This is 99% invisible.

I'm Roman Mars.

Our story this week is about a park.

Not some massive city park designed by Frederick Law Olmstead or anything.

Just an ordinary neighborhood park in a suburb of St. Louis.

It's about seven acres with soccer fields, two playgrounds, tennis courts, and a creek that runs

along the back.

Dave Davis worked there as a groundskeeper in the 90s. It was an unpaid position, but it came with a strange perk.

The trade-off was that you got to live in a house for free in a good school district in a nice neighborhood

A park in your backyard? Right at the entrance of the park there was a house where Dave and his family lived at At the time, he and his wife

were struggling to save enough money

to buy their own house, so it was perfect for them.

It quite honestly felt like an answer to a prayer

because we were newly married. we had two children at this

point and and you know we really wanted to own a home and we wanted to get ahead.

At first glance the house seemed like just an ordinary ranch home.

From the outside it looked like pretty much any of the other houses in the area, maybe a little bit smaller.

But it was when you got inside the house that you realized, wow, and the only way to describe it is to be quick and say, it's like somebody hurried

up and finished it.

And that's because that is exactly what had happened.

It turns out that Dave's house wasn't supposed to be the home for the

groundskeeper. In fact, the park was never supposed to be a park. It was

...