The Ghost and Mr. Chicken

The Ghost and Mr. Chicken is a 1966 American comedy horror film starring Don Knotts as Luther Heggs, the town dunce and a newspaper typesetter who spends a night in a haunted house, which is located in the fictitious community of Rachel, Kansas. Don Knotts' first major project after leaving The Andy Griffith Show, The Ghost and Mr. Chicken uses a similar small town setting and involved a number of alumni from the sitcom, including director Alan Rafkin and writers Jim Fritzell and Everett Greenbaum. It was a box office success, paving the way for a string of other Knotts-fronted comedy films. The working title was Running Scared. The title is presumably a humorous variation of the film The Ghost and Mrs. Muir (1947). Plot Luther Heggs is a typesetter for the Rachel Courier Express in Rachel City, Kansas, who lives at the Natalie Miller boarding house and aspires to be a reporter. Luther is not taken seriously, and his peers mock him when his report of a murder near the supposedly haunted Simmons Mansion proves to be nothing more than a local drunk knocked unconscious by his irate wife. Full-time reporter Ollie Weaver ridicules Luther over his mistake. Ollie is dating Alma Parker, on whom Luther has a crush. While at work, asked to add some filler to the paper, Luther learns from the newspaper's janitor Mr. Kelsey, who was a gardener at the Simmons Mansion, that the mansion was the site of a murder–suicide. Mr. Simmons killed his wife with a bladed instrument before leaping to his death from the organ loft. Legend has it that the ghost of Mr. Simmons can still occasionally be heard playing the organ at midnight. Kelsey encourages Luther to write about the Simmons Mansion. When the editor, George Beckett, reads the article, Kelsey plants subtle hints resulting in Beckett assigning Luther to spend the night in the manor on the 20th anniversary of the murder-suicide and write about his experience. Fear makes Luther hesitant to take the job, but the realization that this is his big chance to become a reporter as well as an opportunity to impress Alma pushes him to accept. While staying at the mansion, he hurls a book at a bookshelf in an effort to silence eerie knocking and laughter which is keeping him from sleep, inadvertently opening a hidden passage to the organ loft. At midnight, the bloodstained organ begins to play by itself. Luther flees downstairs and finds pruning shears stabbed in a painting of Mrs.