Gracey Manor (Magic Kingdom)

**Gracey Manor** also known as **Gastley Mansion** and the **Haunted Mansion** is the setting of the attraction the Haunted Mansion in Walt Disney World. While containing connections to S.E.A. it is generally considered non-canonical as its alternate Disneyland counterpart has been better established within the expanded universe.

## Description

Gracey Manor is a colonial dutch mansion located in a sleepy village within the Hudson River Valley of upstate New York. It had three stories in addition to a tower cupola overlooking its front doors.

### Features

#### Exterior

* **Cemetery**:
* **Garden**:
* **Family Plot**:
* **Mausoleum**:
* **Patio**:
* **Pet Cemetery**:
* **Unfinished Wing**:

#### Interior

##### 1st floor

* **Endless Staircase**:
* **The Foyer**: The side foyer of the manor which contained a fireplace and portrait of one Master Gracey.
* **Library**:
* **Music Room**:
* **Portrait Gallery**: This was an octagonal room located underneath of the mansion's cupola. It was decorated with four portraits of the mansion's former guests and and residents as they appeared in their corruptible, mortal states.
* **Portrait Corridor**: This portrait corridor was used to portray two marble-busts and five haunted portraits.
* **The Grand Hall**: The grand hall was a dining hall and ballroom with several balconies, a door to the outdoor graveyard, and a pipe-organ built in.
* **Servants' Quarters**:

##### 2nd floor

* **Endless Hallway**: The endless hallway was a seemingly physics breaking hallway of rooms presumably used for the 999 ghostly residents of the estate. The landing of the hallway was decorated with curtains, a macabre suit of armour and an arm-chair with designs resembling a face.
* **The Conservatory**: The conservatory held several plants and a sealed coffin containing a restless corpse.
* **Corridor of Doors**: The corridor of doors are dark corridors decorated with photographs of corpses, portraits of ghosts and other forms of morbid decor.
* **Séance Chamber**: The Séance chamber was used by the manor clairvoyant Madame Leota to summon the estate's spirits.

##### 3rd-4th floors

* **The Cupola**: The cupola was used by the Ghost Host to commit suicide, leaving his hanging corpse within it.
* **The Attic**: The mansion's attic was used by serial-killer Constance Hatchaway to store away the evidence of her murders and is where she resided as a ghost.

## History

The history of the Magic Kingdom's Haunted Mansion is generally considered non-cannon to to extended park mythos due to it seemingly directly contradicting Disneyland's Haunted Mansion history which has been accepted within the continuity. There are however many events and characters which parallel one another or which can be presumed by Occam's razor to act in parallel to one another.

### Background

#### Magic Kingdom

The Haunted Mansion was constructed at some point in the 17th century by Dutch settlers in a village along the Hudson River in upstate New York. According to some sources, the manor was built on an Indigenous burial ground which was stolen by the colonists. The mansion was owned by the wealthy Gracey family who c. 1692 the mansion became affiliated with one Madame Leota, a witch from Salem who fled to New York to escape persecution and established a shop near the manor known as *Memento Mori*. By the time of Leota's death, she would be buried within the mansion's Gracey family-plot.

At some point in time (likely in the 18th and/or 19th centuries) , the mansion became home to a deformed madman known as the, "Hatchet Man". He is presumed to have killed certain individuals before committing suicide in the cupola of the manor using a noose. In death the Hatchet Man became the mansion's, "Ghost Host" and had an apparent connection to, "Little Leota" who was an apparent relative of Madame Leota's. Little Leota would go on to posthumously serve as the mansion's, "Ghostess".

By the 1870s the manor was owned by the wealthy George Hightower and in 1877 would also become home to his bride Constance Hatchaway. Constance was however a serial-killer who murdered George with an axe, decapitated him, and placed his head in a hatbox within the attic as a souvenir amongst the belongings of her four other late-grooms. Constance went on to live a life of wealth and comfort, dying in her old age around the 1920s. Following her death, Constance's ghost haunted the manor's attic as a murderous bride spirit.

At some point in the late-19th/early-20th century the mansion became owned by the wealthy Dread family. The Dreads were run by wealthy patriarch Jacob Dread who was murdered with poison by relative Bertie Dread. Bertie was killed by Jacob's widow Florence who herself was killed by the twins Wellington and Forsythia Dread when they suffocated her in birdseed. The twins were later murdered by Maude who was a nanny and/or cousin for the Dread family and bashed the twins' heads in with a hammer as they slept for their inheritance. After killing the twins she went to sleep but inadvertently set the house on fire due to her usage of matches as hairpins, setting the manor ablaze with her inside.

#### Tokyo Disneyland

The only known residents of the manor in life were Mister West, his pet dog Digger, one Chauncey Xavier, "Brother" Dodd, Borden, "Grandpa" Marc, Fred and, "Brother" Dave. It is unknown if they held any relations to the Gracey family or not nor if Mr. West retained status as master of the manor as he paralleled Master Gracey. At some point in time a new wing was being constructed for the manor only for it to be left unfinished and left in ruins for unknown reasons.

### Alternate-versions

#### Ghost Gallery

The Ghost Gallery is a non-canonical backstory for the Haunted Mansion which was created by cast-members of the attraction in Walt Disney World. While not in the attraction's main continuity it has been responsible for many elements of the Haunted Mansion's lore in official materials and spin-offs.

In the Ghost Gallery, the manor was constructed on the Halloween of 1671 by town burgermeister Ub van der Iwerks. The mansion was constructed over Indigenous burial-grounds which caused frequent accidents during construction that resulted in Iwerks going mad and sealing himself within a crypt in the mansion's cemetery where he died. During the American revolution the unfinished mansion served as army barracks for American revolutionaries and later became an outpost and brothel for pirates. In 1871 the mansion changed hands to one Colonel Ronald Stevens who aimed at completing the mansion only to be driven to insanity by the manor's spirits resulting in him inadvertently triggering a boiler-explosion that claimed his life. The Stevens estate laid him to rest behind the manor with a backwards epitaph and sold the Haunted Mansion to an organization known as the American Spiritualist Society which documented at least 900 spiritual contacts within the estate before they disbanded in 1914.

The house was sold to wealthy businessman George Gracey, Sr. who had his wife Mary move into it with their son George Gracey, Jr.. George Sr. was an absentee husband and father who had an affair that produced an illegitimate child in the form of Daniel Patterson. For his adultery, Mary murdered George Sr. with a hatchet to the skull and after being acquitted for the crime being of passion she took her inheritance and abandoned her son to be the new master of the manor. Due to his disturbed upbringing, George Gracey, Jr. was obsessed with the occult and spent his family fortune on the arcane such as an authentic Egyptian mummy he smuggled into the country or a haunted piano. This lead to George hiring a clairvoyant from New Orleans named Madame Leota who he had an affair with, producing an illegitimate child in the form of, "Little Leota".

George's wife Lillian was a melancholy circus-performer who disdained Madame Leota for her relationship with Master Gracey. In response to this, Madame Leota used magic to summon an alligator during one of Sally's performances, killing her. Little Leota was also considerably murderous and killed her maid Prudence when she was only a young girl then later in her youth befriended several pirates that made port in the town. She attempted to seduce many servants in the manor but they refused her advances, leading to Sally tricking them into walking into a quicksand pit behind the manor but not before accidentally falling into the Hudson River and drowning. There were many other incidents of murder and misfortune that resulted in countless deaths in the manor's grounds, typically involving Madame Leota and Master Gracey.

When the Gracey fortune ran-dry, Master Gracey attempted to remarry to a wealthy teenaged orphan named Emily Cavenaugh. She too was murdered by Madame Leota, here being locked within a chest in the attic of the mansion. After this Gracey and Leota became recluse as Leota worked to transform the Haunted Mansion into a portal to the underworld. When Gracey found out about this he objected with Leota attempting to trap his soul within her crystal-ball after she learned of his transgressions. Master Gracey commit suicide by hanging himself in the manor's cupola before she had the chance, causing the curse to infect Leota instead. Years later, the Haunted Mansion was purchased by W.E.D. Enterprises and turned into an authentic haunted-house attraction known as, "The Haunted Mansion" which cast-member Dick O'Dell was left in-charge of.

## Appearances and allusions

### Frontierland

A removed sign from Walt Disney World's Frontierland pointed to the Haunted Mansion and identified it as having been called, "Gastley Mansion".

### Haunted Mansion

This version of the Haunted Mansion is the setting for the Magic Kingdom and Tokyo Disneyland versions of the attraction.

#### Haunted Mansion Holiday Nightmare

The seasonal Haunted Mansion Holiday overlay is recreated in Tokyo's Haunted Mansion where Jack Skellington and the residents of Halloween Town throw Christmas festivities in the manor.

### Disney Kingdoms

In Disney Kingdoms: Haunted Mansion comics, this Haunted Mansion is seen on a photograph in the Ghostly Materials Gallery of the Haunted Mansion in New Orleans. It is shown by the Hatbox Ghost to be one of the mansions connected to the Haunted Mansion via the endless staircase along with the Hollywood Tower Hotel, Ravenswood Manor and Rainbow Ridge.

## Connections

### Fantasyland

In addition to the Tokyo Haunted Mansion being located in Fantasyland, the Magic Kingdom Haunted Mansion has a tomb in the pet cemetery dedicated to one J. Thaddeus Toad from the attraction *Mr. Toad's Wild Ride*. In the *Beauty and the Beast* themed gift-shop *Bonjour! Gifts* is a portrait depicting a man representing a fictionalized version of *Magic Kingdom* president Phil Holmes. In the man's possession is a roll of wallpaper from the Haunted Mansion.

### Mystic Manor

Certain characters and items from the Haunted Mansion can be found within Mystic Manor such as a mosaic of Medusa and two staring busts. The Tales from the Haunted Mansion books also mention *Lord Henry Mystic* as having been rivals with one Bartholomew Tusk who in that story obtained the Haunted Mansion's mummy.

### Phantom Manor

Characters and items including Madame Leota, the Singing Busts and the Staring Busts carry over into Phantom Manor from the Haunted Mansion.

### Tower of Terror

The manor's late-owner George Hightower and his bride Constance were both members of the Hightower family, a wealthy American clan which most notably included Harrison Hightower III of New York's Hotel Hightower.

## Trivia

* The setting of this incarnation of the Haunted Mansion was inspired by the village of Sleepy Hollow, Tarrytown from Washington Irving's *The Legend of Sleepy Hollow*.
* In Tokyo Disneyland, the gates of the mansion are decorated with copper griffins intended to blend it with the more medieval Fantasyland setting.

## References

1. ↑ http://doombuggies.com/history7.html
2. ↑ https://jungleskipper.com/sea/attractions/skipper-canteen#&gid=1&pid=center-shelf-4th-shelf-c57
3. ↑ http://2719hyperion.blogspot.com/2007/03/snapshot-sign-pointing-to-gastley.html
4. ↑ http://ultimateorlando.blogspot.com/2012/10/magic-kingdom-president-has-tribute-in.html