Lifestyle
First look: Disneyland's original Haunted Mansion returns with a heartbreaking new scene
When Disneyland’s Haunted Mansion reopens Saturday in its classic, non-holiday form it will essentially mark the completion of a nearly yearlong refurbishment project, one that added significant backstory and lore to one of the resort’s most famed and mysterious attractions.
A fixture at the park since its 1969 opening, the Haunted Mansion has been the subject of regular tinkering, its illusions evolving and changing as technology — and culture — advances.
This update will be no different. One of the Mansion’s signature scenes has been remade, and now has a much more somber story to tell.
Walt Disney Imagineering, the secretive arm of the company devoted to theme park experiences, has once again revisited the ride’s trademark attic scene, long home to a tortured bride. There’s still a bride, but she’s never quite looked or acted like this.
It’s not the only major change to an attraction developed during the Walt Disney era. An expanded queue has added narrative-focused gardens and a greenhouse to where guests will wait in line, while a new gift shop adjacent to the ride’s exit expands on the storyline of Mademe Leota, seen in the attraction as a disembodied floating head in a séance scene. Imagery at ride’s end, in which a “ghost will follow you home,” has also been updated.
Walt Disney Imagineering has unveiled a new version of the Haunted Mansion bride, this one appearing to float while holding a candelabra. A beating red heart is seen in her chest, a nod to earlier versions of the figure.
(Richard Harbaugh / Disneyland Resort)
As for the would-be honeymooner in the attic, she’s now utilizing the latest in projection technology, appearing to float before guests as she holds a three-pronged physical candelabra, giving corporeal depth to her ethereal glow, which hovers away from a shattered window of a wall. Her blindingly red heart, in a nod to the park’s original vision of the bride, still beats in time to an elongated, gloomy rendition of Richard Wagner’s “Bridal Chorus.”
Disneyland’s Haunted Mansion has for about 55 years stood as a love letter to humanity’s most hedonistic tendencies. Gluttony, greed, sloth, lust and even murder have been on display in its cryptic halls. We’re all going to bite it in the end, the Mansion seems to tell us, so let’s live it up. There are no gilded gates here, but there is one heck of a party, complete with serenading busts, ballroom dancers, excitable opera singers, drunken buffoonery and portraits locked in an endless duel.
And now there’s heartbreak.
The new bride in the Haunted Mansion appears to float, and she is surrounded by pictures of past loves. The men gradually disappear in each portrait, creating a sense of constant loss.
(Richard Harbaugh / Disneyland Resort)
In an exclusive preview of the revamped scene on Tuesday morning at Disneyland, where operations have not been interrupted by the L.A. area fires, I stood across from the new bride for a number of minutes. I marveled at how the hidden-in-the-floor projections allow the ghost to levitate, but also increasingly felt a sense of mourning. Like many locals, my emotions are heightened at the moment, but I was also struck at how much more clearly defined the bride’s face is now, appearing grief-stricken and lovesick. I tell Kim Irvine, the longtime creative director with Imagineering at Disneyland, that unlike the previous bridal scene, here I’m feeling a sense of sorrow.
That’s intentional, Irvine says, noting the team wanted to heighten the “sadness in her face.”
“We thought, what if we change the story back a little bit to the original story that the Imagineers had about a lost bride in the attic mourning the loss of her husbands,” she says. “It was a sad thing. It was a story about lost love.”
The last time the attic received a major overhaul was in the mid-2000s, and that figure, known as the “black widow bride,” had more aggressive, sinister story to tell. Holding an axe, she was portrayed as a murderous, wealth-seeking seductress who had beheaded her husbands, evident by their heads disappearing from the wedding portraits scattered around the attic. Those pictures are still present, only now the full bodies of the men vanish — leaving their departure up to the imagination.
Irvine says the attic scene was redone, in part, because the projection technology on the prior figure had become so outdated as to necessitate regular maintenance. But rather than update what was there, Irvine saw an opportunity to add a greater contrast with the more festive waltz in the prior room as well as to embellish the Mansion’s tale.
The candelabra, for instance, that the character is holding is identical to the one visible floating in an earlier hall scene, now implying the bride is broodingly wandering the Mansion. Additionally, the candelabra will appear a third time, materializing in a cemetery crypt in the ride’s final act.
The expanded Haunted Mansion grounds are filled with an abundance of details and new fixtures — some slightly spooky, others more mystical.
(Richard Harbaugh / Disneyland Resort)
“The bride that used to be in there was an axe murderer, and in this day and age we have to be really careful about the sensitivities of people,” Irvine says. “We were celebrating someone chopping off her husband’s heads, and it was a weird story. I know the fans — some will like it and some will say, ‘Oh, you changed something again.’ That’s our job. That’s what we’re here for.”
Irvine knows the vast Disneyland fanbase will be paying close attention. As one of Disneyland’s most celebrated attractions, and one created by a cadre of Walt’s original Imagineers, fan attachment to the Haunted Mansion is strong.
The expanded grounds of the Haunted Mansion are dedicated to various characters found inside the attraction, including a section of the gardens inspired by Madame Leota.
(Richard Harbaugh / Disneyland Resort)
And the Disney faithful are especially protective of the Haunted Mansion. To wit: an online controversy erupted earlier this winter when it was discovered that the new shop adjacent to the ride contained a piece of art that was created by artificial intelligence. The presence of AI art felt particularly egregious knowing the value Imagineering places on authentic, hand-crafted work.
The moment clearly weighed on Irvine. “How they can find one thing out of all this cool stuff,” Irvine says of the fan outcry, trailing off as she stood in the shop full of artfully created oddities and references to tarot and mysticism. She stresses that the AI art was a temporary placeholder, noting there are many objects coming to the shop — more paintings and tapestries among them — that are in the process of being fireproofed before final install.
“They felt like it would be appropriate for a short time until they could put something else in,” Irvine says of the ill-fated art. “They never intended to do anything bad, and it is gone now. We’re going to bring something back in that is hand-painted, like all of these other pieces are.”
Irvine’s connection to the Mansion runs deep, and is extremely personal. A veteran with Imagineering for nearly 55 years, Irvine just may be the only living creative at the company who worked with and was mentored by Walt’s initial team of designers, including that of her mother, Leota Toombs, one of the first women to work for Imagineering and the inspiration for Madame Leota.
A painting of Madame Leota, inspired by the late, real-life Imagineer Leota Toombs, hangs in the Haunted Mansion’s gift shop. Toombs was the mother of Kim Irvine, the Imagineer who oversaw recent additions to the Mansion and its grounds.
(Richard Harbaugh / Disneyland Resort)
In the shop, officially designated as Madame Leota’s Somewhere Beyond, hangs a portrait of Toombs in her Haunted Mansion guise. The painting was inspired by one of Irvine’s photos of her mother, and if you look closely you’ll spot Kim’s face in the crystal ball that Leota is holding. “That’s what she was seeing into the future,” Irvine says.
Such hidden details abound — instruments that appear to hover, a chair in the shape of the Mansion’s “Doombuggy” ride vehicle and nods to Leota’s spiritual connection to cats. The low-hanging chandelier one spies when first entering the shop used to dangle inside the Mansion itself, having to be removed when more illusions were added.
“We made this in the early ’80s to go over the crystal ball before it floated,” Irvine says. At the time, Imagineering wanted to update a relatively “common” chandelier with a spookier, spider web-inspired look.
A chandelier that hangs in the Haunted Mansion gift shop was once found inside the attraction itself.
(Richard Harbaugh / Disneyland Resort)
The shop, Irvine says, has been in the works for about a decade. It’s designed as a carriage house, and the story is Madame Leota has taken it over as a live-in space. Irvine says it’s created to rhyme with the Mansion, particularly in its color scheme, utilizing the same tones of green and white, only with different places of emphasis. If the design is less ornate, Irvine notes that’s purposeful, pointing out Antebellum carriage houses were “a little bit knocked down.”
Its size was a challenge. “To shoehorn anything into tiny Disneyland is really hard,” Irvine says, adding, “a lot of people in merchandising would have preferred it was bigger.”
The changes to the queue were driven, in part, by other forces as well, namely to ensure the winding line was up to modern ADA standards and to better handle bottlenecks for Disneyland’s current crowds. Here, too, Irvine looked to expand on the Mansion’s narrative, creating multiple sections with different tones — an ever-so-slightly purple-hued garden is Madame Leota’s space, and a more contemplative area is dedicated to the master of the house, a former sea captain whose narrative has shifted over the years.
A sense of sadness permeates that part of the garden — mermaids drape their hair over the light fixtures, and contrasting female statuaries — one prideful and one sorrowful — are meant to nod to his less than ideal romantic relationships. “His love, his life, his lady, was the sea,” Irvine says.
An area of the expanded Haunted Mansion queue is dedicated to the master of the house, who, according to the attraction’s lore, is said to have been a sea captain. The space is one built for reflection.
(Richard Harbaugh / Disneyland Resort)
Leota’s spot is more irreverent. Of particular interest is a not-so-hidden conduit that runs up the side of the centerpiece tree. Here, Irvine created a tribute to late Imagineer Rolly Crump, known for his whimsical art and one of the first artists to work on the Mansion. “Rolly Crump used to do a thing he called the ‘Egyptian eye,’” Irvine says. “A lot of his drawings for the Mansion have that, so I hand-painted it on the conduit to make it look like a snake and put his initials on the top.”
The gardens are a mix of original and found objects. Irvine stops to point out some Imagineering crafted grates, which hide utilities with astrological flourishes, and says she scoured antique shops from “Pasadena to Temecula” looking for items that would fit. She’s happy to share where she collected a piece. A pair of sleeping lions, for instance, Irvine found in the back pages of a catalog for a Chicago statue company, and two iron griffins were hiding in the corner of an Alhambra marble shop.
Irvine says she isn’t bothered when fans discover where an item was procured. “It would be impossible for us to make everything,” Irvine says.
As Irvine walks the ground, pointing out various weeping trees and plants, she also spots areas to continue to tinker. She wonders if a grassy nook in front the Mansion is too pristine as she laments the fact that a fountain relocated from nearby New Orleans Square is no longer pumping water, noting such complex construction wasn’t in the budget. She points to an iron horse on an utility box, quickly adding the direction of the face and handle may someday need to be changed.
And there may still be more work to do inside the Mansion. When Imagineering last made updates to the attraction in 2021, Irvine’s team spoke of potentially removing the hanging corpse in the stretching room, noting such an image could be triggering for some guests. “We’re still looking at that,” Irvine says. “That one is complicated, structurally … One thing at a time.”
For a palace dedicated to the dead, the Haunted Mansion remains a living entity.
The art industry is increasingly shaped by artists’ and art businesses’ shared realization that they are locked in a fierce struggle for sustained attention — against each other, and against the rest of the overstimulated, always-online world. A major New York art fair aims to win this competition next month by knocking down the increasingly shaky walls between contemporary art and fashion.
When visitors enter the Independent art fair on May 14, they will almost immediately encounter its open-plan centerpiece: an installation of recent couture looks from Comme des Garçons. It will be the first New York solo presentation of works by Rei Kawakubo, the brand’s founder and mastermind, since a lauded 2017 survey exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute.
Art fairs have often been front and center in the industry’s 21st-century quest to capture mindshare. But too many displays have pierced the zeitgeist with six-figure spectacles, like Maurizio Cattelan’s duct-taped banana and Beeple’s robot dogs. Curating Independent around Comme des Garçons comes from the conviction that a different kind of iconoclasm can rise to the top of New York’s spring art scrum.
Elizabeth Dee, the founder and creative director of Independent, said that making Kawakubo’s work the “nerve center” of this year’s edition was a “statement of purpose” for the fair’s evolution. After several years at the compact Spring Studios in TriBeCa, Independent will more than double its square footage by moving to Pier 36 at South Street, on the East River. Dee has narrowed the fair’s exhibitor list, to 76, from 83 dealers in 2025, and reduced booth fees to encourage a focus on single artists making bold propositions.
“Rei’s work has been pivotal to thinking about how my work as a curator, gallerist and art fair can push boundaries, especially during this extraordinary move toward corporatization and monoculture in the art world in the last 20 years,” Dee said.
Kawakubo’s designs have been challenging norms since her brand’s first Paris runway show in 1981, but her work over the last 13 years on what she calls “objects for the body” has blurred borders between high fashion and wearable sculpture.
The Comme des Garçons presentation at Independent will feature 20 looks from autumn-winter 2020 to spring-summer 2025. Forgoing the runway, Kawakubo is installing her non-clothing inside structures made from rebar and colored plastic joinery.
Adrian Joffe, the president of both Comme des Garçons International and the curated retailer Dover Street Market International (and who is also Kawakubo’s husband), said in an interview that Kawakubo’s intention was to create a sculptural installation divorced from chronology and fashion — “a thing made new again.”
Every look at Independent was made in an edition of three or fewer, but only one of each will be for sale on-site. Prices will be about $9,000 to $30,000. Comme des Garçons will retain 100 percent of the sales.
Asked why she was interested in exhibiting at Independent, the famously elusive Kawakubo said via email, “The body of work has never been shown together, and this is the first presentation in New York in almost 10 years.” Joffe added a broader philosophical motivation. “We’ve never done it before; it was new,” he said. Also essential was the fair’s willingness to embrace Kawakubo’s vision for the installation rather than a standard fair booth.
Kawakubo began consistently engaging with fine art decades before such crossovers became commonplace. Since 1989, she has invited a steady stream of contemporary artists to create installations in Comme des Garçons’s Tokyo flagship store. The ’90s brought collaborations with the artist Cindy Sherman and performance pioneer Merce Cunningham, among others.
More cross-disciplinary projects followed, including limited-release direct mailers for Comme des Garçons. Kawakubo designs each from documentation of works provided by an artist or art collective.
The display at Independent reopens the debate about Kawakubo’s proper place on the continuum between artist and designer. But the issue is already settled for celebrated artists who have collaborated with her.
“I totally think of Rei as an artist in the truest sense,” Sherman said by email. “Her work questions what everyone else takes for granted as being flattering to a body, questions what female bodies are expected to look like and who they’re catering to.”
Ai Weiwei, the subject of a 2010 Comme des Garçons direct mailer, agreed that Kawakubo “is, in essence, an artist.” Unlike designers who “pursue a sense of form,” he added, “her design and creation are oriented toward attitude” — specifically, an attitude of “rebellion.”
Also taking this position is “Costume Art,” the spring exhibition at the Costume Institute. Opening May 10, the show pairs individual works from multiple designers — including Comme des Garçons — with artworks from the Met’s holdings to advance the argument made by the dress code for this year’s Met gala: “Fashion is art.”
True to form, Kawakubo sometimes opts for a third way.
“Rei has often said she’s not a designer, she’s not an artist,” Joffe said. “She is a storyteller.”
Now to find out whether an art fair sparks the drama, dialogue and attention its authors want.
Lifestyle
They set out to elevate karaoke in L.A. — and opened a glamorous lounge that pulls out all the stops
Brothers Leo and Oliver Kremer visited karaoke spots around the globe and almost always had the same impression.
“The drinks weren’t always great, the aesthetics weren’t always so glamorous, the sound wasn’t always awesome and the lights were often generic,” says Leo, a former bassist of the band Third Eye Blind.
As devout karaoke fans, they wanted to level up the experience. So they dreamed up Mic Drop, an upscale karaoke lounge in West Hollywood that opens Thursday. It’s located inside the original Larrabee Studios, a historic 1920s building formerly owned by Carole King and her ex-husband, Gerry Goffin — and the spot where King recorded some of her biggest hits. Third Eye Blind band members Stephan Jenkins and Brad Hargreaves are investors of the new venue.
Inside the two-story, 6,300-square-foot venue with 13 private karaoke rooms and an electrifying main stage, you can feel like a rock star in front of a cheering audience. Want to check it out? Here are six things to know.
The Kremer brothers hired sculptor Shawn HibmaCronan to create an 8-foot-tall disco-themed microphone for their karaoke lounge.
1. Take your pick between a private karaoke experience or the main stage
A unique element of Mic Drop is that it offers both private karaoke rooms and a main stage experience for those who wish to sing in front of a crowd. The 13 private rooms range from six- to 45-person capacity. Each of the karaoke rooms are named after a famous recording studio such as Electric Lady, Abbey Road, Shangri La and of course, Larrabee Studios. There is a two-hour minimum on all rentals and hourly rates depend on the room size and day of the week.
But if you’re ready to take the center stage, it’s free to sing — at least technically. All you have to do is pay a $10 fee at the door, which is essentially a token that goes toward your first drink. Then you can put your name on the list with the KJ (karaoke jockey) who keeps the crowd energized throughout the night and even hits the stage at times.
Harrison Baum, left, of Santa Monica, and Amanda Stagner, 27, of Los Angeles, sing in one of the 13 private karaoke rooms.
2. Thumping, high sound quality was a top priority
As someone who toured the world playing bass for Third Eye Blind, top-tier sound was a nonnegotiable for Leo. “Typically with karaoke, the sound is kind of teeny, there’s not a lot of bass and the vocal is super hot and sitting on top too much,” he says. To combat this, he and his brother teamed up with Pineapple Audio, an audio visual company based in Chicago, to design their crisp sound system. They also installed concert-grade speakers and custom subwoofers from a European audio equipment manufacturer called Celto, and bought gold-plated Sennheiser wireless microphones, which they loved so much that they had an 8-foot-tall replica made for their main room. Designed by artist Shawn HibmaCronan, the “macrophone,” as they call it, has roughly 30,000 mirror tiles. “It spins and throws incredible disco light everywhere,” says Leo.
Karaoke jockeys Sophie St. John, 27, second from left, and Cameron Armstrong, 30, right, get the crowd involved with their song picks at Mic Drop.
3. A concert-level performance isn’t complete without good stage lighting and a haze machine
Each karaoke room features a disco ball and dynamic lighting that syncs up with whatever song you’re singing, which makes you feel like you are a professional performer. There’s also a haze machine hidden under the leather seats. Meanwhile, the main stage is concert-ready with additional dancing lasers and spotlights.
Brett Adams, left, of Sherman Oaks, and Patrick Riley of Studio City sing karaoke together inside a private lounge at Mic Drop.
4. The song selection is vast, offering classics and new hits
One of the worst things that can happen when you go to karaoke is not being able to find the song you want to sing. At Mic Drop, the odds of this happening are slim to none. The venue uses a popular karaoke service called KaraFun, which has a catalog of more than 600,000 songs (and adds 400 new tracks every month), according to its website. Take your pick from country, R&B, jazz, rap, pop, love duets and more. (Two newish selections I spotted were Raye’s “Where Is my Husband” and Olivia Dean’s “Man I Need,” which both released late last year.) In the private karaoke rooms, there’s also a fun feature on Karafun called “battle mode,” which allows you and your crew of up to 20 people to compete in real time. KaraFun also has an entertaining music trivia game, which I tested out with the founders and came in second place.
The design inspiration for Mic Drop was 1920s music lounges and 1970s disco culture, says designer Amy Morris.
5. The interiors are inspired by 1920s music lounges mixed with ‘70s disco vibes
A disco ball hangs from the ceiling.
If you took the sophisticated aesthetic of 1920s music lounges and mixed it with the vibrant and playful era of 1970s disco culture, you’d find Mic Drop.
When you walk into the lounge, the first thing you’ll see is a bright red check-in desk that resembles a performer’s dressing room with vanity lights, several mirrors and a range of wigs. “So much of karaoke is about getting into character and letting go of the day, so we had the idea to sell the wigs,” says Oliver. As you continue into the lounge, the focal point is the stage, which is adorned with zebra-printed carpet and dramatic, red velvet curtains. For seating, slide into the red velvet banquettes or plop onto a gold tiger velvet stool. Upstairs, you’ll find the intimate karaoke studios, which are decorated with red velvet walls and brass, curved doorways that echo the building’s deco arches, says Mic Drop’s interior designer, Amy Morris of the Morris Project.
Sarah Rothman, center, of Oakland, and friend Rachel Bernstein, left, of Los Angeles, wait at the bar.
6. You can order nontraditional karaoke bites as you wait for your turn to sing
While Mic Drop offers some of the food you’d typically find at a karaoke lounge such as tater tots, truffle popcorn and pizza, the venue has some surprising options as well. For example, a 57 gram caviar service (served with chips, crème fraîche and chives) and shrimp cocktail from Santa Monica Seafood. For their pizza program, the Kremer brothers teamed up with Avalou’s Italian Pizza Company, which is run by Louis Lombardi who starred in “The Sopranos.” He’s the brainchild behind my favorite dish, the Fuhgeddaboudit pizza, which is made with pastrami, pickles and mustard. It might sound repulsive, but trust me.
As for the cheeky cocktails, they are all named after famous musicians and songs such as the Pink Pony Club (a tart cherry pomegranate drink with vodka named after Chappell Roan), Green Eyes (a sake sour with kiwi and melon named after Green Day) and Megroni Thee Stallion (an elevated negroni named after Megan Thee Stallion).
When John Lantigua, a retired journalist in Miami Beach, checked his email one recent morning, he was glad to see an invitation.
“It was like, ‘Come and share an evening with me. Click here for details,’” Mr. Lantigua said.
It appeared to be a Paperless Post invitation from someone he once worked with at The Palm Beach Post, a man who had left Florida for Mississippi and liked to arrange dinners when he was back in town.
Mr. Lantigua, 78, clicked the link. It didn’t open.
He clicked a second time. Still nothing.
He didn’t realize what was going on until a mutual friend who had received the same email told him it wasn’t an invitation at all. It was a scam.
Phishing scams have long tried to frighten people into clicking on links with emails claiming that their bank accounts have been hacked, or that they owe thousands of dollars in fines, or that their pornography viewing habits have been tracked.
The invitation scam is a little more subtle: It preys on the all-too-human desire to be included in social gatherings.
The phishy invitations mimic emails from Paperless Post, Evite and Punchbowl. What appears to be a friendly overture from someone you know is really a digital Trojan horse that gives scammers access to your personal information.
“I thought it was diabolical that they would choose somebody who has sent me a legitimate invitation before,” Mr. Lantigua said. “He’s a friend of mine. If he’s coming to town, I want to see him.”
Rachel Tobac, the chief executive of SocialProof Security, a cybersecurity firm, said she noticed the scam last holiday season.
“Phishing emails are not a new thing,” Ms. Tobac said, “but every six months, we get a new lure that hijacks our amygdala in new ways. There’s such a desire for folks to get together that this lure is interesting to people. They want to go to a party.”
Phishing scams involve “two distinct paths,” Ms. Tobac added. In one, the recipient is served a link that turns out to be dead, or so it seems. A click activates malware that runs silently as it gleans passwords and other bits of personal information. In all likelihood, this is what happened when Mr. Lantigua clicked on the ersatz invitation link.
Another scam offers a working link. Potential victims who click on it are asked to provide a password. Those who take that next step are a boon to hackers.
“They have complete control of your email and, in turn, your entire digital life,” Ms. Tobac said. “They can reset your password for your dog’s Instagram account. They can take over your bank account. Change your health insurance.”
Digital invitation platforms are trying to combat the scam by publishing guides on how to spot fake invitations. Paperless Post has also set up an email account — phishing@paperlesspost.com — for users to submit messages for verification. The company sends suspicious links to the Anti-Phishing Working Group, a nonprofit that maintains a database monitored by cybersecurity firms. Flagged links are rendered ineffective.
The scammers’ new strategy of exploiting the desire for connection is infuriating, said Alexa Hirschfeld, a founder of Paperless Post. “Life can be isolating,” Ms. Hirschfeld said. “When it looks like you’re getting an invitation from someone you know, your first instinct is excitement, not skepticism.”
Olivia Pollock, the vice president of brand for Evite, said that fake invitations tended to be generic, promising a birthday party or a celebration of life. Most invitations these days tend to have a specific focus — mahjong gatherings or book club talks, for instance. “The devil is in the details,” Ms. Pollock said.
Because scammers don’t know how close you are with the people in your contact list, fake invitations may also seem random. “They could be from your business school roommate you haven’t spoken to in 10 years,” Ms. Hirschfeld said.
Alyssa Williamson, who works in public relations in New York, was leaving a yoga class recently when she checked her phone and saw an invitation from a college classmate.
“I assumed it was an alumni event,” Ms. Williamson, 30, said. “I clicked on it, and it was like, ‘Enter your email.’ I didn’t even think about it.”
Later that day, she received texts from friends asking her about the party invitation she had just sent out. Her response: What party?
“The thing is, I host a lot of events,” she said. “Some knew it was fake. Others were like, ‘What’s this? I can’t open it.’”
Andrew Smith, a graduate student in finance who lives in Manhattan, received what looked like a Punchbowl invitation to “a memory making celebration.” It appeared to have come from a woman he had dated in college. He received it when he was having drinks at a bar on a Friday night — “a pretty insidious piece of timing,” he said.
“The choice of sender was super clever,” Mr. Smith, 29, noted. “This was somebody that would probably get a reaction from me.”
Mr. Smith seized on the phrase “memory making celebration” and filled in the blanks. He imagined that someone in his ex-girlfriend’s immediate family had died. Perhaps she wanted to restart contact at this difficult moment.
Something saved him when he clicked a link and tried to tap out his personal information — his inability to remember the password to his email account. The next day, he reached out to his ex, who confirmed that the invitation was fake.
“It didn’t trigger any alarm bells,” Mr. Smith said. “I went right for the click. I went completely animal brain.”
The new scam comes with an unfortunate side effect, a suspicion of invitations altogether. It’s enough to make a person antisocial.
“Don’t invite me to anything,” Mr. Lantigua, the retired journalist, said, only half-joking. “I’m not coming.”
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