Jim into that particular room? For what purpose? It’s never explained), Jim hears a voice in the distance and begins to follow it. This leads him to find one of the most recognizable characters from the Haunted Mansion, Madame Leota. For the few of you out there who don’t know about Madame Leota, she’s a spiritual medium who appears as a floating head inside a crystal ball. (Disney Trivia time- Madame Leota’s name was based on Leota Toomes, a former Disney Imagineer whose head was the model for the Haunted Mansion character. Although Leota Toomes actual voice wasn’t quite menacing enough, so the job of voicing Madame Leota went to Eleanor Audley, who had previously voiced two classic Disney villains- Maleficent and Lady Tremaine.)

Anyway, Jim has now met Madame Leota, which leads to a mildly entertaining moment when Jim is forced into a chair as said chair and table start levitating around the room, along with various instruments. Madame Leota, while speaking in riddles, tells Jim that there is a curse on the house and that it must be broken if he wants to escape the mansion with his family. Jim, after his chair stops levitating, understandably begins freaking out and takes off running, with various floating instruments pursuing him. After this chase scene continues for a bit, Jim manages to find refuge behind a door, which is where he reunites with Megan and Michael, who are still in the company of Ezra and Emma. Jim, still not quite ready to accept that the mansion is haunted, tells his kids to get their stuff together as they’re leaving as soon as they locate Sara. Megan and Michael, however, state that they can’t leave, as they have to help break the curse. Jim pretty much refuses to listen to anything they say, still rattled from what he’d just experienced, until Michael tells him that Sara is in trouble, and they show him the portrait of Elizabeth. Like his kids, Jim also instantly sees the resemblance between Elizabeth and Sara.

While all of this is going on, Sara has decided that she doesn’t want to be mad at Jim anymore and heads out to look for him. During her search, she comes across Ramsley, who tells her (not untruthfully) that he left Jim in the library. When Sara ventures into the library herself, however, she finds Master Gracey instead, and they start talking. Sara asks Master Gracey why he wants to sell Gracey Manor, as it’s been his home for generations. So Master Gracey begins to tell her the tragic story of Elizabeth, which we previously saw glimpses of during the prologue scene. Back then, Master Gracey and Elizabeth were deeply in love with one another. However, they were from ‘two different worlds.’ Which is obviously the movie’s attempt to vaguely touch upon the fact that Master Gracey was the rich, White heir to the estate and Elizabeth was a woman of mixed race. Needless to say, such a union would have been strongly frowned upon in the Deep South during that particular time period. (And yes, I know I’m putting that mildly.) In the end, Elizabeth ultimately decided to poison herself, which led to the heartbroken Master Gracey to give into his grief and hang himself. Since then, his spirit has roamed the halls of the mansion. Of course, because Sara isn’t supposed to know that the mansion is haunted quite yet, Master Gracey lets her believe the events of the story in question happened to his grandfather and not to him. (And Sara doesn’t think to question how Master Gracey’s grandfather was supposed to have hung himself while seemingly unmarried and childless. Maybe she just assumed he’d fathered children with a different woman before meeting Elizabeth?)

Upon returning to Madame Leota’s chamber, Jim, Megan, Michael, Ezra and Emma discuss the curse with her. Madame Leota states that Elizabeth does indeed walk the halls of the mansion, which does make it sound like Sara might be Elizabeth reincarnated after all, but she also states that they mustn’t be deceived as things are not as they appear. She goes on to state that in order for the curse to be broken, they must learn ‘the truth,’ and instructs Jim to venture into a certain mausoleum in the mansion’s cemetery and locate a key inside a black crypt. Finding this key is imperative. However, Megan points out the issue of how they’re supposed to get out to the cemetery, as they’re seemingly trapped inside the mansion. Which, of course, leads to Ezra saying the iconic phrase of ‘there’s always my way.’

Ezra’s way ends up taking a carriage hearse pulled by a skeletal horse, which passes right through the walls of the mansion. (I suspect that this was a reference to the carriage hearse being pulled by the invisible horse that can be seen outside the Haunted Mansion attraction in both the California and Florida parks, but if that was the case, you’d think they’d make the horse in this movie invisible as well. Was it just easier for the special effects team to make the horse a skeletal one instead?) As they make their way through the cemetery, Jim, Megan and Michael witness various ghosts lurking around, which is obviously a nod to the well-known graveyard scene from the ride. We even get a glimpse of the Hitchhiking Ghosts before Jim, Megan and Michael exit the hearse to continue searching on foot. After a brief encounter with the less than helpful Singing Busts (who are played by the Disneyland Dapper Dans, I believe), Megan locates the mausoleum Madame Leota indicated. Because Michael is too scared to go inside, Jim decides to venture into the mausoleum alone, instructing Megan to stay with her brother as he isn’t willing to leave him there by himself. Here, we also learn that Megan studied Latin for three years. Which does make the characterization of these kids a bit harder to swallow. Since it’s later indicated that Megan is currently 13, this means she started studying Latin when she was 10. While I readily admit I don’t have much experience with children, I find it a bit unbelievable that a 10 year old would have an interest in learning Latin. Of course, she doesn’t seem to be as fluent in Latin as she claims to be. According to her, the plaque on the door to the mausoleum reads ‘beware all who enter, here lies the passage to the dead.’ But I have it on good authority that a more accurate translation is closer to ‘anyone who enters here will end up in the fire.’

Of course, Megan soon goes against her father’s wishes and follows him into the mausoleum, stating that she was worried he wouldn’t find the key. Jim and Megan quickly find the correct crypt and are able to remove the key from the skeletal remains inside. But as the two of them start to leave with the key, the movie decides to throw a bit more tension at us by having all the dead bodies inside the mausoleum come to life. So we get a whole sequence of Jim and Megan trying to fend off a bunch of skeletal zombies, as well as relocating the key Jim accidentally dropped. Eventually, Jim and Megan are able to shake the zombies long enough to run towards the entrance of the mausoleum, but just before they could reach the door, it slams shut, trapping them inside as the door locks on the outside. And to Michael’s horror, hundreds of spiders appear and begin crawling about on the door, thereby preventing him from being able to help unlock the door and free his father and sister. Fortunately, this hurtle is soon dealt with as Jim calls out to Michael from behind the door, reassuring him that it’s okay to be scared sometimes, and that everyone gets scared once in a while. But that it’s important to not let that stop you. Which is a really good message for this movie to teach. Much better than the stance Jim tried to take up at the start of the movie, in which he claimed that he never got scared. This manages to encourage Michael to face his fear long enough to open the door, enabling Jim and Megan to escape the pursuing zombies by the skin of their teeth.

After a brief fake out when it looks like Jim lost the key again, they return to Madame Leota’s chambers. Only to be told that they have another stop on this scavenger hunt and now must locate a trunk. Jim, to say the least, is feeling quite perturbed by this and decides to simply take Madame Leota’s crystal ball with them as they look for the trunk so he won’t have to continue going back and forth. They find the trunk in the attic and, when Jim unlocks and opens the trunk, Madame Leota instructs him to ‘find the thing that must be read.’ So Jim rummages through the contents of the trunk and finds a letter inside a red envelope. By opening it up and reading it, they find that it’s a letter that Elizabeth had written. In the letter, she accepts Master Gracey’s marriage proposal and states that she will love him for all eternity, which indicates that Elizabeth hadn’t really killed herself as they’d been led to believe. Which means someone must have murdered her and made it look as if she’d killed herself by leaving behind a fake suicide letter. As they take this revelation in, Ramsley suddenly appears on the scene, revealing that he’d been the one behind everything. He explains that his motive behind the murder was because he thought that it would have destroyed the reputation of the estate and the Gracey family name if the two had gotten married as they’d planned. So he felt it was his duty to do whatever was necessary to prevent Master Gracey from making such a grave mistake as running away with Elizabeth. So he tricked Elizabeth into drinking poisoned wine before slinking away through the same secret passageway Jim had discovered earlier, to make sure he wouldn’t be discovered next to Elizabeth’s body. (I recently heard that there was a story called The Legend of Gracey Manor that was written by the creative team at Buena Vista Pictures in collaboration with this movie’s filmmakers, which delved a bit more into Ramsley’s backstory and further explained his motivation. But outside of an article on the Haunted Mansion Wikipedia, I can’t find any information about this story, so it’s possible it was only available to readers for a limited time.) Upon hearing this, Jim vows to tell Master Gracey what really happened, but Ramsley states he can’t allow Master Gracey to learn the truth because Ramsley’s plan involves having Master Gracey marry Sara while believing she’s Elizabeth. Then, when Master Gracey believes he’s finally reunited with his lost love, the curse will end and everyone’s souls will be free. To prevent them from revealing his transgression and evil plan to Master Gracey, Ramsley uses his ghostly abilities to trap Megan and Michael inside a trunk and literally throws Jim out the window, followed by barricading the windows and doors so he wouldn’t be able to get back inside. Even when Jim tries to break the glass panels of the conservatory, they magically repair themselves each time. (And yes, it is a bit unbelievable that Jim survived being tossed out of the attic window and falling right onto the glass conservatory dome, followed by the roof of his car. At the very least, you’d think he’d have broken a few bones upon impact. But in a Disney movie based on one of their classic attractions, you gotta suspend your belief a bit.)

Inside the mansion, Master Gracey is still showing Sara around. After Master Gracey asks her if she believes that love is about second chances and forgiveness, he can no longer keep up the pretense. He starts grilling her about why she still doesn’t recognize him or remember anything, stating that he was so sure that bringing her back to Gracey Manor would help jog her memory of how they once loved each other. As Master Gracey continues to implore Sara to remember her previous life as Elizabeth and how they can now be together at last, ghostly figures of people dancing appear around them. Needless to say, this completely freaks Sara out, and once she manages to pull herself free from Master Gracey’s grip, she takes off running, loudly declaring that she’s not Elizabeth. This devastates Master Gracey, who begins to doubt that Sara is his lost love returned to him after all. But Ramsley appears behind him, assuring him that’s not the case, and that Sara will eventually remember him. After sending Master Gracey on his way to get ready for the wedding ceremony, Ramsley then approaches Sara and instructs her to put on the wedding dress that was originally meant for Elizabeth so she can marry Master Gracey. To ensure her cooperation, he reveals to her that he’s holding Megan and Michael captive and virtually threatens their wellbeing if Sara doesn’t agree to pretend to be Elizabeth and marry Master Gracey. While Sara is devastated, she relents to the blackmail.

Outside, Jim is sitting by his car, feeling defeated and beating himself up, blaming himself for the whole mess as it was his idea to come to Gracey Manor instead of going to the lake like they were supposed to. As he’s sitting there, Madame Leota comes rolling up. (Don’t ask me how she got out there, because I have no idea.) She gives him a bit of a pep talk, urging him to try to get back into the mansion again, as ‘the only true failure is when you stop trying.’ This somehow gives Jim the inspiration to use the car as a battering ram, driving it right into the mansion’s conservatory (destroying a piano in the process). Once inside, Jim manages to free Megan and Michael from their makeshift prison after fighting off a few animated suits of armor. With the children safe and out of harm’s way, they all barge into the ballroom where Ramsley is in the middle of officiating the wedding ceremony. When Sara sees Jim, and that their children are safe and sound, she immediately turns away from the altar and runs into Jim’s arms. However, Master Gracey, still believing Sara is Elizabeth, orders Jim to get away from her, drawing his sword. Jim doesn’t back down, though, telling Master Gracey that Sara is not Elizabeth, and that Ramsley is only trying to trick him into believing they’re the same woman so the curse will end. But Master Gracey doesn’t listen, until Jim shows him Elizabeth’s real letter, which Ramsley had confiscated before he could see it. Upon reading the letter, Master Gracey is visibly shocked and turns to Ramsley for answers. While Ramsley tries to bluff his way out of things at first, he quickly realizes the jig is up and admits that he’d killed Elizabeth to prevent Master Gracey from marrying her and bringing scandal upon the house. As a final act of vengeance against Master Gracey’s ‘selfishness,’ Ramsley, I guess, summons up a legion of demonic creatures to attack everyone. But this doesn’t really lead to anything. Because with Ramsley’s evil deed exposed to everyone, a fiery portal forms in the nearby fireplace, and a dragon like creature made up entirely of fire appears to drag Ramsley down to Hell. But as he’s getting dragged down, Ramsley grabs onto Jim’s ankle in an attempt to take him down with him. Fortunately, Master Gracey is able to save Jim in the nick of time, but Ramsley is left to his fate.

Of course, things are not quite wrapped up yet. See, during the wedding ceremony, Ramsley had given Sara a goblet of poisoned wine. Because I guess the plan was to have Sara die so she could be with Master Gracey in death. And although Sara had the goblet up to her lips when Jim, Megan and Michael stormed in, it looked as if they’d arrived just in time. But I suppose a few drops of the wine had touched her tongue, and the poison is now taking hold. As Jim holds the dying Sara in his arms, the spectral orb that Megan and Michael encountered earlier appears. The orb enters into Sara’s body, and Sara starts to levitate as a gateway to Heaven appears overhead. It’s then revealed that the orb was Elizabeth’s spirit the whole time. But until Ramsley’s part in her death was revealed, she couldn’t properly materialize. Master Gracey and Elizabeth, overjoyed to be reunited at last, share a passionate kiss, only pulling away when Jim reminds them that that’s still technically his wife’s body that Elizabeth is inhabiting. So Elizabeth’s soul exits Sara, who is instantly revived. (So I guess possession can cure people of poison?)

As the movie wraps up, Master Gracey expresses his gratitude towards Jim, also offering his apology for mistaking Sara for Elizabeth. As a token of appreciation for reuniting him with Elizabeth and freeing them all from the curse that kept their souls trapped in the mansion for so long, he gifts the Evers the deed to the house, giving them his permission to do what they want with it. With that, the souls of Master Gracey and Elizabeth are able to cross over into Heaven, along with Ezra, Emma and assumingly all the other ghosts who haunted the grounds. Well, all except for Madame Leota and the Singing Busts, who the Evers family apparently decide to take with them as they finally continue their journey to the lake. And that’s how the movie ends, with them driving down the Lake Pontchartrain Causeway, which is apparently a famous bridge in Louisiana. And something I’ve noticed about this scene? They’re now driving a completely different car than the one they were driving upon arriving at Gracey Manor. Where did this new car come from? Was there supposed to be a time jump here?

So that was the 2003 version of Haunted Mansion. While I still enjoy the movie, I can see the problems with it. There are admittedly a few plot holes. Such as what exactly conjured the curse that kept everyone’s souls trapped. And why exactly were Ezra and Emma seemingly so afraid of Ramsely? After all, they were present when Jim first discovered the letter that exposed the truth about Elizabeth’s death. Why did they still go along with Ramsley’s deception instead of telling Master Gracey? Also, who put Elizabeth’s real letter in the trunk, and then placed the key to the trunk in the black crypt? The obvious answer is Ramsley of course. But one has to wonder why he wouldn’t have simply burn the letter to cover his tracks. And yes, I can see why some Haunted Mansion fans would take issue with how all the ghosts cross over at the end. Because the whole point of the Haunted Mansion ride is that the mansion is occupied by ‘happy haunts.’ The ghosts are haunting the mansion because they want to be there. They enjoy haunting the mansion. So having them all cross over at the end does kind of contradict that sentiment. And it’s not really explained why Madame Leota and the Singing Busts didn’t get to cross over with everyone else, either. But all that aside, I still enjoy watching the movie as there’s enough good parts to make up for the head scratching moments. Some of the special effects are still impressive to look at over twenty years later. And the whole mystery aspect surrounding Elizabeth’s death is rather enjoyable. Though I am grateful that they didn’t throw in an Eddie Murphy animatronic on the ride at Disney Parks like they did with the Pirates of the Caribbean ride. (I know I’m probably in the minority, but I firmly stand by my stance that adding the Depp animatronics to the ride was a greater travesty than getting rid of ‘We wants the Redhead!’) And as a side note, I probably should mention that this movie often has the characters use the word gyp*y when talking about Madame Leota. While it’s common for people to use this word as if it’s synonymous to fortune tellers or free spirited wanderers, it was historically used a racial slur for Romani people and can therefore be very offensive to some people. Of course, I’m giving the script writers the benefit of a doubt, assuming they were simply ignorant of the true meaning of the word, like most people seem to be.

That’s all I have to say about the 2003 version of Haunted Mansion, but there’s still the 2023 version to tackle, so let’s get going.

The Haunted Mansion (The 2023 Version)

This version came out twenty years after the first one, and even before the movie begins, you can tell that this one will be significantly different. Not only is this one over thirty minutes longer, but it was given a PG-13 rating. (The version with Eddie Murphy was PG.)

As the movie begins, we hear the familiar words of the Ghost Host from the ride welcoming us ‘foolish mortals.’ Only it’s not the iconic voice of Paul Frees saying the line, but Jamie Lee Curtis, who will later appear as Madame Leota. While the previous version only had vague indications that the movie was set in Louisiana (such as the Evers’ car having Louisiana plates), this movie wastes no time in establishing the location as we’re not only directly told we’re in New Orleans, but we get to see various visuals of the New Orleans natives. With this introduction out of the way, it immediately cuts to a New Year’s Eve party. Here, we’re introduced to our main character (or at least one of them), Ben Matthias, an astrophysicist who specializes in making lenses, and is currently attempting to create a device that can detect dark matter. While at the party, Ben ends up meeting Alyssa, a local woman who gives ghost tours. Needless to say, the two instantly hit it off, with Alyssa inviting Ben to attend one of her ghost tours. But the happy meeting instantly dissolves to what appears to be a few years later. Ben is back at the same bar, and it’s immediately obvious he’s been through something as he seems to be slightly intoxicated. The bartender, who seems to know Ben quite well, informs him that there appears to be seven people waiting for him outside. He then sympathetically asks Ben why he’s still leading ‘her tour’ and offers to help sneak him out the back. But Ben turns down the offer, stating that they always follow him. With that, Ben heads outside to meet the people who are there for the walking tour he’s now overseeing. As Ben gives the tour, it quickly comes clear that he’s not exactly a people person. Despite his insistence that the tour will focus only on the historical aspect of the city, the tourists constantly ask about ghosts and whether or not various buildings are haunted. Eventually, this causes Ben to snap, loudly declaring that there’s no such thing as ghosts, and going on to state that ‘life is dirt, we’re all dirt!’ To his credit, Ben quickly apologizes for his outburst, but I am curious as to how the rest of that tour went.

As the opening sequence continues, we see a car towing a U-Haul trailer through the city streets, followed by the famous Lake Pontchartrain Causeway. This car is soon revealed to contain Gabbie and her nine-year-old son, Travis. They’ve apparently purchased a decrepit mansion located in the middle of nowhere, which we’ll later learn that Gabbie intended to turn into a bed and breakfast. Upon arriving at the mansion (which, to the movie’s credit, looks practically identical to the exterior of the Disneyland version of the ride), Travis slowly begins to look around inside while Gabbie takes a phone call with the movers, who are somehow four hours behind them. While Travis is clearly unnerved by the house, Gabbie is confident that it’ll be great once they fix it up a bit. So Travis makes his way upstairs to select his room. Of course, the ghosts inside the mansion waste no time in making their presence known. Upon entering the bedroom he chose, Travis is quick to cover up a creepy looking painting of a bride with a tarp. But the tarp slowly starts to get pulled down every time Travis turns around to set up his sleeping bag, quickly moving back into place whenever Travis shines his flashlight at it. Until Travis looks away long enough for the tarp to be pulled all the way off. This time, when Travis looks back at the painting, the image of the bride has vanished. Upon hearing a ghostly voice welcoming him home, Travis quickly turns in the direction of the voice, leading to a suitably creepy moment of the ghostly bride appearing in the corner whenever the light of Travis’ flashlight is not on her, and Travis’ flashlight instantly starting to die. When Travis’ flashlight goes off completely, he naturally turns and runs out of the room, screaming. Gabbie, hearing her son scream, comes running over to see what’s wrong. But when Travis tries to tell her that the house is haunted, Gabbie doesn’t initially believe him. She tells him that while she knows the place isn’t as warm and inviting as they hoped, he still needs to give it a chance, and things will seem better once she lights a vanilla scented candle. However, Gabbie’s tune quickly changes when she sees an animated suit of armor seemingly appearing out of nowhere in front of them. Right away, she agrees they need to nope out of there, and they both immediately vacate the mansion and drive off. (This alone earns the movie major points, as it shows people reacting to their house being haunted in a realistic manner instead of choosing to stubbornly stick around.) But as their car leaves the mansion behind them, a ghostly shadow appears near the gates of the mansion, stating in a sing-song voice that ‘you’ll be back.’

An undetermined amount of time later, Ben is woken up from a sound sleep when he hears someone knocking on his front door. But it’s not until he hears the knocker letting themselves into his house without invitation that Ben gets out of bed, grabbing an empty liquor bottle to use as a makeshift weapon. The man at the door ends up being a priest called Father Kent. (And yes, Father Kent is played by Owen Wilson. From what I gather, there are some who didn’t agree with this casting, but to be honest, it didn’t really bother me.) Ben is understandably not the least bit happy about the uninvited visitor, but Father Kent isn’t bothered by this and strikes up a conversation with Ben. In this conversation, it’s revealed that Ben had previously invented a camera strong enough to capture ‘ghost particles.’ Ben doesn’t directly deny this, but states that he was professionally ridiculed over his invention. Father Kent then tells him about Gabbie and Travis, stating that they’d previously called him up to perform an exorcism on their haunted home, but that he thinks what they really need is a paranormal expert. Ben essentially shakes his head, once again stating there was no such thing as ghosts. Father Kent takes this in stride, stating that if that were the case, then there’d be no harm in coming down and taking a few pictures with the ‘ghost camera’ to settle the minds of the mother and son. Still, Ben doesn’t agree to get involved. Until Father Kent tells him that Gabbie is willing to pay him $2,000. As the saying goes, money talks. So, after Father Kent leaves, Ben goes to his closet to root through a few boxes he has stored away to retrieve his ‘ghost camera.’ As he’s gathering up his invention, he chances across a framed photograph of himself and Alyssa, which triggers a flashback to the day he’d first shown Alyssa the quantum lens he’d developed, and how he’d felt that it could change both their lives. However, we’re not yet given any clear hints as to what happened to Alyssa, so at this point we can only speculate as to why she’s not a part of Ben’s life anymore.

So Ben makes his way to the mansion with his Ghost Camera. Upon arriving, however, he realizes the camera’s battery is dead. Nevertheless, he presses on and meets Gabbie at the front door. But as Ben is about to step foot across the threshold, Gabbie quickly stops him, telling him that, as much as she might need his help, he probably should leave. Because once he steps foot through the door, there’s no going back, and it ‘could change the course of your entire life.’ In response, Ben states that he’s willing to take that risk and steps inside, accepting the money Gabbie had offered in the process. Gabbie begins to show Ben around the mansion, starting with the library where she and Travis have been sleeping. Here, Ben and Travis have something of a bonding moment when Ben notices the action figures Travis has arranged in front of his pup tent, which I gather are the same sort of action figures Ben had played with when he was a boy, as Ben starts talking about Action Guy a seemingly less well-known superhero whose weapon of choice is a shoe. We also get a moment when Gabbie starts to mention Travis’ father, but she doesn’t get a chance to complete her statement. When Ben takes out his Ghost Camera, Gabbie quickly warns him to make sure the flash is turned off, as ‘they don’t like that.’ (I’m sure everyone who has been on the Disney ride sees what they did there.) Anyway, Ben starts taking pictures with the Ghost Camera at the various spots Gabbie and Travis show them on their tour of the mansion. But because the camera’s battery is dead, Ben simply mimics taking pictures while making sound effects with his mouth. Unfortunately, nothing supernatural seems to be happening during the tour, which only seems to confirm Ben’s suspicions that the mother and son duo are nuts. However, Ben does manage to witness something small. He happens to pass by a painting of a mariner in a yellow raincoat and matching hat. As Ben looks at the paining, the sound of seagulls can be heard, and the Mariner’s eyes seem to turn to look right at him. Of course, Ben simply waves this off as his eyes playing tricks on him. He wraps things up by telling Gabbie and Travis that, according to his calculations (which are just random doodles he draws in his notebook), there aren’t any ghosts there and that what they’ve experienced was simply caused by the power of suggestion.

So Ben leaves the mansion and heads back to his place. But it quickly becomes clear that something followed him home when his TV constantly switches channels from the documentary Ben is trying to watch to an episode of The Deadliest Catch. When the TV remote is knocked out of Ben’s hand by an unseen force, Ben quickly puts working batteries into the Ghost Camera. Unfortunately, Ben forgot about Gabbie’s warning about using the flash, and as a result, he’s shoved to the floor as the shutter flash goes off. When the picture he took appears on the screen seconds later, Ben sees a faint image of someone sitting on his couch. After stepping outside to try and calm his nerves, unable to believe that he really saw what he saw, he quickly decides to go back inside and try again, though this is due in part to him wanting to avoid having to make small talk with a neighbor. (Can’t say I don’t relate to this guy.) This time, however, while he doesn’t use the flash, nothing unusual shows up in the picture. Shaking it off as another example of the power of suggestion, Ben tries to go to bed, only to be disturbed by water dripping on his face, followed by banging sounds coming from the bathroom. When he investigates, he finds his bathroom door has pretty much become a dimensional portal to a storm-tossed sea. Out of nowhere, a harpoon files by, just narrowly missing Ben’s head.

This leaves Ben truly shaken, and he retreats to a nearby café to get some coffee. Only for the cup of coffee to get pushed off the table and breaking before Ben could even touch it. Looking over, he sees the reflection of the Mariner Ghost briefly appearing in the window across from him, making Ben suspect that the Mariner Ghost is following him. And when Ben once again returns home, it’s to find that his house has been completely flooded. As a wave of water rushes towards him, the image of a man’s face appears in the wave, ordering him to return to the mansion.

So Ben drives back to the mansion to find Gabbie and Travis sitting out on the porch. It’s very clear that they were anticipating his return. Gabbie explains that something similar happened to them, pointing out that she wouldn’t make her son stay in a haunted house by choice, but no matter where they went, they continued to be haunted by ghosts that had latched onto them as they tried to get away. Ben is not very happy, saying that while Gabbie did warn him before he first stepped through the door, she should have done a better job of properly explaining that he wouldn’t be able to go home again. Gabbie counters this by saying that she would feel worse about the partial deception if Ben hadn’t taken so much money only to take a few fake pictures and scribble down random nonsense, indicating that she wasn’t fooled by his act earlier. However, Gabbie then indirectly apologizes, pointing out that she would do whatever she had to do in order to make sure her son was safe, which Ben seems to understand. Though he tells Gabbie that he can’t help her and that she’d be better off with bringing in an exorcist. To this, Gabbie kinda cringes and admits they already tried going down that route. Which leads to the reveal that Father Kent is also there, admitting that he also fell prey to the ghosts haunting the mansion and is likewise stuck there.

While comparing notes with Gabbie and Father Kent, Ben realizes that the ghosts that followed each of them when they tried leaving had all wanted them to return to the mansion. So it stands to reason that the ghosts want them there for some reason. They just have to figure out what that reason in. So, after a scene when Ben tries to exit the library after midnight despite Travis’ attempts to stop him, leading to an appearance of the Endless Hallway from the ride, as well as Ben getting briefly chased by a ghost wielding a hatchet, they begin coming up with a plan to figure out what the ghosts want. To achieve this, Father Kent decides the first step is to figure out the mansion’s history, so he gets in contact with Bruce Davis, a college professor at Tulane who wrote a book about haunted houses in Louisiana. While the book was hardly a best seller, with only nine copies being sold, their only other option was a historian who died, so they gotta work with what they’ve got. Meanwhile, Ben will use his Ghost Camera to properly document each of the ghosts occupying the mansion. Once they know who they’re dealing with, they can bring in someone who can help communicate with the ghosts. Of course, the only medium in their price range is a woman named Harriet. During this montage sequence, we also get another brief bonding moment between Ben and Travis, with Ben seeing some bullies chasing Travis as he tries to come home from school and he tries to talk to him about it. Though it turns out that that moment serves a deeper purpose when Ben begins viewing the video he was able to catch of the ghosts that become highly active after midnight. Ben remarks how it’s hard to get a read on the ghosts as they’re always moving about. But Travis points out that they’re not just moving around. They seem to be running from something.

Anyway, Ben and Father Kent meet with Bruce at some hibachi restaurant, where Bruce tells them that the house where Gabbie and Travis are living has a string of traumatic events tied to it. He explains that the mansion was discovered fully built in 1788. To everyone’s knowledge, the land hadn’t even been worked on before that point. The earliest recorded document that Bruce could dig up was a deed acquired by William Gracey, who purchased the estate from an undisclosed buyer. William Gracey’s wife, Eleanor, tragically died from Yellow Fever. After her death, things started to get really weird. That’s when Bruce starts to gush about how he’s been wanting to get an up close look at the mansion in question for the past 6o years. But when Bruce casually mentions that he’s having heart surgery the following week, Ben immediately realizes that they can’t allow him to set foot inside the mansion, unwilling to let a man with a heart condition have to deal with getting a random ghost following him everywhere he goes. After all, such a thing might end up killing him. Bruce is not happy about being denied access to the house, they announcing that if don’t let him go, he won’t let them see the contents of the file he’d put together. This standoff ends with Ben physically wrestling the file out of Bruce’s grip and then running out to join Father Kent, who ran out seconds earlier to start the car.

Meanwhile, Harriet is brought to the mansion. And right away, she comes across as one of those parlor trick psychics. For instance, she walks into the dining room and astutely declares that she senses people used to eat there. Harriet announces that if there’s an evil spirit in the house, only a banishment will do the trick and that she, as a bona fide and qualified medium, is more than up to the task. It’s important to note that she also mentions that in her brief time in the mansion, she’s sensed a lot of grief in the house, and that if grief is unprocessed, it will make a spirit stick. But Harriet then says that, before she can begin, she’ll need a week to properly charge her crystals and conduct her research, and that she expects to be paid for that week of preparation. With that, Harriet turns to leave, stating that she’ll send them an invoice from her PayPal account in the meantime. Of course, an irate Harriet returns two hours later, berating Father Kent about not warning her that the ghosts in the mansion were following people, and that she had been harassed by a ghostly horse and rider. Still, Harriet admits that she now has no other choice than to help them and agrees to assist. So they consult the contents of the file that Ben apprehended from Bruce. In the process, they learn that after the death of his wife, Gracey lost his mind and eventually took his own life. But before that, he’d spent all his money on a medium to try and contact his wife’s spirit. They also learn that that, between then and now, 66 people had moved into the house, with each one of them dying in terrible and specific ways. Cue some name drops from fan favorite characters from the ride, namely the Duelists and Constance Hatchaway. Harriet’s ears perk up when she hears that the medium Gracey hired was Madame Leota, who was known as the greatest medium there ever was, but they all agree that they should try and get in contact with Gracey, as he must be the key to stopping the hauntings. Ben then finds a letter Gracey wrote to Madame Leota within the file, which asked her to meet him in the mansion’s séance room. This puzzles Gabbie. While the mansion’s blueprints indeed depict a room at the end of a certain hallway, when she shows them the hallway in question, they find a wall and staircase leading up to the next floor, but no séance room. Father Kent, suspecting there’s a hidden door, tries to move a wall sconce, only to find that it wasn’t a secret lever when it breaks clean off the wall, accompanied by a small shower of sparks. But Ben then realizes that Father Kent wasn’t completely off the mark, and that the painting of a woman on the wall in front of them had two fingerholds where the eyes should be. Thus, they find the entrance to the séance room.

Inside the séance room, Harriet leads the séance to contact Gracey’s spirit. After a few fake outs when it looks like Harriet had fallen asleep instead of going into a trance, Harriet announces she’s made contact with Gracey, and she instructs him to write them a message using a pen and notebook she’d purchased from CVS. After a tense second, the pen begins to levitate and the words ‘talk to Leota’ are written out. But the moment Gracey’s ghost writes out the message, and Ben takes a picture of him with the Ghost Camera, the ghost quickly vanishes. Now, Ben is finally convinced that Harriet can indeed communicate with the dead, and he asks if he can contact someone for him. When Harriet asks him who he wishes to contact, Ben slowly removes the wedding ring he’s been wearing from a chain around his neck, declaring that he wants to speak to his wife. With that, it’s confirmed to the audience that Alyssa had died, and Harriet realizes that Ben was the grieving spirit she was sensing. But she regretfully informs him that she can’t contact Alyssa, and that she doesn’t think her spirit is there.

Travis then asks Harriet if she can get in touch with Leota instead. The second he asks this, the door slams shut, and an evil laugh is heard. When Ben tries to take a photo with the Ghost Camera, it’s shoved out of his hands, smashing onto the ground and breaking. Despite the obvious aggressiveness of this new ghost, Harriet still tries to summon Madame Leota. But this only results in the chair she’s sitting in to get quickly dragged out of the room and right out of the mansion entirely. (And yeah, the chair Harriet is sitting in does resemble the Doom Buggy ride vehicles from the Disney attraction.) Ben, Gabbie, Travis and Father Kent all run out after her to make sure she’s alright, but as they’re seeing to Harriet, they see a car approaching. It turns out to be Bruce, who is understandably angry about them stealing his files and barring him from seeing the mansion for himself. Despite Ben’s attempt to stop him, Bruce enters the mansion, but before he could retrieve his documents, he’s also ejected from the mansion via chair. Unlike Harriet who only ended up landing in the mud, Bruce is dragged out into the main road, right into the path of an oncoming truck. Cue an instant jump cut to the hospital. While Bruce survived the ordeal, he was still taken in by an ambulance due to his bad heart. While the nurse does reasonably question why Bruce was apparently riding a chair down a main road at night, she doesn’t push the matter when Ben and Gabbie are unable to come up with a plausible explanation. Though Ben and Gabbie get worried when the nurse suggests having Bruce stay there overnight, so when a ghost (judging by the distinct sound of seagulls as well as a sprig of seaweed appearing in a UV bag, I’m guessing it’s the Mariner Ghost again) creates a convenient distraction by messing around with a neighboring patient’s bed, they quickly usher Bruce away.

Back at the mansion, while Gabbie and Trevor do their best to monitor Bruce’s heart, Harriet approaches Ben. She offers her condolences about Alyssa’s death, but tells him that it’s good that she’s not there. She then goes into a whole explanation about the physical plane and the regions beyond. The place where they overlap is where hauntings occur, but if a spirit is at peace, it’ll go straight into the regions beyond and remain there. So she speculates that’s where Alyssa is now, and that’s a good thing. She goes on to tell Ben that sometimes, spirits in the region beyond can still send messages to their loved ones. Harriet refers to these messages as Ghost Winks. As an example of this, Harriet tells of her late father, who had loved model trains. To this day, whenever Harriet is feeling particularly sad, she will randomly hear a train whistle in the distance, and she knows that’s her father saying hello.

Late that night, Ben wakes up to see a ghostly shadow looking in at him from the hallway. The shadowy figure greets him by name, stating that they have a friend in common. Before Ben’s eyes, what appears to be the silhouette of Alyssa walks by. Stunned, Ben follows after the silhouette and ventures outside into the mansion’s graveyard. After passing by ghostly figures of The Groundskeeper and his dog, as well as the famous Hitchhiking Ghosts, Ben catches up with who he believes to be Alyssa. But as ‘Alyssa’ starts to turn around, it’s revealed to have simply been a dream when Travis wakes him up to inform him that Bruce wandered off while they were sleeping. Concerned for the older man, Ben and Harriet head out to locate him. They manage to run into the wayward Bruce outside the ballroom, and Bruce expresses his urgency to find Leota, suggesting that they try the attic.

Together, the three locate the attic. Despite Bruce’s determination to lead the charge, Ben refuses to let him go up there, reminding him of his heart condition. Bruce soon relents, agreeing to stay and ‘protect’ Harriet. This leaves Ben to venture up into the attic alone. Despite a run-in with Constance Hatchaway herself, who tries coming at him with her trademark axe, Ben is able to successfully retrieve a locked trunk, which he brings down to the Séance Room with Gabbie, Harriet, Bruce and Father Kent. (I’m guessing Travis went back to sleep or something, as I don’t remember seeing him during this scene.) Sure enough, they find the trunk belonged to Leota, as it contains her book of incantations as well as a large crystal ball. As they study the crystal ball, it activates, and the face of Madame Leota appears. She confirms that Gracey hired her to try and contact the spirit of his late wife, Eleanor. Despite them holding a séance every night for an entire year, they were unable to contact Eleanor. Although the repeated séances did open the floodgates, allowing hundreds of other ghosts to come through. After this went on for a while, Leota urged Gracey to stop trying to contact Eleanor, in fear of what else they might inadvertently unleash. But Gracey refused to listen. Eventually, he started receiving what appeared to be messages from Eleanor, which begged him to join her on the other side. Giving into the temptation of being with Eleanor again, Gracey did as the messages said and drank a bottle of poison before Leota could warn him that it wasn’t Eleanor who was speaking to him but a dark spirit who was feeding on Gracey’s grief and had the power to trap once happy souls inside the house. After discovering Gracey’s body, Leota tried to determine the identity of the dark spirit, but before she could do so, the dark spirit managed to trap her within her own crystal ball. Madame Leota completes her story by saying this dark spirit has already managed to trap 933 souls within the mansion’s walls, but that 1000 souls are needed for the dark spirit to complete a ritual that will enable him to escape the mansion himself. Madame Leota also warns them to beware of the full moon, which is when this dark spirit will be at his most powerful state, and she urges Ben to be particularly careful as she can sense the extent of his grief over losing Alyssa, which will make him the most vulnerable to the dark spirit’s manipulation.

Harriet suggests attempting to banish the dark spirit from the house, to which Madame Leota agrees. And she starts to tell them that, in order to banish the dark spirit, they’ll need an object that belonged to the spirit when he was still living. But before Leota could offer further instructions, the voice of the Dark Spirit interrupts them, which causes Leota’s image to vanish from sight. That’s when Bruce tells the others of the bad news. While Leota had said that the Dark Spirit had managed to collect 933 souls, there had been 66 additional deaths that had occurred within the mansion’s walls since Leota had been trapped. Which means the Dark Spirit only needs one more soul to complete his ritual. And since all those deaths had occurred during the full moon, they only have four days left to stop this Dark Spirit from collecting his final soul. The problem is, since a banishment requires them to use an object that once belonged to the Dark Spirit, how are they supposed to locate such an object when they don’t even know who the Dark Spirit is? Fortunately, Harriet has an idea, and she suggests trying something she calls a reverse séance, which involves her spirit leaving her body and venturing into the Ghost Realm, so she can get a look at the Dark Spirit. (Ben points out that that sounds very much like astral projection, but Harriet dismisses this, virtually accusing him of just making up words.)

Once again, the movie gives us a quiet moment, in which Ben and Gabbie have a private conversation. Gabbie voices her concern for Travis and how he might be processing things. She confides in Ben how she wanted to come to Louisiana so Travis could have a chance to put everything with his father behind him and just focus on being a kid. But she feels he can’t have that with the house being haunted like this. So Ben heads out to talk with Travis, who also confides in Ben about his difficulty in forming friendships with the kids in his new school. He also tells Ben that he’d talked to his dad earlier, and that his dad wants him to come visit, but Travis doesn’t want to risk making his mom feel bad. Ben, in order to help cheer Travis up, reveals he’d brought an Action Guy action figure to go along with Travis’ other action figures, and the two proceed to play with them.

That night, everyone proceeds with the Reverse Séance. However, it’s not Harriet’s spirit that exits her body, but Ben’s. Ben’s spirit quickly encounters Gracey’s ghost and attempts to follow him, only for Gracey to quickly shake him. So Ben wanders about for a bit, crossing paths with various Haunted Mansion Easter Eggs. Eventually, he does manage to corner Gracey’s spirit and begins questioning him. Gracey acknowledges that the whole mess was his fault, but that nobody knows the Dark Spirit’s mortal name. Still, Gracey begs Ben to not allow the Dark Spirit to claim his last soul, as then they’ll all be trapped there forever. At that moment, all the ghosts begin to run away in fear, and Gracey announces the approach of the Dark Spirit. Of course, those of us who are familiar with Haunted Mansion lore have already been able to recognize him by his silhouette. That’s right, it’s the legendary Hatbox Ghost. Upon seeing him, the Hatbox Ghost addresses Ben by name and starts to approach him. Listening to his instincts, Ben does his best to hide from the Hatbox Ghost, even accepting the nonverbal suggestion of an animated suit of armor to hide underneath a table. But his efforts are in vain as the Hatbox Ghost spots him by materializing his head into his trademark hatbox. In the end, Ben only manages to get away when his friends, realizing what happened when Ben’s body momentarily gets inhabited by the Hatchet Ghost from earlier, summon Ben’s spirit back to where it belongs with the aid of a bell and Harriet’s sage smudge stick. As Ben recovers from his ordeal, he tells the others what he saw during the Reverse Séance, saying he saw the Hatbox Ghost, and how the other ghosts were clearly afraid of him. But Ben can’t give them much to go on as to how to identify the Hatbox Ghost’s mortal name. All that Ben can say is that the ghost’s grin is burned into his memory.

Here, we get yet another character moment. Ben, realizing that Harriet is probably feeling a bit put out that he managed to exit his body instead of her (particularly when she admits that maybe she is limited in her abilities), tries to reassure her, saying that it was just because he was feeling particularly raw. And that he suspects that the Hatbox Ghost wants him as his 1000 soul. At this, Ben opens up to everyone, telling them how his wife died in a car accident. And losing her was particularly hard on him because, on the day the accident happened, she’d asked him to go with her to get some tater tots, which were her favorite snack. But Ben was feeling very frustrated that day because of how much work he had to do, so he sort of snapped at her that he was too busy. Because of that, when Alyssa got into the accident while making another stop for ice cream, she was alone when she died. That’s why Ben had tried so hard to build the Ghost Camera, because he wanted to see her one more time. Ben completes his sad tale by voicing his fear that Alyssa died not knowing that he loved her. While Gabbie and Harriet reassure Ben that they’re sure Alyssa knew, Bruce starts trying to lighten the mood by making jokes about Alyssa’s cholesterol levels, citing how often she seemed to eat foods that were high in fat and salt. Despite the somewhat insensitive nature of Bruce’s comments, it does the trick, and Ben is soon chuckling, thanking him for making him laugh in the face of his lingering sorrow.

Still, there’s the lingering matter of figuring out who the Hatbox Ghost was when he was alive. Bruce is the one who comes up with the idea of taking Ben down to a local police station and having him describe the Hatbox Ghost’s face to one of the sketch artists there. And I’d be lying if I said this scene wasn’t funny to watch. You can tell the sketch artist finds Ben’s description of the man who ‘mugged him’ to be fishy, particularly when Ben says the man had no nose or lips. Still, the sketch artist does his job, though he does visually facepalm when Bruce suggests that he draw the culprit again, this time with skin. Still, the visit with the sketch artist pays off. Thanks to the artist’s rendition, Bruce is able to correctly identify the Hatbox Ghost as Alistair Crump. (I wonder if this name was an intentional homage to Rolly Crump, one of the key Imagineers responsible for giving us the Haunted Mansion ride. After all, the name Gracey came from Yale Gracey, another mastermind behind the creation of the ride.) According to Bruce’s historical records, Alistair was the son of a real estate tycoon named Addison Crump. Addison was, to say the least, a poor excuse for a father. According to the lore, he kicked his son out of the house when he was just a boy, claiming that Alistair had cried too much at his mother’s funeral. After that, Alistair seemed to disappear entirely, only reappearing after his father died under mysterious circumstances. Having become wealthy himself during his prolonged absence, Alistair became well known for throwing elaborate parties, inviting all the social elites who failed to come to his aid when he was a boy. Only many of these guests went missing during the parties. It was said that Alistair had become deeply involved in dark magic and needed a constant supply of blood sacrifices to maintain his power. However, nobody ever found where he hid the bodies of his victims. In the end, his servants, having had enough of the abuse he inflicted on them, turned against him and beheaded him with an axe. Before dying, however, Alistair, whose head was never found, vowed revenge from beyond the grave. Gabbie then points out that Alistair’s old estate, which is only a few hours north from them, was named a historical property and has since been turned into a bed and breakfast.

As everyone starts getting ready to head off to Crump Manor, speculating that they’re sure to find something that belonged to Alistair there, the Hatbox Ghost, having overheard that they were able to discern who he was before he died, does his best to interfere. Using his control over the mansion, he physically separates Ben and Travis from Gabbie, Harriet and Bruce (we’ll later see that Father Kent had stepped outside to get something from his car). The room Ben and Travis find themselves trapped in quickly starts to turn into the famous Stretching Room, and the floor beneath them turns to a combination of quicksand, kegs of dynamite and an alligator infested pool. Thankfully, with the aid of the paintings’ occupants, Ben and Travis are able to escape their predicament by hitching a ride on the gargoyle shaped sconces, which help them reach the ceiling, granting them access to a window to the outside. After managing to climb down from the roof, they rejoin Father Kent, and the three narrowly manage to drive away to get to Crump Manor. As for Gabbie, Harriet and Bruce, they’re still trapped inside the mansion. To make things worse, Bruce starts to experience a heart attack. Despite Gabbie’s attempt to tend to Bruce and Harriet trying to ward off dark spirits with her smudge stick, Alistair takes advantage of Bruce’s weakened state to possess his body.

After what must have been a long drive, Ben, Travis and Father Kent make it to Crump Manor, which seems to resemble the Haunted Mansion exterior at Disney World. Much to Ben’s displeasure, the people who own Crump Manor don’t just operate a bed and breakfast. They also host dinner theater. Still, they make their way up to the entrance, with Father Kent saying a tour will begin in five minutes. Despite Ben’s intentions to have this be a quick in-and-out mission, he quickly finds this will not be the case as the tour guide, Pat (played by the uncredited Winona Ryder), states the tour will take three hours, with bathroom breaks strictly prohibited. After the tour goes on for a while, Ben hears from someone else taking the tour that its rumored that Alistair’s missing head is still hidden somewhere inside the house. Taking this as their best lead, Ben and Father Kent begin trying to decide how they’ll go about finding the missing head. That’s when Travis points out he might have a solution. During the tour, he’d personally witnessed wet footprints appearing on the floor. Realizing this means the Mariner Ghost had followed them there, they track him down to one of the rooms. After a bit of a rocky start, Ben manages to get the Mariner Ghost to agree to aid them by promising him that they’ll help him find his way back to the sea. Accepting the terms, the Mariner Ghost, using the steam that forms on a bathroom mirror to communicate, reveals the fact that Alistair’s 1000th soul must be willing. The Mariner Ghost then leads the three of them down to a fireplace, where they locate an entrance to a hidden crawlspace beneath the floor. Ben and Father Kent quickly realize that only Travis is small enough to fit through the opening. Travis, while he is clearly reluctant to go down there, realizes that he really doesn’t have a choice. Down in the hidden crawlspace, Travis finds that this is where the bodies of Alistair’s victims were stored, as indicated by the iconic punny tombstones scattered about. Amongst the tombstones, Travis finds an old top hat and realizes it must be the item they came for. Despite him getting a minor fright when he finds a human skull beneath the top hat, Travis is able to bring it back to Ben and Father Kent.

With Alistair’s hat in their possession, Ben begins the drive back to the mansion. On the way, we’re treated to a little product placement from Burger King (this movie was teaming with product placements and namedrops of big companies like Amazon and Zillow), with Father Kent briefly mistaking Ben’s jalapeno poppers for tater tots and thinking it might be a Ghost Wink. By the time they make it back to the mansion, it’s already dark. Ben and Father Kent exit the car, but Ben instructs Travis to stay put. Travis objects to this, stating that he wants to see this through to the end, but Ben puts his foot down, saying it’s too dangerous. Travis is visibly upset at this, but he relents, stating that he’ll try getting in touch with his dad. As Ben starts to make his way inside, Father Kent decides that it’s time to be honest, and he admits to Ben that he’s not really a priest. In actuality, he works for a Halloween supply store, and his priestly getup is part of a side hustle of his. Ben seems to be too stunned for words by this at first, but then decides to give Kent a bit of a pep talk, telling him that Kent helped him get back in touch with who he used to be before the pain of losing Alyssa took over his life. Now it’s Kent’s chance to find the inner strength inside of him. To drive the point home, Ben asks Kent if he’s ready to be a hero, turning the question Kent previously used on him back the other way. This helps Kent agree to stay and do what he can, and they make their way inside.

Once inside, Ben and Kent start looking around for Gabbie, Harriet and Bruce. Though it’s obvious to the viewing audience that Bruce has been possessed by Alistair from the way he was clearly hiding behind a corner when they walked in. When Bruce/Alistair approaches them, he informs them that it’s all over as Harriet had found some mumbo jumbo spell in Leota’s book of incantations while they were gone, and Alistair had already been defeated. When asked where Gabbie and Harriet are, Bruce/Alistair claims they went to the general store to get some taffy. If Ben is suspicious of this, he does his best to not give his suspicions away, and he steps away to try and locate the two women, leaving Kent alone with Bruce/Alistair. Seeing the top hat in Kent’s hand, Bruce/Alistair asks if that’s the genuine hat, but Kent claims it’s just a replica. Not buying this, Bruce/Alistair asks to see it, but in doing so, his voice comes out distorted, which Kent clearly picks up on. Realizing that his attempt at subterfuge has failed, Bruce/Alistair orders Kent to give him the hat and leave the house. When Kent doesn’t comply with the demand, the two of them start to wrestle for the top hat. After a struggle, Bruce/Alistair manages to toss the top hat into the fire, and Kent immediately dives to save it. Taking advantage of Kent’s distracted state, Bruce/Alistair tries to come up behind him and bash him over the head with a candlestick. Fortunately, Ben had already managed to locate Gabbie and Harriet, who have been left tied up and gagged elsewhere. And the moment she was able to, Gabbie took off running before she was properly untied. She manages to arrive just in time to tackle Bruce/Alistair to the ground.

With the slightly singed top hat in her hand, Harriet tries to begin the banishment ritual. However, the full moon is now at its peak, meaning Alistair’s powers are at their strongest. Because of this, Bruce/Alistair is able to telepathically rip the hat from Harriet’s grasp before tossing it back into the fire. With that, Alastair casts Bruce’s body aside, appearing in his actual form. Alastair monologues for a bit, saying that he’ll be relieved to be able to be free from this house, going on to say that while there are 999 ghosts haunting the house, there’s room for one more. He then turns to Ben, saying that final soul could have been him. Gabbie instantly realizes that Travis isn’t present and asks Ben where he is. Ben assures her that Travis is safe in the car, talking to his father. This shocks Gabbie, who says that’s not possible- Travis’ father died a year ago!

Yeah, that’s the movie’s big twist. While Travis’ father was notably absent throughout the movie, there was nothing to directly suggest that he’d died before this moment. It was easy for the viewing audience to suspect that Gabbie and Travis’ father had simply gone through a very messy divorce. And as this revelation sinks in, we see Travis is sitting in the car with a pen and notebook, with the pen moving on its own. The pen writes out the words ‘I miss you, I want to see you.’ Travis voices aloud the question as to how they can see each other, and the car door opens, allowing Travis to see a yellow light shining out from a basement window.

Now that Alistair is clearly planning to use Travis as his willing soul instead, Ben and Gabbie race off to locate him in time, with Ben instructing Harriet to fetch Madame Leota and tasking Kent and Bruce to find a way to get past Alistair’s ghostly minions in order to get the hat before it burns completely. With that, everyone runs off into separate directions to complete their individual tasks. Kent taunts the ghosts’ intelligence badly enough to get them to chase after him, clearing a path for Bruce to rescue the top hat from the fire. Meanwhile, Harriet approaches Leota in the Séance Room. Leota states that their only hope of banishing Alastair now is if Harriet can release her from her crystal ball, so they combine their powers. Harriet is visibly doubtful that she is gifted enough to properly cast the spell that can release Madame Leota, but Leota assures Harriet that she believes in her. As for Ben and Gabbie, they end up getting separated because of the house’s walls and floors shifting around. Clutching at straws, Ben calls out to Gracey for help. Right away, Gracey pops up through a hidden panel in the floor, instructing Ben to follow him to Travis. When Ben goes through the hidden panel himself, he finds himself in an Escher like room that’s clearly meant to reference the Endless Staircase that I believe is exclusive to the Disney World version of the ride. With Gracey’s help, Ben is able to catch up with Travis in the basement, arriving just in time to find the boy being lured to a glowing yellow hole in the stone floor by a disembodied voice pretending to be that of Travis’ father. Ben beseeches Travis to take his hand, telling him that he was wrong and that his father isn’t here. And if he was, he’d want Travis to be safe with his mother. Travis suddenly breaks down, tearfully saying that he hates it everywhere, and nowhere feels right without his father. To this, Ben sympathetically decides to change tactics, assuring Travis that he knows how he’s feeling right now as he’d felt that same kind of pain as well. But he needs Travis to trust him now, saying that Travis can talk to him about his misery so they can be miserable together. In the end, Ben’s words do the trick, and Travis consents to try and put the loss of his father behind him, accepting Ben’s hand. Together, they turn and try to make their way out of the mansion, with Gracey helping Gabbie meet up with them along the way.

However, the path they take out of the mansion leads them right into the middle of the cemetery, where Alastair is waiting for them, accompanied by a legion of the ghosts under his control. Ben, unwilling to allow Alastair to harm Gabbie and Travis, offers himself up in exchange for their safety. But before he takes Alastair’s hand so his soul could be claimed, Harriet appears, accompanied by Madame Leota, who was successfully freed from the crystal ball. They’re shortly joined by Bruce, carrying the remaining fragment of Alistair’s top hat. As well as Kent and the other ghosts, who had agreed to turn against Alastair when Kent managed to appeal to their better natures and their desire to be free from Alastair’s control. Still, Alastair is unwilling to admit defeat just yet, sending the minions who are still loyal to him after Bruce, thereby preventing him from reaching Harriet and Leota. Travis, however, volunteers to run and get the hat fragment from Bruce in order to carry it the rest of the way.

Ben, seemingly realizing that Alastair is about to attack his friends directly, stops him by stating that he’s right- the others cannot safe him from his grief. As he says this, he starts to reach out to Alastair to allow him to claim his willing soul. But right before Alastair can touch Ben’s extended hand, he pulls back, declaring ‘but they can save me from you.’ With that statement hanging in the air, Harriet and Leota, having gotten the hat fragment from Travis, began the banishment ritual, which includes words that any Haunted Mansion fan will find familiar. As Alastair is dragged down into the grave-shaped portal by purple tendrils, he tries one more time to appeal to Ben’s lingering grief, offering him the opportunity to see Alyssa again, stating that this is his last chance to tell her he loves her. Ben, while still clearly hurting, simply responds that ‘she knows.’ And with that, he slams his foot down on Alastair, forcing him the rest of the way down into the abyss.

With Alastair gone and both Ben and Travis’ souls safe, it looks like it’s a happy ending all around, though the spell that has freed Madame Leota from the crystal ball will apparently not last forever, meaning that Leota will have to return to her imprisonment. (She is accepting of this, however, stating that the crystal ball is actually quite roomy.) As for the 999 ghosts, despite Kent telling them that they’re all free to leave or cross over, their preference appears to remain in the mansion. Gabbie and Travis accept this, with Travis pointing out that someone should stay and look out for them, suggesting that he’d be okay with staying at the mansion as well.

And now begins the wrap up portion of the movie. Keeping up their end of the bargain, Ben and Travis drive the Mariner Ghost down to a pier somewhere, where the Mariner Ghost apprehends some poor guy’s fishing boat. Sometime later, Halloween comes to New Orleans, as evidenced by the decorations lining the street. Ben gives Kent a box of some of Alyssa’s clothes and such so they can be donated, indicating that he’s ready to move on with his life. After Kent leaves, Ben notices the pretty longhaired cat that has been lurking about outside his house throughout the movie. With a smile, Ben steps over to pet the cat. That’s when he notices the collar around her neck, and when he takes a moment to get a better look, he sees the cat’s name is Tater Tot. Immediately, the expression on Ben’s face shifts, and it’s clear when he turns and looks upward that he realizes that this is a Ghost Wink that Alyssa sent him.

Later that evening, Ben makes his way back to the mansion, where Gabbie and Travis are having a small get together for Halloween, with Harriet, Kent and Bruce in attendance as well. Here, we learn that Gabbie and Travis are indeed staying in town, as Gabbie (who had mentioned in passing earlier that she’d worked as a doctor prior to moving down to New Orleans with Travis) got a job at New Orleans General. And Travis’ problems at school seem to have improved as he announces he’s been voted as the vice president of his class. Also, Kent had been inspired to get ordained as a minister, and it’s suggested that Ben has gone back to the astrophysicist world as he mentions that ‘the lecture went on a little long.’ Before Ben can enter the house, he and Gabbie jokingly repeat the exchange they’d shared upon their first meeting, with Gabbie telling Ben that if he sets foot through the door, it could change the course of his entire life, to which Ben announces that it’s a risk he’s willing to take. And so, the movie comes to an end, with Ben, Gabbie, Travis, Harriet, Kent and Bruce sharing a meal as the various ghosts that continue to haunt the mansion dance about the room to a jazzed up rendition of Grim Grinning Ghosts that I would love to hear a full-length version of.

Overall, I rather enjoyed this version of Haunted Mansion. While I still find the whole tragic love story aspect of the 2003 version to be very enjoyable, as well as the whole twist of the murder being covered up as a suicide, I thought this version did a better job of explaining the reason behind why there was a deadline to fix the conflict. I don’t think they really explained why it was so urgent for the curse to be broken so quickly in the 2003 version. After all, they’d already been waiting for 112 years by that point, so why was it so imperative to get Sara to Gracey Manor as soon as possible? But in this movie, they made it clear why there was a time limit to defeat Alistair. In addition, I appreciated how this movie took the time to let the viewing audience catch their breath from the overall plot and simply let the characters be people. And full props to how the movie gave us the message that it was okay for little boys and even grown men to cry and be sad. That’s a very important message to present in a world of toxic masculinity, where boys can often be ridiculed and mocked for showing any sign of perceived weakness. While we do see a bit of this outlook in terms of Alistair’s backstory, his father’s harsh response to Young Alistair crying at his mother’s funeral is clearly presented as wrong. And on a personal note, I really liked how it was left ambiguous as to whether or not Ben and Gabbie were going to get together. While they certainly have plenty of moment where we see there’s a solid connection between them, as well as scenes where Ben is bonding with Travis in a very father and son kind of way, it’s still not explicitly stated if they’re romantically involved in the end or not. Yes, Ben does bring Gabbie some flowers at the end, but that could be interpreted as a platonic gesture as well. I think this was a smart move on the movie’s part, particularly since I don’t think either of them were in a place where they should think about getting into the dating scene again. I mean, Ben had only just started putting the loss of Alyssa behind him. And Gabbie just lost her husband and the father of her son a year ago. While it’s not exactly clear where Gabbie is in terms of the grieving process, Travis was still very much in his mourning period. As much as he clearly liked Ben, he might not be comfortable with the idea of Ben essentially ‘replacing’ his father. And it’s made abundantly clear that Travis’ wellbeing and happiness is Gabbie’s main priority at the moment (as it should be). While I certainly wouldn’t object if Ben and Gabbie end up dating if there’s ever a sequel, I am glad they left it open ended in that regard. Finally, I can see how Haunted Mansion fans would prefer this to the 2003 version since the ghosts end up remaining in the mansion this time around and don’t cross over in the end. Plus, this movie was practically bursting at the seams in regards to nods and references to the Disney ride. Honesty, you could easily make an extensive list of how many Haunted Mansion Easter Eggs there were in this movie. In fact, the only element that I don’t recall seeing in this version are the Singing Busts. But while it does stink that they were left out, I can’t think of a way they could have been squeezed in.

#disney haunted mansion #haunted mansion 2003 #haunted mansion 2023

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