Disney’s Haunted Mansion, the new movie based on their classic theme park attraction, obviously features its fair share of spirits of the dead interacting with the living. Belief in an afterlife and whether or not ghosts exist is obviously a deeply personal belief and divisive topic depending on whether one is a religious person or not. It certainly is for some of the film’s cast and its director who opened up to IGN about the topic during the film’s (pre-SAG strike) press junket in New Orleans.
Ghostly experiences are nothing new for director Justin Simien. “I've had a lot of them. First of all, I grew up Catholic in Houston, Texas. And my mother's side of the family, they're all from Louisiana. So this sort of like Creole mix of blackness and Catholicism and voodoo and all this stuff, I literally grew up in that milieu,” Simien recalled.
“My mom would tell me stories about after her father passed, seeing him in a cornfield and trying to get him to let them use the car. I mean, ghost stories were just stories growing up. It was just sort of the fabric of life. And unfortunately, I lost my father at a really young age. I lost my grandmother. I've lost some folks and I think a lot of people have experience on everybody. But every time I've lost somebody really, really important to me, there's usually one of those ghost-wink moments on the other side that I am never expecting and cannot explain in any other way than there's something going on. Now, what does that look like? Are they literally floating around? I don't know. I don't know. I don't where they go. I don't know where they're from, but it just seems to me that's probably more going on than meets the eye in this life.”
Likewise, actor Rosario Dawson, who plays widowed mom Gabbie in the film, also went into personal detail to explain why she believes in ghosts: “Because I appreciate that there's things I just don't know. I don't understand why the smallest cell in the body and the largest cell in the body, the sperm and the ovum come together and then just keep multiplying. And then a person, not just a person, but a soul and a spirit. And one that as you speak to, I think really brilliantly comes in with intuition. Comes in with personality, and character. Comes in with distinction. And then when someone passes, their body, all of those cells, all of those things that we consider real is still there. But that spirit, that magic, that something that we can't quite zone in on is gone.”
“But is it really? Because if it's energy, then it's always there,” Dawson continued. “And I've always felt the presence of my ancestors. I feel my grandmother very close to me. I feel other people who speak to me in moments where I need to know that I'm not alone and they make that known to me. I feel that. I believe in that.”
Dawson’s co-star LaKeith Stanfield, who plays astrophysicist Ben Matthias, also admitted to having ghostly experiences but doesn’t think the spirits of the dead are necessarily malicious.
“I know what I experienced and it's quite profound. I actually don't think that it's as scary as one might think. I think fear and things like that exist on this plane, but there are other planes where there's no such thing as that. And you can imagine on a plane where there isn't life, there isn't the fear of death, which is ultimately what we all fear, pain and death,” Stanfield said.
“I think that there are places where there isn't that. So we might imagine some spirits to be having malicious thoughts towards us, but I think humans probably have the malicious thoughts. These other things are not really tripping.”
Leave it to Dawson and Stanfield’s comedic co-star Tiffany Haddish, who plays the psychic Harriet, to throw IGN a curveball on the topic: “I believe in demons and parasites.”
Tiffany Haddish shares the perfect in-universe excuse for everything. #HauntedMansion pic.twitter.com/1HCcKb2zjn
— IGN (@IGN) July 30, 2023
And cast member Jamie Lee Curtis, who plays the ghostly, crystal ball-inhabiting medium Madame Leota, wasn’t having any of this supernatural talk: “I believe in not ghosts and parasites. I do not. I'm a practical, we're here, we're not. Do what we're supposed to do here while we're here and then get the fuck out kind of person.”
Do you believe in ghosts? Let us know in the comments.
For more on Haunted Mansion, discover how Madame Leota was brought to life and read our Haunted Mansion review.
IGN's Ben Watts conducted these interviews.
