THEHAUNTINGPASTSSTORIES

On rare occasions the stories in funny animal comic books deal with incidents that have taken place a long time before the present in the form of graphic flashbacks. And it is even rarer that such events are of a predominantly negative nature, because in essence, funny animal stories are supposed to be just that - funny.
Carl Barks often had a varied approach to his primary characters' doings, as he would sometimes add former events to a new story in order to describe a more integrated and composed side of an individual character. Mostly the reader is just treated to a few titbit-ish scraps of explanatory information of a more supporting yet negative kind. Examples: In WDCS132 'Boonehead or Bonehead?' Donald Duck constantly brags to his Junior Woodchucks nephews that he used to be an excellent boy scout for the Boonehead organisation, which is obviously not the case, and in several gold-related stories Scrooge McDuck recalls several strenuous events such as in U$49 The Loony Lunar Gold Rush during a sizzling hot summer in South Africa's Transvaal region, where he had to run the lengthy journey to Capetown to buy asbestos gloves in order to pick up molten gold.

But apart from these glimpses - that brilliantly help form pieces of the characters' denials and determinations - Barks also took time to develop more substantial events, that would come back to haunt the protagonists, primary as well as secondary, in his stories. Here are some examples.

FC0495 'The Horseradish Story' - 1953

Synopsis:
Chisel McSue presents Scrooge with a valid paper that enables him to obtain all Scrooge's wealth. It can be avoided, though, if he finds a certain case of horseradish at the bottom of the sea...

Comments:
We learn of one of Scrooge's seafaring ancestors, Captain Seafoam McDuck, who, in 1753, agreed to transport a case of horseradish to Jamaica aboard his ship The Golden Goose. When he failed to do so, he discovered that a special clause in the transport contract forced him to surrender his fortune, but he managed to hold on to his gold teeth.
The inherited teeth were later sold by a golddigging Scrooge in 1880 to enable him to buy prospector's outfit up north.

FC0238 Voodoo Hoodoo - 1949

Synopsis:
An old zombie confuses Donald with Scrooge as he delivers a curse from his witch doctor. Donald and the nephews travel to Africa to get free of the curse.

Comments:
Scrooge tells that 70 years earlier he wanted some land in Africa for a rubber plantation, but the owners, a tribe of ferocious savages, wouldn't sell. So he hired a mob of thugs and chased the tribe into the jungle.
This is not the only black side known about Scrooge and his treatment of local natives; in WDCS230 'The Black Wednesday Story' we learn that Scrooge was peddling useless hair tonic among the North American Chillyboot Indians in 1908, a fact that came back to haunt him in the story.

U$16 Back to Long Ago! - 1956

Synopsis:
Scrooge is hypnotized and learns that in a former life he was a sea captain who hid a treasure chest. He rushes off to find it...

Comments:
Scrooge understands that he was a British captain Matey McDuck sailing the Spanish Main in the 16th century looting for Queen Elizabeth. Donald was his trusty boatsman Pintail. After the two modern discoverers have recovered the once extremely valuable contents of the chest they suddenly realize that it has become their own worthless inheritance!!!

U$26 'The Ghosts of Pizen Bluff' - 1959

Synopsis:
Scrooge returns to a windy ghost town to find his old gold mine.

Comments:
In several stories we have heard how Scrooge have lost substantial amounts of gold, and in a few of them we can rejoice with him when he actually retrieves it years later. As in this story, where he was a gold miner (strangely, the only story Barks made featuring Scrooge as a gold miner despite the topic's obvious potential!) in the Wild West town of Pizen Bluff. Ghostly and ghastly events drove him away from his findings back then, but now he is back to recover his diggings.
In DD52 The Lost Peg Leg Mine Scrooge reacalls, under hypnosis, that he once hid two saddlebags full of gold in the desert, and now he goes after them, and in WDCS172 'Christmas in the Deep' Scrooge is determined to recover a shipload of his own gold that went down with one of his ships during World War 2.

FC0159 Ghost of the Grotto - 1947

Synopsis:
Donald and the nephews are stranded on a coral reef with an old Spanish galleon. But the barren reef is inhabited - by a man in ancient armour.

Comments:
By chance, the Ducks stumble upon the old man in shining armour who has been defending an ancient treasure deep inside a cave for many years. The nearby villagers perceive him as a ghost, but the situation is actually much more serious, because the old man - as well as many others before him - were kidnapped at 50 year intervals as young village boys in order to portray a British sailor from the time of Francis Drake.

FC0189 The Old Castle's Secret - 1948

Synopsis:
Scrooge's treasure is in peril at the old family castle in Scotland. He takes Donald and the nephews along only to discover that the castle may be haunted...

Comments:
The entire story circles around dead ancestors and their ghosts. Even the current caretaker of the castle is presumed to be a ghost when Donald at one time encounters him!
We are taken to Scrooge's musty old ruin of a castle far out in the moors of Scotland. Barks leads us through multiple rooms from the towers to the cellars and we are stuck with the same eerie feeling that the ducks experience. Amazingly, Barks manages to press an astonishing 73 death related references (the words death, graveyard, ghost, and so on) into this scary story despite the fact that any kind of references to Death were banned from the Disney comics!
In U$29 Hound of the Whiskervilles Scrooge and the Ducks return to the grounds to solve a mystery of a giant, scary hound roaming the moors.

WDCS176 'Wild Bill Hiccup'- 1955

Synopsis:
Donald grows tired of the nephews' love of Western films and he decides to show them the real West. But he wasn't counting on Wild Bill Hiccup...

Comments:
Over time the Ducks made a few, short trips to the old West's ghost towns, but this is the only time they actually stay in one. Before long they are convinced that the ghost of an old sheriff haunts the town ruins - and they are partly right! The same sheriff, whom everybody had thought was dead long ago, is actually still patrolling his old town, as he is kept artificially alive...
In FC0275 Ancient Persia a mad scientist kidnapped the Duck family, forced them to go to Persia and prepared to use them in an experiment. In the story a whole group of genuinely dead Persians are revived, cause havoc, and die again...

U$25 The Flying Dutchman - 1959

Synopsis:
Scrooge goes hunting for a mysterious gold-laden ship which sails without a crew. Donald tags along with his fishing rod...

Comments:
Barks used a well-known tale when he made this haunting story based on semi-realistic events. The original tale tells about a Dutch captain who was renowned for the uncanny speed of his trips between Holland and Java, and was suspected of being in league with the devil because of it. During a storm at Cape of Good Hope (Africa's southernmost point) the captain made a blasphemous remark that he would not retreat, but would continue his attempt to round the cape even if it took until Judgement Day. For that remark he and his ship were doomed to sail the high seas forever. Barks gladly joined the party about the ominous ghost ship, but changed it slightly to incorporate Scrooge's determined search for gold bullion.
In U$23 The Strange Shipwrecks Scrooge's gold-laden ships are mysteriously wrecked in the Doomgurgle Straits and there is talk of the ghost of the terrible Corsican pirate, Raider Nick, who is at large. But he is not going to stop Scrooge from saving his gold...

U$56 Mystery of the Ghost Town Railroad - 1965

Synopsis:
Once worthless railroad shares are now going through the roof but long ago Scrooge hid his near a spooky hotel in a ghost town...

Comments:
Scrooge recalls that he bought shares in The Goldopolis And Boom City Railroad in 1898, so he and the Ducks set up base in the old ghost town's abandoned hotel to search for the long-forgotten documents. Soon they discover that the building is haunted by elusive and thieving beings as well as eerie ghosts (crows dressed up as ghosts wearing white sheets), that follow the panicking ducks around.
Barks got the initial idea about a ghost infested hotel on a car trip when he and his wife, Garé, passed a certain hotel in Nevada which was said to be haunted by a girl and her newborn baby who had both been killed. A haunting story in itself...

FC0456 Back to the Klondike - 1953

Synopsis:
Scrooge is having trouble with his bad memory but after a visit to the doctor he recalls a huge gold nugget he once left behind in Alaska.

Comments:
This story may hold material for a psychiatrist ready to examine Scrooge and his actions during his time up north. Of course, Scrooge had to be rougher than the roughest and tougher than the toughest when it came to the hoarding of gold, but he overstepped the line, when he forced the (granted, at that point good-for-nothing) golddigger Glittering Goldie to slave at his claim for a whole month thus making her feel how hard work it was digging gold.
In fact, Barks received a lot of criticism for this action and he realized how questionable the sequence was: Scrooge picked her up and carried her out to his claim and made her go to work. It didn't look like kidnapping, yet it was. He was taking the law into his own hands and that is not lawful.
Now, many years later Scrooge stumbles onto Goldie again. He sees that the poverty-stricken woman has mended her ways by dedicating herself to helping wayward children, and he seemingly decides to make amends for his horrible behaviour; he simply lets her find a hoard of formerly buried gold nuggets at his old claim on White Agony Creek...