Tracking down the truth behind the hearse in front of the Haunted Mansion was a pet project of mine. In 1996, the employee newsletter, the Disneyland Line, published an interview with Dale Rickards, the antique collector who sold the hearse to the Disney company.
Rickards claimed that the hearse had originally been used in Brigham Young‘s 1877 funeral procession, but also claimed all of his supporting documentation had mysteriously disappeared in a robbery.
Although he was unable to back up this alleged connection to the leader of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, the rumor persisted and was often repeated as yet another Disneyland trivia fact.
To track down the truth of the matter, I reached out to the Church of Latter-Day Saints archives to see if they had any record of the hearse being used. The letter I received back made it clear that the hearse was not connected to Brigham Young.
The excerpts from the book that LDS enclosed with the letter showed that Brigham Young’s casket was actually carried by several men. A hearse was never used. The page numbered 144 in this doc details the order of procession.
And finally, here’s the Deseret News article that the LDS archivist referenced in her letter.
The hearse is still a neat prop and people love to take photos with the ghost horse. It is certainly an antique as well. If you look at it closely, you’ll see the wooden carriage has seen better days. While we might not know its real history, we can say for certain that it was not connected to Brigham Young as the sellers had claimed.
Photo via Flickr
