HGTV’s new ‘Scariest House in America’ to feature familiar Kansas, Missouri homes
Two of the houses featured in the new HGTV series, “Scariest House in America,” that debuts Friday are in Kansas and Missouri.
The series is hosted by comedian, actress and home design enthusiast Retta, who also hosts the network’s popular “Ugliest House in America.” The four-episode Halloween spinoff debuts at 8 p.m. Friday.
The search for nine of the scariest houses in the country led HGTV to Atchison, Kansas and Brumley, Missouri, on Lake of the Ozarks. Those homes will be featured Oct. 11.
“If you thought the Midwest was all corn fields and quaint towns, and cordial people, you’d be wrong,” she says in the “Mysterious Midwest” episode. “Because America’s heartland is not for the faint of heart. The houses here know how to bring the scary.”
In the final episode, the home deemed the “scariest” of nine featured will be renovated and revived to the tune of $150,000 by designer Alison Victoria.
Which will win the scary title? The former jail now inhabited by bats? The alleged mobster hangout?
These are homes, Retta says in the first episode, that are either spooky-scary (as in people died there) or just scary looking — houses “you wouldn’t be caught dead in, unless you’re dead already, that is.”
A spokeswoman for the show said the owners were unavailable for interviews.
In Brumley, population 91 in Miller County, she visited the town’s well-known Haunted Castle House, a historic, two-story Victorian home built in 1855 with a graveyard full of crumbling tombstones out back.
The home has been featured on other TV shows and podcasts. Four owners have died in the house; another passed away on the property.
Current homeowner Steve (no last name given) is a ghost-hunting enthusiast. His wife? Not so much.
“We bought the house because it was haunted,” he said in the show. “I’m fascinated with anything paranormal. Judy, she’s just an incredibly loving, supportive wife.”
“The house is pretty scary,” Judy confirmed, saying they installed cameras when they moved in to catch anything weird going on.
“We regularly see apparitions,” she said.
“Doors open and shut on their own,” said Steve.
Once he took a picture of himself in a mirror in the house and “you can see what looks like a little girl clear as day right next to me.”
HGTV dubbed the home “The House of the Ghost Geiger.”
When Retta stepped into the foyer, Steve handed her a hand-held electromagnetic field meter — aka Ghost Geiger — to use “that may detect if there’s a spirit around you. If it gets to the orange or yellow lights in particular,” he told her.
“I kinda don’t want to see it hit yellow,” Retta said.
“I’ll let you do it,” she said as she handed it back to him.
Once, Steve said, he opened the closet door under the front staircase “and there was a little boy just settin’ back there. And there was an older lady at the top of the stairs one day just looking down at me. There’s a lot of things that happened in this room.”
In the dining room, the couple displays vintage black-and-white photos of previous owners, a weathered Bible from the 1800s and last rite boxes decorated with crucifixes.
In a restroom nearby, behind an ominous black curtain, the couple have set up a “summoning room,” where a skull and a Ouija board sit on a table surrounded by scary statues and exorcism masks on the walls and shelves.
A baby doll with dark hair, eyes closed, lies in a coffin-like box.
There are more dolls in a bedroom upstairs. Creepy dolls. With lifeless eyes.
Even the Raggedy Ann sitting upright on the bed looks threatening.
“How do you not see them going eeeek,” Retta joked, making a stabbing motion.
Dude killed his brother
As she arrives in Atchison, Retta notes how “all these old buildings just make the town look creepy.”
HGTV has done its homework. She correctly refers to Atchison as one of the most haunted cities in the Midwest, with at least five well-known haunted houses there.
They visit the Dilgert haunted house owned by Camille and Thomas, who — before Retta tours the place — introduce her to the spirits in the house to let them know she isn’t there to harm them.
Camille asked the spirits to treat Retta “with dignity and respect.”
This house caught a bit of national attention last year when it went up for sale.
Because it’s not every day a haunted house hits the market.
When Camille and Thomas bought the 2,002-square-foot house, the first sentence on the real estate listing was: “Have you ever wanted to live in a haunted house?”
“And we just thought it was a schtick. We were just really more interested in the house itself,” Thomas said.
They were skeptics, said Camille, until their first night, when she “saw a very portly gentleman and he then fizzled into the hallway. They didn’t even give us time to unpack or get comfortable. We just kinda got honorary roommates.”
The home was built in 1880 by the town’s former golden boy, stonemason Adam Dilgert, who fell from grace after he beat his brother to death.
He was so beloved that one point the town was named Dilgertville in his honor, according to HGTV.
The couple explained that a triangular-shaped patch roped off on the lawn was the spot where a cadaver dog barked and laid down. In their research they discovered that Dilgert had a lower leg amputated.
“So, it could be a foot,” buried there, Camille said.
“And a lower leg,” her husband chimed in.
They turned an upstairs room previously used to host funerals into the main bedroom. But the creepiest space is the “offering room” in the stone-walled basement where the first owners stored coal.
They keep a big table set up with letter tiles for Dilgert to communicate when the mood strikes. Mediums regularly visit the house. The first psychic who visited made contact with Dilgert, the couple said.
Dilgert, they learned then, wanted his boots back.
So they keep a pair of boots next to a camping chair in the basement where he can relax.
They also set out cigarettes and whiskey “to keep him comfortable,” Camille said.
In the press materials HGTV sent out to promote the show, Retta said she didn’t see this hosting opportunity coming her way.
And “for a gal that is spooked by every creak, critter and errant hair that brushes my shoulder,” it didn’t exactly leave her in good spirits.
“Glad I got through it, but I won’t lie and say I ‘enjoyed’ it,” she said.
This story was originally published October 4, 2024 at 6:00 AM.
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