Man pays $37,400 for name, epitaph on Haunted Mansion tombstone

[matcom]

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Cary Sharp is not a Disney zealot. Truth be told, he's been to Disneyland only once.

But he acknowledged Thursday afternoon — minutes after winning a $37,400 EBay charity auction to have his name and epitaph carved on a tombstone in the Anaheim park's Haunted Mansion attraction — that reasonable minds might disagree.

"I enjoy Disney; I'm not a Disney fanatic," said Sharp, a 37-year-old doctor and health care attorney from Baton Rouge, La. "Of course, this would raise questions now."

He placed his first bid Monday for a whopping $35,500 "as a joke" to give his friends one more thing to tease him about.

"To be honest, I seriously thought I would be outbid," he said. "I guess I'm a little bit stunned right now…. But I definitely have no regrets. It's a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity."

Disneyland has never given fans a chance to be a part of any attraction. Only longtime employees are immortalized in the park — in Haunted Mansion gravestones and in the store names along Main Street.

"It's been phenomenal," said Duncan Wardle, vice president of press and publicity for the Disneyland Resort. "I think it just completely caught people's imagination. We've never done anything like that."

When the tombstone offer first hit EBay, horror author Clive Barker started the bidding at $750. By the end of the first night, it had far surpassed Disney's expectations, climbing to $16,000.

http://www.latimes.com/news/custom/showcase/la-me-tombstone22oct22.story