"Her plaintive pleas can still be heard, 'O Muse, provide the perfect word!"
- Prudence Pock's Crypt
Prudence Pock was a poetess who is buried near the family plot of the Haunted Mansion in Walt Disney World.
Biography[]
Prudence Pock was a poetess and writer who was a member of the Pock Family and who worked in the Haunted Mansion's library. The plaque on her crypt reads: "Here lies poetess Prudence Pock. She died, tis said, from writer's block." She spends the afterlife in her crypt, haunting a book which she fills by writing morbid poems.
Appearances[]
The Haunted Mansion (Magic Kingdom)[]
Guests can find Prudence's crypt within the queue's family plot, where stone carvings of books decorated in coded glyphs pop out of the sides. At the head of the crypt, an open book can be found haunted by Prudence's disembodied spirit who writes morbid poetry within it. Guests can interact with the woman by giving her rhymes for her poetry through the use of a Spectrecom invented (or at least patented) by one R.H. Goff and which is installed within the tomb.
The sides of her crypt are decorated with a message hidden using a symbol substitution cipher which reads, "Welcome home you foolish mortal, this mansion is your mystic portal, where eerie sights and spooky sounds fill these happy haunting grounds". Each of the symbols used in the cryptogram represent something associated with the Haunted Mansion such as a key from the servant's quarters, a singing bust and the number 13.
Other Appearances[]
Tales from the Haunted Mansion[]
Prudence Pock with Dr. Ackerman
Prudence appears as a major character in the fourth book in the series, Tales from the Haunted Mansion Volume IV: Memento Mori. In this incarnation, she is a once-popular horror writer, many of her works being inspired by stories of the Haunted Mansion. Following a book signing in Liberty Square, Prudence was invited to the mansion by librarian Amicus Arcane, who was assembling many "ghost" writers for a competition: to see who could weave the best chilling story, with the winner getting to replace Arcane as the head librarian. Prudence's own story was titled "Writer's Block."
Prudence, seemingly driven mad by the experience, relates many of the stories she was told to Dr. Ackerman while incarcerated in Shepparton Sanitarium. As the story progresses, it is revealed in a dream-like twist that the one truly bound to the asylum is Ackerman, tormented every night in his cell by Prudence's ghost, who he murdered in a fashion similar to Poe's "The Cask of Amontillado" by walling her into a basement room and forcing her to write a new story before "dying of writer's block". The story of her own death - which took place before she went to the mansion for the symposium - ultimately wins her the competition, but she declines becoming the librarian in order to continue haunting Ackerman for the rest of his mortal life.
Poems[]
- You must pay attention though life is so hectic. Ask Earl who did miss that fence was electric.
- Myrtle Jones, it was said could clear all of the hurdles. Until she was eaten by a large snapping turtle.
- Al was not scared to go out in the rain. Too bad that it was a class 5 hurricane.
- In honor of poor Charles, we're having a wake. He died from eating too much birthday cake.
- One night on safari, crazy Franz Geiger tried to ride a man-eating tiger.
- Deep in the wild, on his off-road machine, Greg found that his tank had no more gasoline.
- Sweet Hanna had taken a cruise to Manila. She was thrown overboard by an angry gorilla.
- Old Lucy, you see, had such poor eyesight. Instead of a candle, she lit dynamite.
- In the swamp, poor Sally Slater was eaten by an alligator.
- The miner forgot his warning canary. Now he mines six feet under the old cemetery.
- Irv thought he'd relax in his jungle cabana, but a really big monkey thought him a banana.
Trivia[]
- She shares her last name with Phineas P. Pock who is one of the singing busts from the graveyard of the mansion.
- In one of her poems, she mentions Sally Slater which is the name of the Tightrope Walker from the Stretching Room.
- The sides of her crypt are decorated to look like the Mansion's library complete with the book pushing themselves out.
- The SpectreCom which guests use to speak with the nearly departed is patented by R.H. Goff which is a tribute to imagineer Harper Goff.
- In concept art, the Writer Crypt featured a statue of Prudence Pock covering her face as well as the stature of an owl and a roofed area held up by overgrown pillars
- Several of her poems might reference other Disney Parks properties:
- Those with jungle/safari theming might reference the Jungle Cruise.
- The Class 10 hurricane poem could reference Typhoon Lagoon.
- The poem about the miner and his canary could reference Big Thunder Mountain Railroad.
- Prudence's poem about Irv might reference the monster film King Kong (1933) which included a giant gorilla.