Madame Leota

Madame Leota is a character from Disney's The Haunted Mansion Attraction and its many spin offs within the franchise.

## General Information

### Feature films

The Haunted Mansion
Mickey's House of Villains

### Books

The Haunted Mansion (comics)
Disney Kingdoms: The Haunted Mansion
Tales from the Haunted Mansion

### Video Games

The Haunted Mansion
Epic Mickey
The Haunted Mansion: The Black Widow Bride

### Park Attractions

The Haunted Mansion
Phantom Manor
Hallowishes
Memento Mori

### Voice

Eleanor Audley (original)
Susanne Blakeslee (current)
Oona Lind (Phantom Manor)

### Actress

Leota Toombs (face)
Oona Lind (Phantom Manor)
Kim Irvine (face) (Haunted Mansion Holiday)
Jennifer Tilly (2003 film)

## Background

Madame Leota is the mansion's resident medium and is responsible for allowing the spirits who thrive there to materialise and appear visible for the guests. She appears as a disembodied head inside her crystal ball, surrounded by mist and hair.

Her personality, backstory, and motives vary by interpretation. In most media,

### Her incantation goes as follows:

*"Serpents, and spiders, tail of a rat…*

*Call in the spirits, wherever they're at!*

*Rap on a table, it's time to respond…*

*Send us a message from somewhere beyond!*

*Goblins and ghoulies from last Halloween...*

*Awaken the spirits with your tambourines!*

*Creepies and crawlies, toads in a pond…*

*Let there be music from regions beyond!*

*Wizards and witches, wherever you dwell...*

*Give us a hint… by ringing a bell!"*

### Cut incantations

*"Horntoads and lizards, fiddle and strum,*

*Please answer the roll by beating the drum.*

*Harpies and furies, old friends and new,*

*Blow on a horn, so we'll know that it's you."*

## Development

The illusion responsible for bringing the mysterious medium to life dates back to early experiments done by Rolly Crump and Yale Gracey in 1959, ten years before the opening day of the attraction. They would project footage of Hans Conried as the Magic Mirror in a Disney television special onto a bust of Ludwig Von Beethoven just to see how it would look. They were impressed by the mediocre, albeit inspiring result and showed it to Walt Disney who loved it. WED enterprises (Now known as Walt Disney Imagineering) recorded imagineer Leota Tombs as the face model lip syncing Eleanor Audley's eerie voice and the character was brought to afterlife.

Before, Leota sat stationary on her ball stand, but in 2005, for Disneyland's 50th anniversary, she was given a new feature; Floating Leota is accomplished by wires from various directions pulling the ball in winding, spiraling motions.

## Appearances

In all three "Haunted Mansions", the guests start out merely feeling the presence of its resident happy haunts, moving objects and making eerie sounds. We then enter a dark room known as the Seance Circle where the mysterious medium in her ball floats above the table reciting various incantations. With this, she encourages the spirits to come out for the guests as they enter the next room.

### Phantom Manor

In this darker version of the classic attraction, Leota chants in both French and English to call forth the spirits for a ghoulish wedding party.

### The Video Game

In the video game released to compliment the original film, Leota acts a a companion and mentor to the hero, Zeke Holloway, and uses her gift to give him instructions and clues. In this version, Leota has a southern accent and once served with the evil cult known as the Order of Shadows. After learning of their true intentions, she joins the Brotherhood of the Soul and fights off Atticus Thorn's forces before he sends stronger enemies to neutralise her. At that, he confines her to her own crystal ball, greatly limiting her powers. When there is no other hope of saving the mansion and the afterlife, Leota and the exiled ghosts summon the unsuspecting Zeke to use the arcane Beacon of Souls to purify the rooms and spirits one by one. When the two finally confront Thorn in the Vault of Shadows, the Grandmaster takes the Beacon's power sources, prompting Zeke to insert Leota into the weapon's chamber. Using her energy to defeat him, the mansion is free and Leota and the ghosts help Zeke pursue his dream of becoming an author.

## Additional Appearances

### Epic Mickey

In this version, Mickey Mouse, trapped in a world of forgotten characters, meets Madame Leona

## Trivia

* Madame Leota has a spell-book open beside her table which has her incantations written upon it.
* In Phantom Manor, Leota is both portrayed *and* voiced by Oona Lind. This is the only version of Leota to be portrayed and voiced by the same actress.
* During the Haunted Mansion Holiday and Haunted Mansion Holiday Nightmare overlays, she is played by Kim Irvine, Leota Toombs' daughter, and voiced by Susanne Blakeslee, the current voice of Maleficent and Lady Tremaine.
* She was named in a piece of cut narration from the Ghost Host: "Perhaps Madame Leota can establish contact. She has a remarkable head for materializing... the disembodied..."

## External Links

https://disney.fandom.com/wiki/Madame\_Leota

https://hauntedmansion.fandom.com/wiki/Madame\_Leota

The Haunted Mansion: Imagineering a Disney Classic