Disneyland's Haunted Mansion Event - Part I
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O’Day moves the discussion to another panelist. "Sam, let’s talk to you because you helped to define the look of the Haunted Mansion."

"I was working with an art director named Marc Davis", begins McKim. "Marc Davis being the Art Director at the time, in designing the look of the Haunted Mansion, the outside…I was the sketch man…We went through a lot of rough sketches. He said, O.K. we have a meeting tomorrow morning with Walt. Let’s get a good couple of things done. Just what we talked about. I’ll look at it this afternoon to see if its ready. And when he looked at it in the afternoon he said well O.K. it’s looking all right, say I’m coming back after dinner. So I put a few more hours in on it. I was so tired and didn’t go to the meeting with Marc the next day. He came back and told me, ‘Your sketch was effective. The result was he didn’t want it to look like that. He said we’re going to let the ghosts do all their stuff on the inside. On the outside I want it to look like the rest of my park neat and clean and so on.' So much for the first sketch. But they did use it afterwards even after they built it when they put out a litho and poster.’"

O’Day turns to the next panelist, "X, what was happening while the house was sitting there vacant?"

Atencio answers, "Well it was there for many years. People kept asking when are they going to do something with the Haunted Mansion? They kept asking this question over and over. The only excuse we had was that we’re recruiting ghosts. We have 999 ghosts and we have room for one more anybody want to volunteer." Atencio spoke of the attractions evolution from walkthrough to ridethrough. He says that Yale Gracey came up with idea of calling these vehicles Doombuggies and he "did the script for it and Paul Frees did the narration of the ghost voice." According to Atencio, after he completed the script Walt then asked him to write a song for the Mansion. He wrote the lyrics for Grim Grinning Ghosts.

Next a video clip is shown of John Hench speaking to a reporter. In the clip Hench recounted Disney’s leak of the Haunted Mansion to the BBC Walt explained that he was developing a location for the disenfranchised spirits. He wanted to provide a place for them to go as old houses were being torn down. He also wanted to guarantee actors a place to perform after they’d passed on to the other side. Walt requested that all interested ghosts register. According to Hench, from that very first interview Disney described the Mansion as containing "wall to wall creeps and hot and cold running chills."

Marc Davis’ early sketches are displayed and the artist/creator gives a brief description of each. The following is a partial list of the images displayed

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According to Marc Davis, Walt really enjoyed showing off the portraits from the stretch room. They were covered and could be slowly unveiled. Seeing the delight on his guests' faces, Walt would "laugh like mad."