Written by David Mogolov
Photo: © Depositphotos.com/celiafoto

 

Haunteneers, I’m used to watching high-speed relationship trainwrecks on this show, but in five seasons, I’ve never seen anything like the disaster that is the Dulths of Ocean City, Maryland. Normally the ghosts are the scariest part of the show, but this time it was the people I watched through tense fingers while shouting, “NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO!” If I had a time machine, I’d go back to the Dulth wedding so that I could speak up when the minister asked if anybody had an objection. I’m so unsettled after watching this episode that I might end up a ghost myself, haunting the couple in my afterlife, kept from rest by the unresolved questions I have about them.

It’s been four hours since I watched the episode, and I’m still in a mild state of shock, like I just watched every Game of Thrones season finale for the first time all at once. I don’t know if I’m supposed to be giggling or weeping or writing my members of Congress. That said, I only get paid my media conglomerate scrip if I turn this thing in before the morning commute, so let’s recap this episode as if it’s just a normal day and not a turning point in the lives of every basic cable viewer.

We meet the Dulths in the first moment of the show, and immediately we know it’s going to be a spectacular episode because in the introductory interview—the one where most HGTV couples share why they’re excited to move into a haunted house—Cam interrupts Tish three times, each time to point to a different high school football trophy. As he hoists the last one, he says, “Oh man, if some ghost throws this bad boy, it’s gonna be him or me. I gotta lock this stuff down.” Tish seems so used to interruption that she just keeps on talking under him, and while we can’t quite make out exactly what she’s saying, we can clearly hear her refer to a family history of being “just a little bit psychic.”

The couple is unable to articulate exactly why they want to get a haunted house, but Tish mentions that she’s seen every episode of Haunted House Hunters, Haunted House Nation, and Flip that Murder House, and is confident in her ability to separate the good opportunities from “the stabby ones.” We also meet her college friend Robin who lives in a slightly haunted house. Tish clearly hates Robin’s guts and wants to show her up. Cam stares at Robin’s cleavage and nods without listening to their conversation, saying, “What my baby wants, my baby gets.” He then yells that he wants to wrestle a ghost, and elbows Tish in the face while demonstrating a sleeper hold on an imagined spectral opponent.

Typically, we get a clear definition of the couple’s budget, a number highlighted in the corner of the screen, but not with the Dulths. All the HGTV producers could manage is a chyron that says “Budget: ????” as Tish and Cam have a long argument over who is responsible for a credit card maxed out at the Vitamin Shoppe (it turns out it was both of them, independently going on secret supplement binges). The Vitamin Shoppe argument is so long that this episode actually has three minutes less commercial time than others: The Vitamin Shoppe must have stepped in a sponsor.

Having no sense of her clients’ budget, realtor Debbie takes a Goldilocks approach, taking them to tour a tiny, ramshackle fishing cottage haunted by a poltergeist, a middle-class split-level home that was the sight of a terrible ritual murder, and finally, a sprawling mansion built and slowly expanded over decades by a multigenerational incestuous family of reclusive crab-fishing barons. At each house, Cam and Tish ooh and aah upon arrival, but when Debbie tells them prices, Tish makes the face of a spelling bee contestant given a word she never studied, and Cam says—each time, seriously, each time, in the EXACT same words—“If I arm wrestle a werewolf and win, we get a price break, right?” Then he makes a “check out these guns” pose. It’s hard to know if he’s a carefree millionaire playboy or a broke manchild with no comprehension of money.

The first home, the fishing cottage, is delightful at first glance. Definitely a fixer-upper. Cam believes that with a little elbow grease he can handle the shattered windows, the broken, axe-split doorframes, and even the backed-up-to-bursting plumbing. We see him confidently pick up an unmounted window and set it into the open hole in the wall. As he walks away satisfied with his handiwork, a ghostly force shoves the window back out of the wall, shooting it across the room, where it crushes a squirrel that is gnawing what appears to be a human thumb.

Cam likes the house, but wishes there was room for a man cave. Tish likes the water view, but wishes there was a jacuzzi, and is bummed out that there’s such a typical haunting, saying, “you know, for a haunting this is pretty ho-hum. I was hoping for something more artisanal, a conversation-starter.” Debbie goes to wait in the car while Cam and Tish fight over whether he’s going to build their baby gates or whether they’re going to subscribe to a “no gates” model of parenting Tish had a vivid dream about. All around them, dishes are crashing, as the poltergeist loses its damned mind, presumably over the thought of this couple procreating. Voiceover indicates that the cottage has no stairs to put a gate on.

Next up is the split-level ranch, and as the Dulths get out of the car, the camera cuts to an across-the-street neighbor crossing herself and looking on anxiously. Moments after they enter, the front door slams behind them, and the lights go out suddenly. When the camera crew manages to get a portable light going, we see realtor Debbie smacking Cam’s hand off her breasts. Behind him, “DIE DULTHS” has appeared on the stairway wall, written in a translucent, sparkling goop that Tish knowingly and excitedly identifies as “real ghost jizz.”

A moment later, in the living room, Tish picks at the loose edge of some heavy paisley wallpaper and a whole sheet tears away, revealing part of a mural. Peeling more from the wall, they discover the entire wall has been painted to depict a Black Mass. Cam is beside himself with excitement, figuring it’s going to auction for “at least a billion.” Then he asks Debbie if she’s ever ridden in a Ferrari, and whether she likes yellow.

Touring the back yard, Tish shrugs at the mass grave dug up by the police. “We’ll probably just flatten this whole area and put down paving stones, a walkway to… what is that?” They edge around the mass grave to a handwritten sign indicating a pet cemetery at the back of the lot. The camera crew gets in close, and we see clearly recent clawmarks and signs of slaughter at the edge of a small open grave. Cam gets philosophical: “Hey, would an undead dog eat its own bones?” Tish looks terrified, but it turns out she’s upset by the realization that the place only has one and a half bathrooms. “Dammit, Debbie, I said minimum two baths. I’m not living through that horror again.” Disgusted, she pushes the realtor into an open grave and leaves in a huff.

The next morning, the couple meets up with Debbie at the Goddard Estate, a 29,000 square foot mansion that’s sat unsold for nine years. Cam has arrived with a duffel bag of his trophies and a pair of 45-pound dumbbells, wanting to see how they look in the house. Tish has brought along her friend Robin.

In the driveway, Debbie lays out some of the home’s key selling features:

• Cam will be able to build his man cave in any of the several man-made caves Donovan Goddard used as torture chambers throughout the 1980s. With a proper speaker system, he might even be able to drown out the wailing and shrieks of Donovan, who is trapped eternally, forced to endure the same treatments he once doled out.
• Tish is excited to learn of a bonus room, a secret chamber off the head servant’s quarters that was used by Maggie Goddard to summon rage demons.
• A wraparound porch on the east wing of the estate offers a marvelous view of the canyon into which Big Jay Goddard marched a dozen LSD-dosed acolytes on a doomed 1967 vision quest immortalized in the documentary “Children of the Night” – on full moons, the porch is said to be overrun with their spirits, whispering wisdom that has driven multiple paranormal investigators to madness.
• A three car garage!

Cam disappears for two minutes of the episode, but the voiceover and timestamp tell us he’s gone for four hours. When he returns, Ocean City police are on the scene, and Cam emerges from a hidden corridor, his formerly-dark hair completely white. Looking towards Tish, but not directly at her, he says, “I signed the deed, for all eternity.” For the rest of the episode, he’s catatonic, scratching an itch on his elbow until it bleeds, and then scratching the bloody wound. Robin frantically tries to bring him out of his fog, asking about all the promises he’s made her, while Tish grills Debbie on the best asking price for the house.

After the commercial break, we learn that the couple has selected the Goddard Estate, but only Tish appears in the interviews. She laughingly refers to Cam’s “tinkering,” and in the background, we hear the sound of metallic hammering, occasionally interrupted by bloodcurdling screams. We’re also informed that realtor Debbie has moved, leaving no contact information.

I’m exhausted, Haunteneers, but elated. I don’t expect my employer to let me follow up on this, as I have to crank out sixteen viral content heaps a day, but I desperately want to drop in on the Dulths. Maybe I can Kickstart that! Let me know in the comments if you’re good for $20.