If you’re ever at a Disney park, and you hear a custodian or manager radio for a “Code V” cleanup, it means someone has vomited. A “Code U” means someone has urinated. And a “HEPA cleanup” means someone just dumped a dead person’s cremains somewhere in the park. Again.
Though the notion that folks have been spreading dead people’s ashes at Disneyland and Disneyworld has long been a spooky rumor elevated to urban legend, a new report from the Wall Street Journal (headlined, appropriately enough: “Disney World’s Big Secret: It’s a Favorite Spot to Scatter Family Ashes”) has confirmed this macabre activity.
Utterly unsurprisingly, the Haunted Mansion is most ash-scatterers destination of choice, though literally anywhere and everywhere appears to be fair game as well. Many guests smuggle ashes past the bag-search by stowing them in pharmaceutical pill bottles or makeup compacts.
Via the Wall Street Journal:
Human ashes have been spread in flower beds, on bushes and on Magic Kingdom lawns; outside the park gates and during fireworks displays; on Pirates of the Caribbean and in the moat underneath the flying elephants of the Dumbo ride. Most frequently of all, according to custodians and park workers, they’ve been dispersed throughout the Haunted Mansion, the 49-year-old attraction featuring an eerie old estate full of imaginary ghosts.
The Haunted Mansion probably has so much human ashes in it that it’s not even funny,” said one Disneyland custodian.
A Disney spokeswoman said, “this type of behavior is strictly prohibited and unlawful. Guests who attempt to do so will be escorted off property.”
Though ash-scatterers make custodians’ jobs way grosser than they need to be, and cremains will certainly be vacuumed up and tossed out if people are caught dumping them, it doesn’t seem as though anyone has ever been arrested for this act.
According to the report, the “HEPA cleanup” code replaced the funnier and much more offensive (and since-banned) “Code Grandma.” So…yeah. People, stop dumping your grandma’s remains at Disneyland. It’s gross.