Cincinnati’s neighbor city to the north, Dayton, may be home to one of the scariest houses in America — at least according to the all-new HGTV show, Scariest House in America.
The new show is a spooky-season spinoff of the network’s Ugliest House in America, starring Parks and Recreation and Good Girls actress and comedian Retta. In this reality-competition spinoff, Retta is trading ugly for scary as she tours some of the creepiest houses in the country — from a former jail now inhabited by bats to an alleged mobster hideout and a crumbling home with witchy vibes.
Episodes are divided into regions: the Northeast, Midwest and South, with three semi-finalist houses in each episode. At the end of the episode, a finalist is chosen to move on for a chance at the grand prize: a $150,000 renovation by HGTV designer Alison Victoria.
“I did not see this iteration of this show coming,” Retta said in a press release. “I was cool with the summer road trip and ugly in paradise, but, for a gal that is spooked by every creak, critter and errant hair that brushes my shoulder, this wasn’t it. Glad I got through it, but I won’t lie and say I ‘enjoyed’ it.”
The “Mysterious Midwest” episode features a former church-turned-home in Dayton, Ohio, built in 1885 and dubbed “Highway House the Lord Left” by Retta.
“I’m here today to see if Ohio can make me say, ‘Oh, hell no,” Retta says in the episode.
Best friends Jess and Brandon said they purchased the church-house together about six years ago. They paid just $53,000 for it, but say the property needs a lot of work.
“We saw the church online and we just wanted to come look at it, just to see what was up and hopefully not get murdered, and we didn’t get murdered, and I guess it’s ours now,” Jess tells Retta.
In addition to the church-house’s overall spooky exterior, the property also features a large cemetery where the church’s founders are buried. Inside, the former chapel, which has sagging and missing ceiling tiles, functions as the living room. The home also has a creepy basement kitchen and a sub-basement covered by a grate where the well is — well water, which, as Jess points out, comes from the ground, and the ground they’re surrounded by functions as a graveyard.
At the end of each house tour, Retta rates each house's scary appearance, bad function and fright factor. We won’t spoil it and tell you how "Highway House the Lord Left" did, but let’s just say it ranked high in its spookiness.
The first episode of Scariest House in America will feature the Northeast homes and airs on HGTV Friday, Oct. 4 at 9 p.m. “Mysterious Midwest” will air the following week, Friday, Oct. 11. You can watch on HGTV, as well as Max and discovery+.
