A: While X. Atencio did not consider himself a songwriter, Walt Disney was very pleased with the lighthearted lyrics he came up with for Pirates of the Caribbean. When work was progressing on the Haunted Mansion, X. felt that a simple song would lighten up the mood in that attraction also. So, he wrote the lyrics for “Grim Grinning Ghosts”; the alternate title was “The Screaming Song.” He never revealed how he came up with the song’s title. Veteran studio composer Buddy Baker wrote the music.  Different arrangements of the song were used throughout the attraction. According to Jason Surrell in his Haunted Mansion book, “In order to make the graveyard scene a true showstopper, X. and Buddy did everything they could to give those music cues an even more otherworldly quality, including detuning the instruments and recording the music backward and combining it all in the final mix.”