Henry Ravenswood

Biographical information
Other names	The Phantom (confirmed in 2019 updates) Mr. Ravenswood
Profession	Businessman Dark Spirit (post-mortem)
Relations	Martha Ravenswood (wife) Melanie Ravenswood (daughter)
Behind the scenes
AlternateVersions	The Phantom

Henry Ravenswood (1795-1860) was a wealthy mortal man who used to own Ravenswood Manor before it became the dreaded Phantom Manor. In the post-2019 version of the attraction, it is shown that in death, his spirit became the malevolent Phantom.

Description

Henry Ravenswood was a businessman and founder the Big Thunder Mining Company. He was said to be an ambitious, disciplinarian man, who nevertheless loved (beyond reason) his daughter Mélanie. According to early backstory reports, he was notoriously unfaithful to his wife Martha, but this aspect has not been kept in the final attraction (either to simplify the story, or to avoid this controversial material).

Biography

Ravenswood was initially a simple prospector in the old West, but his discovery of gold in Big Thunder Mountain in 1849 would make him a fortune. The town of Thunder Mesa sprang up soon after, and Ravenswood would establish financial dominance of the mining operations in the area. Ravenswood would build a stately manor on a hill overlooking the river and the boomtown he'd helped create.

Local natives warned that the mountain was the resting place of the legendary Thunderbird, and that if the settlers kept mining, the spirits of the mountain would grow angry and cause misfortune. Ravenswood, ignoring the warnings of the legend, continued to work in the mines.

As the years passed, Henry would become increasingly possessive of his daughter, now a young woman. He deeply resented the string of suitors that came looking for Melanie's hand, as none of them were good enough for her in his eyes. As a result of this Henry killed all four of his daughter's first four suitors; Barry Claude who he had mauled by a bear, a steamboat captain who he had fall off a waterfall in a rowboat, a man he cut in half with an industrial buzz-saw, and a man who he blew up with a large amount of dynamite. At some other unknown point of time, Henry cheated during a duel with another gentlenan by turning around before the draw and firing at the man's back, killing him.

Melanie's fifth and final suitor was a train engineer working in Thunder Mesa, and it was not long before they were making plans to wed. Ravenswood, for once, consented the union, but when he learned that Melanie's beau intended to take her away from Thunder Mesa, he became furious and vowed he would do everything he could to prevent this from happening. However, before he could take action to stop the wedding, the great earthquake of 1860 devastated Thunder Mesa, and Ravenswood and his wife were killed. Some claimed it was the wrath of the Thunderbird that caused the tragedy while others said it was the result of a massive dynamite blast from the Mountain. On the day of Melanie's wedding, not long after her father's death, her groom mysteriously vanished without a trace. It was revealed later that the Phantom murdered the groom by hanging him from the rafters in the attic, and that this sinister specter remained afterward to haunt the house and torment Melanie as she lamented the loss of her beloved. It is speculated that the Phantom is actually the ghost of Ravenswood, returned from the grave to ensure his daughter would never leave Thunder Mesa.

Gallery

Concept art of Henry Ravenswood. This was the most commonly-reproduced image of Henry prior to the 2019 portrait's addition.

Henry ravenswood.jpg

An originally fanmade portrait of Henry with the likeness of his voice actor Vincent Price, later used on the Daily Disneyland website's French variant.

A glimpse of Henry Ravenswood's face in the mirror, as seen in the online teaser for the May the 3d, 2019 reopening of Phantom Manor. (Actor unknown.)

Henry grinning after putting on his top hat.

Trivia

• Henry and Martha Ravenswood's graves can be seen in Boot Hill Cemetery side-by-side and located not far from a nameless monument-like grave that is presumably the final resting place of their daughter.
• Prior to the unveiling of an official portrait of the Phantom during the 2019 refurbs, Henry was typically portrayed in his mortal form resembling Vincent Price, seeing how Price was initially meant to provide his/the Phantom's voice. The most notable instance of this was an originally fan-made portrait appearing on the Daily Disney website.
• Though the original intention of the Imagineers' during the ride's inception, the identity of Henry with the Phantom was kept ambiguous in the ride's original version. Whether he was still canonically the Phantom became heatedly controversial (even among official sources). The 2019 refurbishment of Phantom Manor, broadly identical to the Mansion’s Constance Hatchaway additions, retconned the link to be fully canonical.
• In the S.E.A storyline commonly used in Disney Parks attractions (including Mystic Manor), the owner of the Big Thunder Mining Co. is a man named Barnabas T. Bullion rather than Henry Ravenswood, however in Big Thunder Mountain's story Bullion operated the company during the 1880s while Ravenswood's reign ended in 1860 so it is possible that Bullion simply absorbed the company 20 years later. It is also possible that the two were business partners.
• Henry's planned portrait in the 2019 refurbishment changes changes into a skeletal form in the same way as the Dorian Gray-style Master Gracey portrait in Disneyland's mansion.