The Haunted Mansion is a complete dark ride attraction located at Disneyland, the Magic Kingdom at Walt Disney World, Tokyo Disneyland, and Disneyland Park in Paris (as Phantom Manor). Each incarnation of the attraction features a ride-through tour of a haunted house in Omnimover vehicles called Doom Buggies, preceded by a walk-through show in the queue. Both parts of the attraction showcase advanced special effects, and the second also includes spectral Audio-Animatronics.

Original concept

The attraction's roots date back to even before Disneyland was built, when Walt Disney had just hired the first of his Imagineers. The first known illustration of the park showed a main street setting, green fields, western village, and a carnival. Disney Legend Harper Goff developed a beautiful black and white sketch of a crooked street leading away from main street leading by a peaceful church and graveyard, with a run-down manor perched high on a hill that towered over main street.

While not part of the original attractions when Disneyland opened in 1955, Walt assigned Imagineer Ken Anderson, to make a story around the Harper Goff idea, and design of his new 'grim grinning' adventure. Plans were made to build a New Orleans themed land in the small transition area between Frontierland and Adventureland. Weeks later New Orleans Square appeared on the souvenir map and promised a thieves' market, a pirate wax museum, and a haunted house walk-through. After being assigned his project, Ken studied New Orleans and old plantations to come up with a dirty drawing of an antebellum manor overgrown with weeds, dead trees, swarms of bats, and boarded doors and windows topped by a screeching cat as a weathervane.

Despite praise from other Imagineers, Walt wasn't too thrilled with this drawing, hence his well known saying, "We'll take care of the outside and let the ghosts take care of the inside." Despite this, Walt journeyed out to the Winchester Mystery House and became deeply captivated with the massive mansion with its stairs to nowhere, doors that open to walls and holes, and elevators. Ken came up with stories for the mansion including tales of a ghostly sea captain who killed his nosy bride and then hanged himself, a mansion home to an unfortunate family, and a ghostly wedding party with previous Disney villains and spooks like Captain Hook,Lonesome Ghosts, and the headless horseman. Some of the Universal Monsters were even planned to appear.

Rolly Crump and Yale Gracey, two Imagineers put in charge of the spectral effects, recreated many of Ken Anderson's stories. Walt gave them a large studio at WED enterprises; they studied reports of hauntings and Greek myths and monster movies, eventually making quite a show in their private studio. Some of these effects frightened the cleaning crews that came in at night to the extent that management eventually asked the crew to leave on the lights and to turn off the effects after hours. Defying this, Crump and Gracey connected all the effects to a motion-sensitive switch that, when passed, would turn everything on. The next day when the two returned to work, all the effects were running with a broom in the middle of the floor. Management told them that they would have to clean the studio themselves, because the cleaning crew was never coming back.