Mr. Meaker is a character from early script drafts for the Disneyland Haunted Mansion and one of many early versions of the Hanging Man motif later assigned to the Ghost Host.
Background[]
Mr. Meaker was created by Imagineer Dick Irvine as part of the development of the walkthrough versions of the attraction. Mr. Meaker was to be represented by a portrait hanging next to an old fashioned canopy bed, which the cast member guide would reveal as a death trap by pulling a lever and causing the canopy to come down and smother whoever was laying on the bed. A spiel associated with the vignette reads:
“Mr. Meaker was a very simple man who lost each of his five wives in a very tragic manner, They died in bed—apparently of natural causes. Mr. Meaker’s only compensation was that his wives were all insured. He smothered them with affection… One night he was testing the mechanism while his cat was sleeping on the bed. When Mr. Meaker found out he had killed his pet, he was heartbroken. He hanged himself.