Eloise and the Ghost Story

I think it’s fair to say that quite a number of us are big fans of Disney, whether or not we like to think otherwise. Disney has always been there with us, shaping our childhoods. And though Disney is home to some of the most beloved classics of our childhood, like Snow White, Pinocchio, Beauty And The Beast and so forth, a lot of people nowadays like to dwell on the more darker aspects of Disney.

The company’s innocent and picturesque façade of childhood wonder seems to be overshadowed by several haunting stories being spread around on the internet, which includes such tales as the various gruesome accidents and deaths at Disneyland, abandoned theme parks left to rot in the Bahamas, an alleged cartoon reel of Mickey Mouse walking through hell and committing suicide in the end, and of course all those supposed subliminal messages hidden within various shows and movies in order to brainwash the youth of the world.

I guess my experience isn’t quite as grisly or as far-fetched as those stories, but then again it still makes me wonder about all those sick weirdos that live out there in the world, that like to manipulate simple children-centred media into something more grotesque. To be honest, I find this pretty fascinating myself, but at the same time it really worries me. But on the bright side, at least I got my own experience to share with people, and add to the ever-growing roster of bizarre Disney-themed horror stories.

Perhaps I should start with a little bit of background first, just so you all can get the general gist of things before the events that followed after. Then I can get into the meat of this weird little story.

Me and my little sister live out in the country with our mom, though recently I had moved to college. There really wasn’t much to do back home, and any friends we had lived miles away from us. If you like looking at fields of cows and horses, that place would be pretty great for you. But since there wasn’t anything outside to do for me and my sister except for wandering across fields of muck, we both stayed at home and watched TV, or more specifically movies.

And my sister was the biggest movie lover I knew. It didn’t seem to matter what genre it was, she’d happily sit down at any old movie and watch the same one continuously for days after until she moved on to the next one (of course certain movies were out of bounds; I doubt my mom would allow her to watch a slasher movie or anything of the sort).Though she loved watching films, she didn’t really have any kind of contextual grasp on the art of film-making itself. It could seriously be any old rubbish she’d get from my mom that was a cheap piece of crap on sale somewhere, and she’d just happily sit glued in front of her bedroom TV and we’d never see her again unless she had to use the bathroom or ask for a snack from my mom

.I guess I had grown to become a lot more cynical in terms of watching and appreciating movies. I had taken up a Film Production course at college, and was also fond of watching various YouTube film critics in my spare time. I felt a little bad in a way because I’d always find myself judging whatever movie I’d be watching with my family, and I guess it kinda spoiled the innocent enjoyment I used to have for them. I suppose I am glad that my sister still has that mindset. I’m surprised she still has, after what she saw.

So this brings me up to the point when I came back home for the summer term, and my little sister had just gotten a new DVD from my mom off of Amazon; Eloise At The Plaza.

So yeah, as it would turn out, Disney had created a lot of these straight-to-DVD and TV live-action movies. They pretty much had the same reputation as the DVD sequels of classic Disney films like The Little Mermaid and Beauty And The Beast. Let’s just say they weren’t exactly the best of what Disney had produced.

Now, I don’t really have any objection towards the live-action movies Disney have made, since there’s still the classics like Bedknobs And Broomsticks and Mary Poppins, but the lesser known ones tend to not be all that great. At all.

Ah well, I was still open to watching this particular movie with my little sister, just to keep her company when my mom would go out shopping. Though I personally wasn’t looking forward to watching the movie myself.

I guess I had gone off of Disney a bit at that time, anyway. I wasn’t really on-board with people going on about the “new golden age for Disney”. Not that the newer movies were bad or anything, I just thought they were kinda over-hyped and I was tired of constantly hearing people at college and online talking about how ‘amazing’ these newer movies were.

But whatever, it was just quality time with my little nine-year-old sister, still in primary school and still watching anything with an innocent mind.

I should probably talk about the film a bit too. I guess they were based off of a series of popular kids books in the 50’s. They seemed to be along the same lines of kids books like Madeline, following the tales of an unruly child as she uses her imagination to go on ‘adventures’ in an otherwise very mundane environment. I guess the difference being that this particular kid character happens to be pretty wealthy, unlike the usual poor orphaned archetype, and lived in the penthouse of The Plaza Hotel in New York whilst living with an English nanny and several pets. Overall the premise of the movie is pretty simple, and in my honest to God opinion, I found it pretty boring and annoying, but for my sister’s sake, I just sat there and had to stomach the ordeal.

I guess I can be grateful that my sister still has a very young mind at her age. I would have preferred a sister who was still willing to spend time with her older brother than one who’d barely interact with anyone as she tapped away on her iPhone or tablet or some crap. I just wish we could have spent time doing anything else than watching Eloise for the thirty-seventh time since I’d come down for the summer term.

One day, my mom took my sister up to the hospital. I think it had some thing to do with her sinuses. Anyway, they left me alone to look after the house when they were out, since my mom was expecting a parcel to arrive.

I sat on the sofa in the living room for a while before I decided to (what else) watch a movie.

I turned on the TV to see that Eloise was still on.

That was weird, I thought. I realised that my sister had only turned off the TV and not the DVD player, hence why the menu screen was still up.

When I look back, I like to think that the DVD was just waiting for me. Heck, maybe it was. Who knows.

Weird thoughts aside, I went to turn it off, but before I did I decided to check out the Special features menu.

I’m not sure why.

I suppose I felt a little bad for ridiculing this movie when I watched it, and made comments throughout that got on my sister’s nerves. I couldn’t really help making fun of a movie I didn’t like. It was just a bad habit, I guess.

But I also felt bad in that the movie itself was still very innocent and child-friendly. And it was clear that work had been put in the movie, along with some pretty decent talent like Julie Andrews and Jeffrey Tambor in starring roles. I especially felt bad when I clicked on the menu just to check out some of the features. I saw the ‘making of’ featurette, as well as a behind-the-scenes look with the illustrator of the original Eloise books, Hilary Knight. I couldn’t help but feel a little more guilty about mocking the movie whilst watching those interviews about Eloise’s inception from her creator. Then there was also a list of 5 episodes, which had me thinking that perhaps there was going to be a TV series of Eloise after the movie was made, but I guess it simply didn’t take off. It was weird that they were all packed onto the film’s DVD rather than put on a separate disk altogether, or even a bonus disk. Then again, I guess the episodes themselves might not have warranted that much interest, and maybe putting them all on the one disk may have been like a little added bonus for the kids.

Or at least, that’s just what I figured.

I looked down the list of episodes. They were listed in the following order:

Ep1)-Eloise Goes To School

Ep2)-Eloise Takes A Bawth

Ep3)-Eloise Goes To Hollywood

Ep4)-Eloise And The Rawther Rude Guest

Ep5)-Eloise And The Ghost Story

How very riveting, I remember thinking to myself, sighing internally at the rather uninteresting and generic titles. I guess these were all based on the other stories from the original Eloise book series, but only as episodes instead of their own little movies?

I could only imagine that they were incredibly uninteresting, even to kids. Without anything else to do on the menu and out of mere curiosity, I began to watch an episode. So, about the episodes.

Each one had a time stamp of 20 minutes next to each episode in brackets, and I noticed a few actors were changed from the movie. I noticed that Julie Andrews no longer played the nanny, and was played by some different actress I didn’t recognise. I didn’t pay much attention to the credits either so I didn’t see which new actors replaced the old ones. However, Jeffrey Tambor reprised the role of the hotel’s stern manager, Mr Salomone.

Episode one is pretty generic. Eloise is bored with her tutoring from Nanny. She decided that she wants to go to a public school, where she makes new friends there, has a snooty teacher, and helps fend off a bunch of mean bullies to save her new friends. Standard affair for a kid’s show.

Episode two was weird, though I admit I did grin a little at some bits. The plot was simply Eloise taking a “bawth”, as her English nanny would pronounce it, and flooding the entire room while she played deep sea diving adventures, as a Venetian masquerade ball was taking place down below. Of course, the water seeped through the ceiling onto the ballroom below, and the irony was stated that the now flooded ballroom was “beginning to look like Venice”(and before you get any creepy thoughts about this particular episode, Eloise was wearing a bathing suit. So no, there was no inappropriate child nudity).

Episode three is where Nanny takes Eloise to Hollywood, and through various shenanigans involving a snooty actress, she ends up as the starring role of an upcoming movie, only to learn that being a film star isn’t as great as it seems.

Episode four was pretty boring and predictable. Yet another snooty grown-up character called Mrs Richards comes to stay at The Plaza, and overtime her ill temper and pompous attitude begins to wear on everyone, guests and staff alike. The manager Mr Salomone finally breaks down and enlists the help of Eloise, which is something he wouldn’t ever do at any other time, to get rid of the guest by utilising her practical jokes and tricks. Then ensues a whole lot of Home Alone style booby traps, though much more tame, and eventually the rude guest flees the building and Eloise is congratulated.

Now I know I had listed all the above in order like I had watched them in that way, but the truth is that I only watched them all much later on after I had watched episode five, Eloise And The Ghost Story.

It was the title that caught my eye out of all the five episodes. I guess I just lean more towards the darker and scarier sources of entertainment, even in kid’s media. I know I said before that I like to watch the classic Disney movies, but my favourite where definitely the darker films like Hunchback of Notre Dame. If I had to choose my favourite film genre overall, then it would be horror above all else.

I guess at the time I just thought to myself that out of all these episodes, I just hope they had a half-decent spooky one. I’d just check it out, get a general gist for the quality of the rest of the episodes, and then take the DVD out and watch something else while I waited for my mom and sister to come back.

Then you may be thinking, what was the point of listing all those other episodes then?

Well, after I had watched episode five, I wanted to see what all the other ones were like.

And all those other four episodes were perfectly fine.

This one, however, wasn’t. It clearly wasn’t.

Episode five starts off with Eloise running down a corridor with a safari cap on. She talked to the audience about how she was observing the “wildlife of the Plaza Hotel” (which were just hotel guests and staff going about their usual routines) and set up several of her typical pranks, such as pouring a pitcher of water down a mail chute, at the exact time another guest opened it up, and the water splashed in his face. Mr Salomone had finally had enough of her games, and decided to run up the floors to chase her down. Various hijinks ensue in the following chase and Eloise soon finds herself on the seventeenth floor.

This was the first thing that threw me off about this episode. When it cut to a perspective shot of Eloise staring down the long empty hallway, the quality of the camera changed to a shaky cam, like it was a home video. It was a little blurred, and the lighting and colour was very dull. I just assumed at the time it was used to give a little atmosphere, but it still made me feel uneasy for some reason, though I thought maybe it was like one of those realistic visual gags you’d see on something like Spongebob Squarepants. Though in hindsight that was a bit of a stretch to consider that.

Regardless, I carried on watching. Though it still bothered me, but honestly I was kind of keen to see where it was going with this.

The camera quality returned to normal as it cut back to Eloise, who began walking down the long hallway with a sense of wonderment. I was guessing from her wide-eyed expression that she’d never gone onto this floor before.

Mr Salomone then came running into view, having arrived from the elevator, and grabbed Eloise’s shoulders, a look of sheer abject terror on his face. It actually got me a little worked up on how genuinely horrified Jeffrey Tambor looked. For a moment I thought he was gonna break the fourth wall, and that this whole episode was like a really bizarre joke episode(For all I know, that could actually still be the case).

Mr Salomone took Eloise aside, telling her that she shouldn’t be up here. Before Eloise could make one of her typical sassy remarks, he interrupted her by telling her, in a dead serious tone of voice, that no one ever comes up here to the seventeenth floor.

Eloise fell silent for a second, but soon she was smiling at the knowledge of a mystery. She clearly wanted to know more.

So Mr Salomone began to tell her (and thus the audience) about what happened here, on the seventeenth floor.

As the story goes, a rich young entrepreneur and his wife stayed up at the seventeenth floor in Room 37, during the 1930’s. Soon the wife began complaining about creaking noises coming from the hallway at night. Her husband didn’t pay her any attention on the matter, so she complained to the hotel manager at the time. But nothing came of it.

Soon the noises got worse. The loud creaking sounds were heard right outside their door. The wife insisted they must leave, panicking as she thought it might have been some kind of stalker, but her husband insisted to her they must stay as their business partners would be arriving to the Plaza the next day for their important meeting. And on that very night, he was woken up by his wife’s screaming. He went to the door where the scream was heard, opened it to the hallway outside, and simply vanished along with his wife. No one knew what happened to them, and thereafter the seventeenth floor has been know to be haunted by a ghost called Mr Creaks.

I was a little puzzled. To me the story Mr Salomone told wasn’t scary, but I tried putting myself in the shoes of a little kid. If I was a really young child listening to this story, and just the incredibly sincere and haunting way he told it to Eloise, I would have been shitting myself! There was no way this could have been in a kid’s show. But then again, the name “Mr Creaks” would sound like something a little kid would have created.

And Eloise herself didn’t seemed phased by the spookiness of the story either. She was brimming with excitement as expected from her character. For her, it was a new chance for adventure. From there on I guessed that the next part of the episode would be her trying to go on a little ghost hunt on the seventeenth floor, where she’d either discover the whole thing to be a hoax from some one-time quirky character or the ghost turning out to be friendly and the whole story turned out to be a huge misunderstanding.

But that wasn’t the case. I should’ve known at the time, from just that strange tonal shift in the hallway scene earlier. But then again, I guess I wouldn’t have this weird little story to tell if I never pressed on further, eh?

There was a mini-montage of Eloise suiting up with her safari hat, a pair of binoculars, a giant butterfly net and a bag of popcorn in case she got bored waiting. The time shifted from day to night in an instant, and Eloise tiptoed past her sleeping nanny, and out of the door. She then headed up to the elevator, entered it and pushed the button, and she ascended to the seventeenth floor.

With a quiet ding, the doors slowly slid open. It was here that I noticed that the usual cheery background music was not playing here. The scene was completely silent. No music played at all, and it remained the way until the episode ended.

The hallway was revealed to myself and Eloise; it was drowned in complete darkness.

Pure deathly silence, save for one sound; Eloise’s breathing had intensified. I could hear the little girl inhaling and exhaling shakily as she looked on into the darkness. It seemed like the poor little actress herself was utterly terrified about walking down this long, narrow dark hallway. I didn’t blame her honestly. I wouldn’t walk down that hallway myself. It’s that primal fear of being enveloped in a pitch black void. You can’t see a thing. No light, no colour, just empty dark space.

It was then when I noticed something else that was off. The camera angle had not changed. It hadn’t made a cut to another position since the hallway was revealed to Eloise/myself. The camera was almost in a POV shot. I say ‘almost’ because it was hanging right over Eloise’s left shoulder, the lower left side of her face was partially in frame, in the top right corner of the screen.

She began walking forward, still breathing heavily and in a shaky manner, as the camera followed uncomfortably close behind. I felt so bad for the actress. It was like she was being forced to walk down this hallway. I was really weirded out at all of this, to say the least. Why the sudden change in tone from the movie? Was the director just trying something new? Was he genuinely trying to make a creepy episode for kids? Well if so, all of my congrats to that guy. Give him a medal for freaking out kids!

Maybe this was why the series was discontinued, I thought.

Did someone really try to show this on TV?

Yet, the episode continued. And it only got worse from here.

Eloise had eventually inched her way out of the elevator, which closed behind her, making her jump a little at the sound of the doors slamming together.

Her breathing still growing louder by the second, she slowly tiptoed forward, holding out her butterfly net as a weak attempt to protect herself from what ever lurked within the darkness ahead of her.

At this point I was just glued to the screen, unable to take my eyes away from that black abyss at the end of the hallway. I was anticipating anything to happen; a jumpscare, a loud noise, or even just a frigging transition to another cut instead of this drawn out tracking shot over the poor girl’s shoulder.

But nothing happened.

Not yet anyway.

A sound did make me and Eloise simultaneously jump. Something had fallen to the floor with a light crunching sound. I assumed it was the bag of popcorn she was carrying. She had dropped it, too concentrated on holding the net out in front of her like a spear.

She then stopped, and stood firmly in place. She was staring into the darkness, gulping and shaking. Her heavy breathing slowly began to sound like a rhythmic beat to me, being the only source of noise to me at that moment, gently rising up and down, up and down, up and down.

She stood there for a maddening long time, the camera had still not changed position, and was hanging over the frightened girl’s shoulder. The camera, or rather whoever was holding it, was eerily still. The camera only moved ever so slightly. A gentle rise and fall, seeming to follow the rhythm of Eloise’s breathing. But aside from that, there were no sudden jerks or dips like the cameraman was getting tired. I wondered if someone was even holding onto the camera at this point, or if it was on some kind of dolly or something.

After a while I began to lose it. My legs became shaky and jittery. I was actually beginning to feel a little paranoid. The episode was still going. I’m sure by now it must have passed the 20 minute mark. But it was still going. Eloise was still just standing there. Why had she stopped?

Then I saw why.

I only had just caught on to what she was staring at in the pitch blackness.

This goddamn thing will haunt my nightmares for as long as I live.

I only saw the silhouette first, slowly emerging from the darkness that was floor seventeen.

A tall, rounded shape, with what looked like an impossibly long neck. A low, creaking noise was heard. It was like the sounds of creaking floorboards, that had been slowed down considerably, and mixed with the gurgling of old metallic pipes. I guess it’s pretty evident why this thing was called “Mr Creaks”.

It stepped ever closer, so slowly, taking its time to inch its way forward towards the petrified child. The disgusting gurgling and creaking sounds grew louder, and more….human sounding.

I could make out more of its features as it drew nearer;

it wore a grey suit, like the ones worn by many of the gentleman guests at the Plaza. The jacket seemed to be stretched out over his legs, if the creature even had any legs. Its body looked like the shape of a bell.

Its round, bell-like body was complimented by a tall, skinny neck, that stood straight up like a pole. Its arms hung by its sides, the fingers on each hand were four long claws, spread out and curled like the wing feathers of an owl.

And the face. Oh God, that face…

The head was a wide oval posed on top of the ridiculously skinny neck. It kinda reminded me of the head of Stewie Griffin from Family Guy, or at least the shape of it. On top of the head lay a thin layer of black stingy hair, combed over each side, giving it the appearance of a large spider perched on top of its scalp.

The skin was pale, and the face was almost featureless, save for those…eyes.

Two horrifically enlarged eyeballs protruded on either end of that strange widened head, staring straight ahead. At Eloise. At the camera. At me.

The irises were grey, as well as the blood vessels. The eyes were disgustingly detailed for what I thought at the time was a really impressive costume or prop. I really don’t know what to make of it now that I’ve thought about it more, but I really hope it was just a prop.

I noticed, aside from those huge, soul-piercing eyes, that there were four small dots on the creatures face. I assumed they were just freckles, but almost as if the camera itself had read my mind (I hope to fucking God it didn’t) it slowly zoomed in towards the creature’s face.

It now had that hideous blank-staring face in full frame, staring me down from behind the screen.

I then saw the “freckles” much more closely.

They were, in fact, eyes.

Four smaller, human eyes that were positioned under the creature’s larger eyes, a pair under each large eye. Each pair had the same corresponding colours parallel to the other side; one pair green, one blue. Both matched the other side, and was just staring straight ahead into nothingness.

They seemed completely lifeless, yet just as realistic to the creature’s more prominent larger eyes.

The camera then panned slowly down to reveal the creature’s throat.

I saw where the croaking sound was emitting from. A small vertical slit opened up in the throat, the skin flaps on either side vibrating as the creature groaned and gurgled. It resembled a smoker’s stoma. The sight made me hold my own throat with unease, as if my mind unconsciously tried to prevent such a cavity to open in my own throat at that moment, just from staring at this hideous sight.

Suddenly, a loud deafening scream almost made me nearly burst out of my skin. Eloise had just let out the most terrified, blood-curdling scream I’ve ever heard anywhere, in film or in real-life. At least, up until that point in time.

The camera then finally made a cut to show Eloise as she ran to the elevator, frantically banging on the buttons. She was crying, practically sobbing. Sickly mucus dribbled from her nostrils as tears leaked in streams down her now pale cheeks. She could barely breath through her terror and her crying.

The camera panned back to that creature. It was still standing there, staring straight at the camera, as it was in dead centre frame. Right in the middle of that dark hallway.

Then it began walking closer.

When I say ‘walking’, I just meant it moved closer. I didn’t see any foot movement, or its feet in general. It just slowly glided over to her. It moved so gracefully, no sudden jerks or sways. I wondered what was moving it along. Perhaps it was a crane that was hidden behind the creature, or perhaps it was propped up on a wheeled platform?

Eloise turned around and let out another scream, at seeing the monster lurch forward inch by inch, slowly closing the distance between it and her. She turned and darted down the other corridor adjacent to the elevator. I had forgotten that corridor was there, and apparently so did she until the last minute.

Eloise banged on all the doors for someone to let her in. Not one sound could be heard from the other side of those doors.

They were all empty. Or at least that’s what I assume. Perhaps they were all in on it. Perhaps the girl was just another careless wanderer-made-sacrifice to the residents of the seventeenth floor. Perhaps they all knew about Mr Creaks. And they all knew the consequences of meeting him.

Or perhaps the whole floor was just abandoned all together. Maybe they had all succumbed to the wrath of this monster.

My mind was just in full panic mode, watching this poor frantic girl tearfully trying to find at least one safe haven. In that moment I was sharing her fear.

At last, for what seemed like an age of banging on doors and hearing that horrific creaking sound echo throughout the darkened hallway, she finally found an empty room, the door unlocked. She barged into the room and slammed the door shut, and locked it with the old latch.

By this point, Eloise had dropped all of her equipment, leaving her hat and net scattered in the hallway.

She stood by the door, exhausted and still crying and trembling.

The creaking sound had stopped altogether.

It had gone back to being ungodly silent, just as it was when she had first stepped off that elevator into that damned hallway.

At this point, I knew this episode had gone way over the standard time length from the other episodes, but I didn’t care. I didn’t even check my watch. I was just rooted to the spot, my eyes fixated on the door that Eloise herself was staring at, waiting for any sound at all.

I wasn’t even questioning this horrifying episode’s meaning anymore, or at least at the time it was on. It’s so hard to describe the fear I felt during each sitting.

Yes, each sitting. I watched this episode multiple times after. Because believe it or not, this was not the worse to come from this experience. It was only the beginning of this strange, but ultimately haunting ordeal.

Without so much as a warning or build up, the ghastly croaking sound rattled right from the other side of the room’s door. Eloise didn’t even scream this time. She couldn’t, her throat was too dry and rough. This couldn’t have been her acting, I thought. I imagined the actual child actress had been terrified so much to the point she couldn’t even breath properly.

Me, on the other hand, my sense of tension had worn itself a little. After the first initial shock of what the hell was happening on screen, I guess I just rolled with it, even though I was still frightened about what this could all be. I knew I was going to see this through to the end of what I thought at the time was just a sick joke episode by some demented director.

Eloise had shakily pulled up a bedside footstool to the door, slowly clambered onto it, and looked through the peephole. Her breath was harsh and rough-sounding. It almost sounded like she was choking on her own tears.

The camera cut to a perspective shot. Again, it was low resolution like a crappy film camera, just like the first time she came up to the seventeenth floor. It was staring through the peephole into the empty hallway outside.

I didn’t have to wait long before I had cold shivers rattling down my spine once more, when a large, unblinking eye swayed into view out of nowhere, magnified and distorted by the warped glass. The croaking noise was deafeningly loud this time, almost busting the speakers on the TV with its harsh feedback, but I couldn’t think to turn the volume down.

There was a cut back showing Eloise still peering through the hole.

Just when I thought nothing else could surprise me anymore, this episode once again caught me off guard. So much so that I actually cried out in shock.

I couldn’t believe I was seeing something like this, associated with an innocent little child character.

The peephole was now apparently devoid of any glass bearing, because a long black tongue had shot its way through the hole, and jabbed itself straight into Eloise’s open eye.

I remembered I screamed and fell back into the couch when I first saw this happen.

Eloise didn’t even scream this time, she just yelped and began to whimper, her lip trembling as the creature’s slimy appendage jerked and wiggled about inside the poor girl’s eye socket, with a sickening squelching sound.

There was no blood. It was too dark to see the effect properly. Even so, I squirmed in my seat. In my mind I was constantly trying to tell myself that this was just a joke. It was just a joke. Hell, this probably isn’t even the same actress as Eloise. Perhaps none of the actors were. They changed the actress playing the nanny, maybe all the other actors were just really good impersonators/lookalikes from the ones in the movie. They were all brought in to take part in an elaborate prank. And these were just really good effects and prosthetic makeup used.

My mind was just unravelling at that point, trying to find any explanation that I could think of.

The girl’s eye finally relented from the eye socket. The sticky tongue had pulled the eyeball out, making a very cartoon-y pop sound as it did, like the sound of a cork being pulled out from a champagne bottle. The other eye soon followed. Another pop, and little Eloise was left eyeless.

It was like the episode was once again changing its tone. Now in what can easily be described as the most gruesome scene in this whole screwed-up episode, was now being treated with cartoonish sound effects and visuals. The eyes didn’t have a connecting nerve strand when both had been pulled out from the wretched girl’s head. They were like little marbles being yanked out by a sticky, slimy strand of black rubber. As I said before, there was no blood, or at least none I could see. Eloise was completely silent the whole way through the horrific eye-removing procedure, save for her saddened whimpering. It was as though she had completely given up hope, and just took what was coming to her.

There was a rough jump-cut of sorts, showing the monster in the hallway. It looked at the camera, its face in full view and the croaking sounds seemed much more softer.

It zoomed in a little closer to its ghastly pale face atop its emaciated neck. I could see the black slimy tongue slither back inside the creature’s throat hole, thick grey saliva trickling out of the fleshy orifice. Once again my mind forced me to envision such an opening on my own throat.

I saw that on the creature’s face there were now three pairs of small, human eyes situated just underneath the larger eyes. The newest pair were smaller than the other two pairs. They blinked, and stared blankly and soullessly at the camera. And the creature turned, and began to glide slowly back down into the abyss of the hallway, from whence it came.

The shot stayed on that hallway, and as the monster’s slow creaking had quieted and ceased altogether. The credits finally began to roll over the still frame of the dark hallway. They scrolled by too fast to read any of the names. They were just blurs of white lines and undecipherable words. The only sound that could be heard during the credits and before the episode finally cut to black, was the sound of Eloise, sobbing quietly from behind the room door.

The episode finally ended, and I was brought back to the episode playlist menu.

After a long moment of staring dumbfounded at the screen, I decided to take action. I took out the DVD and proceeded to throw both the disk and the case into the trash, but then I stopped halfway of doing so. I looked at the disk. I wondered what the other episodes were like. As frightened as I was at finding something like this on a kid’s DVD, I was also incredibly curious. I wanted to know more. Perhaps there was even a clear explanation in one of the episodes. Maybe at least something on the disk would explain what the Ghost Story episode was all about.

Perhaps it was an episode that no one should have seen. And someone decided to put it on the DVD?

I’ve heard about lost episodes on the internet a lot, and a lot of the time they always tend to be the most disturbing things possible. I mostly thought a lot of it was a bunch of BS, but now that I’ve experienced it first-hand, I guess that there are such things that exist.

The more I thought about it, the more I tried to rationalise it. I finally came up with a theory. Perhaps, as evident from the few number of episodes shown on the DVD, that the show didn’t do so well. The director or crew or anyone in production of the show felt like they’d been jibbed by Disney forcibly cancelling their show due to lack of interest from the public. So they, as well as a few willing actors, decided to go out with a bang, and really stick it to the Disney television studios or whoever had them cancelled. I came to this conclusion since The Ghost Story episode was the last episode shown, thus being the last episode made before all production on the short-lived series diminished.

I decided the one defining factor of this theory is if the other episodes were normal. So I took the DVD up to my room. I kept it there to examine, and hoped that when my sister came back from the hospital, she wouldn’t come looking for it.

I guessed she hadn’t paid much attention to the DVD special features just yet.

As previously mentioned, all the other episodes were perfectly normal. But now I was wondering why this “lost episode” was featured on this disk, where kids could easily find it. Was it a mistake? Or perhaps someone purposefully included it on the disk. But why?

It wasn’t long before just a few days after I watched The Ghost Story episode for the first time that my sister came storming into my room, insisting that I stole her movie and that she wanted to watch it right at that second. I was obviously reluctant to hand it back, but she snatched it away from my bedside desk before I could make a grab for it. She ran back to her room to begin her ritual of re-watching the movie over and over again. She had slammed the door shut. I about to just charge in there just to rip that DVD away from her once and for all, but my mom came storming up the stairs, demanding to know what all the noise was about.

I tried to explain to her as calmly and as rationally as I could that my sister shouldn’t be watching the movie. I told her I found some “adult-content” on the DVD extras menu. She was sceptical, but I knew if I told her the outright truth she wouldn’t believe me. Or perhaps she would’ve at the time. I never really had the chance to find out.

It was too late.

A scream shortly came from my sister’s room. It was a scream of sheer terror, one that I never wanted to hear from my little sister, not then or ever again. It was almost heart-breaking to hear her sound so terrified. Me and my mom burst into the room. She was sitting rigid on the far end her bed away from her TV, her face white as a sheet and staring at the screen.

My heart was caught in my throat when I saw what was on the screen. I was certain at that moment my mom had just fallen completely silent, more out of confusion than horror.

What I first thought my sister was watching the Ghost Story episode, to make her scream like that. But she hadn’t.

She was watching the normal movie.

But with one, ghastly defining alteration to it;

Eloise, or rather the actress playing her, had black tape crossed over her eyes, forming a black X-mark on each eye.

The film played out normally. All the actions and lines delivered were normal. Everything Eloise had done in the movie prior was completely normal and how it should be, just now with both her eyes being crossed out.

Ever since we had seen this, none of us knew what to think of it during the next few days. My poor little sister wanted to get rid of the movie for good. My mom thought it would be a good idea to call some numbers or do some research on the studio and distributors to find out more about what we had seen. I agreed, and did my own research. But nothing came of it. I suppose I don’t necessarily blame Disney for this. Perhaps they had nothing at all to do with this at all. The association of Disney Home Entertainment and distribution was perhaps merely a coincidence. But that didn’t matter. Now it was all beyond rational explanation for me.

The only other thought that comes to mind is that….could a film DVD be hacked? Like how one would hack a game? Could it be possible to add new scenes or use top-grade special effects to do a complete re-edit of a movie? I’m sure it must have been possible to do so. I’m certain of it.

But now it begs the question; why would someone go to such lengths to do all of this on a kid’s movie?

Further questions were raised, when upon examining the DVD cover, I slipped out the paper film cover from the clear plastic sleeve when I had caught a faint outline of a pen-drawn picture when the casing was held against the sunlight. I hadn’t noticed this before. And my hands were trembling the whole time I saw this drawn picture on the underside of the cover:

It was an illustration, drawn in the exact style as Hilary Knight’s drawings.

It depicted Eloise, standing straight with a solemn expression. Both her eyes had X’s over them.

Behind her stood Mr Creaks, holding tightly onto her shoulders, staring at me with its soulless eyes. As I looked at that harrowing image, I wondered if something much more sinister and malicious was at work. Or perhaps it was all just a joke that went way too far.

I really don’t want to think about the possibilities of the former.