"Of course, there's always my way…"
How many hundreds of times had I heard that phrase, while standing in the Haunted Mansion's stretching room or listening to that Ron Howard Haunted Mansion LP as a kid, without ever taking notice of it?Yet I remember, about ten years ago, standing in the stretching room, hearing the Ghost Host utter those words, gazing up to see that swinging corpse in the rafters and all of a sudden realizing:"My way?What the heck is he talking about?"
Questions entered my head in rapid succession:
"His way…the hanging corpse…is that how the Ghost Host died? Suicide…?"
"…Hanging?"
And most interestingly: "Is that the body of the Ghost Host hanging up there right now?"
More questions than answers, and none of this had ever occurred to me before. Besides leaving me feel profoundly enlightened, it also left me feeling incredibly obtuse. Was I–after spending hundreds of hours thinking about this place–the only one in the room who didn't know the meaning of "my way?" (A quick check with my brother standing next to me–who should know the attraction only a little less well than I do–revealed that he'd never thought about it either. So maybe we're both a little slow.)
Just recently, the story took a step forward for me.The Haunted Mansion blog Ghost Relations Department has a post that claims that a particular Haunted Mansion portrait is the likeness of the Ghost Host. And what's displayed in the painting? A creepy, undead-looking gentleman with a tell-tale noose around his neck. Ah-ha.(The post doesn't, however, make any allusions to the "my way"-noose relationship: either they missed it, or it's such an obvious connection that it went unstated.)
Based on the assertion that this is the image of the Ghost Host–which I have no reason to doubt*–it seems clear that the Ghost Host did die by hanging. Was it suicide? Don't know. Is that his body, hanging up there in the rafters? Don't know that either. But just for my own personal satisfaction, I'm going to assume that it is: I like it that way.
There are still questions to be answered (though they likely never will be), but am I the only one who didn't put two-and-two together about the backstory of the Ghost Host?
* GrimGhosts.com also indicates that this image is a representation of the Ghost Host. (Search for the second occurrence of the term "Ghost Host" on the page.)