The Bricklayer is one of the ghosts in the Haunted Mansion.
Description[]
The character appears near the very end of the ride in the Cemetery sequence, where the ghost is shown to be walling up its crypt from the inside through the use of a trowel, bricks, and a lot of cement.
History[]
Bloodmere Manor[]
In the deleted Bloodmere Manor script, the backstory of the Mansion has a part in which a construction worker employed by WED was walled up alive by ghosts in the Mansion when Disney was renovating the mansion.
Harry the Arm[]
In another unused Ken Anderson script there was a character nicknamed "Harry the Arm" who would have been an arm popping out of a hole in the wall who would have attacked the guest's tour guide.
Tor the Arm[]
In one script for the mansion, the arm belonged to a servant named Tor who worked for a character known as, "The Commodore" (a Sea Captain incarnation) and was tasked with keeping his bride captive. However, Tor accidentally strangled the bride and as a result, hung himself in an act of suicide.[1]
Trivia[]
- There is a little known possible visual gag regarding the Bricklayer which is that throughout the Graveyard sequence you see a total of 4 crypts, the first three have their bricks pulsing as if ghosts on the inside were trying to get out, as opposed to the fourth where the ghost is walling themselves up inside.
- Some attribute the character as being a reference to the Edgar Allan Poe story "The Cask of Amontillado" in which a man is walled up alive by his friend in an attempt to kill him.
- In the unofficial Ghost Gallery storyline, the Bricklayer was said to have been the 17th century Dutch Burgermeister, Ub van der Iwerks (a reference to Disney animator Ub Iwerks) and that he was the original owner of Gracey Manor who built the mansion on sacred Native American burial grounds and after construction became plagued by freak accidents, Ub took up construction of the estate himself only to go mad and brick himself up alive in a tomb.
- In the video game The Haunted Mansion: The Black Widow Bride, he is said to be none other than Reginald Caine, one of Constance Hatchaway's unfortunate husbands.
- In Phantom Manor, the character of Barry Claude is extending his arm through a crypt in an effort to reach his beloved Mélanie Ravenswood as a reference to the brick-layer.
- The character is referenced in the mausoleum sequence of the 2003 film, when some of the crypt's residents burst through a walled up chamber.