Priscilla was a human woman who is now a ghost.
Description[]
Priscilla was a beautiful young woman. When she was eighteen years old,[1] in the year 1810, an older, wealthy sea captain called Bartholomew Gore offered to marry her.[2] Accounts differ on whether she married him at once, had yet to marry him, or was just about to marry him when[3] he brought her to his Mansion. However, while the Captain was away on a sea voyage, Priscilla discovered a journal and a key left on his desk in his study. The journal contained a series of dates seemingly matching up to the activities of the bloodthirsty pirate “Black Bart”. Overcome with a terrible suspicion, Priscilla used the key to open Captain Gore's sea chest, and discovered that he was indeed the infamous buccaneer and murderer, trying to use his ill-gotten fortune to turn over a new leaf.
After Priscilla confronted the Captain, he murdered her, either by strangling her right there and then,[2] locking her in the very sea chest she had opened and leaving her to suffocate,[3] or throwing her out the window of the Attic[1] or into a well.[3] Priscilla, however, quickly became a ghost hell-bent on revenge against Gore for what he had done to her. She haunted him throughout the Mansion,[2] as several other ghosts, of pirates previously murdered by Gore, already did. In addition, the accounts according to which she died by being thrown in the well alleged that the well became haunted itself, its water the colour of blood and emitting strange bubbling noises.[3] Beauregard believed that Priscilla had eventually succeeded in driving Gore to suicide[2] desite other accounts showing that Gore had instead taken back to sea and found Gracey Manor, where he drowned in the basement while searching for the legendary treasure.[4]
At any rate, Priscilla's ghost remained in the house. Her portrait, like the Captain's, became a Changing Portrait, changing from a benign smile to a malevolent smirk.[2] Over one hundred and fifty years after the murder, Beauregard led some tourists on a tour of the Old Gore Mansion, telling them about its tragic story; he got Priscilla to materialise in a rocking chair in the living room and tell part of the story in her own voice.[2]
Behind the scenes[]
Priscilla was a pivotal character to Ken Anderson's original scripts for the backstory of the Haunted House Disneyland attraction that would later become The Haunted Mansion. In the finished ride, however, her character evolved beyond recognition into the bridal-gown-wearing “Beating Heart Bride” of the Attic, later displaced herself by the Black Widow Bride. However, some accounts of the Beating Heart Bride (later dubbed Emily), such as Mystery of the Manse and Nuptial Doom, reinstated one or the other element of the Gore/Priscilla story, with Master Gracey taking on the part of the Captain.
Additionally, another and much triter echo of Priscilla remained in the finished Haunted Mansion in the form of Granny Ghoul in her rocking chair, directly modeled after Anderson's concept art for Priscilla's ghost in her chair in one of the Haunted House scripts.
At any rate, Priscilla first appeared in an actual Haunted Mansion story in 2016 as a cameo in the comic story Disney Kingdoms' Haunted Mansion. Most of her story was then reinstated in an actual narrative in 2020's A Haunted Mansion Tale, edited from one of Ken Anderson's show scripts — although not without errors: a sketch clearly meant by Anderson to depict the sea chest with Priscilla choking inside of it (and identified as such by Long-Forgotten Haunted Mansion) was used to depict the chest prior to Priscilla opening it, with Priscilla's murder being depicted as a strangulation illustrated by a gag of a hairy arm dragging Priscilla back into the house that would have been part of the "pre-show", being visible to guests from the exterior of the house as they queued up to enter the ride.
Notes & References[]
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 According to Jim Sorkis's recollections of discussions with Ken Anderson in 1993.
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 2.5 A Haunted Mansion Tale (2020).
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 3.3 Long-Forgotten Haunted Mansion’s analysis the Anderson storyboard used for A Haunted Mansion Tale.
- ↑ Disney Kingdoms' Haunted Mansion (2016).