Hello and welcome to Dakota Life.

I'm your host, Michelle Van Maanen, on this special edition of Dakota Life.

We thought you might like to take a look back at some of the people and places we met in our travels across our great state earlier this season.

We'll be traveling from the Black Hills in the west to Yankton in the east.

So pop some popcorn, heat up some cocoa, and pull up your favorite easy chair.

Lean back and relax as we bring you the best of Dakota life at South Dakota Public Television.

We feel privileged to be given the task of collecting and sharing the stories of South Dakota and her citizens.

Not only do we get to visit many towns across this great state, but we meet interesting people wherever we go.

People we think you'll find interesting, too.

In this first segment, we visited with the ranch hand by the name of Ernie Hirschman.

Here's your chance to get to know a neighbor.

Near Whitewood in northwest South Dakota.

Ernie lives and works on the ranch of novelist Dan O'Brien while O'Brien travels the country writing and teaching.

Ernie takes care of the Buffalo her to the Falcons.

O'Brien trains and then releases visitors to the ranch, often come to meet the novelist and stay to visit with the ranch hand, who seems to be the most content man in South Dakota.

Got a few chores to do every day, you know, but we race birds and partridge in and we do a little bit of fooling with him, you know, feed and water him in the morning and, and, this time of year, of course, the important thing is flying.

Getting the Hawks rolling every day.

Yeah.

Can we maybe go out and and, check the buffalo herd, see what's going on there?

If it's cool enough, we might run the dogs for a while, and and, Well, right now we're trying to finish up our fencing for the buffalo and and we're building a corral and that kind of uses up a part of the native that, probably normally there wouldn't be much going on, but.

So we've been probably putting in 5 or 6 hours of.

Yeah, a lot of kind of harder work than normal.

But, does it seem like work?

No.

Not really.

Oh, when it's hot, you know, it's unpleasant and all that, but it's, it's a pretty good life, I sure.

Can't complain.

I would say that of the millions of people I've met, there's only one like Ernie.

That might be good.

That might be bad.

But Ernie is, It's a lot to be admired.

You know, he's he's a guy that doesn't do anything he doesn't want to do.

And, I think a lot of us spend our time chasing our own tail, trying to make people happy.

And, Ernie figured out a way not to do that.

And he's the only person I've ever met anywhere in any country that has even approached that.

Well, he's pointing that to me.

Ernie was born and raised near Tindal.

When he was young, he never thought about developing a career.

Ernie calls himself the proverbial grasshopper.

He doesn't have a higher education.

So it's surprising to visitors that Ernie can quote the Latin names of just about any plant in sight, and he often makes literary references in everyday conversation.

Over the years, Ernie has been a construction worker, welder, lifeguard, dam builder, highway department employee, and the owner operator of a shoe repair shop.

He's watched the world change along with his career choices.

Well, in a lot of ways it's it's, you know, progress is is nice.

You know, you like living is a lot easier, a lot less work and all that.

But, you hate to see a lot of that old.

Skills disappear.

You know that people did things by hand, and and, the craftsmanship was pretty neat.

Even even things as simple as a little turn latch on a gate.

You know, somebody who sold them out with a pocket knife in the old days, you know, now they screw on a metal thing you buy in the hardware store, and it's done, you know, and it's, in the old days, that was they did it by hand, you know, and it was somehow it was warmer and more personal, I guess.

I don't know.

Tell me about your home.

It's not the largest home in the county.

No, but it's home, I guess.

What are the measurements?

It's 12 by 16, and, well, it's it's big enough for me.

You know, I don't, need a lot of space.

It's pretty messy.

I'm not any kind of a housekeeper, but, And keeping a hawk in there, it, it gets pretty disturbed, but.

And I've had to take down some of my decorations since we've.

Since I keep a hawk in there a lot.

I used to keep, since I'm a fly tire, I have a lot of feathers around.

And I used to keep birds, skins and stuff hanging on the wall because they're kind of pretty.

But.

But, birds are always mating at them, so I had to quit that.

It looks like you have one of the best views in South that that I do.

Yeah.

Yeah, that's a good part.

You know, this is great country out here.

Tell me about what you can see from your cabin.

Well, for one thing, you can't see anything manmade except a couple of power lines and one light over on, on the hill.

It, Oh.

The skiing hill over there.

They got one light up there at night.

Terry peak.

Yeah.

And that's the only manmade light you can see at night from here.

And, of course, Bear Butte is in the right off there in the distance.

And that's fun to watch.

All the different colors it gets from sunlight and clouds hanging on it, everything.

And, other than that, we're kind of in a little bit of a bowl here where where the land goes up around us and blocks all the stuff.

You don't care to look at.

Ernie has grown to love his cabin home in the northern hills just the way it is.

But he also knows changes in the land and maybe his lifestyle are just around the corner.

Well, I'm sure there's going to be a lot more people out here this seems to be kind of growing by leaps and bounds.

You.

And I, I don't know, I guess for the majority of people out here, they think it's great.

You know, but he's I've maintained all right along that our, our, scant population in South Dakota is their biggest asset.

And I don't know, I, I really hate to see a lot of people moving in, but, this tourist deal is kind of good.

You know, they come and spend their money and then they go home, and that's kind of a good deal.

But, and over the summer is the slow time of our year anyway.

So by the time they go home is when we start, you know, really getting interested in being out and about.

And that works out good for us.

But.

I don't know, it's so far, you know, we got plenty of places to play the Hawks and and plenty of game and at least most of the year to fly around.

So you really can't ask for much more than that.

You know, you see this all this in politics.

You see all this stuff like happened with Clinton and you, and your first reaction is, you know, my goodness, this is really turning into a fiasco of some sort.

But politics is bent like that.

If you look back, it hasn't changed any.

It's been like that ever since.

Two guys wanted the same job.

And, and so that I don't, I don't really concern myself with that much.

I guess, I guess my main concern is, is you kind of worry about, about the habitat deteriorating too much.

You know, the life quality of life is, is really important.

For everything.

Not just people.

I mean, everything that lives out here.

And there's a lot of really neat stuff out on the prairie that, people don't see or probably don't even realize is out here.

But, right.

You really hate to see that go, by the way.

You know, because there's no replacing that stuff once it's gone, which is South Dakotans be doing to help preserve their life.

Well, you can't really ask people to stop living, you know what I mean?

Everybody thinks they're they're important and their lives are, are important to them.

You know, I don't know, it's pretty hard.

The only thing you could, you could say is if they want to live city type lives, they should go where there's a city, you know, not not cut up where they are just so that they can have that kind of stuff.

But I don't know if that's fair either to other people, you know?

I mean, everybody's entitled to whatever they can get, I guess.

And, while you would prefer that they go on somewhere else, you can't really expect them to leave just because you don't like what they're doing, you know?

So I don't know, live and let live, I guess.

Are you the most satisfied guy in South Dakota?

I wouldn't be surprised.

I wouldn't be a bit surprised if you find yourself wandering the northern hills and happened to meet a man named Ernie Hirschman.

Don't be surprised if you two find yourself thinking he probably is the most content and satisfied man in the state.

While some men are content with living a simple life in simple surroundings, others dream of leaving a lasting legacy to mankind for one man, that dream was a legacy made of steel.

Vast throngs of grateful, happy people celebrate the end of fighting the dawn of peace.

2 million New Yorkers jammed.

Times square gets official.

It's all over.

It's total victory.

It was 1945, and American servicemen were coming home.

World War two was behind us.

America was changing focus from defeating enemies overseas to building a new economy at home.

It was time to start pursuing the American dream.

A dream that for most young families, started with owning a home.

But the sheer numbers of American dreamers meant that the demand for housing was at an all time high.

I've since returned and we're getting married and didn't want to go back to the traditional housing set up.

Then you start living with your parents, even though you're married, and then buy your own house.

They wanted to come home with her, with her wife, and have their own living quarters.

So it just kind of compounded the issues.

And then the baby boom shortly thereafter, it really multiplied the housing demand.

America needed affordable family housing and needed it fast.

Carl Stradlin, the general manager of Chicago Vitreous Enamel Company, had been working on an idea for a new building material.

His idea was not to build houses.

His original plan he wanted he took to the government, was to build gas stations, but they weren't to.

We need to provide housing for our returning veterans.

So he went back to his designers.

He said, build me a house of steel.

It sounded like a great idea, the same principles that a generation before had made the family car affordable would now do the same for the family home houses would be manufactured using porcelain enameled steel, the same material used in bathtubs and kitchen appliances.

The parts would be mass produced at his Ohio factory and trucked to building sites across the country.

Once at the site, they could be quickly assembled with just a Phillips head screwdriver and a socket wrench back in Ohio, the factory would produce 30,000 homes per year.

Stradlin secured a $15 million government loan and went to work.

The result was the luster on home, a gleaming, futuristic house with more in common with the cars in the driveway than most of the other homes in the neighborhood.

Designed in part by automobile designers, the 1000 square foot homes were intended to cost $7,000.

Buyers could choose between surf Blue, Dove Gray, Desert Tan and Mays yellow exteriors with neutral colored interiors.

The luster on company took out ads across the country, promising buyers a new standard of living forward thinking ideas like radiant heat in the ceiling, a combination clothes washer, dishwasher and built in cabinets, vanities and bookcases appealed to prospective buyers.

They are also Ada accessible, which was a new concept for that time frame that even today you can take a standard wheelchair and roll them inside, even to the bedrooms and the bathrooms.

So they were also looking at helping out some of their disabled veterans.

Lust runs were considered ultra modern, even space age.

At the time.

I told somebody today one thing about it, you know, a lot of people hang things on their refrigerator.

I can hang things anywhere in my house.

Mike Pooley owns this home in Mitchell, one of four lust runs in the Mitchell Lust Run Historic District and one of 14 across the state that have been listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

When you tell people that you live in a tin house and they drive by and they look at the outside and then they continue the conversation and you say, well, that's how the inside is, too.

And they're like, no, you don't have ten walls inside.

Yeah I do.

The Chapmans lived right across the street from Mike.

They bought their luster on just a couple of years ago.

Everything was metal, you know, and I looked around the shingles are metal sidings metal.

The doors are metal.

The interior walls are metal.

Sliding doors to the bedrooms and bathrooms.

They are all metal.

And, so was really different.

I've never seen so much metal, you know, but, so I was quite a, quite a change from, living in, the other types of homes that we've been in before.

Harvey and Laverne and Muller live in another three bedroom lust run right down the street.

Really?

We were quite impressed with, at that the evening we came in.

Showed it to his wife where he thought it was kind of neat.

That could be built pretty quick.

And we're, not a real expensive home, but are still a good looking home after 40 years, the outsides still look pretty new, except.

Or maybe there's a chip of paint gone.

Well, it was revolutionary.

And, you know, everything else was, brick and mortar or, wood frame and, now with the, Talk about, bad severe weather and stuff.

A lot of, people are talking about going to steel framed homes again.

You know, lust runs also make a great conversation piece.

Oh, it's a standing joke with pretty much everybody.

You know, you live in a tin house.

You know, during a lightning storm.

Are you scared because you're going to get electrocuted?

During a, hail storm?

It sounds like a drive by shooting.

Those types of things.

People like to make fun of it.

We had some kids stay with us overnight, you know, from, church groups that would stay overnight.

And they just raved over it.

They didn't think there was such a thing in this world.

In the end, financial problems, unexpected costs and slower than anticipated production plagued the lust run company.

Despite government loans eventually totaling $37 million, the factory never came close to meeting their 100 homes per day goal and orders piled up.

Although popular with the public, Lust Run was losing up to $1 million a month in 1950.

Carl Stratton's dream ended when the company filed for bankruptcy after producing less than 2500 homes.

The lust runs here in Mitchell are unique because of their location.

In my research across the country, I've only found one large area of less drawn out, and that's on, the Quantico base and there's like 300 of them there in Mitchell.

There are four right in a block together.

And in the rest of the state, there's only two next to each other that I found.

The last runs are listed on the National Register of Historic Places, not because of their physical age, but because of the age they symbolize.

Carl Strand one's dream may not have turned out as he had planned, but today his lust drawn homes remain a tribute to that dream, both architecturally and historically.

They are of a unique design of architectural merit.

They were only a limited amount of them made during the construction period.

So they're very rare.

Housing types throughout the country.

They are, a distinct point to a specific point in time in history.

And.

Carl Strand Lynde lived in obscurity for the rest of his life, right up to his death in 1974.

He insisted that if the government had just given him more time, the less drawn company would have turned a profit, making him a fortune and changing the way we all live.

Early explorers of the New World were taught by Native Americans how to catch fish, by tying animal hair in the shape of insects to bone hooks that may well have been the beginning of the craft of fly tying and the art of fly fishing.

As you'll see in this next segment.

95% of what fish in the stream eat is based on insects in one form or another, whether they're the kind you see flying around or, nymphs and larva and stuff that live under rocks.

95% of what they eat is based on that in one form or another.

So when you tie flies, you're trying to imitate at least close enough to form the fish.

One of those types of life form.

Most people who fly fish become interested in fly tying after they learn to fly fish.

Al Campbell was just the opposite.

When I was young, my family lived in Livingston, Montana, and it was our tradition every Saturday that we would go to the grocery store and shop.

And I hated that.

One Saturday we stopped at Dan Bailey's Fly shop and Dan Bailey had the first mail order fly food fly business in the world.

Anyway, we stopped there.

My dad had to pick up a fishing license and some other supplies, and there were some people tying flies and I was just captivated by that.

These women were tying beautiful flies, and he hired a lot of the local women to tie his flies for him.

So I was captivated by that.

And my dad time came and he said, let's go shopping.

And I like the youngster of my age through all of that, I didn't want to go shopping.

Dan Bailey, bless his heart, said, just leave him here.

He'll be fine.

It became a Saturday routine to do that.

One day after many, several months of this, Dan Bailey asked if I would like to learn to fly fish.

And, I think you probably could have heard my head shaking.

Yes, 20 miles away.

But yeah, I definitely wanted to learn to fly the.

The tools you need are pretty basic.

You need some thread, a bobbin, a pair of scissors, advice and materials that you wouldn't think would result in anything like this.

But first you need to identify what the fish will eat and then try and replicate that insect.

Remember the stone fly nymph that we were looking at?

You can take materials and you can try to create something that looks like it.

Basically it was kind of a brown and orange or yellow or whatever type of color.

So you try to find a hook that is going to somewhat closely match it.

You find your thread that you're going to use.

It can be black because their heads are kind of dark.

You know, the only important place that the thread showed up much was on the but the other area.

And basically what you do is you select materials that are going to show up, the way that the fly looks or they're going to look similar to the insect, the fish.

In this case, I may, since they have tails on them, spot tails.

Now, keep in mind that this fly is going to scoot through the water pretty fast when it's in front of the fish, so they're not going to have a chance to count and see whether it's got two tails or 22.

I don't know what this is called because we haven't tried one of these before, but I'm going to create something that should catch fish.

To most people, fly tying is a means to catch a fish.

To some it is a craft.

Either way, it is not something that can be learned overnight.

I think a lot of people don't recognize the craft value of it because they've never been around it much, so they don't really see the craft value.

But yeah, it is the craft definitely.

All I'm doing is taking different materials and manipulating where they lay on the hook to create like an artist with with paint, create a picture.

You don't learn to play the trumpet on a day.

You don't learn to type flies in a day.

You might learn to type one fly in a day, but to tie a lot of different flies, it doesn't take some time.

Most flies are designed to look like one certain insect.

Others are more versatile.

This fly is called the swamp.

Yeah, it's even harder to pronounce swap tackle.

Wingless all purpose fly.

It's an acronym spelt S, h, w RPA swap, and basically it's designed is to look more like a lot of things than anything.

And in particular, if you look at, insects and try to view them as a fish, would view them, a lot of different insects on a bright, sunny day will look about the same from underneath them.

Sunshine.

And then the fish, as I oftentimes what's flying over them, they see as a silhouette or floating over them.

They see as a silhouette and they don't get a good view.

As to the fall food, especially considering there's a lot of reflection from underneath on the water to so they see the silhouette rather than the whole fly.

Well, this fly is designed to create that impression of something, even though it may not be exactly like anything that looks enough.

Like everything that they're going to buy the and we're done.

Like any hobby, fly tying and fly fishing can reduce the pressure of everyday life.

Life.

If you're trying to do that for me.

It's, very pleasant sport.

And I think of fly tying is part of the overall sport.

It's not.

It's not the sport.

It's just part of the overall sport.

Some of the people I've talked to tie flies and never, never fly for they tie flies.

It's a type of therapy for them.

If you need something to relax your nerves and give you something to do, time flies can be a real good therapy for the.

In my case, it's a little bit of both.

I'm a fisherman too, but.

If you'd like to learn more about fly tying or the sport of fly fishing, you can visit our via our web page.

You can also try reading fly fishing by Tom McNally and fly tying methods by Daryl Martin.

Check your local library.

While some men have a passion in life for fishing, some find passion in a more spiritual arena.

In this next segment, we'll visit with the friends and family of Joseph Meyer, the founder of the Black Hills Passion Play in Spearfish and a true man of passion.

Mr.

Meyer definitely.

Was one of the greatest actors I think I've ever experienced in my life.

His interpretation of of the Christmas was one of warmth and tenderness, but at the same time, strength.

He was a businessman.

He was a very fine actor.

He was a promoter.

He was a tireless worker, worked continuously and was a perfect gentleman, absolutely perfect gentleman, the most courteous person I think I've ever known.

He never asked anyone to do anything that he couldn't do himself.

And if you didn't hurry and do it, he'd have it done.

He was a man of tremendous energies.

Physical energies, mental energies, spiritual energies.

He was a man who pursued his dream, who followed the goal that he had set for himself and, did not settle for less.

He was Joseph Meyer, founder and director of the Black Hills Passion Play in Spearfish, South Dakota.

But many knew him as the portrayer of Jesus Christ.

Joseph began his acting career as a youngster playing the baby Jesus in Lune in Germany.

He was the sixth generation of his family to participate in the Passion Play dating back to 1242.

Joseph immigrated to the United States in 1932.

He and members of the Passion Play performed in cities all across America until he found his home in Spearfish.

Five years later, he was traveling on his way to the West Coast with a tour.

In 1937, and was playing in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, which at that time, of course, was the only town of any size in our state.

A group of, businessmen from the Black Hills, contacted him and asked if he could take a day to come out to the Black Hills and look, at some possible sites here, which he did.

He was shown, what later became, the Stratus Strato Bowl, stratosphere Bowl, I think in Rapid City.

But, that did not meet his requirements.

And somebody suggested that he come on up to Spearfish.

Well, Spearfish was a tiny little town of 2500 people, and.

But he came along and, stood on this hillside and saw the magnificent vista in front of him.

Lookout mountain, the valley all around him, the hills surrounding, and at that time there was an apple orchard down at the foot of the hill.

Some people talking in the apple orchard, were audible to him, and he realized that also, this hillside provided tremendous acoustics.

And so that, determined his choice, of Spearfish, for the permanent home of the passion play.

Producing a player of this magnitude is an incredible feat.

Joseph Meyer was perhaps the American a fine example of the American dream.

He came to America in, the early 30s to escape the oppression of World War Two in Europe.

And he had nothing with him other than his dreams.

And he was with a theater company.

But he began to flesh out his dreams to make them a reality, like so many of the pioneers did in the early part of the century.

And the fact that the play has been here 60 years, I think, says a lot about what type of business man he was.

He started out with this amphitheater.

There were black seats out here at the beginning, and they had to haul in bushes or whatnot.

So to soften the appearance of the stage, and gradually he took the receipts of and the money that they made in the tours and here and turned it back into the amphitheater.

He was continuously improving it.

Joseph, share the love and the direction of the Passion Play with his wife, Claire, who also played the part of Mother Mary.

But Joseph's duties didn't stop at the portrayal of the Christus or the management of the production.

Joseph also had a love for animals, and would often train the young camels and horses that would become part of the Passion Play, a performance Joseph Meyer's accomplishments did not stop after the creation of the Passion Play.

He was very influential on the pavement of Spearfish Canyon Road and the construction and placement of Interstate 90, which runs next to Spearfish.

Joseph was the recipient of many awards, including the Lifetime Achievement Award, given to him shortly before his death by Governor William Janklow.

Joseph also gave back with time and money to charities, organizations, and those less fortunate than he.

He did things for everybody.

A lot of people didn't know that he was the one that helped them get started, or maybe some of the many occasion he found that someone needed something, he would, call me and say, you think you could arrange to have this taken care of for these folks?

And I said, yes.

People never knew.

He was a very generous, very noble, very fine individual in that respect.

He responded to people a great deal.

And I think that he felt, that he was helping in some way to return some of the, goodness which had been given to him through this community and by the United States.

He was an enthusiastic, American citizen, became a citizen early on and involved himself, a great deal in, politics in, that being a special interest of his, and his being well informed, in it.

And so he just, I think, made himself, as much of an American as he could, in his eyes, that involved, giving of himself, of his time, of his financial support when that was possible.

He was, dedicated to his people.

He was dedicated to his friends and, of course, his family.

The the fact that the play continues today, I think, says a lot about Joseph Martin's dedication.

It was his life's dream, and it's an honor to be carrying it on for him now, when you were in the presence of Joseph Meyer, you definitely knew that you were in the presence of a great man.

But at the same time, he was not intimidating as great people can be sometimes.

Joseph Meyer had a wonderful way of putting you at ease and making you feel how, like a human being.

After his retirement in 1991, Joseph had performed as the Christus more than 9000 times, spanning more than 60 years.

Joseph Meyer passed away at the age of 94 on January 31st, 1999, in Spearfish.

His tradition lives on is daughter Your mother and her husband, Guido del Vecchia, manage the production of the Passion Play through his contributions, achievements and memory.

Joseph Meyer will truly be remembered as a man of passion.

Should you ever find yourself in the Black Hills during the summer months, you might want to take in the Black Hills Passion Play performances are done on Tuesday, Thursday and Sunday.

All summer long.

In the pursuit of story subjects for Dakota Life, we sometimes find ourselves having a lot of fun.

In this next story done around Halloween, we not only had some fun, we actually found a real life Ghostbuster.

The subject of our investigation?

This house in Yankton.

People familiar with the house were convinced that it was haunted.

We loaded up our ghost busting equipment and took off in search of the truth.

When we arrived, we found what appeared to be a normal house on a normal street in a normal town.

But after talking to the owner, we realized the things happening here were far from normal.

There was a family that lived here prior to me for probably 30 years, and they said it was haunted, which would fly off the wall.

Things that were in the basement.

We got thrown out to the trash, returned mysteriously, and.

I just kind of said, yeah, right.

And then when I moved in, then it I think I was proven wrong.

Colleen first noticed strange behavior in her pet cats.

They appeared to be watching something moving around the room and going up the stairs, but the cats weren't alone.

People who rented the upstairs apartment also spoke up.

She said there is somebody that shuts my door, walks up the stairs, proceeds down the hallway, and their reward for that freak.

And when the board creaks, she said, I know they're there, she said.

I get up everything.

And Colleen herself had experienced some strange things.

I heard marbles rolling all over the floor, and so I asked the girl who lived up there, Loretta, I said, was your daughter up there playing with marbles like at three in the morning last night?

And she said, no, did you hear that?

And I said, yeah.

She said, what was that?

And I said, it sounded like marbles rolling to me on the floor.

Well, it's all carpet up there.

So then we all got.

Even Colleen's next door neighbor had heard strange things from the houses previous owner.

And he told me of two different incidences in the home, in his house that he saw.

His dad and I had asked him about it, and he had said that he knows perfectly well that his dad naturally had died a few years prior to that, and he had said that there was no question in his mind whatsoever that he saw his dad on two different occasions in that house.

We decided to have a look around.

Hey, wait a minute.

You hear that?

Something is ticking.

I hear something ticking.

What is that?

We definitely needed an expert, and we knew just who to call.

This is a house that attracts ghosts.

It's a place where old ghosts meet.

As a professional psychic.

Donna O'Dea hunts ghosts for a living.

Some of them come because they don't know they're dead.

And some of them, stay in a place because they feel that they have something that they have to take care of, that they have to finish unfinished business.

Some of them are angry.

Some of them are afraid.

There's, an older man who lives here.

And, He's he's happy here.

He doesn't want to leave here.

He spends a lot of time in the kitchen.

He likes fried eggs.

He said that he heard that he was really hot.

And.

The other place isn't the choice that he said.

His wife was a saint.

Anyway, that's what she always said.

So she must be in heaven.

She must be in the other place.

And so he's not leaving.

They didn't get along very well.

I think he was at one time clobbered with a frying pan.

There's a young man here, 15 or 16 years old.

He died, tragically.

Used drugs in his life.

And that may have been a contributing factor to his death.

This room must must have been, a parlor.

Yeah.

I can see people playing cards in here.

There's a lady in a long dress.

They're having tea.

They're playing cards there.

There are.

There are four ladies here.

Even a patch of plaster revealed signs of an angry ghost.

There's a man who was like a very.

There's the.

I was in there.

I can't see as well from this angle myself, but here's.

Here's the nose and here's the mouth just full of venom and spittle and screaming and yelling and I feel that this is a house that may be one of those houses that ghosts just migrate to.

You know, just as in life, we have favorite places we go.

I mean, we have coffee shops where we meet.

Well, this is a house where all ghosts meet.

As long as they don't bother me or harm me or my son, it doesn't bother me.

But if I ever see one face to face, I probably won't live here.

I mean, that's fine.

I hear noises or.

Or my renters tell me and and, But if I actually see one walk up to me.

Yeah, I would probably move out.

Who knows what lurks in the dark recesses of a home?

An old man in an unhappy marriage.

A young man searching for peace.

An old lady playing games.

When you hear a bump in the night.

Just remember this normal house.

On this normal street.

In this normal town.

And a mystery that may always remain mysterious.

Locked up forever inside the yet.

And find.

Donna O'Dea says that hauntings are more common than you may think.

According to her, one third of us may someday end up roaming the earth as spirits.

Believe it or not.

Well, that's all the time we have for this edition of Dakota Life.

We hope you've enjoyed the program.

If you have an idea for a future Dakota Life segment, please drop us an email at Dakota life@sdb.org or call us at 1877 talk PTV.

That's 1-877-825-5788.

Join us next time as we travel our great state in search of stories of Dakota life for South Dakota Public television.

I'm Michelle Van Maanen Thanks for watching.

And.

Many.