Disneyland Haunted Mansion Hitchhiking Ghosts Fall 1974 Disney News Magazine Cover

This 19" x 15.5" original acrylic painting by Disney Art Director Dan Martinez was used for the front cover of the Fall 1974 issue of Disney News magazine. The Disneyland Division of Walt Disney Productions first published the quarterly "Official Magazine for Magic Kingdom Families" in 1965 to help promote the Anaheim theme park, and later, Walt Disney World in Florida. Disney News eventually became known as Disney Magazine in 1994, running until the Summer of 2005.

Initially hired by Director of Marketing Jack Lindquist as a junior designer at Disneyland in 1968, Martinez handled the publication's design and production during its early years. Some of the other Disney attractions that he painted for the magazine's covers include Space Mountain and America Sings. Afterwards, he worked on Disneyland promotional brochures, invitations, and press kits for special events, as well as interviewed prospective designers for Walt Disney World prior to its opening.

The Haunted Mansion illustration additionally appears on the inside Contents page with the following Cover Story caption: "Hitchhikers are not always what they seem to be. At least, they aren't at Disneyland and at Walt Disney World in the eerie atmosphere of the Haunted Mansions. For more about these wandering spooks and the houses they inhabit, see story beginning on page 2."

The artwork no doubt inspired the outer box packaging design of the Lakeside Walt Disney World Haunted Mansion board game, which hit toy shelves the following year.

The image also graced the cover of Persistence of Vision, an unofficial historical journal celebrating the creative legacy of Walt Disney, in 1997. Issue #9 features an article called "Haunting Melody - The Story Behind Buddy Baker's Score for the Haunted Mansion," written by Tish Eastman, a composer at Walt Disney Imagineering.

The picture once again resurfaced in 2013 on the backing card of a keepsake pin that was given exclusively to guests of Disney's Happiest Haunts Tour, an official guided walking tour through Disneyland, which takes place annually during the Halloween season.

A full moon looks down on the mansion, as fanged bats circle. A menacing rat lies in wait upon a weathered gravestone on one side, while, on the other, a lone owl sits leering on the branch of a straggly, claw-like cypress tree. Between them stands the infamous hitchhiking ghosts--the Traveler, the Skeleton, and the Prisoner--in their animatronically-correct forms, materializing out of an ephemeral fog. The trio's translucent glow was accomplished using egg whites.