Tim Maitland is a character from the Tales from the Haunted Mansion book series.
Appearances[]
Tales from the Haunted Mansion[]
Tim is one of the members of the Fearsome Foursome, a group of teenagers obsessed with ghost stories and the macabre. When their treehouse meeting place is destroyed by lightning, they find invitations from Amicus Arcane inviting them to the Mansion in the wreckage. Arriving at the Library, Arcane begins telling the four children grisly tales starring them.
Tim's story, "Lonegan's Glove", begins with him finding the cursed baseball glove of Lefty Lonegan at a flea market at Amicus Field. Trying it on, his demeanor changes into something cruel and he takes it from the seller after throwing a crumpled 5 dollar bill at him. His friend Willa Gaines notices the change and convinces him to return it, but the seller has disappeared from the flea market without a trace. That night, he has a vision of Lonegan's undead specter coming to his window to reclaim his glove, while Lonegan's six fingered severed hand appears in the room to try and reclaim the glove. With Tim's parents dismissing it as a nightmare and unable to find a way to get rid of it, Tim ends up using the glove for school baseball games and finds himself gaining Lonegan's talents. As Lonegan's glove makes him the star of the team, Tim begins acquiring the player's personality and arrogance and loses most of his friends on the team in the process. With the All-Star game on the horizon, Willa again tries to get Tim to get rid of the glove and play the finishing game as himself, while telling him the story of the glove's curse. The glove refuses to be gotten rid of and as Tim becomes consumed by the dark presence at the All-Star game, he finds himself transported back to the July 17, 1955 game that Lefty Lonegan lost his hand at, though with a team of zombie baseball players. Lefty Lonegan's zombie appears again to try and get his glove back, but with Tim being unable to remove it himself, Lonegan and the zombie ball players devour him, only leaving the glove behind.
The kids critique the quality and improbability of the story, but Tim cannot deny that he can't take Lonegan's glove off of his hand. As the stories continue to be told, the kids become increasingly uncomfortable and wanting to leave, but as they wrap up, the truth becomes clear to them and the signs of their deaths begin to clearly manifest on their ghostly forms and they formally join the Haunted Mansion's happy haunts.
Trivia[]
- Tim takes his last name from the Maitlands in Tim Burton's film Beetlejuice, which foreshadows the twist that the Fearsome Foursome are all ghosts that have failed to realize they died.