A Phantom Awaits You

Rated PG-13 for language, adult situations, and frightening images. You have been warned…

This story is based off the Phantom Manor attraction in Frontierland at Disneyland Paris, formerly known as Euro Disney, which opened in 1992. Unlike the Haunted Mansion attractions, which do not have 'official' background stories, PM does have an official story penned by Imagineers that is found on the ride fact sheet that can be found at http:www.ravenswood-manor.com.

Phantom Manor belongs to Disney, as does the Haunted Mansion and any other Disney things that are referenced to in this story.

Kimberly, her interns, her family, and her friends are my own original characters. Carr News Service, the company Kim works for, is fictional. The character of Lawrence is an elaboration of the PM ride character of the man whose corpse we see dangling in the stretching room, presumed to be murdered by the Phantom.

This story is in continuity with Kim's prior adventure, When You Hear the Knell of a Requiem Bell. WYHTKOARB takes place in February of 2004, and this story follows in September of the same year.

And now…the opening notes are done…so enjoy the story. To start off, we have a quote from a Disney movie that I think perfectly illustrates Phantom Manor…

It's a nightmare but it's one exciting ride.- Beauty and the Beast

Chapter One

I tried to get out of this. Really, I did. But because my boss is a pushy jerk, I was stuck with this assignment. Well, okay, my boss isn't a jerk, but I really, really didn't want to write this article anyway.

"Come on, Kim! You always do a great job at these haunted house stories!" John cajoled.

"I don't want to John." Because the last time I did one, I nearly died because a ghost thought that I was the reincarnation of his wife who had at last returned to him forever. But I couldn't exactly tell my boss that…I mean, would YOU believe someone who told you that when trying to get out of an assignment?

So despite my protests of not wanting to get stereotyped as a writer, which was the excuse I used for months, I got stuck writing about Ravenswood Manor, a haunted mansion in a place called Thunder Mesa, Nevada, where people have been reportedly been seeing the ghost of a bride wandering throughout the house, singing to herself. Local legends say that she was jilted on her wedding day, but believed that her groom would return to her, so she waited for the rest of her life, but he never came. And now, even in death, she waits for him.

I'm sorry, but that's just pathetic.

Oh, um, sorry for not introducing myself. I'm Kimberly Elizabeth Fox, known to most people as Kim. I'm 25 years old, and I live in San Antonio, Texas, where I was born and raised, and currently am employed as an investigative travel reporter for Carr News Service. Until last year, that meant all I did was write stupid features on stupid local monuments, but then I wrote a piece on the haunted hotels in downtown S.A. that go picked up by a lot of supernatural-centered publications. That led to my article on Gracey Manor, a giant haunted mansion in New Orleans that's home to 999 ghosts.

Gracey Manor is the reason why I never wanted to set place in a haunted house ever again. When I got there, the house's owner, Edward Gracey, showed a lot of interest in me, which unnerved me to no end. Also unnerving me to no end was a painting I found of a woman who looked exactly like me, who was named Katherine. Then I found out that Edward was a ghost, and that when he was alive, Katherine had been his wife. He was convinced I was her reincarnation, and for a while, I almost thought the same thing because of these really creepy flashback type events I kept on having. Now, I can see that my mind was just playing tricks on me.

At least, that's what I keep telling myself in order to maintain my sanity.

But anyway, I somehow became convinced that I really was Katherine and Edward was planning to kill me so that I could be a ghost with him when my best friend Ben burst in, with help from a dead bride named Emily, and helped me get back to reality, as I had called him earlier that night. Whenever I think about how close I came to…ugh, I can't even tell you how scared I get. I was reliving the experience for quite a while. So you can see that my aversion to haunted places is totally understandable.

I realize not all haunted houses are haunted by men who were married to women who looked exactly like me, but still. And while I believed that I was Katherine, I was all dressed up in this fancy ice blue dress, and ever since then I've had an aversion to that particular shade of light blue. Which is really too bad, because I used to love that color and it looked great on me…

But, I digress…

The article on Gracey Manor was actually a pretty big success for me. Not only did it appear in USA Today, different newspapers from across the country also picked it up, and it got me quite a bit of money, which enabled me to buy tons of DVDs and CDs and go on a vacation to Miami with my friends Ben and Tracy. So, not all bad came out of the Gracey Manor ordeal. But however, it gave John, my boss, the idea that I have a talent for writing about the supernatural, and he's been foisting supernatural themed articles on me ever since March, when my article was published. And finally, a few days ago, I gave in to his incessant begging.

So that's why I'm sitting in the parlor of this old haunted mansion, waiting to talk to a tour guide or something. Ravenswood Manor is used as part of a ghost tour in Thunder Mesa, which is like a ghost town that's part of a bigger town called Frontier, so it's been kept up pretty nicely inside. The outside, however, was much different. It was all falling apart and all the hedges were untrimmed. I guess it was done like that to keep up the scary freaky haunted house image. I just got here about an hour ago, after a long flight to Las Vegas, and an hour-long drive to Thunder Mesa.

"Ms. Fox?" A voice asked. The voice belonged to a smiling woman with shiny, straight blonde hair and a hunter green suit on. She looked alive enough, but then again, I've been fooled before.

"That's me." I said, standing up.

"Ms. Fox, nice to meet you. My name is Gloria Meyers, and I'm the guide for the Haunted Thunder Mesa tour. Welcome to Ravenswood Manor."

"Thanks." I said.

"Would you like a tour of the house?" Ms. Meyers said, still using a friendly tone.

"Sure." I said. There was nothing about Ms. Meyers that put me on the edge, so I took that as a good sign.

Ms. Meyers pointed to some paintings on a wall in a nearby corridor. "See those paintings?"

"Yeah." I nodded. La la la…this is boring. But I think I'd rather be bored than in peril.

"Notice anything?" The four different paintings all featured the same auburn haired girl in different situations. One showed her out in a garden, one with a man on a picnic, one of her wading, and one of her holding a red parasol. One of the paintings eerily resembled one at Gracey Manor. (Not the painting of Katherine, my doppelganger from the 1880s)

"They're all of the same girl." I said. I sure hope that's what she wanted me to notice…please don't let her be talking about anything like shading or line usage, because I'm clueless about that stuff.

"Uh huh. Her name was Melanie Ravenswood. Legend has it that on her wedding day, she was jilted by her groom, who was never seen again. She spent the rest of her life wandering throughout the Manor, convinced that her groom would return."

Even though I had heard the story before, and many similar stories on the Travel Channel, I nodded as if I hadn't.

"Rumors say that Melanie's fiancé was murdered by a jealous ghost. Supposedly before the ceremony he was lured into this very portrait gallery. Before he knew what happened, there was a noose around the poor young man's neck and he was hanged to death by a cackling specter." Ms. Meyers pointed up to the top, where you could see a skeleton hanging.

Oh my God. My blood ran cold.

"Ms. Fox? Are you okay?"

"Oh, um, yeah. That's just…disturbingly similar to something that was at Gracey Manor, the last place I did an article like this on. Except the man hanged committed suicide because he believed he couldn't go on living without his wife." Yeah, his wife who looked exactly like me. "And, there's a painting just like that one over there." I said, pointing to the one of Melanie Ravenswood with a parasol. "But…kinda sorta different."

"Wow. Spooky. The hanging corpse terrifies our guests. To be honest, no one knows how it got there. Nobody can even get up that high, because all staircases leading up to the attic and ceiling were destroyed in an earthquake in 1860." Ms. Meyers informed. She sounds like such a history teacher.

"Well, either way it's still gross." I said.

Ms. Meyers laughed. "You got that right, Ms. Fox. Anyway, let's look down here." We walked into a new hallway where there were some smaller paintings. At the very end of the hallway was a giant painting of Melanie Ravenswood, all decked out in her bridal gown. She had actually been a very pretty girl, with bright green eyes that complimented her shiny red hair nicely.

"Anyway, Martha Ravenswood, Melanie's mother, had been a typical Southern belle. Her father Henry was the son of Thunder Mesa's first mayor. Neither Henry nor Martha was thrilled with Melanie's fiancé, who was a railroad worker. They didn't think he was good enough for their little girl. They wanted her to marry another man, a rising young politician, but she wouldn't hear of it. Henry and Martha finally accepted him, but they were killed a month before the wedding was scheduled, so Melanie pushed the date back."

"That's horrible." I said.

Ms. Meyers nodded. "It is a rather sordid story. After she was jilted on her wedding day, Melanie refused to take down the wedding decorations or to even change out of her wedding dress. People started circulating rumors that she had gone insane. What is true is that Melanie never again left this house. If she survived, she'd be around 150 years old. People used to hear her singing as they passed the house by, and then they'd say, 'there goes mad Miss Melanie again'. That singing has never stopped."

Normally, I'd think that Ms. Meyers was just trying to make the place seem interesting, but ever since Gracey Manor I've totally believed in the supernatural. Before I could make any comments, Ms. Meyers asked me,

"Ms. Fox, do you believe in ghosts?"

Once, I answered this question with an assertive "No." Things have since changed. "Totally." I said.

"Have you ever had a close encounter?"

"Yeah." Way too many.

Ms. Meyers nodded. "You know something? I've seen her. Melanie Ravenswood, I mean. I was upstairs, passing by one of the bedrooms, and I saw her, sitting at a table, crying. But she was old and wrinkled, though her hair was still auburn. But the really strange part was that, well, her mirror was the image of a skull. I blinked, and then everything was back to normal."

"How weird."

"Ms. Fox, I've got to be honest. Melanie Ravenswood is not the only ghost here. Maybe you could put this in your article. All of us who work here have felt another presence here, one that's, that's…evil."

"Evil?" I repeated. This was new to me. I had been in the presence of ghosts before, and some of them annoyed me, and pretty much all of them scared the crap out of me, but none of them were evil.

"It's a horrible feeling! All of a sudden, you know you're not alone in the room. And then, you can hear a horrible noise that sounds sort of like laughter. Then the lights flicker, and then…"

"And then…" I prompted.

"Everything goes back to normal."

"Ew. Weird. And trust me, I KNOW weird."

Ms. Meyers nodded. "Weird indeed. That's not the only weird stuff that goes on here. Some portraits seem to mysteriously change. Some seem to stretch out. People swear they see the ghost of Melanie Ravenswood holding a candelabra. There have been reports of a skeleton-like specter out on Boot Hill, which is the name of the graveyard out back."

"Have any tourists ever run screaming from the house?" I asked, sort of jokingly.

Ms. Meyers laughed, but then her face turned slightly serious. "Yes. That's happened quite a few times as a matter of fact."

"What is it that scares them so much?" I asked.

"Different people say different things." Ms. Meyers said with a shrug of her shoulders. "Recently, most people have been talking about the skeleton-like specter in the graveyard."

"Yeah, those are pretty damn freaky." I nodded.

"Would you like to see the graveyard? You'd be surprised how many people want to see it."

"Graveyards aren't exactly my thing."

Ms. Meyers nodded. "You don't seem like the type of person who'd be interested in the macabre."

"I'm not, really. Sure, I mean, I've done some articles on haunted places, but I didn't choose to do those, I got assigned them. Trust me, I'd so much rather be like that girl from the Travel Channel who gets to go to all those fancy hotels and host shows about them." I am such a blabbermouth.

Ms. Meyers laughed. "That sounds like fun!"

"Um, you know, I'd better be going now. I gotta check in at the hotel, but um, I'll be back tomorrow to do my research."

"Okay. What time will you be here?"

"About noon?" I offered.

Ms. Meyers nodded. "I'll be here to show you around and answer any questions you might have."

"Thanks!" I said. "It was nice to meet you, Ms. Meyers."

"Nice to meet you too, Ms. Fox. I'll see you tomorrow."

"Um, okay!" I said brightly.

As I left Ravenswood Manor, I felt really, really good for some reason. Even though I had to spend a lot of time at some creepy haunted place, I was actually kind of happy. This place seems pretty interesting and there are no brooding ghosts convinced I'm their wife here.

I think things are going to be just fine.