Oakland Cemetery’s Halloween tours let the dead speak to the living

Marietta: Several tours, including a pub crawl, a haunted trolley tour and a “Scary-etta” downtown tour, sponsored by the Ghosts of Marietta; 770-425-1006; www.ghostsofmarietta.com/

Norcross: Haunted History Walks, Friday-Oct. 30; 404-934-4805; www.historywalksofnorcross.com

Stone Mountain: A Tour of Southern Ghosts, Thursday- Sunday and Halloween; 770-469-1105; festivals.stonemountainpark.com/

The dead walk the earth this time of year, but there are no stumbling, brain-eating zombies at Historic Oakland Cemetery.

Here, at Atlanta’s most celebrated boneyard, the ghosts are well-spoken and polite. Dead, but polite.

“This is designed to enlighten, not frighten,” Mary Woodlan, director of volunteers and special events at Oakland, said of the October night-time graveyard tours called “Capturing the Spirit of Oakland.”

Each year, a few full-time “residents” of the cemetery (played by actors, storytellers and volunteers) rise from their earthy beds to tell tales of their lives to night-time tour groups. It is the one time that visitors are allowed inside Oakland after dark.

And though there are no jump scares, and the emphasis is on smiles rather than chills, storyteller LaDoris Bias-Davis points out that it is almost Halloween, it will be night-time, and you will be standing in a graveyard, talking to a dead person. Some numinous dread is expected.

“It adds to the story,” said the South DeKalb resident. “We’re just capitalizing on this time of year.”

Bias-Davis play an African-American household servant from South Carolina named Catherine Holmes. Holmes’ father was a slave, but he was able to pay for the freedom of his children. After the Civil War, Holmes moved to Atlanta to work for a white family named Boylston. When she died in the late 1800s, the Boylstons insisted that, though the cemetery was segregated, she be buried in their family plot.

While little is known about Catherine’s own family, some other ghosts on the tour will be more familiar to visitors. Sally Smith, a volunteer at Oakland and manager of the gift shop, brings Oakland resident Margaret Mitchell back to life this year, and gives Mitchell an opportunity to reminisce about her famous book, the movie it spawned, and her newspaper career. She will dress in a pearl-and-lace dress and other appropriate period gear, including the same kind of low-heeled shoes Mitchell would have worn. “She had a bad ankle,’ said Smith. “That’s why she decided to write a book.”

About 90 visitors at a time will stroll through the cemetery during the guided one-hour tours and will visit six different graves. “The scripts are very entertaining,” said Woodlan. “The actors take on the persona of these people, and they ham it up.”

Researchers often turn up interesting information about the cemetery and those buried there, including a recent discovery that Atlanta lumber executive David Crockett, buried at Oakland in 1932, was the great-grandson of that very famous David Crockett who was, reportedly, king of the wild frontier.

There are ghost tours in almost every part of the metro area during the month of October. The ghosts at Oakland have been introducing themselves to visitors for the past seven years, and usually different Oakland residents will pop up each year, though some of the favorites, such as golfer Bobby Jones and former mayor Maynard Jackson, have made return visits.

“Sometimes there’s a little murder and mayhem involved,” said Woodlan, as in the tale of two brothers who shot each other to death during a boarding-house brawl. “They were the best of friends,” she said, “when they weren’t drunk”

But generally it’s a peaceful evening. “All Saints Day is about respecting the dead, honoring your past, honoring your ancestors,” said executive director David Moore, “and that’s what we do here year ‘round.”