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Ken Anderson is considered by many to be the father of the Haunted Mansion due to his early involvement in the development of the project at Disneyland. It only seems fitting that during the Mansion’s 50th anniversary month a panel entitled “Ken Anderson’s Haunted Mansion ’57: A Year of Horror, Humor, and… Voodoo?” was put together by Jeremy Marx of the Disney History Institute at the D23 Expo 2019. What really made this panel special were scans of Ken Anderson’s personal collection of Haunted Mansion concepts. Of the documentation for his Haunted House project, there were 14 scripts, over 200 notes, and over 150 images!

I could sit and listen to Jeremy talk about this subject for hours and not get bored. The stuff he was able to cover in just one hour was simply incredible (and there’s still so much more). My sincerest thanks to Jeremy and the Disney History Institute for supplying most of the images for this article. A lot of what was shown in the panel were not from the Disney Archives, as I mentioned before, so it’s a huge treat that we can include them here. 

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