The Misery of the Manse was the final officially published story in Slave Labor Graphics's Haunted Mansion comic, printed in Issue 7. Picking up directly from the ending of The Final Interview, it was intended as the start of another multi-part story, but when SLG lost the rights, it was left as a cliffhanger.
Summary[]
Picking up where The Final Interview left off, the Haunted Mansion has sunken into the ground and become pulled into a mysterious netherworld after hitting Ghost Number 1000. The force of the impact jostles William Gracey's skeletal remains out of the rafters, causing him to land onto the floor of the Stretching Room and gain a proper corporeal form resembling his living self. He encounters Steve and clarifies to him that he is indeed dead and a ghost, though he remains in a state of confusion and denial. Moving into the portrait gallery, the two encounter Madame Leota, now free of her crystal ball and in a gloating mood. She explains to Gracey that when he was strangling her to death, she was in the midst of cursing him to a thousand years of agony and misery, where he would feel the deaths of his victims a thousand times over before having his soul ripped apart in a thousand different directions. However, since she was being choked out, she was unable to cast the curse properly, resulting in the "One Thousand Ghosts in the Mansion" event, but she still feels Gracey has gotten what he deserved. As Steve stares out the window into the boundless realm the Mansion has been transported to, we go back to the living world where Sarah, the Caretaker and the Head Maid try to process what just happened. The Caretaker explains the stories his ghostly wife told him of how something big would happen when the Mansion hit a thousand ghosts and how everyone inside living or dead would suffer a terrible fate when it occurred. The Maid explains that Sarah would have been the one to trigger the event if the paramedics hadn't revived her and the Mansion had been skating around the number for years before Steve's death. Desperate to rescue Steve and hopefully find a way to set things right, Sarah leaps into the pit after the Mansion while the Maid and Caretaker, unable to stop her, muse that it's the bravest or craziest thing thing they've seen.
Trivia[]
- After visually depicting Gracey Manor as resembling Phantom Manor in the Interview storyline, the Mansion's design has switched over to resembling the film version.