The Ghost and Mr. Chicken

The Ghost and Mr. Chicken
Theatrical release poster
Directed by	Alan Rafkin
Produced by	Edward J. Montagne, Jr.
Written by	Jim Fritzell Everett Greenbaum
Starring	Don Knotts Joan Staley Liam Redmond Sandra Gould Dick Sargent Skip Homeier
Music by	Vic Mizzy
Cinematography	William Margulies
Edited by	Sam E. Waxman
Distributed by	Universal Pictures
Release date	January 20, 1966 (1966-01-20)
Running time	90 minutes
Country	United States
Language	English

The Ghost and Mr. Chicken is a 1966 American comedy film starring Don Knotts as Luther Heggs, a newspaper typesetter who spends a night in a haunted house, which is located in the fictitious community of Rachel, Kansas. The working title was Running Scared. The title is presumably a humorous variation of the film The Ghost and Mrs. Muir (1947).

Luther Heggs is a typesetter at the Rachel Courier Express the local newspaper in Rachel, Kansas, but he aspires to be a reporter. One night, observing what he believes to be a murder outside of an old, supposedly haunted house known as the Simmons Mansion, Heggs rushes to the police station with his scoop. Unfortunately, as he relates the details of his story to the Chief of Police, the murder "victim" walks into the room, a local drunk who had merely been knocked unconscious by his irate wife, who had brought him in to be jailed. The next morning, Heggs walks downstairs to the dining room at the Natalie Miller boarding house and overhears Ollie Weaver (Homeier), a full-time reporter at the newspaper, mocking Luther's mistakes of the night before. Ollie is also dating Heggs' love interest, Alma Parker (Joan Staley). According to local lore, the Simmons Mansion was a "murder house" 20 years earlier, when Mr. Simmons murdered his wife (with some unknown sharp instrument that was never located — ultimately revealed to be a pair of gardener's pruning shears), and then jumped 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.

To increase newspaper sales, Luther is assigned to spend the night in the house on the 20th anniversary of the murder/suicide. At midnight, Heggs sees the old organ begin to play by itself. There are a few other mysterious happenings, including Luther's discovery of a secret staircase to the organ loft, hidden behind a sliding bookshelf, and a pair of gardener's shears in the throat of a painting of Mrs. Simmons. His eerie story gets the town abuzz and causes a delay in the plans of Nicholas Simmons (Philip Ober), nephew of the deceased couple, who intends to demolish the mansion. In retaliation, and to discredit Heggs, Simmons sues both Heggs and the Rachel Courier Express for libel.