By Samantha Benjey
In 2001, Maria Johns, an English teacher at Eldorado High School, got chosen to be on Fox Family’s Scariest Places on Earth as a photographer to document a shaman ritual, along with her then-boyfriend, Jeff Leipart.
The episode took place in Springer, New Mexico, at Dorsey Mansion. The mansion was built in 1878 by former US senator Stephen W. Dorsey. Dorsey paid for the mansion through corrupt mail contracts, according to the Dorsey Mansion Wikipedia page. Dorsey later abandoned the mansion in 1882, and about 100 years later the mansion was sold to the State of New Mexico. Dorsey and his family left shortly after their mansion became a Tuberculosis Sanitarium.
In the episode, Navajo Nation shaman Andrew Chee, is called in as a last resort to put a stop to “restless spirits.” According to Sandy Henning, the owner of Dorsey Mansion, these spirits could range from former sanitarium patients to a murdered Native American, or even the ghost of Stephen Dorsey himself.
“I hope that the shaman will put the restless spirits to rest, that it will be a quiet and peaceful house to live in,” said Henning in the episode.
Johns and Leipart come in later in the episode to document the ritual. During the filming of the episode, Johns claims that it was hard to take the ritual seriously.
“For some reason, I just started cracking up a little,” Johns said in an interview. “At one point they stopped the filming and they were like ‘You have to act like you’re scared.’”
Although John claims the ritual was funny, the mansion itself was scary.
“It was scary because it’s a weird mansion and it’s literally in the middle of nowhere in the desert,” Johns said. “You drive on a dirt road for, I wanna say, forty minutes into nothing.”
The episode aired on March 29, 2001. But according to Mrs. Johns, they were originally supposed to film earlier in the year.
“I don’t know if they were trying to scare us before the show, but they told us on the way there, the crew got in an accident, and they thought it was because of this Dorsey mansion curse,” said Johns. “And that’s also why they brought in the shaman come in.”
The Scariest Places on Earth episode includes investigations of Greyfriars Kirkyard in Edinburgh, Scotland, and Leap Castle in Cooldberry, Ireland.