VISITORS TO THE BULLOCK HOTEL, one of the key features of historic Deadwood?s Main Street, may have the opportunity to experience a visit from the hotel?s founder. Seth Bullock passed away in 1919.
I grew up in an old turn-of-the-century house with an active history. It had once been a guest house where Theodore Roosevelt stayed and still had the original horse hitching posts and old-fashioned well spigots for the horse troughs.
Old houses make the best settings for ghost stories. Creeking steps and doors take us back to the opening of the radio drama ?The Inner Sanctum,? and dark drafty attics give us the heebie jeebies as we half expect Bela Lugosi to appear around the corner.
When we first moved in to our house, school kids told my then 8-year-old brother that someone had died in the house and they could be heard walking around the attic at night. My brother told us this at the dinner table and, despite my parents? best attempts at refuting the story, he was determined to find the ghost.
That night, after everyone had fallen asleep, he carefully climbed the stairs to the attic in hopes of catching the ghost during his stroll. What he planned to do with the ghost when he caught him, I?m not sure. As little boys are wont to do, he probably would have questioned the poor thing all night about the logistics of being a ghost (is it any wonder he grew up to be an engineer?). Unfortunately, those creeking steps did his plans in. Mom soon followed behind him and tucked him back into bed before he could meet our spooky house guest.
South Dakota?s historic preservation efforts have helped keep these wonderful old houses around, like the one I grew up in, for generations to enjoy. But the legends of haunted places in South Dakota will last forever.
The state park
The beautiful, but eerie, Sica Hollow in northeast South Dakota offers some of the most spectacular scenery in the state and is thought to be the location of a creation and vengeance story where various Native American mythical figures fought.
The Hollow's first Indian visitors named it "Sica," (pronounced she-cha) meaning evil or bad. Gurgling reddish bogs, which Indians saw as the blood and flesh of their ancestors, line the Trail of the Spirits. Swamp gas and stumps glow in the dark, and small waterfalls are heard echoing as trapped air escapes.
Many of the fears of the supernatural were spread from the Sioux to the white settlers. It was later believed that some sort of beast or ?Big Foot? type man inhabited the dense woods, a fear given credence when several people disappeared at Sica Hollow in the 1970s.
Several of the people who joined the hunting parties for the missing persons admitted that they were looking for some sort of beast. The missing people were never found.
For those brave enough to stay the night in the park, many have reported hearing voices and chanting, the sounds of cries and war whoops, and even a few reported seeing ghostly Indian braves.
The state capital
The state capital, Pierre (pronounced peer), boasts several haunted places.
One of the best known is the First United Methodist Church, where the ghost is thought to be a young choir director who fell to his death from the church balcony. Church members and ministers have reported unexplained noises and movement in various areas of the church, including inside locked rooms.
Now demolished, the old Kehr Pioneer Store, later a nightclub and donut shop, has produced several ghost stories. Thought to be haunted by its original owner, Max Kehr, who hung himself in an upstairs apartment, former owners of the old building tell stories of strange noises.
One instance occurred when the building housed a nightclub. The owner claimed to have heard someone walking down the stairs and up to the door of the office, but when he opened the door, no one was there.
A former hospital turned apartment building houses residents who report an elevator that seems to run on its own and television sets that mysteriously turn on cartoons, when the room is empty. People reporting the incidents think the presence is that of a young girl.
The historic hotel
Featured on the television show, ?Unsolved Mysteries,? The Bullock Hotel in historic Deadwood continues to thrive since it was first built in 1894. Located on the remnants of Sol Star?s and Seth Bullock?s hardware store and warehouse, the entrepreneurs changed business plans after their store had burned for the second time.
Deciding to build Deadwood's finest hotel, they had native pink and white sandstone hauled from a quarry to build the Italianate style hotel. Upon completion, it boasted a restaurant that could seat 100 people and offered dishes with pheasant and lobster. The large lobby featured red velvet carpeting, brass chandeliers, oak trim and a Steinway grand piano. The 63 rooms upstairs were furnished with oak dressers and brass beds. Each floor had a bathroom, and a library and parlor were located off the balcony.
Since his death in 1919, Seth Bullock continues to play host at his namesake hotel. According to both staff and guests, reports of the tall ghostly figure of Bullock in various areas of the hotel, including the restaurant and the basement still occur. Plates and glasses have been known to shake and move in the restaurant, and lights and appliances turn on and off by themselves.
Guests have reported hearing their name called out by a male voice or been tapped on the shoulder when no one is present. Others have heard whistling or the sounds of footsteps in the hallways when no one is there.
In the guest rooms, reports continue of unplugged alarm clocks going off, televisions operating without assistance, cloudy figures visiting rooms and hallways, and a broken antique clock continuing to chime.
The Bullock Hotel offers a ghost tour for those wanting to hear more stories and see the places where they occurred.
