Producer/Engineer: Bill Pollock

Editors: Sarah Rendo/Robert J. Baumann

Cover: Rob Mitchell

 

Everyone knows that Walt Disney started his first film studio in Kansas City. You'd be a stupid idiot not to. But what most people don't know is that Walt Disney left behind something behind in the Laughagram Studios.

 

Before leaving Kansas City for Hollywood, Walt Disney accidentally locked a tiny mouse in his desk drawer and not just any old mouse––Mickey Mouse.

 

The mouse that kept him company during all those restless days and sleepless nights in the studio; the lone candlelight to his genius. Disney fed Mickey Mouse with tiny crackers and ginger ale droplets. The most famous mouse in the history of famous mice left to nibble out his fortune––eternally.

 

No one knows if Mickey Mouse escaped the desk, but strange happenings have been reported ever since. The building that housed Laughagram Studios is now merely four lean walls of brick buttressed by metal supports, but there are rumors that if you walk the block at night you can hear the squeals of a dying mouse, squeals loud enough to make you lose your soup.

 

Sometimes the squeals are quiet like a secret Sunday afternoon turtle dump but they say the haunting squeals get louder with the release of Disney videos. They say that when Steamboat Willie came out you could hear the mice for days. They say it sounded like a choir of rodent banshees harmonizing at cheese practice.

 

But the most squealing of evenings is by far Walt Disney's birthday. It's louder than a thousand jumbo mice playing the violin in a music volcano. The only way to ease Mickey Mouse's eternal pain on that most haunted of nights is to sprinkle cheese on the sidewalk in front of the building. The ghost of Mickey Mouse does not partake of the cheese at daytime, but at night he feasts on whatever cheese litters the block. Provolone, American, Velveeta, Sharp, or plain old stinky catfish cheese––it doesn't matter: the ghost of Mickey Mouse isn't too picky.

 

If you listen very carefully you can hear Mickey Mouse saying, Thank you folks, for even the daintiest of imitation cheese crumbles.