Night falls on Evergreen Cemetery, and the shadows grow deep beneath the towering pine trees.
Rustling can be heard just under the clip-clop of horse hooves.
A wagon slowly rolls past row after row of headstones in the century-old graveyard. A cool breeze chills the passengers as tales are spun about the cemetery's occupants. Some are historic figures. Some are notorious. Some are restless and roaming the grounds.
It is the first time in the 101-year history of Evergreen Mortuary, Cemetery and Crematory that the grounds have been open after dark for a Halloween-themed event. Tours, organized by Bill Delfs, operator of RavenHearse Produc-tions, will be offered this weekend and next.
Bill Addison, president of Evergreen, operates the cemetery with his sister, Anne Vandenberg. Normally, the cemetery closes at sunset. But Vandenberg hopes the after-hours RavenHearse tours, with an emphasis on history, will put visitors at ease and encourage them to return to Evergreen Cemetery, 3015 N. Oracle Road.
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"Cemeteries are fantastic history books," she said. "There are some wonderful stories to be told of the pioneers and on the military side.
"Evergreen is so unique because it has been around since 1907" and is the only privately owned cemetery left in Tucson.
More than 33,000 people are interred at Evergreen Cemetery — 60 of its 120 acres are currently developed.
Though the cemetery is barely a century old, some of its occupants expired decades earlier.
During the last century and a half, land developers saw potential for building on cemetery sites closer to Tucson's center. That meant moving the occupants of those graves. That meant paying someone to disinter and rebury their dearly departed.
If families couldn't afford such a service, some did the job themselves, covertly sneaking into the grounds to replot their relatives, Delfs said. It's entirely possible, he said, that some of those rogue gravediggers might still roam the property looking for a place to transplant their kin.
The family-friendly cemetery tours will be gore-free, and largely based on local historical figures, facts and folklore suitable for all ages, Delfs said.
"We don't want to do anything scary or disrespectful," he said.
But that doesn't mean the odd specter or two won't take an interest in after-hours visitors or try to hitch a ride aboard the wagon.
No two tours will be exactly the same, said Jerry Woods, a gunslinger from Trail Dust Town who will make an appearance on the tour as a comical, gravedigging apparition.
The tour, he said, "feels like it has a living presence to it. It can move and shift and develop."
During the tour nights, Boy Scouts and students from Abbie Loveland Tuller School will sell refreshments.
Horse-drawn and vintage motorized hearses will be parked nearby so visitors can take their photographs with the funeral coaches.
Visitors be forewarned, though: If a weeping woman dressed in a flowing white gown should approach, resist the urge to comfort her.
The lovely woman is La Llorona, and she would be only too glad to lure strangers to their deaths as she wanders the banks of arroyos and rivers, searching for her own children, whom legend says she drowned lifetimes ago.
DID YOU KNOW
La Llorona (pronounced "LAH yoh ROH nah"), Spanish for the Weeping Woman, has been a part of Hispanic culture since the days of the conquistadores.
The tall, thin spirit — blessed with natural beauty and flowing black hair — is that of a doomed mother who drowned her children and now spends eternity searching for them along rivers and arroyos.
But it's not just her own children for whom La Llorona searches.
Legend says the apparition is indiscriminate, acting without mercy, dragging strangers, young and old, to watery graves.
Source: www.legendsofamerica.com
