‘Haunted Mansion’ Ending Explained: Who Can Escape the Hatbox Ghost? (2024)

Disney’s 2023 Haunted Mansion movie is a fairly straight-forward ghost story: single mother Gabbie (Rosario Dawson) and her son Travis (Chase W. Dillon) purchase an old, decrepit mansion outside of New Orleans, hoping for a fresh start in the wake of tragedy. Naturally, they discover that the house is filled with restless spirits, and the film kicks off with their attempts to exorcize the unwelcome guests from their property, introducing a whole host of characters to help make that happen. This includes Owen Wilson’s Father Kent — who turns out to be not so much a priest as a scam artist — Danny DeVito’s Professor Davis, Tiffany Haddish’s psychic Harriet, and LaKeith Stanfield’s Ben Matthias, a former astrophysicist haunted by the death of his wife. But what happens once they’ve all been summoned to the mansion? Keep reading to find out whether their exorcism is successful.

Unfortunately, as the film kicks into gear with its multitude of references to the iconic Disney attraction, that’s where things get complicated: it turns out that, once someone sets foot in the house, the ghosts haunting the property won’t let them leave, following them home to haunt them until they return. This includes Ben being followed home by the Mariner, who drowns him out of his own living room, only for him to return to the mansion furious with Gabbie. The same happens to Kent, Davis, and Harriet, leading to an exploration of the house that turns up not only more ghosts, but some answers as well.

What’s Haunting This Haunted Mansion?

At first, Gabbie thinks it’s the ghost of Edward Gracey trapping everyone in the mansion, but when Ben spirit-walks to the other side, he discovers that something far worse was summoned when Gracey himself held séances in the house, led by Jamie Lee Curtis' Madame Leota. A portal was opened as he performed séance after séance, eventually leading the Hatbox Ghost (Jared Leto) to break through the veil between worlds and take control of the house and all the spirits within, trapping Leota in her crystal ball and killing every successive owner of the mansion. It’s nearly disaster when another ghost tries to escape the land of the dead through Ben’s body, and chaos only continues to unfold as danger lurks for Gabbie and her friends.

A bit of research (and a cameo from Hasan Minhaj) leads the team to discover that the Hatbox Ghost is actually the spirit of Alistair Crump, a sad*stic millionaire who murdered countless people before being beheaded — hence the hatbox. He is a dark and vengeful spirit, and needs exactly one thousand souls in order to come to full power and menace the real world beyond the mansion, of which he has exactly 999. (Sound familiar?) But the only way to truly banish Crump’s soul to the other side of the veil is with a piece of something that belonged to him in life, and it’s up to Ben, Father Kent, and Travis to travel to Crump’s former mansion, now a tourist trap, to find something to use for the spell.

After a quick trip to the mansion that yields two blink-and-you’ll-miss-them appearances from Winona Ryder and Dan Levy, the trio grabs Crump’s original top hat and return, with Ben making Travis promise he’ll stay in the car for his safety. But Crump’s been angered, and while Ben thought he was the target for the ghost’s attempts to take a final soul, they discover the soul must be willing, and Travis is lured out of the car by the Hatbox Ghost pretending to be his deceased father, manipulating the boy’s grief into becoming a willing sacrifice.

Teamwork Saves the Day in 'The Haunted Mansion'

Ben successfully saves Travis from Crump’s clutches, but Crump takes other measures, possessing Professor Davis in an attempt to burn the hat. He’s rescued, but an army of ghosts is sent after the team to kill them, and it’s Father Kent’s job to distract them while everyone else attempts to get rid of Crump. It’s chaos as the hat is burned and the Hatbox Ghost chases after Ben, taunting him for the death of his wife and telling him he can see her again if he agrees to die. Everyone’s split apart, and things look grim as Ben makes his way to the graveyard, where he’s surrounded by flying ghosts and Crump begins to build to his full power.

It’s Harriet to the rescue, finally, as Kent convinces the ghosts that it’s worth more to fight back against Crump than continue to fear him for all eternity. They join forces with our ragtag gang of the living, and with the last scrap of the burned hat and a little help from Madame Leota, whom Harriet was able to free from her crystal ball, they’re able to banish Crump to hell, the ground swallowing him up after one last assertion from Ben that he wants to live in his wife’s memory. Everyone (ghosts included) rejoices, but when someone suggests that all the ghosts are free to pass over to the other side, now that they’re free from the Hatbox Ghost’s influence, none of them seem all that ready to leave. Gabbie, then, suggests they stay — after all, there’s plenty of room in the house.

The film then ends with Ben walking out of his freshly painted (and no longer soggy) French Quarter digs and discovering a cat he believes is a sign from his late wife on his doorstep. He heads back out to the mansion, and it’s obvious that he and Gabbie are starting to become more than just friends as she invites him in — along with the rest of the gang — for a Halloween party, telling him, much like at the beginning of the film, that stepping across the threshold might change his life. Ben happily takes that chance, and the credits play over a montage of the whole found family enjoying a lively party — ghosts and all.

Haunted Mansion is now streaming on Disney+.