October 23, 2000 (2000-10-23) – October 29, 2006 (2006-10-29)
Scariest Places on Earth is an American paranormalreality television series that originally aired from October 23, 2000, to October 29, 2006, on Fox Family, and later ABC Family. The show was hosted by Linda Blair, with narration by Zelda Rubinstein. The show featured reported cases of the paranormal by detailing the location's history, and then sending an ordinary family to visit the location in a reality television-style vigil.
In a 2001 interview with Larry King, host Blair explained the series:
When we were kids, we used to tell ghost stories, but as we've gotten older -- I have friends who are scientific researchers, and I ask them questions. My mother has passed on. I choose to think she is in a wonderful, other place that we all will go. But I think that some people are trapped here... Well, these are the places that people have talked about for years, and years, that they go in, and you physically feel something is wrong. Some people do see things. Whether it's in a mind, we don't know.[2]
Syndication
Reruns were aired on Syfy, which is a part of NBC Universal. It then aired on NBC Universal's now defunct horror- and suspense-themed cable channel Chiller.
The main controversy with the show was that it was accused of fabricating some of the aired events. According to the documentary crew for a film on the Villisca axe murders, the segment which profiled the murder site—the Josiah B. and Sara Moore House—contained numerous falsities; among the allegations were that it featured a fake newspaper reproduction, photos of an unknown family presented as the murder victims, and an actress posing as a town resident.[30]
Additionally, the "Devil Hunters" crew featured in the segment on the Jersey Devil claimed that the segment which ran thirteen minutes in length, had been edited from two days' worth of footage, and that numerous details were sensationalized and/or added in post-production.[31]
^Gray, Rich (2004). Click or Treat!: The Best of Halloween and Horror on the Internet. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland. p. 72. ISBN978-0-786-41862-6.