Filled with ’80s film love, South Dakota Ghostbusters keeps spooky season alive year-round

By John Hult, for Pigeon605

There’s just something about “Ghostbusters.”

The 1984 film straddles the line between cult classic and mainstream blockbuster, still screened the world over for casual fans and nostalgia junkies while inspiring intense dedication from cosplayers, toy collectors and others in the general nerd culture orbit.

Is the staying power about its blend of paranormal and pyrotechnics? The cast’s confederacy of comic genius? The clever script? The fact that its protagonists were schlubby, relatable anti-heroes?

And how much of it has to do with that call-and-response earworm of a theme song?

For South Dakota Ghostbuster Terri Widener, it’s all of that.

“Even for back in the day when it came out, it was just really unusual,” said Widener, a Sioux Falls pharmacist and mother of four who joined the group about a year ago. “Everyone was able to find at least one thing about it they could connect to.”

One thing is clear: people love Ghostbusters, on screen or in person. When Widener and her fellow cosplayers don their tan jumpsuits, strap on their self-made proton packs and walk alongside their “ECTO-SD” vehicle as the theme song blares, “people get so excited,” Widener said.

“People laugh and smile and chant ‘who ya gonna call?’ as we walk by. It’s just a great feeling.”

The South Dakota chapter has grown to around 20 volunteer members in the seven years since its founding. They’ve become a Halloween season staple, appearing at trunk-or-treat events, the Washington Pavilion’s Spooky Science, Zombie Walk and SiouxperCon, which kicks off “spooky season” in early October.

Halloween is the group’s busiest season, according to founder Brandan Moe of Howard, but the calls for service are steady all year. There’s the Mall Walk for LifeScape in February, the St. Patrick’s Day Parade in March and Canaries games and film screenings in the summer.

And those are just the official events.

“Sometimes if we’ve got some time before or after an event, we’ll go wander around downtown just to see people’s reactions,” said Moe, who spends his out-of-jumpsuit hours in IT.

The reactions are the reward for the volunteers, but there’s more to it. The group has raised $5,000 themselves for various charities around town during SiouxperCon and shows up to support fundraisers held by other groups throughout the year to hand out stickers, trade movie quotes and pose for photos with kids and their families.

The LifeScape event in February is “one of our favorites,” Moe said.

“We usually have a team to raise money for them as well,” he said. “It’s a very rewarding event to do, and we like interacting with everyone and being able to help out such a special organization.”

Joy is its own currency, of course, and plenty of the group’s events are about just that. The Canaries hold an ’80s night every Wednesday, built around a film from the decade. Canaries media director John Gaskins called up Moe on short notice a few months back, and four of the Ghostbusters answered the call to meet the fans, show off “ECTO-SD” and take part in an “Ecto-Cooler” chugging challenge – the “ecto-cooler” that night was Mountain Dew because the actual branded beverage from Hi-C was discontinued in 2001.

As Gaskins and his crew begin to sort the 2021 season’s theme nights into hits and misses, he said, there’s no question that Ghostbusters night falls into the former category.

“The outfits, all the gear that they have, it all makes for a great experience,” Gaskins said. “I’m guessing that for a lot of the fans, that’s what they’ll remember. To have the actual South Dakota Ghostbusters there really made the night.”

The energy and interest didn’t come right away. Moe started the group’s Facebook page in 2014 after learning that South Dakota was the only state lacking a chapter. It wasn’t until the release of a female-focused “Ghostbusters” reboot in 2016 that things took off.

Before long, Moe had a full crew. He bought a hearse in Omaha and turned it into ECTO-SD in preparation for the group’s first big public event, and the response didn’t disappoint.

“When we showed up at Zombie Walk in 2016, everybody just thought it was the coolest thing ever,” Moe said.

Members pay a small fee to help pay for branded patches and parade entry fees and fund their own costumes, but veterans help newer members find deals and workarounds. Walmart now sells ghost traps for about $20 that can be modified to match what’s seen in the film, for example. The sticker shock from the group’s biggest costume investment needn’t scare off people, Moe said. He estimates that he ha put at least $3,500 into his own proton pack, but that’s counting multiple modifications over several years.

“Even thinking about $3,500 for a proton pack can be pretty overwhelming for people,” Moe said.

In the end, the payoff for such investments can be counted in charitable donations, camaraderie and an ever-growing tally of smiling faces.

Widener is glad she took the leap after seeing the crew at the St. Patrick’s Day Parade a few years in a row. She’s proud of the attention to detail her team puts into the screen-accurate costumes and accessories – “they help me get my geek on” – and that sharing her love for the franchise can do some good for her city.

“I’m really lucky to have found the Ghostbusters,” she said. “I love it, my kids really enjoy it, and it’s been an incredible way to get out and connect with our community.”