BRUMLEY, Mo. (AP) — Just down the road from the guy with several hundred junked lawnmowers in his yard is another guy in a haunted house, and he has made the whole town mad.

Nick Sacco says he has been threatened and had his truck tires slashed. Sheriff's deputies have checked on him and his wife, and he has asked for more patrols. Regulars down at the tavern know something's going on but don't know exactly what, and at the heart of the whole tiff is a big Hollywood movie star.

Whew. That's a lot going on for your basic two-church, one-beer-joint town with 91 people just south of Tuscumbia on the early slopes of the Ozarks.

Ah — the segue to Hollywood. According to showbiz sources, Jason Bateman, he of "Arrested Development," ''Identity Thief" and "Horrible Bosses" fame, is set to produce and star in a new Netflix series called "Ozark." It's a show about a man mixed up in drug laundering and the seedy drug trade in southern Missouri.

When Sacco, a newcomer who turned an alleged haunted house into a business after arriving in 2014, heard about the project, he commented on Facebook about the area's image, portrayed in "Winter's Bone," a movie about Ozarks drug culture. He said he'd heard Bateman was coming to the town eight miles east of Osage Beach to scout locations.

Part of the post:

"GO Brumley! Your reputation precedes you."

Didn't go over real well. Next came the angry phone calls, threats and, according to Sacco, "screaming in the driveway."

Miller County Sheriff Bill Abbott confirmed the reports.

The Kansas City Star (http://bit.ly/1TdGMnh ) reports that Sacco, a former Gladstone traffic officer, says that he never meant to rankle local pride and that he made the post out of frustration — he's trying to run a business in an area seemingly tainted by the image of methamphetamine production and trade.

He posted an apology, but it didn't help. His wife, Marcy, shrugged; the town never really warmed to them anyway.

"When we got here, they called us 'the millionaires' because we came in an RV," she said.

Nick Sacco nodded. "It's a 40-footer."

Down the hill on the other side of the Baptist Church at Whittle's Brumley Tavern, a few regulars said they understood Sacco's frustration but didn't think Brumley was worse than anywhere else when it came to drugs.

Owner Dave Whittle skipped over all the drug stuff, focusing instead on a part of the Facebook post where Sacco suggested visitors were scared to go in the tavern because of the area's reputation.

"Now, that I know he shouldn't have done because it's not true," Whittle said.

The others agreed. Business is great, Merle Haggard sings on the jukebox and tenderloins cover the whole plate.

Anyway, no one here is blaming Jason Bateman.

"He's just trying to sell tickets," Leo Sander said from his bar stool.

Now, for the crying woman at the top of the steps in the haunted house.

That would be Martha Dixon, the socialite wife of the Brumley town doctor. Near the start of the Civil War, the couple built a fine Victorian home with a turret and concrete walls two feet thick. It looked like a castle, or at least what passes for one in a small Missouri town.

The Dixons went all out, even ordering a grand staircase that was built in London, disassembled and shipped to Brumley.

Around the turn of the century, shortly before the couple was to host a grand party, the doctor found his wife dead at the top of the stairs. Ever since, people have reported seeing a woman in a fancy dress at the top of the steps, long after the place was empty.

And her crying wafts into the summer nights.

Nick and Marcy Sacco had been traveling the country in their RV when they learned that the old Dixon place was for sale. Nick was born in the area, and his mother still lives there. They liked the looks of the place, though it had fallen from its early grace.

Broken windows. Hangout for druggies. No heat, no air. At one time, Marcy said, pigs had been kept inside.

"Why'd you buy the haunted castle?" someone asked after they bought the place.

They hadn't heard the crying woman story.

But they sure ran with it.

They remodeled the place and now operate the Haunted Castle House. It's kind of a horror story bed-and-breakfast with three guest rooms. People come from all over for murder mysteries, ghost nights and paranormal investigations.

The Saccos say doors lock themselves, empty rocking chairs rock and beds unmake themselves. Last April, a man left a note that told how he was awakened by whispering in the middle of the night. He sprayed his camera around the dark, and one photo later showed "a white column of plasm."

"We've had 14 couples who left in the middle of the night," Nick said.

As an added perk, supposedly there's a mass grave in the backyard from the 1918 flu epidemic.

Marcy won't stay in the place.

"We live at the lake," she said.

Sheriff Abbott scoffed when asked whether meth was a problem in Miller County.

"It's a problem in the whole United States — up in Kansas City, everywhere," he said. "Even when we shut down the labs, the drugs are still here."

He understands Nick Sacco's point.

"But I don't know anything about any ghosts," he said.

At the Brumley Tavern, Brent Fry, the cook, said Brumley is like most any small town in rural Missouri.

"This part of the state probably has more of the meth stigma, but it's no worse around here than any other place," he said.

Stigma doesn't mean much around here anyway

"I've been here a long time, and I still got all my teeth," Leo Sander said from his bar stool.

The people in the tavern don't know much about the Saccos. They say the haunted castle is for out-of-towners.

"I don't think the guy who runs it even lives here," someone said.

Neither, apparently, will Bateman's show. According to the Hollywood Reporter, the series takes its name from Lake of the Ozarks, but it will be shot in New York and Vancouver.