“The Case of the Hungry Ghost” was a three-parter from Dell’s Walt Disney’s Comics and Stories #188-190 (May-July 1956). The strip was written by Carl Fallberg with art by Paul Murry. It features Mickey and Goofy in a twenty-four page adventure to find the Hungry Ghost. The older Disney fan quickly realizes Donald Duck is not going to join the investigators as he did in “Lonesome Ghosts”, the classic ghostbreaker cartoon from 1937.
Part One
Our story opens as Mickey is headed to the police station to buy some tickets. He bumps into Fingal P. Macfingal, an irate Scotsman.
Mickey talks with Chief O’Hara about the blustery foreigner. O’Hara explains Macfingal wanted him to investigate his castle for a ghost that was stealing stuff.
While the Chief and Mickey are discussing the eccentric Macfingal, Goofy shows up. He was practicing magnifying glass skills and someone asked him if he was a detective. Macfingal has hired him to solve his ghost problem!
Mickey decides to join Goofy, to keep him out of trouble. He tells Goofy he will be his bright young assistant but he is actually working for O’Hara. They head off to Macfingal Castle. The castle was brought from Scotland stone-by-stone.
Knocking on the door, a window pops open. It is the butler. Mickey mentions they are there to deal with the ghost. Goofy runs away. Macfingal never mentioned a ghost to him. Mickey and the butler bring him inside. The butler warns them not to take the ghost too seriously as his employer is a “bug on the subject”. He believes his ancestor, Black Rufus Macfingal walks the castle. The butler says the only thing walking the castle is Macfingal, sleep-walking.
The two investigators meet the master of the house. Macfingal recognizes Mickey but can’t place him. Mickey tells him that he was sent by Chief O’Hara. The boss explains that the ghost only steals food. He has no problem with ghosts haunting and rattling chains, but he can’t abide theft.
Mickey and Goofy plan to catch the ghost that night. The butler, Skraggs, overhears. He decides the ghost won’t walk that night. He is definitely involved…
They take a camera and hide in an oven. They see a ghost approaching…
Part Two
The approaching figure is Fingal P. Macfingal, sleep-walking. He takes a bunch of food and throws it out the window. Mickey snaps pictures.
The case solved, the detectives go to leave. Mickey and Fingal crash into each other again. Fingal recognizes Mickey at last. He explains that last time they crashed into each other he broke his cigars, cracked his watch and got a scrape on his knee. He shows them the bandage. He tells the two to go, which they happily do.
Mickey reports to Chief O’Hara. He brings his developed photos.
The evidence is pretty clear. The case is solved. Or is it? When Mickey bumped into Fingal he had a bandaged on his knee from their early collision. In the photos, the ghost’s knee is unbandaged. Something else is going on at Macfingal Castle!
Back at the castle, Goofy is left alone with his employer. He tells Macfingal about the sleepwaling. The man and his butler throw Goofy out. He is fired.
Mickey finds Goofy outside the castle door, and explains about the missing bandage. Skragg overhears through the door.
Skragg lets the two investigators back into the castle. He reveals (to the readers only) he is after some hidden diamonds. He takes Mickey and Goofy to a room filled with armor and shoves them in.
Skraggs is about to lock them in but Mickey grabs the door handle. A tug-of-war follows, with Skraggs getting the worst of it. The two are about to escape when they meet…the ghost!
Part Three
(I have to point out here that Goofy finally says the line we all want to hear: “Th-thuh G-G-Ghost!” A little tip of the hat to Casper and that line that appeared in all the early cartoons when Casper meets new people.) The detectives stop running. The ghost turns out to be an accomplice of Skraggs, named Jake.
Skraggs locks up the detectives at swordpoint. He has Mickey write a false report for Chief O’Hara, saying the ghost is fake and they are staying on as guests for a few days. Skraggs tells Mickey to stop tapping his pen. Mickey lies and says it is because he is nervous. Later Mickey escapes by piling suits of armor.
Goofy is clumsy and falls down the armor ladder. Jake comes to investigate. Meanwhile Skraggs sees Mickey and chases him.
While Skraggs chases, Mickey tells Macfingal the truth. The butler has no choice but to pull a gun and take his employer hostage as well. Jake shows up with Goofy. Skraggs give him heck for letting the ghost of the bag. The two villains are ready to finish the caper, and remove the witnesses. They take them to the castle’s cornerstone.
Chief O’Hara shows up in time to stop the bad guys. Mickey had left a Morse Code message on the letter, calling for help.
Mickey remembers Skragg mentioned the cornerstone. The detectives look at the stone, finding putty instead of mortar. The stone is removed and Mickey hits it with a hammer. Inside the fake stone is a sack filled with uncut diamonds. Macfingal admits he had no idea about the smuggling. He had put Skragg in charge of dissembling the castle in Scotland and rebuilding it in America.
The bad guys escape. They are hiding in the honey-comb of secret passages in the castle. Mickey has a plan. He cooks bacon. Jake, always hungry, gives himself up. He’s headed for a place where he will have three meals a day, prison.
Later Mickey sees a man walking around in a suit of armor and thinks it is one of the crooks. It proves to be Goofy, who has a new job. Macfingal got used to having a ghost walk the castle, so Goofy is a “substitute ghost”. His armor does cause a bit of a spectacle for the drivers on the street!
Conclusion
Stories like “The Case of the Hungry Ghost”, where people are trying to scare away the inhabitants of a big house where a treasure is hidden, is an oldie, indeed. Sir Walter Scott’s The Antiquary (1816) features many of these idea. J. Sheridan Le Fanu’s The Wyvern Mystery (1869) is another. Even someone as recent as Algernon Blackwood’s “The Strange Adventures of a Private Secretary in New York” (1906) and William Hope Hodgson’s Carnacki story “The House Among the Laurels” used it. In Hollywood, the fake ghost story was commonly used before the idea became a regular on television, usually around Halloween. Children’s mysteries like the Hardy Boys also used the idea often. The first book is called The Tower Treasure (1927).
Mickey and Goofy’s adventure has a haunted Scottish castle, suits of armor and a hidden treasure, all Gothic tropes. At no time do you really fear that the inexplicable is haunting this story. (It was intended for younger readers after all. Dell Comics always guaranteed their comics were for the whole family. Cultural cliches like an Irish cop and cheap Scotsman were okay though.) Like the Gothic novel readers of the 1890s (Ann Radcliffe’s crew), you go into such a story knowing that there will appear to be ghosts but they will prove fake.
For a horror fan like me, this is always a disappointment. The writers of the original Gothics wanted to give their readers thrills and chills but could not allow themselves to be seen as actually saying such things were real. The Age of Reason had a stranglehold on culture, making ghosts and fairies the realm of country bumpkins and children. Thank goodness the Victorian ghost story writers reclaimed the supernatural for us to enjoy. Even Disney joined in back in 1968 with Blackbeard’s Ghost, a live-action film with an actual ghost.
