Remember some years back when a series of viral videos surfaced around the internet purporting to have captured real ghosts wandering an empty Disneyland at nighttime after all the guests had gone home? Well, the controversy and debate surrounding those videos can finally be put to rest as one of the video artists who helped create them has at long last revealed how they were crafted.
Writer/producer/director Christopher Cantwell (co-creator of AMC’s Halt and Catch Fire) has shared on his personal Twitter feed that he helped execute the eerie video series as part of a viral marketing campaign for Disney itself. Cantwell says he and his team used a stuntman and visual effects overlays to create the effect of ghostly apparitions haunting Disneyland Resort’s Haunted Mansion, Space Mountain, Twilight Zone Tower of Terror, and Sleeping Beauty Castle.
What’s happening:
- The viral Disneyland ghost videos from a number of years ago have been debunked by Christopher Cantwell, a filmmaker on a team hired by Disney to create them.
- He also credits his other team members David and James Codeglia, Sean Bury, Matt Wyatt, Scott Gairdner, Brad Conlin, and “a bunch of other secret wizards,” calling the production of these videos their “best times at Disney.”
- Cantwell also wrote and directed the fake Lotso Huggin’ Bear YouTube commercial used as viral marketing for Disney/Pixar’s Toy Story 3. He says this was director Lee Unkrich’s idea.
What they’re saying:
- Christopher Cantwell: “We did these too. The famous Disneyland ghost videos. Yep, us. Stunt man dressed in white laid over clean footage and out through VFX overlays. Shot in the park overnight. I love that they live on. And I mean the videos this guy is referencing. Haunted Mansion CCTV, Space Mountain, Tower of Terror. Our stuntman was on a crane behind the castle during the fireworks show. Haunted Mansion was filmed from the roof of Pirates of the Caribbean. We were in Space Mountain for hours with the house lights on.”