Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849) was a victorian author and poet whose work greatly influenced the Haunted Mansion.
Background[]
Biography[]
Haunted Mansion connections[]
Development history[]
Haunted Mansion[]
- The character of the Raven is very clearly based on the titular raven from Edgar Allan Poe's 1845 poem, "The Raven". Unused audio by Eleanor Audley would have had the raven squawking, "Nevermore", a direct quote from the poem.
- The beating-heart bride and echoing beating heart of the attic scene is likely inspired by Poe's short-story The Tell-Tale Heart. In this short-story, a mentally-ill man confesses to having murdered his flat-mate and hiding his body under the floor-boards after repeatedly hearing the loud beating of its corpses heart while he's interviewed by police.
- The Coffin Occupant may be inspired by the character of Madeline Usher from Edgar Allan Poe's The Fall of the House of Usher (1839) where a wealthy woman named Madeline Usher is entombed alive within a coffin, sealed shut with screws by her twin-brother and his friend. She later manages to claw her way out and seek revenge.
- The demonic clock in the hallway has a sharp swinging pendulum which is potentially inspired by Edgar Allan Poe's short-story The Pit and the Pendulum. The shadow hand on said clock might be inspired by the 1932 film adaption of Edgar Allan Poe's "Murders in the Rue Morgue" where a murderous ape makes a similar shadow before strangling a sleeping woman.
- In the graveyard, the brick-layer is seen behind a crypt where they wall themselves up. This might be inspired by Poe's The Cask of Amontillado where a man named Fortunato is murdered by his friend Montressor by being inebriated, lured into a crypt, and walled up within it to die.
- In the Haunted Mansion book Boundless Realm, author Foxx Nolte notes a resemblance between the Arsonist portrait and Scapinelli, played by Werner Kraus, from the 1926 silent horror film The Student of Prague in costume and facial hair. This film was an adaptation of the Edgar Allan Poe story William Wilson and the Faust legend.
- Another loose connection might be the mummy struggling to speak over tea in the graveyard possibly being a play on Poe's short-story Some Words with a Mummy.
- An unused villain planned to appear in the Haunted Mansion by X. Atencio was the, "One-Eyed Black Cat". This character was very obviously based on, "Pluto", a one-eyed black cat from Edgar Allan Poe's The Black Cat. Said cat has since appeared in Disneyland's Haunted Mansion as a sculpture within the interior queue, and at the Magic Kingdom's Haunted Mansion as a carving on the organist's crypt.
Unused[]
In one version of Ken Anderson's Gore Mansion backstory for the manor, Captain Gore walled his murdered wife Priscilla's corpse up behind an out-of-use chimney. In Edgar Allan Poe's The Black Cat, the narrator murders his own wife and shoves her corpse behind the chimney only for their pet cat to appear within the chimney and wail, alerting the police.
Phantom Manor[]
Within Phantom Manor, a clock in Mélanie Ravenswood's boudoir has a swinging blade pendulum. This is inspired by Edgar Allan Poe's short-story The Pit and the Pendulum in-which agents of the Spanish Inquisition torture a man in a pit by using a massive blade on a pendulum. Incidentally, Henry Ravenswood's voice-actor Vincent Price also starred in a 1961 adaptation of this story along with other Edgar Allan Poe adaptations including The Masque of the Red Death (1964) and Witchfinder General (1968).
Printed-materials[]
In the non-canonical but influential Ghost Gallery backstory for Walt Disney World's Haunted Mansion, one of the staring busts is given the name of, "Edgar Allan". The Tales from the Haunted Mansion story, "Some Tea With a Mummy" is named in tribute for Edgar Allan Poe's story, "Some Words with a Mummy" (1845).
Appearances[]
Tales from the Haunted Mansion[]
Poe is one of the many ghost writers invited to Amicus Arcane's story telling contest in Volume IV: Memento Mori. The final story, "Writer's Block", is also focused around the works of Poe, with Dr. Ackerman inviting Prudence Pock to see his Poe collection after presenting her with an authentic quill used by the writer. Ultimately, the invitation is the pretense for an elaborate murder plot, with the dioramas in the dungeons below Ackerman's home being the end result of various Poe-inspired murder schemes, with Prudence being sealed behind a brick wall Cask of Amontillado style where she'll either complete a new story to gain her freedom or literally die of Writer's Block. After her death, Pock would begin haunting Ackerman for the rest of his natural life, resulting in him being institutionalized in his own asylum and seemingly being trapped in his own brick prison.
Other Disney Park appearances[]
- A large book copy of The Raven appeared in Journey Into Imagination within the Realms of Imagination.