Podcast: The Ride - Haunted Mansion 5: Hatbox Ghost

Episode Date: October 28, 2022

It's our annual jaunt through The Haunted Mansion! And this year it's all about the legendary Hatbox Ghost. His short-lived stint in the mansion, why he got the axe, and his exciting return. Scary Trees That Scare Scott Episode up at The Second Gate: Patreon.com/PodcastTheRide FOLLOW PODCAST: THE RIDE: https://twitter.com/PodcastTheRide https://www.instagram.com/podcasttheride BUY PODCAST: THE RIDE MERCH: https://www.teepublic.com/stores/podcast-the-ride PODCAST THE RIDE IS A FOREVER DOG PODCAST https://foreverdogpodcasts.com/podcasts/podcast-the-ride Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

FOREVER! DOG! Warning, the following podcast is part- Playful spooks have interrupted our yearly tour. A pranky spirit has detained us and demanded an entire episode to himself. Kindly remain subscribed as we explore his legend, his triumphant return, his hat, and an even spookier ghoul named Jared Leto. Please enjoy your two-hour intimate look at the Hatbox Ghost, its Haunted Mansion 5 on Hauntcast The Fright! does everyone know what to do

you fucking don't you don't again i'll do it seven weeks no one did i'm the only one who does the assignments i remember what we're supposed to do at the top of the episodes and this one's important guys yeah i think you really let jc down not jesus christ james cameron because we need to honor until avatar that it is seven weeks until Avatar The Way of Water Yes And Here's what I'll tell you I got in the car And I said You know what you're gonna do

You gotta listen to the End of the episode I swear this is true I got in the car I'm listening to the End of the episode I got distracted by something I started driving

I said oh Chromio has a new song And I completely forgot I forgot to listen To the end of the episode You gotta listen to that In your own voice Definitely

No I understand in general But I had the I was leaving I go the last thing You have to do For research for the episode Is listen to the episode you're listening to that than your own voice definitely no i understand in general but i i had the i was leaving ago the last thing you have to do for research for the episode is listening to the end of the episode completely lost it listen to the new chromio song which is good great and then i like fucked up this is what happened my name is michael carlson well no it's not it's michael Madsen. There, I gave it the oomph. Thank you. I'm Scott Grave Digner. Yeah. Over there is Jason Skeleton. Yeah, I'm here.

I was just mostly focused on like, all right, leave a little early so you can get a cup of hot coffee. It's too cold. Too cold this morning for iced coffee. So, you have iced coffee in the fridge, but you gotta go somewhere for hot coffee. I've been thinking about this for about seven weeks. Yes. I, and partially because I think in the time since we, since the last episode, and this is our yearly haunted mansion episode,

or it will become that after some avatar bullshit. But last year we were just like, well, with the yearly nature of this podcast, like that's a year is a long time for stuff to happen for seismic shifts to happen and it's been a long long wait for avatar 2 for any of these avatars to come out it's the only franchise that moves slower than our yearly haunted mansion podcast right um and you know in that year i I think I've, I think I got a blue pilled.

Really? Avatar pilled. I think, I think much more so than I had been. I think I was starting to go that way because that's my thing with the whole thing is like, I think the people, I think the people choosing Avatar and choosing to want to enjoy Avatar are the people choosing fun. It seems like more fun on that side. And Mike, you were ahead on

the curve yeah thank you with this you were the only you were the first one i'd say on this show we thought on the show yeah it's inexplicable that you had the the reverence for the mighty acron you invented this phrase to tribute this franchise um and and that you you brought the spirit of civico and uh and you never lost it and that includes last year when we said do we think it will be coming out we were within weeks of this episode you you kept the faith i thought there'd be a delay right because it's been delayed what a decade at this point avatar 2 2009 was first one yeah yeah yes i really yes so thank you for that i i that's a badge of honor i guess in a lot of ways for me to wear i believed i thought this was the year for sure and it is i mean there's no way it's delayed at this point right at this point no it's the big like christmas

release they made tony the tiger that i saw frosted flakes still i haven't found the actual cereal yet but they they wouldn't put out a serial with a tie-in to Avatar unless the movie was coming out. Yeah, unless they were pretty certain. You can't reel that back. There's no way to pull that back. We've gotten multiple pictures of it at this point because the first one we were like, briefly,

is this real? Is this a Photoshop? But then someone sent the big display from like sam's club or big lots or something and it's like oh that that's real that's in real life confirmed confirming the tiger avatar box that so there's no going back now we are full speed ahead yeah to avatar the way of water and thus we as a unit as a podcast need to act and so we are and that is why this december podcast the ride will present feliz navidad the way of winter a yuletide celebration of all things avatar uh we're figuring out what that's going to be exactly, but we're going to, there'll be at least several things celebrating Avatar, Pandora, the world of Avatar at Animal Kingdom

and anything else that seems relevant. I think we're open to ideas. If there's subsects of Pandora world, if there's things, look, I think we've all spent regrettably little time in Pandora. Yeah. Um, at least I have. I've only been there once, a couple times jason i forget um twice so i i was there i think the first time with you guys and then i was there with my family

uh you did around this time last year okay um well if there's like i mean you know there's big stuff we got to cover but other maybe and you guys might even know, are there little elements of that Pandora culture that we have not hit? There's the bowls. The bowls. Yeah. At Satouli Canteen. That's right. Well, that could be it.

We could talk about the bowls. I've had a couple bowls. I've had a couple bowls. The popping bubble. The popping bubbles. I'm not a big fan of it, but we can talk about it. Okay. I tried it.

Yeah. The popping. The popping bubbles. We can talk about the floor like the the floor or the i should say the ground with the colors in it yeah i'm talking about at night it gets supposedly like gets very colorful it doesn't get as colorful as i kind of said it would but it's still interesting i haven't been there at night the timing has never worked out for me to be there at night so i'm missing a big part of it you simply must go at night let's not forget the other big part of it the

bathrooms halfway through the line of flight of passage oh yeah good point and we've only done the line the episode we did about the ride was not about the ride that's true it's just about the line so we could still discuss the actual ride of flight of passage i mean i don't know it seems to me like bathrooms is going to take precedence over the ride. Well, that's, you know. People know us. You could make an argument that we should have done just the office with the big tank. Mm-hmm. That should be its own episode. Sure, yeah.

With the unobtainium in the little, whatever, that little illusion or whatnot. That's not an illusion. Is it floating like on Parker Selfridge's desk? This is how blue-pilled I am. It is Parker Selfridge. It is Parker Selfridge. I believe believe it's his desk uh no i don't think it is no it's not no it's set way after it's after yeah like he in the time when parker selfridge was alive and on pandora we don't know what's going to become of him in way of water and seed bearer but it's like that little illusion where it's um there's like a magnet or something i think under yeah it's making the unobtainium sort of move around or a difference maybe just

not even unobtainium maybe it's a some sort of a like a disease or uh it's a covid disease or something it's in a little jar that was the initiative so it got released from a lab on pandora it's possible that covid came from a lab on pandora it's like when you're there's like dr augustine's lab yeah is where the origin not enough people are going after dr augustine people didn't realize that that's actually the place that's the lab theory that's my lab theory no kidding i don't remember if dr august i now i don't actually i think i forgot Dr. Augustine Sigourney Weaver, right? Yeah. And Dr. Ogden is the ride exclusive. We're embarrassing ourselves again here. It's Dr. Ogden is the office

in the line. Flight of Passage could be the first ride where we do Flight of Passage 2. Like in big fights in boxing or wrestling where it's like two people meet again. Yes. Well, I still think we... You guys are salivating for twos.

Let me tell you, behind the scenes... Oh, I wanted a sign. I want, yeah. Boys want twos more than anything in the world. Indiana Jones and E.T. too. Indiana Jones too, I'm waiting for. I'm so excited to do twos for things. But yes, I feel like Scott is the lone holdout

of not wanting to do twos yet. Seems to say new things are fun. Aren't, isn't new? New things are good too. That's the battle with Auden Mansion. New things are good too. Yes. We rewrite these things for a reason because it feels good to go home.

Nothing else to do also. And we haven't even talked about three. Sometimes the rubber match is the most exciting one, you know? That's true. You're right about that. That's right. So we'll brush up. We'll make sure we get the right

names for whose lab is which oh absolutely yeah it's just it's been a long time we will get our act together but truly listeners if there is some subsect of avatar of pandoran culture that we need to hit let us know uh because feliz navidad will be here before we know it okay great that's very exciting yes let me ask you a question all right and i i don't want to spoil if you have a picture is coming but you sent us the disney i haven't i didn't buy it i didn't buy it yet okay what are you talking about before you answer the sorry someone finished the sentence uh the the baby navi halloween costume there's a navi baby okay costume i found on Shop Disney. And I realize you've moved.

I don't have your new address. And I was like, oh, I should buy it and send it to him. And then I was like, oh, will it arrive for Halloween? I think it's for a bigger baby. So I was waiting on it because it wouldn't be ready for Halloween. Okay. So yeah, maybe next year when everyone everyone says like avatar like double fever or something because we're gonna be so jacked up after a way of water they're gonna be ready for the seed bearer

what's the next one seed bearers is the next yes is that right and we will be addressing in 2024 that's in two years i was thinking how with these yearly episodes it's funny how by it being at the very end of october we are now i think perpetually tied into uh a couple things election fears oh yeah yeah because we got midterms this year and we want this to go well we want herschel to get in very nervous that our boy isn't gonna take it all the way like he did on the football field uh we are um uh yeah and we're rooting for dr oz uh we are also agents memet what's his name yes we're he's memet we are also uh on the payroll of turkey we are also secret we are agents of influence from erdogan, President Erdogan.

You stumped me. Mehmet Oz has very close relations with the country of Turkey. And everyone's like, that's not great for senators to be super close with other countries. Look, I've only just learned about this man in the last six months. I don't know about any of his previous dealings. Or I've heard something about a the last six months. I don't know about any of his previous dealings, or I've heard something about a television show he had. I don't know. All I know is that he's a salt-of-the-earth Pennsylvania guy.

Just the most regular Pennsylvania boy, which you should root for, Jason. I am rooting. I'm hoping he shows up at the World Series. My beloved Phillies, go into the World Series. Oh, that's right. That'll happen between now that right at the beginning of the year before next year congratulations comes out okay the day this comes out yeah um yeah so so we there's a lot yeah you're you're we do finish

your thought we also have to we're locked into haunts we're locked in a haunts recap every year now uh i'm just saying there's always i think there's there's some stuff coloring these haunted mansion episodes there are fears about how elections are going to go. And in 2024, God knows what the fuck will be happening then in terms of the big election. And we're also going to be really nervous about is the seed bearer of the same high water mark as the way of water. That's a good point. Yeah, that's going to be tense. Yeah.

It's going to be a rough episode. I'm happy we got a minute like you know because this fit like yeah like remember how we felt in 2020 that was crazy yeah uh this this one feels like at least you know there's bad stuff going on but like at least we can take a breather on all that seed bearer stress exactly yeah the seed bearer that we can call and we know way of water is going to rule so actually we should take a nice deep breath. A nice deep breath of water. Let's all breathe in some water. Breathe in some water.

Speaking of, there's someone here who, last year, this title could not apply to you. But this year, it can. And we have our very own seed bearer in the garage. Mike Carlson, the seed bearer. When you say seed bearer, does that mean that you had a child i think so i don't know what it does in the film but doesn't it i mean it makes you know what i was talking about i do i'm a father now uh a seed bearer if you will uh bearing which of the women i was gonna say the woman's probably the one who has the uterus is the seed bearer. She bears the seed.

Lindsay is the seed. It depends on what you think a seed is. Lindsay's the seed bearer in this instance. I'm sure she'll be thrilled to have that title applied to her. Yeah. You're the seed bank? The seed bank? I guess.

The seed shooter. The seed shooter. Is that the Prince song seed shooter? Or no, it's a, oh yeah, he wrote it, Sex Shooter. But that's, is it Vanity or is it? Apollonia 6. Apollonia 6, thank you. Yeah, so that's true.

That's the difference from last year. More of like a seed factory, I think, right? Yeah, that's, yeah. Oh man, yes. I mean, I guess it's all stupid. If you're lucky, you're a seed factory. Yeah, yeah. And you're a salt of the earth.

I'm a lot like Dr. Oz. Dr. Oz, yeah. A real blue collar factory guy. Dr. Oz, yeah. Look, I'm just a humble man with a seed factory. I'm just trying to keep my seed factory in order, and Brandon gets in the way. Brandon wants to shut down the factory. But anyway, big, big jumps.

I just think we need to track some of these things. There's one other thing in the re-listen, and I'm sad you guys didn't get to hear this in checking out Haunted Mansion 4. Something strange happens in it, which it is the first, not the first time, but it is the first reprise of the endless Lake Nona argument. There was the initial time that it came up,

and Jason was mad about Lake Nona, time that it came up and jason was mad about lake nona and then it comes up in haunted mansion 4 and the strangest thing is it is clear as day you fully say oh yeah i got confused i confused the housing develop i confused the city with what disney's trying to do and actually misspoke and i saying it's resolved completely. Completely resolved. I admit my, yeah, yeah, yeah. And then in May, it blew up. It became the biggest argument in the history of the show. I don't know what happened between October and. I don't know.

Yeah, I, God knows. God knows. I'm just lost at this point. Yeah, I initially thought it was just like when like a real estate agent makes up, you know, this is the cool new neighborhood. Oh, well, everyone's moving to Franklin Village in Los Angeles, you know, just makes up. Well, that's not a new, that's been around. He's saying it as an example of a change.

As a marketing. Yeah. Yeah, it was around for a while. So I thought I didn't realize there actually was a Lake Nolte. I thought that was just a community where many listeners live. Apparently, yeah. I have numerous wrestlers

who can hit me with chairs. I think if we wait a couple months, maybe we can get it going again. We can just start it over. I think if a couple months go by, we can wait and do it again again we forget all these things we forgot augustine and ogden and we'll forget so embarrassing we can reprise this is somehow i'm less into doing part twos of episodes and more into just the the arguments coming back oh yeah

full argument episodes yeah that's a good idea uh man we've people are probably wondering when we started actually talking about it uh the mansion that is i have some ideas let's do it at the end now that i'm thinking about it sorry yeah yeah i have a couple things i want like different i want no no no no no no it's more mansion related it's it's you and i being punished if we don't do things right interesting we'll do it at the end we'll do it at the end we'll do the tantalizing okay well you know you're right let's let's move things along and let's officially If we don't do things right. Interesting. We'll do it at the end. We'll do it at the end. Tantalizing. Okay. Well, you know,

you're right. Let's, let's move things along and let's officially get into haunted mansion five. Here we go. And, uh, folks, if it wasn't clear already,

um, this is like, this is like when the ride stalls, this is like when you get stuck and you hear the announcement about playful spooks have interrupted your tour and we are stopping in the place where you the most want to stop in a ride that stops on almost every every time you're on it yeah what would the omni mover it all has to stop if there's any issue in the load of the unload um and we are uh uh we're stopping our tour right in front of the hat box. Oh baby. Here we are.

It's all hat box ghost. This is the, we, yeah, when we negotiated, we negotiated the terms of these episodes. This was very important. I think to us to have an episode just about to you,

to me specifically. Well, Jason, what about Jason? Well, I remember there was a lot of hubbub about the hatbox ghost when he returned and they were kind of like you know uh really ramping up like the mystery what happened why was he really there was he removed he's in the children's record about the haunted mansion

and these drawings did anyone see him and then like so yeah i think i agreed that like yeah we can dedicate to this guy you know the most popular ghost i think the most popular happy haunt yes on the ride i think this is the most story to it um and hey look i i mean i had to wrap my head around it i had to like okay i, I guess. But you know what? We've done, we've certainly done tributes to single characters. You know, we've done Botanicus. We've done the dirty footed pirate only from Pirates of the Caribbean. And, you know, if anybody deserves it, it's the Hapbox Ghost.

Yeah, it's Hattie, which I've seen. I saw a number of places just referring to him as H ghost yeah sure yeah it's hattie which i've seen i saw a number of places just referring to him as hattie i'm anti hattie when i started hearing that i was like that is cutesy i don't like the sand you know i guess today we're talking about old hattie there's a little familiar it's a little presumptuous old hattie i am not a fan of calling him old hattie oh thank you i you. I don't like that. I was worried that this would come up, and then I would just get, like, Oh, right. What? What do you mean?

Shaked with Hattie over and over. I mean, I'll call him Hattie on the episode because we're going to say his name a lot, I think, just for variation. His shorthand? Yeah. But, yeah, no, it's not my... Hatbox Ghost is the way I like to refer to him.

The proper, the full... Full formal name. And, look, I also, you know know i've had my issues in years past where there has not been like maybe the momentum that we needed to actually start talking about things on the ride yeah this is a thing on the ride and i by stopping and focusing on just one character this is now we're now the least in the realm of the thing that i'm fearing on these episodes always which is no no no stop stop stop right we're like well there's no way look we're stopped i assume we this will be unless you're talking about twos we might fall right into hatbox ghost 2 before you but but the sooner we get to it

i guess it'll well um i don't i i will say um a lot of the mystery has since been solved like a lot of like what what is he? What happened? And he's been back for like seven years now. And so I think we're good. You know, I think a lot of the- Jason, should we stop now? Do you not-

Jason. No, no. No, I've got plenty to say. Jason, are you feverish? What are you talking about? What do you mean? Enough has been said. We haven't even done the episode.

We don't know how much we've discussed. We could do a second one. Are you crazy? Well, this was the unimaginable year where I'm like, well, this is kind of an open shop case, fellas. But I want to explain the case. I want to talk about the case. Yes.

Yeah. Well, there's a bunch here. Chronologically, where we have finished, last year we exited the attic and that is the point where in today's times you enter sort of a uh you know kind of a void kind of a like amorphous zone that's not like a clear it's basically exiting the mansion you're falling out of the mansion yeah well technically not yet because right before right before you fall the turn way and we were not going to talk about the turn that's the turn

well no we can talk about when it turns to face the ghost we can talk about the yeah the doom buggy turning to face and i guess some of the because you can see them for some of the descent but only some as soon as you can't see the ghost anymore that is next year's territory off limits um but just chronologically it's we've exited the attic but uh and that's and we so we're in the zone where the hatbox ghost lives today and as jason said has since 2015 since this legendary character was brought back um but his place in the ride itself uh or so people believe and it's all a little ambiguous the history of but like presumably he was in the attic um he was where the bride was okay yeah and the bride was over where the piano was the harpsichord or oh that's what it is the bride was in a different place yes yes okay because you kind of

you rotate i believe tony baxter was the one who said you for years you would rotate towards nothing for a second because that was where oh it's something he was where the doobuggies would like put your focus on to where a certain item was but there wasn't really anything yeah and now the harpsichord i believe is there is it a harpsichord or a piano i saw it referred to as a harpsichord but it could be a piano there's a piano earlier in the ride isn't there yeah well there's a there's an organ earlier in the victor geist is playing the organ earlier are you talking about something else or isn't there another piano probably another piano but there you know the people do you think of it as a piano in the attic in the one that the shadow is playing yeah i would

i i want to say that that is i don't know for sure but i want to say that that's like a tack piano which which which is the like jangly yeah right i forget how you give it the tack effect but like it's it's very it's very specific type of noise like yeah uh uh so yeah that's where the bride was um and he was yeah he was in the he used to be in the attic yeah and the assumption being that that's the bride that's the groom yes and his head is set the way the effect should have worked was that when her heart beats his head disappears and then reappears on the next yeah they were like kind of a saint wow with the heartbeat oh interesting um wait and just to fully i mean i think listeners know but the intrigue in what was cool about this character and is cool

about this character um he is a a ghoulish figure who depending on when you see him but uh possibly he's got a skeleton-like head uh on in the place where a head should be and then there is a magical vanish and his head uh moves magically down to his hat box leaving nothing where his head should be. And this happens back and forth, back and forth, for as long as you're looking at him. And it's just a cool idea. It's a very cool illusion, as it's done now,

and probably was intended to be a very cool illusion, but it didn't quite work out. They said it worked in Imagineering with a controlled space, but then when it was in like an open a little more open area it just didn't work you could see both heads i think at the same time or it was just it just didn't look as cool as it did when it was in imagineering it didn't look cool on site they build these things it was uh it was built at the glendale facilities and they build they make these things in these little cubbies and with like curtains that you can pull on and like really control the environment but then everything else gets installed and you see it in context and i think you were also i think

maybe the guests were so close to it that you could very easily see the the shifting of the lights and however they were actually doing that effect this is um there's a picture of yale greasy like fiddling with it and um uh one imagineer who kind of researched uh the haunted mansion said like oh that's a test model that's not in the mansion this is supposedly the lone picture of it in the mansion that doom buggies found this a while ago this is re but a recent uncovering recent uncovering and there's some very grainy also recent recent like super 8 or 16 millimeter footage yeah there was a debate whether the ghost figure was actually on the ride or not for decades yes this is the lore that we're getting why there's a little more here than just he's a cool animatronic is that it became like you know

essentially almost at any point that you went on this ride from 69 to 2015 when they did a new version of it you did not see this character the hotbox ghost unless well this is what was murky and i i didn't i never knew any of this or tracked any of it that like no sometimes you hear no it was gone before the ride even opened but then internet discussion starts in the 90s and people are like no i saw it i swear i saw it and other people say that's impossible in the chronology but uh but people had so it became like well is this a mandela affected situation or not did people see it or not and i think it was pretty not you couldn't track easily tony baxter claims to have seen it right tony was like there in the first week and he claims he saw it for sure and people they ran through the mansion he said there's a video where

he's going through the mansion i'm sure you've seen part of it at least he's talking about like they got to go on it like for two straight hours when it opened yeah hours and hours worked at disneyland because he's a he's an employee and now legendary imagineer was a an employee doing i don't know what at that point i think he was not ice cream scooper i think he moved up from that at that point but he was something else i don't know where he was in the park at that point yeah and so it seemed eventually confirmed it was there for cast member previews maybe some soft openings but like a month or less it was there and um well you know what hang out we're jumping to like this is the like the the like sleepy real stuff about it yeah the legend really what was propagated for a long time was the idea that this figure was so scary.

Yes. This effect, so shocking and abhorrent that it was too scary for the ride and had to be pulled before really guests started to get to go. They got letters about this and complaints at City Hall. And they were like, we got to yank this. It's far too terrifying even though uh i i saw something where it's like well that head sculpt is also used a version of it is used on the hitch the one hitchhiking ghost one of the hitchhiking ghosts essentially has the same yeah yeah yes so it's a very familiar looking character. But this, so anyway, you've got competing lore of like, oh no, I think it just maybe

didn't work out right versus, no, no, no. This was the scariest thing you ever could have seen. And which is, you know, more exciting mythology, but also how, you know, look, it's a, it's a scary effect. It's certainly very creepy and very off-putting, but like how could know look it's a it's a scary effect it's certainly very creepy and very off-putting but like how could what version of that is so scary that guests are that adults are just like yeah scarred they have to go lie down as soon as the ride's over it's like terrifier 2 uh right now it's just happening there's a grossest horror movie with a clown yeah you know what i'm talking about no i don't know there's a indie clown movie that's the sequel to a movie called terrifier and

it's a really scary clown and it's making people throw up and pass out in the theaters oh it's so gross and it just i always get like i watched a clip someone posted of it and it is it's scary when the a clown knifes you in the face but like does a vertical uh slash on the face that is kind of scary but then like the further shots it's like well you can tell that's not a hand you can tell that he's well i think you should watch it and report back oh i should yeah is it straight i haven't seen it the first one is but the second one's in theaters and it's cleaning up people want to go see this and pass out oh okay yeah so i mean that's probably also partly legend of it yeah like oh my god people are dying watching the movie but also i do think it's super gross from what i hear like

50s kind of like the tingler type yeah gimmickry that imagine a film so scary yep which is so this can't that's the hatbox ghost in 19 that's the hatbox ghost maybe times were different maybe somehow this was so and after all the all the build-up which we went over that this like there's legend kicked into this ride before it even opens that years pass and that meant that building is standing there with no label with no sense of what it is uh like what and and then like is the is the ride itself so scary that they refuse to even open it yeah or is the building haunted like have people died working on it there is all this crazy lore and i think it all really crystallizes in this character it's an

accidental perfect situation of like lore and then it all converging like probably in the night like yeah 90s or something yeah i don't think there i don't think there was a place for the the myths and the legend to gather pre-internet no uh like this must have been way less of a thing in the in the 70s 80s yeah you would have to talk to a bunch of weirdos in person to get this stuff yeah the letter column of e-ticket magazine was only so big you know yeah i do want to give credit to i think you know with the technology they had in the later 60s trying to sequence a beating heart effect with like a black light coming up on a face and then a tiny spotlight coming up in a hat box is an audacious idea like it is crazy that i'm

sure would be difficult a little less difficult with technology now but like that is a crazy effect to try and do and i think it wasn't just people were so close there was just too much ambient light in the attic that it didn't get dark enough in the way that in a room full of blackout curtains it probably was dark enough sure for the effect uh to work and i it's so it's crazy that it is back now where i feel like the attic is only brighter it has only gotten brighter as technology has made lights oh true brighter but they're doing it in a different way like you have to i mean this like from the photos that you can see of this imagineer gail gracie working on it it is like um it feels very much like the ballroom dancers the the the

ghosts who are very like yeah right like the figure seems like delicate to me, right? Whereas now it's sort of this digitally lit, you know, you have the control over it in the way you would the stages where they shoot the Mandalorian. You know, you can like really accurately dial in level of brightness, but it's just dim enough. And it is kind of impossible to do in this analog way. Here, by the way, this is actually, I think, more terrifying. These are the schematics of the original guys. Oh, yes. And now what you're showing us is like this was some proof that it did exist, because there's also the question of was it ever there at all? And this is like from a manual that proves, no, no, no.

Here's the framework of it. Like they made blueprints with like really, you know, super detailed of what all the framework of it like they made blueprints with like really you know super detailed of what all the parts of it are yeah and i i there was also a rumor i hadn't heard this before but in some jim hill uh podcast or article that the link doesn't work anymore um he said that mark davis said that i think the hatbox ghost became one of the eagles in america sings i think the actual animatronic became this and then other people in line were like i'm sorry i'm afraid that's not probably not right because he's just a bunch of tubes and a head like tubes and metal rods in the head which makes the drawing that you're showing us very unsettling but because it's very it looks very mars attack alien where there's a

creepy skull and then the only thing he's he's just he's skeletal it's like he's just a tube man yes it's those are incredible uh drawings or schematics yeah that was a great fun i mean this on its own unintentionally is like an awesome piece of art yeah yeah it looks like an old like a like a 1800s uh weird outdated yeah medical textbook yeah for sure it's this i i'm trying to think when i learned of this it's probably it's at least i i really only learned about it maybe a decade ago i think did you know about this when you were younger because you were a little more into the magazine stuff?

Not really. No, no. Yeah, this kind of snuck up on me. So this, I think, is a perfect story because people want to imagine Disneyland is real and alive. And it's a fun thing to say that there's some actual mystery when it comes to this place and it's the best version i can't think of another story like this that's as fun as this like there's all the

different rumors you hear about disney the dark ones oh nobody dies on property whatever that stuff but like this is like the most fun version of like well i don't know maybe it's blah blah maybe it's this maybe it's like this is the most fun before they brought it back and before it was sort of recorded history like the most fun way to like speculate of like some little fun real maybe it's real maybe he went away who knows you're saying this is more fun than the lamp the lamp in the bar house well the lamp is the new hatbox ghost is what i think now we can discuss the lamp and did the lamp in the firehouse well the lamp is the new hatbox ghost is what i think now we can discuss the lamp and did the lamp change overnight and didn't walt actually ever see this lamp it was

the idea ever in or it was a type of lamp that they made when walt was alive right yeah it's magic lamp that kept burning through the pandemic walt said if there's ever a pandemic give people the lamp they need hope give them the lamp uh yeah so the lamp is the new ghost but in a pre-lamp era when we needed some some excitement um because yeah i mean i i never had actually tracked in my head it was just yeah nobody's really sure if it was there or not so before i knew the timeline it which which which was interesting uh and and some of the the lore and the mythos comes out of the fact that like i said you as soon as uh you know by september 1969 like the second month of operation for sure you go on this ride and there is no hatbox ghost

but if you were a nerd for this stuff following this stuff looking at any ancillary media you might have been like where's that ghost yeah sure they used the ghost the ghost was by i saw an advertisement with a cool like line drawing of him and then there was this record slash book like the record is a reading of the book and the hat box ghost is in that. So he's in materials that exist outside of the right, which might, might've made people think he was in it. Like,

no, I remember him because there's that hitchhiking ghost that looks similar or he's in the record or whatever. Like in my head, it was possible that it was never available to the public to see. And people were just conflating all right stuff yes and and i think like there's a lot of interview before when it was just like a guillermo del toro's gonna do a new non-eddie murphy haunted mansion he was the one i think who really sort of brought up a lot of like oh it's about the hatbox ghost if you don't know what

that is that's this thing and he probably had the record he probably had all of it because he's yeah there's some concept art yeah but he's got i'm just saying he has probably a house full of like old shit i mean he does have a house full of shape he probably like has the record and stuff enough to like yeah have found the the still kind of seldom examples of hatbox ghost being talked about here's a quick clip just to play it of uh which i'm mainly playing because it's thoroughurl Ravenscroft, my favorite voice, who's also one of the singing bus. This is just his mention in this storybook slash record. He was a cloaked figure with an evil grinning face.

A hatbox hung from his hand. That's that. Okay. It's not much, but if you you're like that could the with the attached image that could linger with you as a kid and you might be like somebody might have heard this in 1970 and then not gone to disneyland until the 80s and thought where's that go where's that hatbox guy it brings up a good question to me uh is he the most popular ghost if he's he never got removed is it is so much of the fun of him is it because it was decades of being of withholding of withholding the ghost you think

he is now for sure i think he's a legend but if there was no legend do people care about this is does he become because i was wondering is there some world where he's sort of like the mascot of the ride in a way ahead of the hitchhiking ghosts uh who now sort of if you need to like represent it abstractly who are you gonna meet in there it's the hitchhikers um maybe leota yeah i guess leota is after the hitchhikers but yeah hatbox ghost might be taking the lead but i'm saying does he take the lead if they just use that original robot that when those pictures and it's a cool effect and it works but does he just become another one of the of the ghosts and the hitchhiking ghosts still are like kind of the the big thing because people are like they followed me home they were in the mirror and oh interesting you know what i'm saying like he doesn't now he's been so showcased and now his

robot is much better than the other robots and he looks very cool he's the only one who got one made he got a very cool robot and legend he's a legend now because of that yeah is he the legendary does he have his own podcast the ride haunted mansion episode oh i don't think he does yeah i think a big part of it the story is important context because it wouldn't have been as as cool even if that if they're sort of like if they'd figured out whatever the 60s jankiness was it probably would just be as fine as right it's the sum of the stuff in the ballroom so he would i'm sure people would like him but he didn't have a few decades of like chinese democracy build up very good comparison yes yeah guns and roses

along i think the hatbox goes delivered a little better than the eventual release of guns and roe that has been out for 10 years i think that's right yeah 10 glorious but it was we all we revisit it each uh each christmas season with our loved ones you know what it really if i could do another pop culture analog, because it's a character in a highly anticipated property who's, it was far enough into the, like, as far as anybody knew, this guy's in it, so he's in the artwork. In the case, in the metaphor I will make,

I'm talking about a character who there were toys made of. Like, this guy, get ready to like this guy. I think the hatbox ghost is the constable zuvio yes the haunted mansion if you don't know if you maybe we should still do a glossary of deep star was carried but this is who was supposed to be in the initial in force awakens in the first line of force awakens toys that came out before the movie one of the characters was constable zuvio a very intriguing name like cat box ghost because you're like a constable in he's maybe in a trailer i forget um but people were there was a lot of constable zuvio buzz before that movie came out and then if you saw force awakens he's not in the movie i don't know where my my friends

uh friends of mine uh such as buzz buzz made a video for funnier diet that i liked which was like let's make something about everything like everything that's going to we think is going to be on star wars based on the seven things they've said and the great josh fadum plays constable zuvio maybe the only on-screen constable zuvio oh wow good point i think so unless anybody i mean he played it he's like kind of a hijinky guy who falls over a classic zuvio lie which i if his zuvio was in the movie i might like the movie more dave filoni we're come on get josh to play zuio on one of these Disney Plus. Josh Fadum, not Josh Gad.

No, no, Josh Fadum, yeah. Has Gad not had enough? Yeah, no, I mean, I wasn't, you put Gad somewhere else. I'm just saying for Zuvio. I was just hearing when you talk about casting and nerdy properties and you say Josh, I go right to one place. I hear you. Make Josh Gad a different constableable a new constable that's what we want fayden is a bunch of brothers who are constables yeah they can be in the same scenes

together um but there's uh historical precedence with that with star wars 2 because the lead up to episode one there were two two big lead-ups one was samuel jackson is a character named Mace Windu. And I think he has less than 10 minutes of screen time in episode one. Oh, that's true. And then the other character who I think you could send proof of purchase away for and get it. Mike, you might know his name. He has like a cone head kind of head. He's on the Jedi Council. Yeah, he's in it, right?

Yeah, he's in it uh why can't i think he has a cone head you could you could send away for this action figure and they were dark horse comics also had like a four issue series so everyone was trying to read the kiadi yeah i'm sorry kiadi mundi is that right is it is this guy's name oh wow monday you're right is it mundi i don't know i've never heard it i mean i'm gonna say this is wow star wars is a monday but maybe there's a clone wars episode where somebody says his last name or his full name not as disappeared as constable zufio but him and mace windu like leading up to episode one those who are the little like and these guys are coming get excited and they're

barely in the movie the whole jedi council is doesn't hold jedi council mace windu gets uh much more action in the second and third yeah and he gets to talk to yoda at least yes he gets like one-on-ones with yoda at the very least but yeah mundy doesn't get to talk to yoda man they don't give monday anything to do or monday yeah. He had all his money. Oh, man. Hey, it's the light side and dark side at the World Series this year. The Phillies versus the Astros. That's right. Jason versus Mundy. I don't know who to root.

You know what? Actually, I do. I had no opinion on the matter until last night seeing Ted Cruz front and center. That's right. Behind home plate. So I'm going Phillies for that reason. And who was front and center at the Phillies game? Star of Top gun maverick

mike miles teller from downingtown pa everyone had a great time at the guy geez miles teller someone who i've tolerated for at least three weeks he's and he's jason's guy now he's my guy now we were talking about like i don't know he was pretty charlie and talk on maverick at snl then he's at the Phillies game. Yeah, I know. He's kind of good on SNL. I can't believe I'm saying this. So, Avatar and Miles Teller you've come around to.

I'm Miles Pilled. I haven't watched the Godfather TV show, but I love a scene. That looks excellent. I love a scene chewing. I love Feud, Betty vs. Joan. that miniseries is so great i don't think those are comparable i don't think it's as good i mean yeah i don't think he's it's probably delivering like jessica lang uh uh susan sarandon facing off but uh yeah yeah we'll see we'll come you know in three years that'll be all we talk about is Teller on the offer. But anyway, back to the Zuvio of the mansion, the Hatbox Ghost.

Let's talk a little, before we even dive back into legend, there's things about this character that exist regardless of form, regardless of if he's drawn on a book or in a figure that got removed or the figure today. I mean, just the effect is cool. The box is cool that he's like hunched over there's a lot of character just to the way that he that he holds it like he's holding it in a mischievous manner like i got something here and we know that he's maybe not the best with walking he's got his uh his his like crooked cane uh which has a more specific term but i'm not shillelagh is that right well that's like a claw like that's a more specific term, but I'm not, shillelagh,

is that right? Well, that's like a claw, like that's a thing you beat someone with. I guess you would use a shillelagh if it's big enough as a walking stick. I think I saw that word applied to, unless I'm crazy, but you know,

hey, it's at least a cane. He's got a gold tooth. That's a distinct facet of him. He does seem to have more personality. I will give it to him. I didn't want to completely take away what is interesting about him, but he does seem to have some interesting things about him

that really stick out more than some of the other ghosts. Yeah. The kind of his asymmetrical eyes, which maybe they aren't exactly but it's just the way the pose is where one is wide and kind of frightful but the other one's more furrowed and shriveled up like it's a you know it's it's an off-putting facial pose for sure yeah the doodles of him for the the kids records and kid stuff can also you can make him cute like he's cute and this he is cute he's pretty cuddly and he's got kind of like a shock of fuzzy hair he looks like

kind of a hannah barbara guy in that version oh yeah almost yeah do you think even before we start talking about like what we think do we think we should maybe get into sort of this history of hats in general because i looked up some interesting stuff about that stuff oh you actually did yeah just a little bit i mean i did i didn't listen to you we're gonna find a way to screw me well i just don't screw i mean i didn't listen to the episode but i did look at i did watch a video called world hat story 101 about the top hat well i guess we better hat of the modern man oh i mean jason do you know anything about the top hat um I know it used to be very labor intensive And the phrase man as a hatter

Comes from like mercury Used to be used in the That's interesting I know you're doing this to needle me But that is interesting It's also interesting the top hat sort of replaced The sugar loaf hat Because that's more of like kind of a pilgrim-y hat

Type hat Which would you prefer Jason? A sugar loaf? to i'm gonna double check a sugar loaf hat before i can't picture that offhand myself either just google sugar loaf um but then also yeah there's obviously it didn't completely should he not put hat in just sugar loaf will do it uh sugar loaf what is it we can talk about sugar loaves too uh that might be for its own episode about sugar yeah sugarloaf seems like the transitional point between like pilgrim hat and like 10 gallon cowboy hat yeah yeah it's kind of man in the yellow hat yes exactly so he was sort of a throwback as well um uh the top hat john heatherington is the presumed creator of the top hat, who was an English haberdasher.

And it was first worn in public in January 1797. Wow. So it's an old thing. This is the Met Gala of its time. People were like, are you crazy? You're not wearing a sugar loaf hat? But soon enough, it becomes the norm. That's right.

And it was still, it was like a wealthy thing. You know, this is a, it's always been a fancy hat. You know, Mr. Monopoly wears it. And I think people like the Mr. Monopoly of the 1800s would wear it as well. So this suggests, again, we need this history because it suggests something about the character of the hatbox ghost goes to be able to analyze him thoroughly are you are you saying like in a socio-economic fashion by by him wearing a top hat and by even you know what by having a hat box because that's a whole i don't know if anyone has the history of the hat box well god forbid but you know because that's i was thinking like do you guys anticipate in your life ever owning a hat box i could see jason having a hat box i was i what did

write down like do people know about in the modern age do people learn about hot hat boxes from this character this attraction you know because i think um you know upscale if you're buying like a real hat like a blocked hat men or women's hat you still get a hat box but like how often do you do that in your life nowadays once or twice for some people if ever you know has anyone ever gotten purchased a hat not that not like a cap right a hat that requires i've never i don't think i will ever be commissioning a hat to be made to my specifications right yeah i think if you are going to a place where you're getting like a fully from scratch like made fedora or cowboy hat 10 gallon hat you might still be getting or like high fashion like um uh if you're going to

nieman's or bergdorf's or stuff you might be buying something that comes in and because the packaging is part of the luxury you know bergdorf's a regional i never heard bergdorf's that was the place that that's the fancy department store whose restroom i used in new york uh burgdorf goodman's uh it's next to the plaza and central park is this like a am i supposed to know the when you used the restroom that story well i told this story when we were in new york because i went in the plaza we wanted to see the lobby of the plaza hotel and most of it is like blocked off for non-hotel guests or if you don't have a reservation there's so many people trying to retrace the steps of trump and pulkin yes they can't that's like abby road like we can't so many people they're

trying to recreate people are getting down on their knees and a little knit cap and another guy in a big coat pointing the way to go yeah yeah uh so if you you never owned a top hat in a serious manner right no no no not nor have i though i do kind of want when i turn like 40 i'd like to start wearing a cowboy hat but i think it might be too much can i i actually looked up the i can't believe i'm staying on inventor of the top hat but i looked at john heatherington is just such a name i i wanted to see more and this is i i'm confused by what i'm reading this is wikipedia and uh i don't know if what we're talking about is the top hat, but there was an incident with this guy.

Oh, yeah, yeah. I saw this. Yes. In 1797, he was charged with breach of the peace and inciting a riot. Yes. Because he'd appeared on the public highway, wearing upon his head what he called a silk hat, which was a shiny luster and calculated to frighten timid people. And the officers of the crown stated

that several women fainted at the unusual sight while children screamed dogs yelped and a younger son of cord wainer thomas no not core no his poor son has he not had a difficult road enough it was thrown down by the crowd which collected and had his right arm broken uh-huh so there is a this is i thought this was interesting because this is like the legend of the hatbox ghost. This seems like bullshit,

doesn't it? A guy wore an experimental hat that made women shriek, dogs yelp, and a child got his arm broke? It was a hat that was a few inches taller than a normal hat

and in a slightly different, slightly different shape and it caused a panic and a riot. This seems like a made-up story does it not in a time where people yeah it's also look wikipedia is saying oh look in the wikipedia the common form of the story has reproduced in many then subtitle put in by wikipedia which books many which books um yeah it seems great and also like a slightly taller hat wear a powdered wig like a normal sane person kill him kill the demon kill the boy and the younger cordwainer thomas

it's so this is yeah this is exactly like the hat box because the legend of the top hat is filled with like oh was it the scariest moment when people saw it were people not able to handle a hat that was uh double the size of a normal hat specifically when i look up silk hat it looks like the hats you know that opening shot in uh the prestige with all the hats just kind of like and you don't know what you're seeing but it pays off later oh right okay uh could you show just that like one minute of film to someone from the past and they would just lose their minds like look at all those hats look at all those tawdry hats yes they gotta be institutionalized yeah

they uh also i i according to that youtube channel um or initially it was usually like beaver fur was used to make uh a top hat until the decline of the beaver industry so then it was probably what a fine industry that must have well trump said he was going to bring back the beaver industry but he didn't't. I believe. Beautiful beavers, folks. We love them. They're making dams. We can make hats out of their fur. If he went on TV and was talking about beautiful beavers, the late night hosts would have a field day.

And it would have sunk his career, certainly, for a presidential candidate to be so lewd. He's on tape talking about wanting to see beautiful beavers. Yeah, no, that would have sunk him for sure i think became very popular be some sort of fur or pelts that were easily acquired in america became very popular in france to wear beaver to wear like yeah items maybe of beaver uh and and so like an influx of money into the early american industry yeah america's founded on the beaver industry yeah i wish we mean probably like grinding up beaver bodies by hand yeah it was it was really on awful whatever it was without knowing any details look back in the past you were either

being scared of hats or you were grinding up beavers you had to choose one or the other it sucked what kind of man are you? Yeah. Beaver grinder. Beaver grinder. Or a hat shrieker. 50% of the food you eat, it's got bugs in it, and they're not supposed to be there. You can call a top hat a hi-hat or a topper, which I like that. I think that's a cute way to call it. I got my topper here.

Topper. Yeah. So I think this is all important context for the character of the hat box ghost to know that i think that's a cute way to call it like i got my topper here and topper yeah so i think this is all important context for the character of the hatbox ghost to know where he comes from and what he's all about i don't i should disagree with you and yet i think maybe it does i think it does yeah because if he's dealing in it just implies he is a fancy ghost and this is a ride full of fancy ghosts that's maybe like there's there's some status uh throughout this there's also uh speaking of wikipedia like barely sourced things

some one of these disney fandoms which are always pretty shade disney.fandom.com uh had the the tidbit of info he was a milliner though this has yet to be clear in the attraction itself okay so he's not then so you made that up so that's bullshit then there's a lot of that on these wikipedia well it's here it says he's this and here it says he's like it's it's not really until we see the jared leto movie which was will be definitively what the hatbox he's playing the hatbox ghost in a movie next year which i guess that's a big thing between the years what you what what date does that come out i'm sure it's before no let me throw this out should we delay next year's haunted mansion episode to fully just talk about the haunted

mansion movie oh man i'm not saying we do i'm just throwing it out no by precedent by precedent okay we have we did the Eddie Murphy movie. That's on the second gate. These can sit alongside. These are not the same track. Okay. I cite precedent to say, please, can we not? Okay.

Can we only do a beleaguered second gate? I'm imagining you wearing a beaver top hat when you're saying this, because you're citing precedent like an old timey judge or something. I say precedent. Hmm. August 11th, 2023 11th 2023 interesting release date early yeah a little early trying to make a little early for halloween but like just the tail end of like summer starting to taper off like august was very grim for movies well past summer you can make an argument though that people are starting the halloween season earlier and earlier every year so that's appropriate well in christmas i saw some oh christmas is already here jason i saw a post uh about like oh uh universal studios hollywood when you walk in the entryway

there's already garland on the fake new york like for halloween and there's there's still like target has a bunch of left of horror nights and they've got like christmas decorations up the snow is on the castle at disneyland yeah yeah and oh i just never mind i won't talk about that that's about my annual pass that i can't renew now oh oh you probably can't either oh i can't yeah unless you did it no jason did it so jason's the only one who has a magic key right now didn't you have like a there's no grace period there wasn't a 30 day i don't believe so and my i might have been past that as well we're locked out until they decide they allow us to buy another one so it's fine with all this bullshit i'm fine i mean i'm

annoyed yeah yeah i'm annoyed it's been annoying there it's just annoying to me if they never release them again and like well again they did last fall knows what they're gonna do yeah it's all over the place next year we'll know we'll have such a pile of new frustrations and confusing kids it's a it's a not it's not a magic key anymore it's a pixie dust pouch so make sure you have your pixie pouch is i'm sorry you don't have enough dust in it today you can't get in well when pixie pouches are announced at least that'll give us a chance maybe on the ground floor again so i'm all for that scenario yeah yeah if as long as we can be opening day of um i i'm not sure which way to go if we because there's stuff to talk about with the mood with the movie but do we stay on kind of legend uh sure well should we talk about the return

or do you have more well i've got a little stuff on so what actually happened so look uh uh the you know legends surrounding it did they pull it because it's too scary uh did actual guests get to see it and what seems to have been pieced together is it was around for employee previews where tony baxter saw it he was like one of the only sources on any of this yeah a little while and he says well it's very possible that they could have also been like soft opening previewing it for guests and guests saw it then but there's only this it's very mild window where it could have happened and over the years through the 90s as the story is coming like it took forever but this site doom buggies has tracked it and a picture was found of it in context and a brief zapruder-esque video yes or you gotta really know what you're looking for to see it but so this there is proof that it

was around for guests for a couple weeks um so then what why did that what a weird like not clean way to to pull it's around for guests a little bit um the the true story here i looked a little further into yale gracie who i'm sure we talked about in the first year or two but i had to as with dr augustine and dr ogden i had to refresh my memory um and i'm sure we talked about him in the context of what he did for The Mansion. But other Disneyland stuff. He basically he was the special effects guy. And that's a really particular thing to be

the special effects guy in the 1950s and 60s. That's where you're using like weird Houdini magic. Houdini magic to like it's all like it's, it's practical effects. So like the popularization of Pepper's ghost,

uh, anywhere, it's been the mansion, but still used today and rise the resistance and other stuff. And then comes from this guy. Cause he was looking for theatrical effects that could have worked, you know, a hundred years ago and they can still wow people in the park today.

Um, the, let's see, he worked on the lava in peter pan's flight a little subtle touch that had to be cool and look real and be done on the cheap uh we were just talking to the dough boys about the blue bayou restaurant and something we uh really lit up at so much such a big part of the ambiance there are the fireflies shooting by that's this guy wow he did those which is like still what a huge part of

being that's like what you that's why the hassle of getting into the blue bayou is this subtle thing and he used to guy used to complain about like uh people trying to recreate stuff he wanted to do and with new fangled ways of doing things and he's like no there's one way to do it there's one way to do these fireflies. Whenever they try, they mess it up. He was very particular. And I think people imagine yours today are still like,

Oh yeah, this guy was, he was right on the, on the money, but everything, he was a genius. Yeah. Uh,

fire in pirates is this guy. And there's a really cool photo of him holding a pipe behind the fire. Oh, wow. Like looking real like just like cool villain with the awesome orange lighting hitting him from behind. So anyway, a guy truly pioneering like so important to the history of theme parks. And he's working in spaces nobody's worked in before. So he's not always going to get it right.

And this is a thing that he didn't quite get right. As we said, it worked in before uh so he's not always going to get it right and this is a thing that he didn't quite get right as we said it worked in one environment but not in another and the reason it got pulled is because he said i'm pulling it like it's not like anyone there was no superior saying yale you screwed up yank the hatbox ghost he was not happy it drove him mad and he pulled it out himself it was like axl rose hearing the first go at chinese democracy and saying this these songs aren't good enough i have a standard yeah i need them to be as good as appetite for destruction yes and then and he and he held to that standard and we can all we're all humming them in our we all we all that's right we need

do it on microphone um he just couldn't take it anymore and it stayed on site he had like kind of a sort of a bungalow office at disneyland and it was just sitting in his office maybe like taunting him like the raven this kind of adds to it too i never heard any of this and uh it just really bugged him and then it started getting stripped for parts not uh jason as you said it's been debunked that he became the eagle in America Sings. But because it's translucent parts, it got robbed for various parts for the graveyard scene and for different characters in that. So the Apox Ghost really disintegrated and just became parts of 12 characters, essentially. And it bugged yale gracie

and he he wanted to get it right he never got it right gotta say also yale gracie sounds like a great guy quote mark davis great imagineer he was a great guy i never drink a manhattan without saying and then my his wife alice and i agree on this here's to yale because that's all he drank love it man's my favorite is a manhattan guy i think he also did like martini lunches uh like on the disney line 24 7 awesome great a drunk magic man who was a perfectionist who didn't want to put stuff in the park he didn't believe in um so that's yale grace so really what happened is the guy who really wanted to bring this illusion of life couldn't do it which makes the 2015 reprisal so much more dramatic that it was like piecing

together the dream of this uh this cool manhattan drinking pipe smoking guy wow yeah so it's almost like thinking of i mean it's not quite the same because the yeti is still in expedition everest and it's not working but joe rode has left the company at this point. But he had vowed for years, he's going to fix it, going to fix it. Now he's gone. Whatever happened, he's with Richard Branson in space now.

But maybe somebody will have to do it in 30 years and finally fulfill his wishes to make that thing move again. They have to know that it's not going to move the needle attendance-wise, but if they can ever crack it, all the nerds like us will be so oh my god the yeti where it will be like in a certain subset it'll just like be a real like wave of excitement the imagineers know that now will we ever have somebody who would rubber stamp green light that project for money again who

wants to do something just because it's fun for that for the park and not because it's going to move the bottom well isn't this hey look isn't the 2015 hatbox ghost and a lot of other things they were doing back then kind of a sign of sign of the times of those times in a good way it's not chapek era we're like i don't know what's more let's do bands here like what more what money adders can we throw in right uh you know this is like when that box ghost got to come back it was such an era of like we don't need to do this but it'd be cool if we did it it would make everybody happy if we did it yeah and it's funny because the 60th anniversary that 2015 uh uh it's fun when companies like this contradict themselves because there was a video about it,

like he's back on the Disney Parks blog and they did a post and they had a little video talking to a bunch of Imagineers and they're like, we thought it'd be cool to bring back for Disney's diamond anniversary, you know, diamond celebration. That was what they called the 60th.

I know, you've taught me guys. I've taught you. I know the diamond but there's also an usa today article from that time where the like lead on the project was like yeah it's just kind of happy coincidence that it's lining up with the anniversary we didn't do that on purpose but then there's also a video with a different imagineer going like as part of the diamond anniversary. So. They have to fit the narrative. The narrative fits, whatever they were.

The narrative fits. They didn't mention the narrative. That is like, well, they didn't really do a bunch of new stuff for that diamond anniversary. It's pretty much just that. Jason,

I'm with you. I'm haunted by that anniversary not doing as much as we wanted it to do. Yeah. There were supposedly so many things going to be announced. Didn't happen. Didn't happen.

This is par for the course at this point. That's true. But so, yeah, yeah 2015 it comes back i try i learned a little about um why that happened that like as yeah i think it got grouped into the the diamond celebration of course but um okay there is a podcast called tomorrow society uh with very good interviews with imagineers about their craft the stuff we don't uh we don't talk about yeah uh we don't have we don't be funny but like uh this guy talks to a couple people who are a part of this project daniel joseph is one and ray spencer is another and i really especially enjoyed listening to ray spencer um this is't an engineer's name. I don't know.

We tend to only talk about like, it's hard to find even like, you gotta be really prominent like a Joe Rohde for a Steven. Know the name. But Ray Spencer at the same, at the very same time, he had three projects going on.

One was the redo of the Matterhorn. So like those screens on the lift hill now and the redo of the robots. Very similar to this. Just like atmospheric screens on the lift hill now and the redo of the robots. Yeah. Very similar to this. Just like atmospheric. Didn't have to do it, but the ride's so much cooler because they did it. Yeah.

It's modern and digital, but it feels it's not out of place in an old ride. And then he also did the redo of Condor Flats, the Soarin' area, into Grizzly Peak Airfield. Also very charming. Also a like, just they didn't have to but better that they did it right it makes the toppings bar more fun as jason knows sure in a better mood and maybe end up loading up on more toppings um this guy also probably the ultimate they didn't have to do it but thank god they they did it. Buena Vista Street. That was his big project. And the red car trolley. He was very passionate about trolleys.

Jason needs to know this. I mean, I like Jason. Say his name again. Ray Spencer. Ray Spencer. Is the guy. His interview at Tomorrow Society was great. And you might think, well, I can't picture this man.

I've never seen him. But you may have. Because if you go to California Adventure, there there is a place called big top toys on buena vista street and as soon as you enter there is a conductor you ever see you ever pass by this a guy in a red jacket and a top hat wow um and that is this guy wow and like the old cone there's the shouting cone like an old director would use it It's like the greatest showman. We talked about him a few months ago. Yeah, well, it might have been because my friends, Tyler and Kia, were at the park and they were like,

hey, theme park fan, who's this? And I said, I don't know, but I'll find out. And I was happy to report that is an Imagineer who likes the circus and likes trolleys and did Buena Vista Street. And now I know he's part of that boxcars too. So I got a good feeling about this guy does he still work there is he done uh fired probably like everyone else i'm not sure it might be like a consulting he does stuff

sometimes i think he might like do stuff for universal yeah too um anyway he brought up interesting interview i won't just like recite things from the interview um but a couple interesting things about the product it was not just we're things from the interview um but a couple interesting things about the product it was not just we're gonna make the hatbox ghost again and plop him back in there's some stuff we got to be concerned with um there was not a natural decision of where to put it because do we like evict a previous character and put it in the attic like it was or maybe we'll have the same problem it won't really fit and then they ended up carving out this little kind of cubby which i love i love his spot um they also had to change the track slightly that's something i didn't know about this it is they didn't just put a figure in because i'd never thought about

this that the doom buggies it's not like it's a digital system right pointing it from place to place there's on the track itself there's some mechanism nudging your car turning it for the way that they want you to look and that spot did not exist for bad bucks goes previously so they had to reroute the track and change it to make you to so you get to stare at it for longer as we're doing with this episode sure yeah and they did it i think they changed and correct me if i'm wrong they changed it um there was a point where they were teasing the hatbox ghost where they sort of just put up kind of like a flat with like a window or something it was like a window and like siding that was up for a while it was up for a while i think they

changed the track before but i could be wrong i'm not sure if that's actually maybe they had maybe they did made it part of a bigger overhaul yeah just like one day we'll just put that we'll take the wall away and he'll be there oh that must be it i think that's what happened so correct me somebody was it kind of a digital window i saw something about it's sort of a digital looking window and then it had the one of this the owl stanchions from the line oh maybe i don't remember and then maybe something even had like it flies away or something i think i was going a lot around the time and i remember seeing the window and we we were talking about like when is that going to come he's it's got to be here it's got to be the

hat box because they didn't say who it was but they said something's coming to the haunted mansion which is real that was awesome there was a tease on the ride oh really like that i'm saying this was a tease on the ride okay versus like oh they're putting a thing on a ride and then it's just there this was like something's coming to the mansion there's a different thing now when you would go on it like that was teasing it in the right like i don't i can't think of a good example of like something new is coming to a ride but there's something there to suggest exactly where the new thing will be i don't know it's very it was very cool it was good it was like a trailer almost like yeah something's gonna be

here it was like a real tease short teaser trailer and they they announced they did announce like a month before like the hatbox goes back he's coming back but it was before that where they were teasing some things here and now it's new and that's neat that's neat yeah and uh yeah i remember it's interesting because sometimes when you try to find like when did this start what's the opening date it's like well this was the previews for cast members and friends and family and that's this was soft opening and this is the official record day this one it's pretty definitive on all the disney like blogs and stuff uh the company websites like may 9th 2015 he's back you can look at him you see him on the ride gotcha huh it's uh here yeah it was like uh yeah you're right scott it's the it was this window if you can see that that's kind

of yeah okay you remember this and there was something with that owl yeah the owl came to life or something yeah um but yeah it was like for sure you knew it was new when you went on the ride for the, after like a refurb. I don't think I ever saw it in that era. That is pretty neat. What I remember, now that we've talked about the kind of the, how they put it together and the project, just emotionally, let me say, I really, I strongly remember seeing it for the first time.

And when I say that I love the space that where he exists in the little space they carved out for him what i love is that it so well utilizes the high backs of the doom buggies where you're heading to something and maybe you see a little bit of glow but you don't know what and then suddenly it just kind of like whips you there and now you're very very close to this character well with who has this whole mythos and it's just cool regardless it's a good reveal yeah because a lot of it is your like a lot of the mansions just looking at big rooms and you have to oh that's cool that's cool and you're looking at a million things at once this is one of the only times with the intimacy that you want. This is maybe the ultimate moment of intimacy because you only have one thing to look at for those few seconds.

The ultimate moment of intimacy that you can have as a person? Well, that depends on who you are and what you're all about. You tell us. You're the seed factory. Well, for me, I am the seed factory. Like Walter White, i am the seed i am the seed like said like walter white i am the seed factory he's he's nervously riffing because he knows it was artificial too intimate too intimate no not artificial uh uh yeah i'm trying to think is there any other than maybe the hallway but that's thing you're moving pretty fast through there and there's no like real face to face with a ghost in the hallway yeah yeah there's

like a there's a pivot point you know what it's like is the uh the trolls in the maelstrom where you head towards the trolls and then you turn from the central points that you get to stare at them for a little while and then you go backwards away from them. I guess that's Elsa also in the new, but it'll always be the trolls in my heart. Sure. Yeah. Sure. The three-headed troll. Three-headed.

Yeah. That's the three-headed troll. Yeah. And then, sorry if I'm good. I haven't done my Maelstrom research. Over the falls. We'll get to that. We'll get to that.

We'll get to that. We'll get to that. We'll get to that. We'll get to that. We'll get to that. We'll get to that. We'll get to that. We'll get to that.

We'll get to that. We'll get to that. We'll get to that. We'll get to that. We'll get to that. We'll get to that. We'll get to that. We'll get to that.

We'll get to that. We'll get to that. We'll get to that. We'll get to that. We'll get to that. We'll get to that. We'll get to that. We'll get to that.

We'll get to that. We'll get to that. We'll get to that. We'll get to that. We'll get to that. We'll get to that. We'll get to that. We'll get to that.

We'll get to that. We'll get to that. We'll get to that. We'll get to that. We'll get to that. We'll get to that. before maelstrom oh uh it sounds great to me who wants that no one wants they all want it maelstrom's great they all want it uh so yeah so it is it is cool like i it's whether you know any of the lore or not it is a cool reveal because you really can't see it coming yeah it's hard

unless you really are craning your neck around yeah you cannot see it coming and all of a sudden you're in front of this now much newer looking robot that has a very cool effect and i would i would be interested i haven't pulled somebody who doesn't know anything about it but i would imagine you would that would be one of the memorable parts of the ride if it was your first time going on it go like oh that was that cool ghost with the head probably now also uh digital newer last year my complaints were about the attic feeling too digital and current and i don't have those complaints about this it's kind of like the the matterhorn redo or there's something about they just didn't it's like something about the like the dimness and the lighting and maybe i'm just influenced by listening to this guy ray

spencer because another thing he said was they they were like we need to make him special because he is special but not so special that he distracts like it is not like an aura of heavenly light on this character and that goes because that would be out of place it is i think the dimness it's it like you don't feel the digital nature of it so much because it's done in this realistic moody fashion it i know it's not the same thing but it almost in the same way that like i feel like if they had made the harry potter queue with the paintings coming to life 10 years earlier those would have looked like screens yeah like there's a perfect love those absolutely they look awesome and they still look great those those paintings come to life if you look at them and they're static you think it's a painting like i

was on it not long ago and it's like it looks great yeah and like the same thing with this it's like within just a couple years stuff like this can make the difference for how good the technology is and how timeless then it can feel because like the bride is dated it's digital what would it kind of feels 90s and it feels very 90s and i don't i feel like this thing could last for maybe the technology gets so good it would feel dated but this thing feels like it could last for 50 years and it wouldn't be you wouldn't go oh i know when that era what era that was made in. Yeah. I mean, I think you bring up a good point about the moodiness. He, there is not a lot of,

I mean, Leota talks. She kind of has her own soundtrack and sound effects and such. But the hatbox goes, he's kind of like sinister, sinisterly laughing at you. And there's that like poof sound uh sound effect kind of when the hat the head is for the transition between the hat box and the head yeah and it feels like copacetic with

everything around it it feels of a piece yes because you can by that point you can probably hear you know just you can hear a little bit of what's going on in the attic and a little bit of the graveyard that's coming up so all these things just need to be ambient and fit next to each other and not be so overwhelming above other elements. The other thing is you're looking at him for a while, long enough as you tilt towards him, and then when you go backwards,

you're kind of guaranteed at least one disappearing, reappearing. Oh, yeah. They time it so you get, yeah, absolutely. And if it stops or if it slows down, you could see it happen a couple times, you know? Yeah, when you get stuck in front of him, oh, what a dream. The best spot, yes.

Yeah, that's where you want to be. I always kind of like when that ride gets stuck, kind of wherever you are. There's no part where I'm like Bummed or anything to like Oh this is boring I kind of look forward to the And I like the little playful spooks

It's part of it to me And it's not like getting stuck on Harry Potter Where I start to get a little nervous Sure yes Where I go you're going to be up here for a while Yeah depending on where you are. That's happened a few times. I got stuck in front of one of those dementors.

Ugh. No, thank you. Spooky. How many stories up are you at that point? Oh, I don't know. A couple. Yeah. At least.

Two, yeah. So if you're stuck in front of it for a while you maybe get a chance to stare at it and try to figure out how does this effect work as we said yale gracie could not figure it out in just in a way just with lighting i forget how much we said it was like essentially the idea it's it's scrims it's it was going to be some version of that it's like the carousel of progress is an example where it seems like a wall but then the lighting changes or it's it's like the carousel of progress is an example where it seems like a wall but then the lighting changes or it's it's you know transparent somewhat and when you when you put a light in there now what seems like a hard surface was actually just uh partially transparent

you could look through it was something like that yeah yeah they use it everywhere on stuff they used it a couple years ago at knots uh paranormal activity maze like where i'd be walking down a normal well-lit hallway and then scrims they changed the lighting on it and like it was hell there's tons of characters yeah yeah and you were like it was like such a great effect that still works right it went from a boring hospital hallway to see the depths of hell yes yeah yeah yeah really cool uh it's cool that yale grazing might be behind the use of that anywhere in theme but he might as far as i know he might be the first so that was the idea was going to be a mini version of that but it's so lighting dependent doesn't

quite work that's not really what it is today do you guys know how they do it this is not there's not even really like debunkers or people really trying to say i figured out the hatbox ghost did you listen does it say in the interview because i did not listen to this interview no and i don't think they like make a i don't think they're dying for it to be said and figured out i have theories based on my idiot brain i have well and and then what i have is like somebody's guess on Reddit. Okay. Which take that with a grain of salt, but it might be. So I maybe have a solution. If you don't want to know, skip ahead. But Mike.

Well, I think it's all like sort of like LED based where like it can like things can like literally like a screen can turn on and off. And the way that they've done it and i'm not smart enough to know almost in the same way like harry potter where like something on the like figure itself just looks better than like it masks that it's a screen it can turn on and off this is my dumb opinion i think it's something like that yeah but then and it's also like you aren't you have to really stare at it to register oh now there's nothing right it doesn't look like anything that's why that's why i think it has to be turned on and offable because you really i've looked you can't see it in the hat box when it's

not there well i think i think i i watched the b-roll of them like you know where they do that they uh take footage of people programming it you know and they're narrating over it in that short video about the hotbox ghost being back and i think what my guess was from what i could figure out from the video the the head on the body that is a practical head but it's like um very basic and the head is the fate it's projected on it and then there's is there nothing in the hat box is there just a screen in there i think that's right yeah yeah because the other face yeah the face obviously is blinking there's not that's not a robot blinking we know that there's a projection of some kind or it's some sort of screen in it so it has to be either or i think so

you're saying and you think jason that there's some sort of like maybe a black featureless head shaped item well no it's white like imagine movie screen wrapped around like a mannequin face like a pure white movie screen so good to be a projection that's the only reason why i'm like is it some like screen inside him that i'm not but maybe yeah maybe projection is just can be so precise now that i never like sort of because on other projection things you can kind of see a little like once in a while it's kind of weird here's and skip ahead listener if you just want this to be magical and not here and this could be totally wrong because again i found it on reddit but it makes sense to me yeah thinking it through i think jason you're correct that there

is nothing in the box and that that's maybe a subtle 45 degree pepper's ghost sort of like there is a little projector in the at the top of the box that's shooting a image of a face down at a weird angle that then conforms correctly to a weirdly angled screen the the head on the body i this somebody believes i'll just read what they wrote and the use i forget the user it had the word wookiee in it okay great that's not full credit but it's something uh um there's a thin piece of opaque material that gets pulled into his chest so oh interesting there's so it's a really it's a very light screen that like furls and unfurls and gets sucked back and then put back like back and forth wow it doesn't not make sense to me and that so it's saying it is a projection but it's just that the the screen pulls down and

up yes and like arrives right on time like to the millisecond wow interesting for the the face to appear on it so yeah so yeah okay so the way to project something would it have it would have to be a white screen because it wouldn't project on the face because when the face is gone white but maybe it's more like it's a really neutral gray, like a darker. Right. So yeah, that would have to be down, obviously, when it looks like he just has black.

Like there's a shadow, like an empty space where his head was. That's the effect. I think it's like it's a screen getting yanked. That's crazy. It feels like a cousin to me of that really cool effect in Tower of Terror Tokyo. Yes, that's what I was thinking a cousin to me of that really cool effect in tower of terror tokyo yes that's what i was thinking appearing and disappear where like you cannot be off by

half a second that was also shocking to learn how that was done because there's something that like disappears and i thought for sure it was some sort of projection trick but it literally shoots down into the ground yeah yeah it's like just fat it's like a fast thing you can't gravity yeah fast you can't see so interesting regardless uses gravity. Yeah, a fast thing you can't see. So, regardless of what's happening, even if this user is wrong about that, I think they're dead on about this. The next part, which is the subtle blue light that represents his head moving from his neck down his body is meant to draw your eye away from the rapidly disappearing screen for the projection. And this interview with the, the, uh, with the Imagineer I heard and another piece of like something on YouTube,

they seem to be hinting at this, that like it's happening right before your eyes and that it's distraction. Uh, prestige. It's a, it's a magic trick. So if you're following is his soul or his essence, which you're going to,

that looks cool. This is whatever like magical ambient light is moving. That is the stress so if you go on it if you and you want to crack it you might just want to stare right at that head and don't look away wow i mean that is what i was trying to do when he first when i first wrote it in like 2015 but the marketing did work of like the hatbox goes back because the lines for haunted mansion were massive to see this yeah yeah you trying to crack it i'm looking at it now yeah and i'm trying to see if i can see the tough you know what the lighting is on its side even for like watching a video of it because you can't yeah it being in this dim spot and it's dim like even if

i bet with all the lights on you you'd go, oh, got it. Yeah, I guess I'm wrong. I guess it probably is still a projection and there's not a screen in it. But I can't really, I guess there is sort of some movement on the head when it transfers. So yeah, it's still hard to tell even if you're staring at the head. But obviously, this is a video. So maybe you can tell more. But it's a really great effect regardless.

Yeah. Yeah, yeah. It's so cool. The fact that we don't really know and that people are not even dying to catch them. And I know what they did. It's really cool. And I'm not even sure. But that seems like a start and amazing.

They really pull off it is one of the i think it is one of the neatest things you can see in disneyland at this point within the right it's just and it's really cool it's really cool and i've said i think i said this on one of the mansions or maybe everyone i'm not sure uh is that if they ever again this is never going to happen now because of the way decisions are made but i would love to see an overhaul of almost all the ghosts in this style because it still looks kind of old school to me but also it's so much more clear it still maintains the sort of spooky nature of the ghost but it's a lot easier to see and a lot easier to see the effects so if you put the graveyard full of at least a few more prominent ghosts because i've said this before it's like the graveyard's awesome but i wish sort of they would apply the new technology to some of the

ghosts and really like spruce things up overall in the mansion maybe like spots here and there i don't feel like it needs addressed but there's yeah there's some that are just kind of hazy and yeah and i know like it's fun to kind of go like like squint and go oh i think this person's doing this but like some of the some of the more marketable ghosts your victor geists your uh constance hatchaways you know yeah uh who uh what's the uh chandelier ghost pickwick pickwick thank you pickwick deserves uh an upgrade is what i'm saying yeah yeah yeah so um well there are you know that look there's upgrades coming to mansions here and there well i'm not happy about some yes well we talked about this when we talked about d23 news the half box ghost is coming to disney world and mike took the hard stance oh you don't want it

not they don't they should uh not an unpopular opinion you think so that's what i've been reading i mean at least in our audience i don't think at the very least it's 50 50 if not more and tilted in favor of this opinion it is kind of just like we put a seven year old animatronic we put a seven year old edition into the florida one which that that is one of the best pieces of news they had. Right. That is, yeah. It's a real sign of the times.

We're putting an old thing in a place. Yes. And really done because of the movie, I think. They're presenting it as a thing. Oh, like the Disney history finally coming to Florida. But really it's like, we're hoping this Haunted Mansion movie is a big franchise. Jared Leto, big star, big character. He's the hatbox that goes, let's get him in there. because people are going to want to see that character once they see this movie that's my

cynical take is that they're presenting it as something for the fans when in fact they're like we got to have this with the movie before the movie's out although who knows when they're going to put it in so um but you're you don't want you're not wanting to just leave an empty space. Your argument is also, which does make sense. I want to leave a seat at the table for the ghost, but I don't want him to be sitting there. You're thinking you want them to get something that they don't. They get their own version.

Yes. I think that's more fun. I think that the lore of Disneyland Hatbox Ghost is fun. And I think it's i like that again we've we i think mostly in agreement that we like it being there's stuff that's unique to the parks on both coasts yeah and i feel like this is what's more specific to disneyland than the legend of this character sure sure so it feels to me like yeah they're putting a hat box over there hat box goes to have like a patchy beard and long greasy hair you want the full 30 seconds to mars look well now okay okay

you're making a little joke i think but i actually would i am making a little joke i think i would be more in favor of them modeling it after jared leto because it'll be different no that logic makes sense but what come on because then it's different if that just happened you would hate it if it happened here if it had like we don't know what it looks like this back and forth already established i'm just saying i'm if you if there were two buttons one button is put the old the same thing that from disneyland and what put the let same thing from Disneyland and put the Leto one in. I'm putting the Leto one in every time in Florida. And I would do it with a clear conscience.

Just taking your daughter for the first time and going like, and that's the hat box. That's not Dr. Michael Morbius. Right. So it's clear. This is not the failed son from House of Gucci. That's right.

No, that's not all Gucci. We just watched House of Gucci. Is it? It's right no that's we just watched house of gucci is it it's wild that performance it is i like the performance i the movie should have been it's more nuts that's my only complaint is that like character should have been like my complaint is like everybody still do the voices they're doing and make the movie a full-on comedy and i'm there but it's not it's not as crazy as the performances would suggest yeah i you know it's as you say this that you would willingly give florida the the leto leto guy what i'll tell you why this occurred to me well i mean i'll just say my my thought i i was thinking about leto

stuff and i was thinking about 30 seconds to mars and i was like you know if there wasn't leto baggage and if and oh how about this if you had grown up with it i think you would love 30 seconds to mars that's an interesting thing and when you say grown up how old if it had come out in the late 90s where you where all that shit you revere because you heard it then i disagree with that i think because i was okay believe it or not a couple weeks ago i was listening to some of the sequel single excuse me singles of 30 seconds to mars to refresh myself okay this was i was on a run sometimes i'm all uh this is gonna seem like i'm i'm complaining i'm allowed control of the youtube once in a while when things are going on when things people are like wanting to focus on the tv

the people were over lindsey's family was over and like people are cleaning up or somebody's in the kitchen and whatever and i'm i can then wield the youtube hang what in the world you're so when everyone's distracted and chores are being done well i'm just you get all right mike gets well that's what i'm saying i'm not trying to act like i'm i'm being persecuted or something i'm just saying once in a while when like stuff is sort of going on and people don't want to watch a movie uh let mike control the youtube and it can be whatever we want while mom is uh putting stuff in the garbage mike gets the youtube it's yes and i understand it because people like to watch TV they like to watch a specific thing people don't necessarily like to go down YouTube rabbit holes like maybe we do

maybe the three of us oh yeah now look I'm entirely YouTube rabbit hole yeah that's my favorite show my favorite show is YouTube rabbit holes of course yes and and look you know there's I'm sure there'd be things you would see in my history and go you watched that the one that I always think about is that you provided as the entertainment for lindsey and her mom multiple versions of sammy davis jr singing mr bojangles i've thought about that ever since yeah i'm like how did multiple it you finished one and then you were like no you should probably see this one for three years prior i want to actually legitimately i want to hear exactly how that played out god i don't even really remember exactly how it played out i will go back there i'm trying to think you must i must i have to know i'm trying to think because like

i'm sure we were watching some sometimes i like so okay so here's here's my strategy sometimes with when i'm youtube rabbit holing with a bunch of other people is i will try to at least get adjacent to some other people's interests l Lindsay is very much like sometimes, sometimes. Lindsay likes old standard. She likes the old crooners. She likes the old time music. She likes newer music as well. So she doesn't like so much like the 70-year-old man in a dingy basement

complaining about the woke police? No, she does not like that. Whatever you're talking about she doesn't like it no she likes those uh soundscapes that i like where it's like uh halloween party going on downstairs oldies playing from another room that's what you do ambient no i well i put that on if i'm like you know working on something or cleaning or stuff it's like um there's a whole youtube channel of it and it's just like a still image and it's just playing like audio um um so i believe this happened because i started putting on some old like old old crooner types and then

we got into sammy davis and i was like you know what i actually don't know a lot of like what was the song what were sammy davis's song you know sinatra's you know a little bit of dean this was discovery this was not like yeah i know the 76 mr bojangles is the best mr bojangles right this was a little bit more discovery and like sammy davis did uh the candy man uh uh and he did mr bojangles which is a 70s song and I forget the band that did it. Yeah, I forget. It's not like an old standard, but he did it in sort of an old style,

and I think he did it every show from that point on. So I was on a Sammy Davis kick at that point, and I don't remember exactly why I ended up with multiple Mr. Bojangles performances. You know what? It actually helps me to learn what i found that you were you were trying to learn about it i found it so strange that you were like you you've done one and then you got to do two more it's really like sat in my head like

a rock for years i don't know there could have been something more strange at play i'm not ruling that out the listeners rank you don't have to do it now but at least on twitter for anyone who's interested rank the mr bojangles performances do you know what a song i uh there's a song that sammy davis does and bobby sherman uh they both uh called sweet gingerbread man which i really i'm a big fan of both versions of it uh one of the credits on One of the credits On one of the Hawkeye Disney Pluses They have Sammy Davis

I think singing Sweet Gingerbread Man Wow That's an oddly relevant Right because it takes place at Christmas Yes It's like fresh out of the pan Sweet gingerbread man It's a very cheesy song

But I like it a lot It sounds nice It is nice can i tell you why i thought 30 seconds to mars yeah go ahead because their most recent album is called america i'm like that's like fucking all your like american american wasteland well american okay so here's here's my argument for why i don't think i would have been because because 30 seconds i was listening to the singles and I was like, oh, this song. Yeah, this is an unpleasant song. I don't know what it's like at all.

It's like very moody versus something like My Chemical Romance, which was the Black Parade. Do you like any of that? No. You know what I'm talking about? No. You don't know what I'm talking about at all? I kind of know a little. There's like a very inspired by American Idiot album, album i think and you're asking me if i know it well i

maybe it's possible if you avoided it like the plague so this was more when i was older when i was 20 early 20s mid-20s and there i like i like those my chemical romance songs pretty good okay and i was going back through all of this stuff, and I go, yeah, what were 30 Seconds to Mars songs? And I was going through a couple of them, and I'm like, oh, this is unpleasant. These songs are unpleasant. Okay. And don't even have a fun, upbeat sort of pop punk thing. It's a little more screamo kind of, like, very kind of labored and more intense and not as much fun.

So I don't think so that's a good reaction you know what i say that not really knowing what the music's like at all i'm not as yeah big into like that screamo emo stuff from around that point and especially the singles which i still don't i'm like i don't it seems like not fun they were on conan one time when i worked there and i was like this is the worst performance i've ever it was like they were they were like six guys with giant drums who like with different color face paint swiped on and it was one of those like oh oh oh one of those fucking chance that wouldn't leave for like 15 years i think maybe we're finally a little bit out of chance oh yeah the tejo i was truly watching it on the monitors like oh people like this five we

can play five to ten seconds of this i think right before jared leto sues us um it's like really like no fun it's just really yeah there's just it's sort of I remember being on the radio And never Getting into it like You know An all American rejects Where I'd be like

Well this is a pretty fun Pop punk The Ataris Anything Where I would casually like it I wasn't a big fan Of either of those bands You want some melody

What's a melody And I want a little Upbeatness And Well To not stay in Tangentland For too long You know this is all

being said because of jerry leto b oh well ultimately the character we're talking about this year will be portrayed on screen by next year we will know we will know what it was we will know how it went yeah um what are our uh uh fears i'm gonna say fears what do we think this movie's gonna be like this this finally we get a boy. That's a good question. Uh, I don't, I don't really know.

I'm not sure. I'm more, my concern is that it's not going to be like as scary and moody as I would want it. And that's not really a few. It's a little concerning because it's very comedy stacked. Yeah. Owen Wilson, Tiffany Haddish. I mean, I like, this is a good cat. Yeah, very comedy stacked yeah owen wilson tiffany haddish i mean

i like this is a good cat yeah no i that is nothing but a tone wise i'm thinking they're gonna lean more toward the graveyard and less toward the hallway if you know what i mean tone wise i'm a little concerned they're gonna burn off a lot of time like the eddie murphy one did where it's like well i'm a real estate dad and i'm not around a lot because i gotta sell these houses but we're moving into one of that because this one already they're like okay the premise is it's a single mother and her child okay and they move into this it's like i don't i do not care just show me this i want a monster i want a ghost party well look even the muppets had to reckon with how why

are you in a haunted mansion yeah this question has to be sure that's true um so yeah i would say that my my concern is like we're still leaning we're gonna lean toward like family friendly not that it shouldn't be family friendly but it's going to be less like atmospheric and there's going to be less of a tone like a cool creepy tone and mood possibly well especially given that as was said earlier guillermo del toro was maybe was like for sure was deep into development of it and who knows what happened or why that one didn't work out but i know that people were pained to discover that j Leto comes with a lot of baggage. Sure. Yeah. And maybe like there's been highly anticipated characters he's played before, where then what he did was kind of annoying or nothing. Michael Morbius. Michael. We all had so many hopes for what Morbius was gonna be uh but the like well so you know what i had not put together is that maybe

this isn't so surprising but doug jones not our friend doug jones but actor doug jones was going to be hatbox ghost in that version and everybody loves him as a creature and character that's he knocks it out of the park anytime from from mac tonight on and uh so that that does feel like oh boy they go from like culty always cool to uh to like a guy who runs a cult well who is a cult leader uh-huh that's true uh all that stuff is true and if uh that is all the cult stuff aside, you know, I do think I like his Mario voice in House of Gucci. I think there's a realm. His Mario voice? He's a very, he's a guy in the House of Gucci.

Oh, I didn't know that. Okay. He's, you should at least watch some scenes from House of Gucci. I think you'll know what I'm saying where you're like, man, this is right on the edge of being something like i'd like to watch i you know i liked him in we crash the show we've worked sure i yeah i thought he was a lot of fun in that but yeah it feels like i don't know i don't also i want to say i have mixed feelings about both of these people but like a road trip uh comedy pairs up Jared Leto's Adam Newman and James Franco's Tommy Wiseau.

I just want to put, let's like merge them together. Sure. Let's write a fictional adventure. New people can play them as long as they play them exactly like those ambiguously foreign strange positive oddballs, you know? They can pick up Joseph Gordon-Levitt Travis Kalnick is that his name

the Uber guy the Uber guy the very aggressive Uber guy you would put him over Don John huh in there

oh yeah if I could only put one or Jiminy if you can only put one Jogo Lev on the boat yeah I'm going Don John look

neither of you are wrong. I was just trying to keep it in the realm of tech guy. I see. I see. You're right. No, you're right. Well, no. Look, Wiseau already isn't.

And you know who you might want to put in there is like an artist, like the tightrope walker. Because he's like an odd, like, you know, like, let me show you a world of fantasy. That's like a duel then. Like two sketch comedy characters. Leto and Levitt's accent characters. Yeah, thrown together. I think one thing I, if I was making a Haunted Mansion movie,

this seems like an easy go-to that I think no filmmaker would consider is trying to mirror in the arc of the movie, make the first half like the Claude Coates segments and then make the second half of the movie like the Mark Davis segments. Sure, yeah. Keep it dark and then make it silly. Yeah.

That seems like an interesting way to get the various tones of the ride in there. Sure. But who knows if anyone's considering that you know yeah i think with let i i think the answer would let you never know what you're gonna get so sure it's almost impossible to tell you might get a surprisingly fun performance or you might get a used condom in the mail i was gonna say for sure you're getting used condom in the mail that's for sure he's gonna do he's gonna have heads in a hat box

he's definitely handed out a bunch of hat box full of some kind of animals heads to the cast oh yeah i know that has happened yeah yeah yeah danny devito got a fucking hat box with a head of a raccoon in it or something yeah that's so nice wow a hat box boy jared is a great guy but can't wait to work oh no he's been he's made big strides in the actors labor issues because now um the animal heads and the used condoms that's been worked into the latest sag contracts the latest screen actor guild contracts that you wait that you that you get them just for participating it's sort of like guarantee like you have to be paid to go do the pre-shoot covet tests like you have to make sure you're getting you know something absurd in the mail yeah because it's gonna help with performance

like you you're you're gonna give it a different bent if you're if there's a real a dirty adult diaper sent to your home diaper A full diaper, adult diaper. I forgot what the things were. I was like, what was this story again? And my, I completely, content warning, content warning. I completely went to used condoms. I forgot that right alongside this was anal beads. Oh, yeah.

He sent people anal beads. Was this on? He sent Will Smith. On Suicide Squad? That's what this was, I think? Yeah, yeah. Not Justice League? Because the Joker.

Because something... We know the Joker. And something the Joker would do would send anal beads in the mail. Anal beads. Yeah, that's right. That's a good point. He would serve as a...

Just like a voluntary Spencer's Gifts sex toy employee. Right, yes. He went into a Spencer's and was like, I know what I'll get. What are the most twisted items? Yeah, yeah. Again, cult

aside, his Joker is fine. I would say it was not worth the hassle. It was not worth the anal beads, but it's fine. I mean, I'm glad the anal bead industry was propped up for that amount of time. I want to see the two Snyder movies. I want to see Justice League 2 and 3.

I would like them to make those. And 3 is a tease at the end of the first Justice League and is the desert nightmare apocalypse. Dystopia. Yeah, where Batman is in the big coat, which is, I think, cool, but makes no sense. Batman's wearing a thick coat over his shirt, over his Batman outfit. All right.

And he's got goggles on for some reason. Doesn't make any sense, really, I guess. He should just have goggles in his cowl. Maybe. Yeah. But then Joker is there with him. So they have to sort of team up in this future world. Sorry, is this happening?

No, people are still banging the drum on this which probably i guess won't happen but it's the most unpleasant drum sounds i've ever heard in my life the justice league movie's good though all of these cuts good these all fall into like fell asleep before the ending for me uh suicide squad justice league well suicide we have to cut this off it's before yeah i know it's longer suicide squad the first movie is not good yeah okay sure yeah yeah yeah sure uh i i don't doubt that someone who has any interest in any of it would like the snyder cut I, like Jason, fell asleep very quickly. But I do in any and all things.

I've been a parent for a while now. The years have gone by with these podcasts. No Baby when we started. There were no Childless Men when we started. Two now. And we're making our way out the window. The fall into the graveyard will begin soon one bit of you know what though jared leto this this casting information gives us one crucial piece of information about this character

and maybe a good good thing as we wrap up the name i don't think i knew the name and maybe the name is purely an invention of the movie but it will become the name canonically because there wasn't one before the hatbox ghost do you guys know offhand i'm looking through i have it here somewhere just you say it i have it ghost's name is alistair crump alistair crump i don't know if you want to say alistair probably not crump presumably a reference to raleigh Crump, Imagineer, which is confusing because other things have called the caretaker, who is a character we'll meet soon next year. He's the wobbly knee guy at the bottom of the hill.

I don't think I realized that was the caretaker. He has been defined as being Silas Crump. So they're trying, and I think the On a Mansion movie, the Eddie Murphy one, had Master Gracie as a character. And we've talked about Yale Gracie. But they're trying to get these guys' names in wherever they can. But a little confusing if there's already a crump, unless they're tying it together,

unless the caretaker is related to the Hatbox Ghost. You know, we should real quick, because there's so many different versions of like, yes, the Hatbox Ghost initially was the husband of the bride. Yes. Oh, right, right. Because it's like, and there's some people that are like oh well he lost his head and the bride killed he's not the husband but she was a victim of the bride and yes also maybe all of it because he has a lot of hat boxes

also he's traveling with a lot of luggage so it's like does he have other heads is he maybe like the the sidekick of the bride in some way he's been killed by the bride but also now he's sort of teamed up with her and he's keeping all the heads of the headless people that she's killed in these boxes i would love kind of a characterization is like yes dear anything you say dear exactly trailing behind her dropping the thing his head's falling off so maybe that's what it is and that's a fun idea huh to to because because yeah there's different like comics and things and everybody made up their own slight origin and again the imagineers didn't put two thoughts other than that looks cool put it in like we said all of pop culture today is adding a bunch of shit

to things that people did not think about in the 50s or 70s. They thought about their Manhattans and their martinis. Yep. Just like, that was cool. That's cool. Let's go to lunch and get hammered. Hammered. Yeah.

One thing I didn't mention, I was looking at the Jason Sorrell book about the Haunted Mansion, and the version I was looking at is an older printing, 2004, 2006. So there's a lot about the Eddie Murphy movie in it. And I was combing through the whole book trying to find stuff on the half box and it gets one page. And again, this is 2004, let's say. And it just has the answer to the mystery like it's all there it just says like it's got the tony baxter quotes he's the one who said like yeah you

it would rotate you towards what is now the harps that he says harpsichord that's where i came up yeah um but he's like yeah, yeah, the effect didn't work because it was too much ambient light and you were too close to it. And it's pretty definitive in this book. And this book is published by one of Disney's publishing things and they bring Sorrel back to update it every few years. I think the last time was around 2015, 2016.

So I do want to get a hold of the newer one and see like, Oh, have they expanded it now? Yeah. Maybe no, maybe not. Maybe no, maybe they kept it a page as opposed to us who did two hours.

This was a two hour about just the hat box ghost. And you know what? We weren't wrong. You weren't wrong. You were wrong you i never i don't think i ever said you could be wrong but i i uh you know this was the right thing to do i'm glad playful spooks interrupted our tour and we stopped here for a while and hung out with alistair crump alistair crump the hatbox ghosts who we will. We will have a lot more to talk about in regards to this character. The Grand Marshal of the Black Parade.

No, don't say that. He's not the Black Parade. Gerard Way. Oh, excuse me. DC Comics editor. Oh, yes. DC Comics writer and editor. The music superstar who parlayed that into a career writing comic books.

Yeah. Hey, good for him. Good for him. They played the We Are Young Festival yesterday wearing their Black Parade outfits. parlayed that into a career writing comic books yeah hey good for him good for him you know they played they played the we are young festival yesterday wearing their black parade outfits and old men masks oh i saw that yesterday maybe they were just afraid the winds were going to kick back up i think they're aware of it being like a nostalgia festival and they wanted to comment on it somehow that's actually a solid bit sounds also unpleasant to play music

wearing oh yeah rubber mask yeah well i guess like slipknot up there playing the black parade dress like carl havoc you know who's carl havoc oh from i think you should leave they oh yeah yeah oh yeah yeah yeah of course of course speaking of obscure names yeah wow bizarre characters yeah you pulled that out real quick carl Havoc. I know what that is. Well, and now we reach any predictions about next year. One I have is that because it was said once, how many more times

will Gerard Way and the Black Parade be mentioned between now and next Halloween? I have my fears. Do you want to get how, here, rate on a scale of 1 to 10 skulls, what do you think to get how here rate on a scale of one to ten skulls how what what do you think you will give the haunted mansion 2023 oh my liking of it yeah and then we'll say our actual scores oh my goodness that's a really should i be optimistic right now uh i'm not three three

point three and a half i'm gonna say six and a half okay i'm gonna be optimistic are you going out of ten that's what yeah ten oh okay i was gonna say three and a half out of five that's not bad yeah that's pretty good yeah uh uh hmm out of ten i'll i'll go eight i'll go optimistic, that's very high. You might really like the Haunted Mansion movie. I might really like the Haunted Mansion. I mean, precedent, if we're going off most recent, Jungle Cruise is not up there. But I have high hopes.

I know. Why? I can't tell. Everything Disney makes is shit. I like Owen Wilson. I know it won't be a Pinocchio, but. I like Owen Wilson. It's kind of an odd a Pinocchio, but... I like Owen Wilson. It's kind of an oddball cast.

Did you say Danny DeVito? Danny DeVito should play Pickwick. Maybe he is. Maybe he is. Oh, man. Jamie Lee Curtis is Madame Leota. That's fun. I mean, that's great.

I feel like she's on a real run right now. Owen Wilson has had some fun stuff. You're right. He can't discount. Yeah, he's been fun so i don't know i i'm going out on a limb i i recent movies i've not been very fond of anything yeah that's my biggest look even these little things are enticing but remember it is a movie that the disney company is releasing in the 2020s and it's not that is why i put a 3.5 it's not the heyday of live action

like the uh the million dollar million dollar duck days a brutal movie yeah uh it's it's interesting with jason though jason i sometimes when your review of a movie i feel like depends on just how your day had been. Because sometimes you'll come out hot with that Country Bear take. And I was like, are we watching the same movie? Yeah, I was not having a good time during the Country Bear take. I think you need to watch that when you're feeling better. And you can reassess it. I feel like I was in a pretty good mood when I went in.

I just think that still to this day, I'm still like, what movie did he watch? The Country Bears is pretty good. Well, you need to get some real good, a little real good when something great happens to you, celebrate by rewatching the Country Bears. That's right. Boot up Disney Plus. There's any number of, is there a playlist of just 2000s? Like, gonna bang out Brother Bear.

We're gonna bang out Home on the Range. Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen. Confessions of, confessions of i mean that's look that was never for me like i i can't judge that one too harshly you never know certain ones you're like this is a movie i never cared about and as soon was bad at the time and i've watched it now and it was better than any movie released i mean that was during the pandemic we went back and watched a lot of like late 90s, mid 90s, like high school movies. Oh, yeah. And you realize how many like either journeyman directors or writers or like really good sketch comedy ringers were writing.

And it's just like, wow, this is pretty good. Someone solid was involved. Well, we will see. That's maybe that's the big thing. I can think of nothing bigger coming in the next calendar year than determining the quality of the Haunted Mansion film.

But Alistair Crump, we'll see you soon. It was great to hang out with you for a while. And listeners, you survived Hauntcast, The Fright, all of it.

It is done and we switch back to Podcast The Ride next week and you can find us on all the socials at Podcast The Ride. Merch is available in our Tee Public store. And for three bonus episodes every month, check to Podcast the Ride next week. And you can find us on all the socials at Podcast the Ride. Merch is available in our Tee Public store. And for three bonus episodes every month, check out Podcast the Ride, the second gate,

or get one more bonus episode on our new tier, Club 3. You will find all of that at patreon.com slash podcasttheride. And yes. Here's what I'd like to say. Oh, wait. You had ideas. Okay. I have an idea.

I want to real quick. And we have to do this quickly because I don't want it to linger in our minds too long yeah maybe scott it's your job i task you with it you need to give jason and i an assignment for next year maybe even the following year very specific very detailed of what we need to do when the episode starts and if we do not do it we will be punished in some way oh we clothing we need to wear things we need to say at the top of the episode and if it does not happen next year, we get punished. And so we get put in the penalty box. Perhaps we drink the year old Donald Duck orange juice that Andrew Grissom.

I mean, I don't know about that one, but I would say I don't know. Bring to me these items three. Yes. So so off the top of your head, what clothing do you want us to have to wear when this recording starts, and what do you want us to start the episode off with? And if we don't do it, the punishment will be, let's see, we have to listen and review solo

on the Patreon full 30 Seconds to Mars album. You'll have to listen to the full one and then solo record 60 minutes by yourself about it. You're charting a guaranteed path to where you end up at the end going 30 seconds of mars kind of like it it's possible but i'm gonna not you're trying to invent a rationale to get where you want to i don't i'd rather review other things and say you

know what i like this um and also it's probably not a good thing to be like jared leto's pretty good actually did you know he actually is good i like him a lot yeah yeah right yes it's the only worst things but maybe on the patreon i will say yeah i can say it but um here's well here's this is where the stakes enter or please add to what i just said if the if the task is not completed yeah with each one a a cluster of robots becomes eliminated from discussion in the graveyard now here we go we cannot even real talk about it real no no this is but these are stakes jason yes because i know you're gonna want to talk about and we by the way both have to do it yeah we both have to remember next year to do this thing um and it can be a couple things it could be sure like like we have to wear blue in honor of avatar we have to wear i think it needs to be complicated uh um okay i think they're wearing uh blue and i'm not just saying that because uh half my wardrobe

is the color blue uh all right now you know not to say blue it won't be blue that's not yeah yeah um okay how about this yeah uh it's it's two parts it is a uh there's there's two reveals involved and i think i'm thinking clothes because you sent me down that path okay uh uh this i'm giving you like go get these clothing items like the dogs at the animal actors show um okay you you need to wear a hoodie like jason you're wearing now and that can be anything but at some point probably let's let's say right at the top you need to unzip it and and on your shirt whether that's written on your shirt itself or like a my name is tag there needs to be uh written your favorite character from avatar the way of water in blue ink okay blue ink right great uh anchor marker does matter that's that's up to you yes i'll just make it like a ballot uh but but it has to be blue um and since we're talking about

the hat box ghost uh just bring a box of any kind and open it up and there should be a type of hat in it okay that would be surprising maybe not that would provoke shrieks or that would break a young child's arm okay but like you know because a philly's hat is not going to do it i know you might have a philly's hat right um yep and uh unless you're so ashamed of how they do in the World Series. I mean, just look. We're just proud they got there. It's a miracle they got there. I'm rooting for you.

As I said, I'm on your side due to Ted Cruz. But yes, when the box opens, there is a hat where I'm like, whoa. Okay. Yeah. All right. An unusual hat and the name of your favorite avatar character in blue ink okay and this is when we start how you hit record on the podcast this all happens yes welcome welcome to podcast to ride you do the whole intro and then

you go and here we go yeah yeah right and i'll say your names right and then you have a little presentation to give all right okay fair enough and if not we lose we're not allowed to talk about the hitchhiking ghosts oh my god instead of too high that stakes that's pretty good pretty good there also though is the question of what even are we going to get to because i don't think we know now we're back to we don't know the dividing markers we don't quite know where the haunted mansion series goes so that's you know maybe we wouldn't even get to them anyway but still then the next year we are not allowed to talk about you don't get to talk at all about

the hitchhiking ghosts that's pretty huge that's pretty okay well uh a big assignment then for next year uh listeners of this specifically will talk to you in 2023 in the great Oz and Herschel Walker reign. And we will, I guess, land. What we will do is begin a descent down a series of, we'll pass by some scary trees. If you want to hear about more scary trees go to the patreon something we just talked about uh check us out on doughboys too if you hadn't heard that i think that's out by now and uh yeah so we will uh here's what all right we just the hatbox ghost has just gone out of our view and another doom buggy is blocking it and we are moving downwards backwards and we set the scene for

next year haunted Haunted Mansion 6. Beautiful. Forever Dog. This has been a Forever Dog production. Executive produced by Mike Carlson, Jason Sheridan, Scott Gairdner, Brett Boehm, Joe Cilio, and Alex Ramsey. For more original podcasts, please visit foreverdogpodcasts.com and subscribe to our shows on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. Keep up with the latest Forever Dog news by following us on Twitter and Instagram at Forever Dog Team and liking our page on Facebook.