<Tr> <Th> Language </Th> <Td> English </Td> </Tr> <P> The Ghost and Mr. Chicken is a 1966 American comedy - drama 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). </P> <P> Luther Heggs (Don Knotts) 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 (Skip Homeier), a full - time reporter at the newspaper, mocking Luther's mistakes of the night before . Ollie is also dating Heggs' eventual 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 . </P> <P> 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 . </P>

Who played alma in the ghost and mr chicken