Constance's Husbands are a group of five ghosts haunting the Haunted Mansion.
Biography
Those five wealthy men were married by Black Widow Bride Constance Hatchaway, who'd brutally murder each one to each time get richer and richer and move on to the next one. It is implied that Constance might have kept the heads of her dearly departed husbands in hat-boxes which she stored within the Attic of the Haunted Mansion along with other keepsakes of the marriages.
The husbands are, in order:
- Ambrose Harper (married in 1869): Ambrose Harper was the naive but good intentioned son and heir of a prosperous farming family in Secret County, California.
- Frank Banks (married in 1872): Frank Banks was a respected Eastern Banker and a pillar of his community. He was native to Bulfor's Island, California when Constance wed and subsequently murdered him.
- The Marquis de Doome (married in 1874): The Marquis of Doome was a foreign diplomat hailing from Peking, China. As shown by his medals, the Maquis had a long history in the military and while he could survive wars and battles, he could not survive his new bride.
- Reginald Caine (married in 1875): Reginald Caine was a prominent railroad baron, gambler and well-renowned gourmand. The gamble of wedding Constance Hatchaway proved to be his downfall however.
- George Hightower (married in 1877): Constance's last known groom was George Hightower, the then owner of the estate which would become the Haunted Mansion (though whether the manor is in New Orleans or Hudson River Valley changes depending on which park you visit) and a man who hailed from Newport Beach, California. George was the wealthiest of all Constance's husbands and his gifts seen in the attic are also the most exquisite as he was also a fan of exotic foreign travels. George was also related to Harrison Hightower III (albeit the exact relation is unknown but the most common guesses are cousins or brothers) who was a prominent collector and the owner of the New York City hotel, Hotel Hightower. After George's death he was buried in a tomb on the mansion's grounds with a bust depicting his visage, a bust which Constance buried her hatched into the head of.
Post-mortem
The five husbands ended up as ghosts just as their common wife did. They haunt their own wedding portraits, making their heads disappear on said portraits to expose Constance's crime. In spite of this (admittedly mischievous) denunciation, according to the Ghost Post, they still love Constance in spite of what she did to them. This is actually understandable, as murder and death in general lose much of their seriousness from the Happy Haunts' point of view, which means that in retrospect Constance's crimes mustn't seem as serious to the ghosts as they would to the living.
Appearances
The first appearance of any of the grooms in the attraction is in the Stretching Room where a portrait shows an elderly Constance Hatchaway sitting atop the tombstone of George Hightower. At the bottom of the tombstone is a marble bust of George which has a hatchet buried into it's head, mirroring his fate.
Later on in the Attic we see wedding-portraits of each of the men alongside Constance only for the skulls to disappear off of the men's shoulders.
Trivia
- George is the only husband who might not have died of decapitation as his stretching-room portrait depicts him with the axe buried in his skull rather than simply beheading him. It is possible from this that Constance killed him with a blow to the skull but severed his head post-mortem as a trophy.
- In the unofficial Ghost Gallery storyline which was created prior to the 2006 update which introduced the character of Constance, the only victim of the Black Widow Bride was George. In this story George was named George Gracey Sr. and was the father of the George Gracey jr.(Ghost Host/Master Gracey). George Sr. was an absent husband/father and had an extra-marital affair with a woman who he inadvertently impregnated. Upon confessing to his wife Mary Gracey (Constance), George was killed with an axe-blow to the skull by the woman who was just waiting for any opportunity to off her loathed spouse. George Sr.'s son Daniel Patterson went on to become Gracey Manor's liveryman.
- During the 1990s there was a live-character referred to as, "The Groom" who appeared in the mansion similarly to the Knight.
Gallery
.jpg "Reginald with Constance (2).jpg (133 KB)")
