Both homes will be featured on HGTV’s show of the same name Friday night, when the seasonal series hosted by actress and comedian Retta, of “Parks and Recreation” fame, premieres.
Either may be enough to convince visitors to turn back around and head for the door — but only one could someday be deemed the “Scariest House in America.”
A 1700s Massachusetts farmhouse said to be haunted by a ghost or two. A Rhode Island cottage filled with “death traps.”
A spin-off of the cable channel’s “Ugliest House in America,” the show will take Retta to nine homes across the Midwest, Northeast and South “that have everything from built-in death traps and questionable taxidermy to daunting basements and ghost sightings,” HGTV said in a statement.
All are competing to win the title of “scariest” — a distinction that comes with a $150,000 renovation by network designer Alison Victoria, host of “Windy City Rehab.”
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“It’s spooky season and I’m traveling across the country in search of the nine scariest houses we can find,” Retta says in a clip of the show shared with the Globe on Thursday. “Whether it’s spooky scary, or just scary looking, I’m talking about the houses you wouldn’t be caught dead in — unless you’re dead already, that is.”
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As Retta swings through the “Nightmarish Northeast,” she makes two stops in New England in Friday’s premiere, which airs at 9 p.m.
An 18th century farmhouse in Townsend, Mass., will be featured in Friday’s episode of