The Ghost and Mr. Chicken is a 1966 American comedy horror mystery 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.

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.

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.

Luther flees downstairs and finds pruning shears stabbed in a painting of Mrs. Simmons, with blood gushing from her neck.

Nicholas Simmons, the nephew of the deceased couple, had been planning to demolish the mansion, but his banker now refuses to close on the deal due to his spiritualist wife considering it a local landmark.

Actor Don Knotts was best known at the time of the film's production for his Emmy Award-winning five seasons on the sitcom The Andy Griffith Show as small town deputy sheriff Barney Fife.

The "Simmons Mansion", a three-story Second-Empire Victorian house, stands on Colonial Street on the Universal Studios lot in California and was built for the film So Goes My Love (1946).

It appeared as the Dowd house in the film Harvey (1950), and, with several alterations to the architecture, served as the home of Gabrielle Solis in Desperate Housewives (2004-2012).

[citation needed] Knotts personally called the Bon Ami company president to get permission to mention the cleaning product's name in one of the film's running gags.

[6] Throughout the movie, Knotts drove an Edsel Corsair, which was considered a commercial failure, to bolster the character Luther Heggs' quirky reputation.

[citation needed] Knotts' popularity prompted a multiple-movie deal with Universal, starting with this movie, and followed by The Reluctant Astronaut (1967), The Shakiest Gun in the West (1968), The Love God?

Several other players from The Andy Griffith Show appear in The Ghost and Mr. Chicken, including Lurene Tuttle, Burt Mustin, Reta Shaw, Hal Smith and Hope Summers.