When Laurie and Chuck Ness head downtown every Saturday night of the summer, they have a way of standing out. It could be the swish of Laurie's hoop skirt and bonnet, or the dapper hat worn by her husband as a group gathers around them next to the pink-hued Sioux quartzite Pipestone County Museum building.
Their Civil War-era attire seems fitting for the weekly Ghost Walks, started six years ago to raise money for the town of Pipestone's Civil War Days. Their somber black costumes also set the mood for the eerie stories they tell during these walks.
Laurie Ness, who is also the mayor of Pipestone, started the tours with 32 ghost stories collected from residents and the county museum. "We now have well over 250 stories and three people telling them," she says.
Established by Civil War veterans in 1873, Pipestone has fewer than 4,200 residents, but its history runs deep with the local pipestone quarries that were considered sacred long before Europeans arrived. American Indians still quarry the red pipestone (aka catlinite), and visitors to Pipestone National Monument can watch pipe carvers demonstrate their craft, their fingers coated with the chalky red dust.
"The red rock represents the blood of the natives," Laurie Ness said. There are legends of "Little People" at the quarries, who are known to be pranksters, and stories of Indian children seen playing or heard talking in a nursing home on the former site of an 1890s Indian boarding school.
Other stories involve the Calumet Inn, where a guest died in a 1944 Valentine's Day fire; unexplained orbs of light; a theater with mysterious footsteps and flickering lights, and buildings where past murders might be the cause of sudden drops in temperature.
Most of Pipestone's ghost stories originate in the late-1800s downtown historic district, where the stateliest buildings, including the Calumet Inn, sport the distinctive rosy or dark red tone of quartzite, which deepens as twilight arrives. Even a skeptic can appreciate how a ghost story enlivens a downtown stroll, and highlights the expressive faces carved in sandstone on the Moore Block building at Main Street and Hiawatha Avenue.
Ghost tours run Saturday evenings from late May through early September, and reservations are recommended ($7; 1-507-825-2563). Anyone craving more can return for Pipestone Paranormal Weekend, Oct. 10-11.
