The Haunted Mansion is my guilty pleasure favorite Halloween film. I watch it with my sister every year, and this year I had so much fun watching it at my newly purchased writing desk, “summoning” her & the movie spirits online. I don’t mind that it’s more goofy than scary. Sometimes we just need a little fun.
One thing that stood out to me in this movie was the theme of love being tainted by anything forced, whether someone is forced into it or forced apart from it.
The haunted mansion’s backstory tells of a forbidden love of an interracial couple. The girl mysteriously dies, many believing she killed herself, and the young heir to the mansion, in his terrible grief, hangs himself. Now his ghost still haunts the mansion, trapped in the very place he tried to give up, waiting to be reunited with her.
Now, centuries later, a family of realtors are invited to check the place out, only to be forced to stay for the night in the midst of a drastic storm. As the different members of the family explore, the wife and mother of the family, Sara Evers, is isolated with the young Master Gracey, who gives a welcoming tour of the mansion. The entire time, however, Sara is being set up to be wedded to him, because he has mistaken her for his long-lost Elizabeth.
Love forced apart is a tragedy; love forced together is also a tragedy. Sara being forced to marry Master Gracey would not rightfully lift the curse or balance the cosmic scales of Gracey being forced apart from Elizabeth.
But another thing that stands out to me in ghost stories like these is this deep, spiritual longing for justice. These are often stories of how so many things can’t just be left in the past—a place can hold trauma, and the lives of the lost still cry out for justice, for truth to be known and wrong to be righted. Ghosts rarely rest in peace until the living can learn from them.
The real spirit of Elizabeth haunts the halls, silent until someone could find the truth. She leads the Evers children to find out more about why the mansion is haunted in the first place. Jim Evers, the husband and father, must go into a mausoleum to find a key, which in turn can help unlock what they need to break the curse that binds the ghosts here.
As much as I like to joke about it, I really do believe in a curse. The overarching tendency of humans to sin—and I mean that in the grave, evil sense of the word, not just to make mistakes. To set forth cycles of hierarchy and abuse of power. To do terrible things out of prejudice or insatiable desire to keep status quo. Humans also have a choice in the matter to find the truth, and break the curse. I think much of that is happening now, as we learn more about our broken, haunted systems and in educating ourselves, seek to free others as well as free ourselves. So many of us are living in a haunted mansion of a nation here in America. Beautiful things and ideals surround us, sure, but built upon bones and burial grounds too long ignored. Murders and terrible injustices have taken place here, and much of the riches and status are empty objects that imprison us, which we try to escape but find almost impossible to. Privileges that we have benefited from, as much as we try to reject them, come hard to destroy as we are living in them, internalized them, shaped by them.
Many will try to tell us that in order to break this misery and “move on,” we can make up for tragedies of the past with quick replacements for what is lost, quick compensation. In the case of The Haunted Mansion, a rushed marriage to a modern woman who resembles Elizabeth should make up for the hate crime murder of Elizabeth in the past. In the case of real life, perhaps rejoicing and praising how sweet and brave some Black families are for forgiving their oppressors/murderers, and saying they’re so christlike for following expectations of accepting abuse, should apparently make up for centuries of racism, brutality, and the life lost. After all, isn’t the goal to “move on”?
Perhaps enough performative and public, trending love can make up for actually learning true history and undoing the generational effect of its evil. Perhaps saying all lives matter and not seeing color, not recognizing people of color as individual people with varied, human differences, can easily patch up needing to do any work for overturning really inherent and inherited racism. Perhaps calling Asians the model minority can make up for Japanese internment camps. Perhaps sympathizing with queer people can cover all needs without actually giving them rights or affirming their existence as good. Perhaps calling women so beautiful makes up for treating them as equal individuals.
I could go on and on.
In The Haunted Mansion, Jim Evers nearly flees with his kids saying “You can’t help the dead. They’re beyond help.” He has no sympathy for the ghosts—until he hears how close his wife is to becoming one. Sometimes that’s all it takes. A real human face, someone you know, someone you love, and realizing they are affected by the curse. Hopefully we don’t wait until it’s too late to help.
The Evers find evidence of how the real Elizabeth was murdered, and did not kill herself. They find out how the wicked butler brainwashed Master Gracey into wanting to marry lookalike Sara in death. In exposing the truth, dodging many cursed obstacles like zombies and possessed armor, and bringing the truth to Gracey, they then help free the spirits.
I told my sister while watching this that I had forgotten they actually incorporate heaven and hell in this movie, not just being ghosts. There is actually a chance to make things better or worse. The ghosts have all been told they are doomed to wander this territory for all eternity, but perhaps not. Perhaps it only felt like an eternity—but there is always a choice, a change, a love, a bend towards freedom, even if it takes longer than we can imagine.
The evil butler tries to damn them all for their offensive love, considering it all a rebellion of not knowing one’s place. He only ends up damning himself; in trying to invoke torment upon others, he separated himself by identifying with evil.
If we’re going to get into the topic of hell or separation, allow me to remind us all that Christ biblically said that the measure of whether someone knows Him is what they have done for the least of these. Ignore their plight and plot their destruction while still religiously invoking things in His name, and you have separated yourself from what the Kingdom of God is all about. Actively take care of, advocate for, and love the marginalized and those less fortunate than yourself, and you have done good by Christ without even knowing it.
Later, when the true Elizabeth returns to reunite with Gracey, it’s like a miracle. There is a gentle blue light above like a whole other magical world, and the quarantined spirits all go at last to heaven.
As I’ve mentioned in previous posts, I am a sucker for lovely depictions of the afterlife. I was moved by the little glowing spirit balls going to a place where their love will never be separated from them again. “And now, only heaven awaits.”
I hold hope for the reality of that, spiritually. But while we are here, inheriting this earth, given the deed to a haunted mansion of a world, what are we to do with it?
What spirits shall we free?
What truth shall we uncover?
What false counterfeits of justice and love shall we denounce, renounce, transform?
What curses shall we break, and what love shall we believe in?
Easier said than done, I know. So much is isolating us and working against us. Even now I hold an overwhelming anxiety about the next few days laying down fate, like a room stretching downwards and revealing a bigger picture of insanity in its walls. But so long as we have love within us, and this drive to protect one another and to learn, I truly believe in breaking curses. And we are in this together.
Besides, there is one motto about the original attraction of The Haunted Mansion that I’ll never forget: “There is always room for one more.” May we hold space for one another as we seek the light.