It’s almost Halloween…so settle in and learn about Disney’s most famous fortune-teller, Madame Leota!
Madame Leota’s backstory is woven through official park lore, interactive queue details and expanded storytelling across Disney media (including movies!)
In addition to appearing in the Haunted Mansion, Madame Leota’s portrait hangs in the Memento Mori gift shop. They say if you knock on the portrait…and wait…sometimes, she knocks back!
Did you know that Madame Leota was named after an Imagineer? Leota Toombs started working for Disney in 1940 and she married a Disney lead animator, Harvey Toombs. She was an artist and worked on the Haunted Mansion model and props team under Harriet Burns.
Imagineer Yale Gracey asked her to pose for the face inside the crystal ball while they were designing Haunted Mansion. (Harriet Burns’ features were too diminutive for the scale). She ended up being…Madame Leota!
Beyond providing her face for Madame Leota, she personally painted and detailed many of the ride’s props and figures. She also provided the voice for “Little Leota,” the tiny bride-like specter at the end of the ride telling you to “hurry back… hurry back…”
Toombs moved to Florida when Walt Disney World opened in 1971 to be part of the Disney imagineering team that built and maintained the attractions. In addition to “Haunted Mansion”, she worked on “Pirates of the Caribbean,” “The Enchanted Tiki Room,” “Country Bears Jamboree” and “it’s a small world.” Along with Harriet Burns, she was among the first women Imagineers. She was officially named a Disney Legend for her contributions in the categories of Attractions and Imagineering in 2009.
Interestingly, her daughter, Kim Irvine, also became an important Imagineer at Disneyland and has also been named a Disney Legend. Irvine is the face of Madame Leota in the Disneyland Haunted Mansion!
The In-Park Story of Madame Leota
In the official ride mythology, Madame Leota was a gifted 19th-century gypsy fortune teller and medium hired by “Master Gracey” to conduct seances inside Gracey Manor. When strange, unexplained paranormal events began plaguing the estate, Gracey sought Leota’s help to communicate with the spirits.
According to long-standing Haunted Mansion lore (and subtle hints in the queue’s interactive cemetery tombstones), Leota’s attempts to bridge the mortal realm and the spirit world went too far. During a powerful incantation, her physical body was consumed or bound forever, trapping her disembodied head inside her own crystal ball.
Now, for eternity, Madame Leota calls forth the “999 Happy Haunts” of the Haunted Mansion. Through her rhythmic, rhyming incantations (“Serpents and spiders, tail of a rat, call forth the spirits wherever they’re at…”), she acts as the spiritual bridge that materializes the ghosts in the grand ballroom, conservatory and graveyard.
Her Tombstone in the Queue
If you walk through the interactive outdoor queue at Magic Kingdom, you’ll see her iconic tombstone facing the walkway.
Look closely: Her bronze face on the tombstone periodically opens its eyes, looks around at the guests waiting in line, and closes its eyes again!
Madame Leota is surely one of Disney’s most iconic characters. Do you enjoy the Haunted Mansion ride?
