Press Release:
The Batavia Cemetery Association is excited to announce that the annual Halloween Candlelight Ghost Walk will be held on Saturday, October 21. Join us for some spooky fun on a ghost walk through the Historic Batavia Cemetery on Harvester Avenue to meet the famous and infamous movers and shakers who not only shaped and influenced the City of Batavia, but the United States and the world.
The guided tour on candlelit paths will bring guests to hear men and women, who, for various reasons, held great power and exerted great influence in their day, were victims of tragic events, or both. Confederate Major Philemon Tracy, one of the few Confederate officers buried in the north; surveyor and land developer of western New York Joseph Ellicott, a man of great power and great flaws; and William Morgan, who disappeared and was allegedly murdered before he could reveal the secrets of the Masons, will tell their stories.
Listen to Utopian socialist Albert Brisbane; Mary Elizabeth Wood, the first librarian at the Richmond Memorial Library and founder of the first library school in China; and Dr. Martha Morgan, a compassionate doctor who spent most of her professional life working at the State Lunatic Hospital in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.
Meet Civil War General John H. Martindale, and maltster and brewer Eli Fish. Shipping and railroad magnate Dean Richmond and his wife Mary will greet guests in their beautiful mausoleum on the last stop of the tour.
Tours begin at 7 p.m. and run every fifteen minutes until 8:45 p.m. Admission is $15. Reservations are required. Proceeds benefit the upkeep and restoration of the cemetery. For more information, or to make reservations, go to bataviacemetery.org.
