Andrew Harding had to take a picture during a 5AM train ride in Chicago, or no one would believe what he saw. It makes sense when you realize the photo was taken on October 30th. Link -via reddit

So, you know how nature is absolutely terrifying? Finally there’s a blog that details all the terrible ways that mother earth wants to destroy you. Filled with terrifying animal pictures and short details of how terrifying any given animal actually is, Nature Wants To Eat You might not have much content yet (it’s still new), but what it does have is a whole lot of promise.

Link

Buying a new home is a big commitment and for first-time buyers especially, it can be a little terrifying. Imagine just how horrific it would be then to discover your home ended up being home to thousands of snakes or the mummified body of the last homeowner. Read about these terrible discoveries and more over at Cracked.

Link

Dead Bodies Under The Mattress

This one involves someone checking into a hotel room and noticing that something smells rotten. Eventually, they realize it’s coming from under the bed. So they move the mattress and discover a dead body. This story has been going around forever and has even been featured in movies like Four Rooms. It seems like this story is pretty unlikely, particularly given that you’d at least think a hotel maid would notice the smell of a rotting body before a hotel guest enters the room, but if you believe that, you’re giving hotel staff too much credit. In fact, the most disturbing thing about this story is how often it actually happens.

In 1982, a few auto thieves killed an accomplice and left him under the bed of their hotel in New Jersey. Four days later, someone discovered the corpse, but the room had been rented three different times in the meanwhile and no one noticed they were sleeping above a dead body. In 1987, a drug user overdosed and his high friend stuffed him under the bed and then ran away. Three days later, a family reported a nasty odor in their room, prompting the hotel staff to discover the body.

In New York 1988, a murderer was clever enough to actually put the body inside the box spring. Even so, the smell still gave away the body’s hiding place only a few days later. This time, at least two guests slept on top of the mattress, not knowing what was below.

There are tons more stories like this. Apparently hotel workers often shrug off these types of odors and go on with their business until a guest complains or even refuses to stay in the room thanks to the smell. If there’s anything to be learned here, it’s that you should never stay in a hotel room with a funky smell. And, if you do notice something off, check under your bed or mattress…or you might not want to, that is, if you’d rather not know what’s below.

Source: Snopes

Image Via neekatnite [Flickr]

Spooky Acts Resulting In Death

Whether it involves a trained escape artist failing in his act or a Halloween stunt that goes awry, this tale revolves around someone dying while an audience watches, often thinking it is all part of the act. Eventually, everyone is shocked when they learn the performer has really passed away.

While it’s a chilling story that has been told over and over, even used in an episode of Tales From The Crypt, it is far from fiction. In fact, it happens more often then you would think. In 1984, magician/comedian Tommy Cooper had a heart attack while performing on a variety show. Unfortunately, because one of the staples of his act was his inept magic skills that resulted in things going terribly wrong, everyone assumed it was part of the act until it was too late.

October 1990 was a particularly bad month for these kinds of stunts. It started when teen Brian Jewell died while performing a hanging stunt meant to entertain guests on a haunted hayride. Only six days later, another teen, William Anthony Odom, died while performing a gallows scene at a Halloween party and the noose tightened around his neck, choking him to death. Days later, Joseph Burrus performed an act that involved him having to break free from a plastic coffin buried underground and covered in concrete. As spectators watched the concrete being poured into the hole, everyone noticed when the wet concrete level suddenly dropped two feet down –the coffin had been crushed. By the time they got Burrus out of the coffin, he was dead.

In 2001, haunted hayride worker Caleb Rebh died when he decided to take the place of a skeleton placed in a noose on a tree. When he struggled with the rope, guests and fellow workers thought he was acting and left him alone until he suffocated.

A good take away from these stories is to make sure your kids never think to do tricks that involve nooses. Also, don’t raise your kid to be an escape artist.

Sources: Snopes #1, #2

Image Via Sospitis [Flickr]

Dead Bodies Mistaken For Spooky Decorations

On a similar note, there have been many of occasions where someone thought something was a Halloween decoration, but it was really a dead body. Heck, this one even served as the basic plot for the Vincent Price classic House of Wax.

In at least two cases, one in 2005 and one in 2009, a suicide victim has killed themselves in October and been left for hours, even days, because people mistook the real corpse for a Halloween decoration.

One of the more interesting, slightly less gruesome stories in this vein involves the corpse of Elmer McCurdy. The outlaw was killed in a 1911 shoot-out. Afterwards, his undertaker went ahead and embalmed him, dressed him up, and started to charge locals $.05 to take a look at the bandit. Eventually, two men claimed McCurdy as their brother in 1915, but the men were actually carnival promoters who wanted the corpse for themselves. The body toured with his “brothers” for a few years and after a few stops at various other side shows it ended up in a Los Angeles wax museum, where those operating the attraction believed it was just another wax creation. It wasn’t until the Six Million Dollar Man filmed at the wax museum and a worker accidentally broke off McCurdy’s arm that people realized it wasn’t just a creepy prop. Finally, in 1977, McCurdy was given a proper burial. To ensure he would stay buried, the medical examiner ordered that two yards of cement were laid over the body.

Strangely, House of Wax was based on a Charles Belden’s story The Wax Works written in 1933. Both of these were made long before any of these stories hit the news, so either earlier news stories like this are now buried or else this one was an urban legend that eventually came true rather than a true story that became an urban legend.

Sources: Snopes #1, #2

Kidney Thieves

Just about everyone has heard the story of the person waking up in a bathtub full of ice with a note telling them to go to a hospital if they want to live. While the bathtub of ice  and note parts may be fiction, this kind of this has been known to happen in India, where a 1995 law requires organ donations to come only from closely related family members, creating a thriving black market for organs.

In 1998, three surgeons and seven accomplices were arrested after being accused of tricking people into having their kidneys removed without permission. The criminals would tell the impoverished victims they could get a good job, but first they had to undergo a medical exam. The exam would then reveal the “applicant” needed a small surgery. During the procedure, the doctor would remove one of the unconscious victim’s kidneys and then the victim would hear nothing more about a job offer. In 2008, a similar racket was discovered by authorities.

Like the wax museum stories, the interesting thing about these cases is the fact that the urban legend was around long before the true stories. In this case, the legend has been spread around since at least the eighties, but the problem in India did not start until after the 1995 law was passed.

Sources: Snopes, Washington Post

Image Via The Doctr [Flickr]

Intentionally Infected With AIDS

The most common version of this story involves a young girl dancing at a club when she feels a small prick on her arm or leg. Then she hears someone whisper “welcome to the wonderful world of AIDS,” before they escape unseen. At her feet, she discovers a blood-filled needle and when she visits the hospital, they confirm that she now has HIV. Another version involves a girl going to the movies and discovering a note informing her of her new status before she leaves.

The earliest version of this story has actually been traced back to the mid-80’s, when a man sleeps with a woman he’s only just met at a bar and then wakes up seeing the words “welcome to the world of AIDS” scrawled on the mirror in lipstick.

While the story of an anonymous stranger injecting someone at a club and the “welcome to the world of AIDS” line are both urban legends, the truth is that there are many stories of people who have intentionally been given HIV. In 2006, a woman in England was arrested for intentionally having unprotected sex with men in an act of revenge after she became infected with the disease.

Some people have even been intentionally injected with the virus, but not by random strangers like the victims in the legends. AIDS activist Brryan Jackson was infected as an 11 month-old baby by his father, who did not want to have to pay child support. By the time he was five, his infection was discovered and his father was arrested and sentenced to life in prison. Fortunately, the nineteen year-old activist is still doing fine despite his condition.

Another person intentionally infected was Janice Trahan, who was given the virus, along with Hepatitis C, by her ex-lover Doctor Richard J. Schmidt who collected a samples from some of his patients and gave it to Trahan by claiming it was a vitamin B injection. Dr. Schmidt was charged with attempted murder and sentenced to 50 years. It is unknown how Trahan is doing because the case was so long ago and there are no follow up new stories on her since 2000. This case was the first of its kind to hit the court system and it eventually inspired a similar Law & Order episode.

Sources: About.com, BBC, ABC News, Wikipedia

Image Via cooling [Flickr]

I know people always claim that urban legends are true and often claim that they know someone that was really involved with the story, but do any of you know any true urban legends that you can actually prove? Try to leave links to the news stories or other sources that prove your tale if you really want any of us to believe you.

If you’re looking to plan a creepy vacation for Halloween time, the BBC has you covered with this wonderful article documenting some of the scariest spots on earth. Pictured is the Island of the Dolls.

Lying off the canals of La Xochimilco, in Mexico, is a chinampa (floating garden) covered with the hundreds of dolls. Gathered by Don Julian Santana Barrera who scrounged rubbish piles, the dolls were hung from trees to keep away evil spirits and remember the drowning death of a young girl. According to Barrera, the dolls he planted and hung around the chinampa were still alive, but forgotten by their owners. While alive, Barrera would move the dolls around the island from different trees, creating a chilling sight. The chinampa is accessible by boat and the dolls are still around, despite Barrera’s death in 1992.

Personally, I’d love to visit any of these spots, but I’m a bit morbid.

Link Image Via SkilliShots [Flickr]

Most of us know about Black Beard, but the pirates with the really ruthless reputations tend to be the ones ignored in pop culture -because who want to idolize creepy, blood-thirsty monsters. For those of you interested in the dark side of history, you’ll certainly enjoy this great Cracked article featuring the most terrifying pirates ever.

Link

Warning: this is nothing like what you’d expect from the title. Performance artist Jillian Mayer is determined to scar her own descendants for life. -via The Daily What

Allie Brosh at Hyperbole and a Half has a new post in which she relates her experiences with childhood nightmares. This, of course, affected everyone around her. Link

Warning: this post contains video clips that may be disturbing to some viewers, as they are from intentionally disturbing films.

The Last House on the Left (1972)

Video link

This movie was the directorial debut of Wes Craven and depicted two teenage girls who are kidnapped by escaped convicts on their way to a rock concert. They are then sadistically tortured, raped and eventually murdered. By using a grainy, hand-held 16 mm camera, Craven’s picture seemed all too real to many movie viewers. He tried to defend the violence by saying it was “a reaction on my part to the violence around us, specifically to the Vietnam War.”

Craven’s excuses didn’t do much to quell the controversy and the movie was censored in many countries, particularly the U.K., where it was banned for seventeen years and remained subject to censorship until 2008.

The Exorcist (1973)

Video link

You probably already know this is a darn creepy movie, but you may not know that it was so shocking to movie goers that many viewers were subject to nausea, convulsions, fainting and shocking displays of anger –one viewer in San Francisco attacked the movie screen, attempting to kill the demon. Paramedics began to be called to the screenings and it wasn’t long before picketers started showing up at the theaters. The film was even banned on video for 14 years in the U.K.

After the film was released, there was a major increase in requests for priests to perform exorcisms and a drastic rise in alleged spiritual possessions and psychoses by people claiming to be possessed. Taking advantage of the hysteria, Reverend Billy Graham  claimed he “felt the power of evil buried within the celluloid of the film itself.”

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974)

Video link

While this film is a classic horror favorite known for its violence, it actually shows little blood and no close ups of the fatal blows, making it quite a bit more tame than most horror films to follow. Even so, it was loathed by censorship boards, resulting its being banned in Australia, Brazil, Finland, France, West Germany, Chile, Iceland, Ireland, Norway, Singapore, Sweden and the U.K. France banned the film twice claiming it would incite violence and the U.K. even instituted a rule banning the use of the word “chainsaw” in a films title shortly after they first banned the film. The country didn’t allow it to be issued uncut for 25 years.

Bloodsucking Freaks (1976)

Video link (I couldn’t post the trailer because it’s too R-rated for Neatorama)

Bloodsucking Freaks is one of the most legendary films from the goremasters at Troma Entertainment. The film is a story of a theater troupe in New York that specializes in performances of humiliation, torture and murder of the group’s white slave ring. It has been voted as one of the worst films ever by a number of critics and review sites and was subject to protest by the Women Against Pornography for its violent sexual depictions of women.

Zombi (1979)

Video link

Whether you call it Zombi or Zombi 2, it was undoubtedly one of the best of the many highly controversial films by renowned Italian director Lucio Fulci. While the film was billed as a sequel to George Romero’s Dawn of the Dead, it actually was unrelated in any way, other than the fact that both movies have zombies. The plot involves a small tropical island where a mysterious disease is affecting the local population. As you may have guessed, the people suffering from the disease all become zombies and hunt down the uninfected people on the island.

The film is pretty well known and was even featured in a Windows 7 ad recently –the scene on television with the zombie bonding with the shark.  While it was a big hit and fairly well received by critics, the gore content caused it to be banned in a number of countries, including Finland and the U.K., where it was not released uncut until 2005.

Cannibal Holocaust (1980)

Video link

This fake documentary about a film crew researching the last remaining cannibalistic tribes in the Amazon is filled with sickening images such as a woman receiving an abortion with a rock, human impalement, castration and surprise, surprise, cannibalism. One of the most upsetting scenes to modern audiences doesn’t involve the torture of a human, but shows the slaughter of a giant tortoise -and unlike the human torture scenes, this one is completely real.

Even so, the footage of murder looked so convincing that the director, Ruggero Deodato, was arrested and charged with murder after the Milan premiere of the film. Unfortunately, the actors all signed a contract agreeing that they would not appear in public for one year after the film’s release in order to keep up the idea that the movie actually featured lost documentary footage. When Deodato denied the actors were dead, the police countered by asking where they were if they were still alive. Finally, Deodato was able to beat life imprisonment after he voided the contracts and had the actors appear on an Italian television show. After the trial, the courts still banned his movie for the genuine animal slayings, but he was able to have the ban lifted 1984.

The film was also prosecuted for obscenity and banned from the U.K. in 1983, an edited version was released in 2001, but it is still unavailable uncut in the United Kingdom. While the film distributors claim it was banned in 40 countries, this is unconfirmed. It has been confirmed to have been banned from Australia, Norway, Finland, New Zealand and, as mentioned earlier, Italy and the U.K.

The Evil Dead (1981)

Video link

If you haven’t seen The Evil Dead and you like horror movies, you’re missing out…of course, if you don’t like horror movies, then why are you reading this? The story follows a few students staying in a cabin in the middle of the woods. One of them plays an audiotape in the cabin that releases the evil spirits of the The Book Of The Dead and then things get nasty. The film launched the career of Sam Raimi and Bruce Campbell.

Unlike the remake, Evil Dead 2, or the sequel, Army of Darkness, this film is not as comedic and involves far more brutality, including a woman being raped by a tree.

Because the film was so violent, the movie was banned in seven countries, including Finland, Germany, Iceland and Ireland. In America, the film was rated NC-17, and the movie has only recently been released in its entirety to many countries although some still ban the unedited version.

Evilspeak (1981)

Video link

Evilspeak follows a military academy cadet that is rejected by his classmates and turns to Satanism to get revenge. There is a lot of violence and murder, as well as Satanist themes, which led to the film’s banning in the U.K. and the uncut version was not released in the country until 2004. Adding to the movie’s controversy was the fact that the founder of the Church of Satan, Anton LaVey, was a big fan of the movie and said it was highly Satanic. Supposedly there is an even bloodier version than the one released, but much of it was cut to get a lower rating from the MPAA. This director’s cut has never been released though.

Tenebrae (1982)

Video link (Believe it or not, this was the only clip I could find without excessive gore or nudity.)

Tenebrae is often considered one of the greatest films by horror director Dario Argento, but its original release was censored and many critics loathed it, only to change their mind when the uncut version was released. The movie follows an American writer who is promoting his novel in Rome, when a serial killer starts to follow the plot of his murder-mystery tale, forcing the writer to take plot in the manhunt. The film was immediately banned in the U.K. for its sexualized violence and its release in America was delayed two years. When it did come out in the U.S., it was highly edited and released under the name Unsane. While the uncut film has been available in the U.S. for some time, it was only released in its entirely to the U.K. in 2003.

Silent Night, Deadly Night (1984)

Video link

How do you really get people up in arms? Don’t just show blood and gore, show the perpetrator of the violence dressed as an adored childhood icon. Silent Night, Deadly Night featured a young boy who saw his parents murdered by someone dressed as Santa…naturally, he grows up and goes on a killing spree dressed as Santa. The National PTA fought against the movie. Protesters picketed the theaters showing it, and critics loathed it. Leonard Maltin asked, “What’s next, the Easter Bunny as a child molester?” The movie was never officially banned in the U.K., but that’s largely because it was never submitted for distribution approval until 2009. It probably would have been banned though, given that the sequel was in 1987.

Sources: Film Site, Wikipedia #1, #2, #3, #4, #5, #6

Shain Erin uses dolls as an art medium. These creepy dolls are fashioned as zombies, ghosts, mummies, skeletons, and monsters! People like them; many of the dolls featured in his gallery have been sold, but there are some available in his Etsy store. The ghost shown is named Cecilia. Link -via Daily Dumper

Since I was a kid, I loved ghosts and haunted houses and Disneyland’s Haunted Mansion has always been one of my favorites and I’m sure many of you agree. But what do you really know about the mansion and the stories behind its layout and design? The history behind the ride is almost as cool as the experience itself, so for today’s Neatorama Facts, I give you an inside look at the Haunted Mansion.

From Humble Beginnings Rose A Legend

Image via Passport to Dreams.

The Haunted Mansion wasn’t open until 1969, but the idea was kicked around since the beginning. In the one of the original park designs created by artist Harper Goff showed a crooked street coming off of Main Street and winding past a church and a graveyard and leading to a run-down mansion on a hill. The idea wasn’t incorporated at first, but Disney liked the idea and assigned imaginer Ken Anderson to build a story around the drawing and create a full experience around it.

Because plans for New Orleans square were currently in progress, it was decided that the ride would be built in the style of an antebellum manor. The original souvenir map that showed New Orleans Square promised that the area would include a thieves market, a pirate wax museum and a haunted house when it was open.

The first drawings for the mansion showed it overgrown with weeds, filled with swarms of bats and having boarded up doors and windows. While this certainly would have set the mood for a scary adventure, Disney hated the idea of a run-down building in his park and insisted, “we’ll take care of the outside and let the ghosts take care of the inside.”

Delays on Top of Delays

Video link

When working on the original plans for the mansion, Anderson developed a number of wonderfully chilling tales, the main of which revolved around a ghost of a sea captain who killed his nosy bride and then hung himself. He was even hoping to incorporate some of the monsters used in Universal films. Most of this ended up not materializing because Disney wanted to take things in another direction.

For the special effects, Rolly Crump and Yale Grace were hired to create creepy effects that would be far from obvious. The pair researched real haunting stories, Greek myths and monster movies and then started building elaborate effects in their private studio. The effects got to be so good that they scared some of the cleaning crew. Thinking that was funny, they hooked up all the effects to a motion sensor so it would all go off when the cleaning crew entered the room. After that, the crew refused to enter the area and they had to clean up their own studio.

Despite all the work on storylines and effects, things didn’t progress very fast and then the imagineers were held up by Disney’s active role in the 1964-1965 World’s Fair. While this didn’t end up speeding the process up, it did actually end up becoming an important part of the final project, as it made the creators realize that the attraction would be far too busy for people to just walk through, as originally intended. Instead, imagineers decided to use the people mover they built for the fair and used in the Adventures Through Space ride as “Doom Buggies” to carry guests through the exhibit.

To Be Or Not To Be (Spooky)

Three of the main designers of the finished project were Marc Davis, X Atencio, and Claude Coats. Rolly Crump also helped add to the ride, as he proposed a “Museum of the Weird” restaurant be built beside the attraction and filled with coffin clocks, talking chairs, man eating plants, living gypsy wagons and other spooky settings. While the restaurant idea was quashed, many of Crump’s ideas managed to make it into the final version.

Claude Coats was design-focused and wanted to create a terrifying atmosphere for the ride, but Marc Davis wanted things to be silly and goofy like traditional Disney attractions. X Atencio was assigned with scripting the ride’s plot line and he managed to mix the two ideas together so the atmosphere begins spooky and eerie and then as the ghosts appear, things begin to get silly.

Image via DoomBuggies.com

Funny enough, the ride’s many delays led to the façade being up for five years before the ride actually opened and a number of rumors began to circulate as a result. One of the best stories said that the ride was so scary that someone died of fright during testing, so they were forced to tone it down and play up the silliness. Because the ride has just such an arc in its story, the tale is widely believed to this day and is even reported on in the Snopes website.

All the ghost stories and urban legends actually helped promote the mansion though and the opening of the ride helped the park recover from Disney’s recent death in 1966.

Size Can Matter

Disneyland is a fairly small park and by the time the Haunted Mansion was set to be established, space was already running out. That’s why the imagineers started the ride off with the legendary “stretching room” that serves as the elevator to help bring guests below the surface level.

Once in the actual ride, you go far beyond the boundaries of the park that you can actually visit, under the railroad, and under the back lot, along the tunnels for Splash Mountain.

Dedications By The Dead

If you remember the outside tombstones looking different when you were a kid, you’re probably right. When the mansion first opened, the tombstones were largely made as a tribute to the imagineers that helped develop the ride. The one dedicated to X Antencio, for example, read:

REQUIESCAT
Francis Xavier
NO TIME OFF
FOR GOOD
BEHAVIOR
RIP

X was perhaps one of the most important fathers of the mansion as he not only scripted much of the ride, but he also wrote almost all of the verses seen on the tombstones and co-wrote the famed “Grim Grinning Ghosts” that serves as the ride’s theme song.

Nowadays though, these memorials have been removed to expand the waiting area (X took his home with him) and a newer pet cemetery has been added in front of the mansion. There is also an older pet cemetery with headstones scattered about, but this can only be seen from the handicap line area these days.

Inside the interior graveyard scene, there are more headstones, many of which also contain hidden messages relating to the imagineers. There are also a few gag ones and one rhyme relates to a charity auction Disney put on eBay that allowed the winner to have his or her name added to a tombstone in the graveyard scene. The winner, a doctor and medical attorney named Cary “Jay” Sharp, was given a tombstone that reads:

Jay
Doctor-Lawyer
Legal Clerk
Forever Buried
In His Work

Image via DoomBuggies.com

In the Disneyworld graveyard, the pet cemetery also contains a special tribute, a headstone for Mr. Toad that was added after the park closed Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride in 1998.

Ghoulishly Good Voice Talent

The “ghost host” who narrates your journey is voiced by Paul Frees, who is commonly mistaken for Orson Welles, who he was able to do a great impression of. You might also recognize his voice as the Pirates of the Caribbean ride, or as the narrator of Great Moments With Mr. Lincoln. He was also the narrator of a number cartoons and stop-motion animations, most notably Donald in Mathmagic Land and the Rank and Bass Christmas series. Perhaps the funniest credit he has to his name though was the voice of “Josephine” (Tony Curtis’ female role) in Some Like It Hot.

Image via Express Monorail [Flickr]

Throughout the entire ride, the “Grim Grinning Ghosts” song is played, although the version changes from room to room. The singing busts in the graveyard actually depict the real singers of the tune and the one most people mistake for Walt Disney is actually Thurl Ravenscroft, who is also well known for doing the voice of Tony The Tiger and his work in the animated version of How the Grinch Stole Christmas.

If you’re wondering how the busts sing, it’s actually just projections of the singers shot at busts with the actors’ features. The same effect is used for Madame Leota as she floats in her crystal ball.

Spectacularly Spectral Effects

Image via Dave Cobb [Flickr]

Speaking of effects used in the mansion, one of the coolest is the ballroom filled with dancing ghosts. The ghosts are not actually holograms, but are instead reflections of dancing animatronic figures located above and below the doom buggies track that shine on to a glass plate set in front of the viewers.  Marc Davis, who designed the room did forget one thing when he set up the ballroom, reflections show up in reverse. As a result, if you look closely, you’ll notice that the women dancers lead the men. Another cool bit of trivia, the organ being played in the ballroom is the original organ used in 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea.

Another favorite effect is the appearance of hitchhiking ghosts in your doom buggy. This is done through the use of a conveyor belt carrying the ghosts at the same speed behind the wall and two-way mirrors which show the ghosts using weak lights.

Remember the Moving Suit of Armor?

If you were one of the lucky few who got to ride the attraction at its very start, you might have a vague recollection of a suit of armor that actually moved around and walked the halls. If so, you’re not crazy, when the ride first started, a cast member would roam the halls in the suit of armor. Because the cast members weren’t supposed to be seen entering and exiting from the dressing room, they were given a remote control to stop the ride. Unfortunately, this resulted in the ride constantly being stopped whenever someone would spit at the character or throw something at him.

The dressing room is still around and is hidden behind the breathing doors.

Variations Between Locations

Image via Express Monorail [Flickr]

All Disneyland parks have a Haunted Mansion, but each one is a little different from one another, with the exception of the French Phantom Manor, which is very different from the others. In the Disney World mansion (seen above), the exterior is done in a Dutch Gothic Revival look because it is located in Liberty Square. Because the park had more space, there are a few more rooms, including a library that features flying books, moving ladders and an invisible ghost reading a book in a rocking chair. There is also a room that looks like something M.C. Escher may have drawn up that features staircases going in all variety of directions and green footsteps moving across them. The Tokyo park is almost identical to this one, except that the outside features broken windows and the narration is in Japanese.

The Phantom Manor of Paris though, follows a completely different storyline than all the other rides. The design of the Manor looks quite a bit like the house in Psycho, but Disney says it was based on the Fourth Ward School House in Virgina City, Nevada. Personally, I think it looks much more foreboding.

Image via wrayckage [Flickr]

The story of the Parisian manor follows the story of a young woman named Melanie Ravenswood and she is predominant throughout the ride, starting with an exterior headstone. Because the ride is located in Frontierland, there are a number of Western-themed displays in the ride, but it is otherwise similar to the original Haunted Mansion’s layout and story.

The story of Melanie Ravenswood says that she was the daughter of a man who made his fortune in the gold rush and built his mansion in a town that’s now run down. Melanie wants to marry a train conductor who promises to take her away from it all, but her father wants to stop the marriage at all costs. The father and mother are killed in an earthquake shortly before the wedding day, but a phantom arrives on the day of the ceremony and kills the groom in the attic (he is the one hanging in the stretching room this time). Melanie swears her groom will return to her and wanders the house throughout the rest of her life dressed in her wedding gown, while the evil phantom and his demonic guests celebrate around her.

After the bride’s boudoir (the room that belongs to the black widow in other Haunted Mansions), there is no graveyard scene, instead the doom buggies visit the backyard where the phantom sits laughing above an open grave. They then travel to underground catacombs and then pass into Phantom Canyon, which is a supernatural version of Thunder Mesa where an earthquake is going on and ghosts rule the streets.

The Mansion Before Christmas

Ever since Christmas of 2001, the Disneyland Haunted Mansion has been decked out yearly for the Haunted Mansion Holiday, featuring the entire cast of The Nightmare Before Christmas. Tokyo has had similar redecoration, but the Paris and Florida parks have never held a similar overlay.

This was not the first Christmas overlay on a ride and The Country Bears and It’s a Small World both received the treatment before, but what makes the Haunted Mansion Holiday special is its use of spooky characters from the Tim Burton film. The special Christmas layout became so popular that it was responsible for the decision to add a Fast Pass to the ride.

Now, there’s plenty more secrets of the Haunted Mansion and I’m sure many of you can help fill in the parts I left out, so be sure to add your own trivia in the comments.

Sources: Wikipedia #1, #2, #3, #4, #5; DoomBuggies.com #1, #2, #3; Mouseplanet; Passport 2 Dreams; 2719 Hyperion; and Disneyland: Little-Known Facts About Well-Known Places.

Disneyland fans! See more Neatorama Facts:

Neatorama Facts: Sleeping Beauty Castle

Neatorama Facts: Pirates of the Caribbean

Neatorama Facts: The Jungle Cruise

Neatorama Facts: Space Mountain

Neatorama Facts: The Enchanted Tiki Room

How many times have looked in a mirror and saw someone you didn’t realize was there with you? Never? Well, it happens a LOT in the movies. -via FilmDrunk

Things are bad. But now’s the time to focus on the good news. (Yes, it goes beyond surviving the destruction of your aircraft.) Although gravity is against you, another force is working in your favor: time. Believe it or not, you’re better off up here than if you’d slipped from the balcony of your high-rise hotel room after one too many drinks last night.

Or at least you will be. Oxygen is scarce at these heights. By now, hypoxia is starting to set in. You’ll be unconscious soon, and you’ll cannonball at least a mile before waking up again. When that happens, remember what you are about to read. The ground, after all, is your next destination.

This post is not for the faint of heart. Link -via Metafilter

A collaborative art film from a group called Hydra, Homunculus pits “little men” against each other. This is the stuff nightmares are made of. -via Everlasting Blort

Photo submitted by Z.  (Sketchy Santas)

Sketchy Santas is a site devoted to reader-submitted pictures of that bastion of the season: sitting on Santa’s lap.  It’s a time when children are either enchanted with the prospect of meeting the magic man who will bring them whatever toys they desire… or it’s nightmare time.

Link.  Previously on Neatorama: Scared of Santa.

Photographer Kerry Skarbakka explores the falling human body in a set called The Struggle to Right Oneself. You’ll look at these and ask, “How did he do that? And how bad was he hurt?”

Using myself as model and with the aid of climbing gear and other rigging, I photograph the body as it dangles from dangerous precipices or tumbles down flights of stairs. The captured gesture of the body is designed for plausiblity of action, which grounds the image in reality. However, it is the ambiguiy of the body’s position in space that allows and requires the viewer to resolve the full meaning of the photograph. Do we fall? Can we fly? If we fly then loss of control facilitates supreme control.

The photograph that first grabbed my attention was Skarbakka falling in the shower, but you’ll have to look for that yourself because it’s a nude. Link -via reddit

Simon Seeks has compiled a list of the most dangerous roads in the world. Many feature rock slide hazards, hair pin turns, steep cliffs and no guard rails. Still, it’s amazing just how beautiful some of these deadly roads are –often because the views from these places are unbelievable.

Link Image Via Damian Morys [Flickr]

If you could think of seven different themes, chances are a few of them are on Cinematical’s list.

One of the seven is one of my favorite movies of the genre, Poltergeist, music by Jerry Goldsmith.

Jerry Goldsmith previously contributed a classic horror theme with his score for Richard Donner’s Omen, but this one, not unlike Komeda’s work on Rosemary’s Baby, runs counter to expectations that horror movie music needs to be naturally dark or heavy to be menacing. That said, the children’s chorus that sweetly and innocently provides a theme for the film’s young protagonist – ironically, sort of the conduit for both its “monster” and heroine – is at once wholesome and terrifying, creating a similar sense of unease and eventually terror as the kids embody the film’s themes of childhood swallowed by a mysterious and terrifying world.

YouTube Link

More great themes at Link.

Make your own scary character that pops up out of trash can to scare trick-or-treaters! Instructables user Back Roads shows you how to create this prop that uses compressed air. Link -via Lifehacker

Pet Sematary: Any dead creature buried in the ancient Micmac burial ground comes back to life, just not quite the way you put it in. After losing his young son Gage, Louis buries his son in the graveyard. Sure enough, Gage comes back — and promptly murders his mother.

That’s only one of ten reasons not to resurrect dead bodies. Link -via Gorilla Mask

Think your health care plan is bad? Consider yourself lucky that you don’t live back in the middle ages when "advanced" surgeries were done using these 20 seriously scary surgical tools. Yikes.

This one to the left is the Arrow Remover:

Arrow Remover – Not much is known about this tool, but it is hypothesized that it was inserted into the wound in a contracted position, with the central shaft used to grasp the arrow. The blades, which appear to have their sharp edges facing outward, were then expanded using the scissor-like handles…

Link

From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by yugosakimi.