SUMTER, S.C. — To get in the Halloween spirit, a Sumter woman is leading the Graveyard Chronicles to teach people a piece of the past. Diana Roof has spent months in the historic Sumter Cemetery, learning about some of the 13,000 people buried in the 45 acres since 1831.
"History is just not numbers, history, they're real people," Roof shared.
"They're just like you and me and they all have a story."
Each tombstone has a story, but sometimes that history can be hard to find says Cemetery Manager Mark Ferro.
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"You can ride around the cemetery for three hours and if the headstone’s not facing the right way, you won't find what you're looking for," Ferro explained. "There's a lot of history out here, and I think that we need to pass it on and, you know, talk about it."
That's why Roof leads tours during the month of October. She tells the stories of all the graves marked by torches, including the man who fired the first shot of the Civil War.
"He was actually killed by a stray bullet," Roof revealed.
She even dresses in a costume from the 1800s to connect with the past.
Roof says she walks around until she finds a grave site that's intriguing, which she often feels "pulled to." Then, she starts the research.
"I just dig in dig and finally something will pop up," Roof explained.
The tour started at 9 p.m. Monday giving people a chance to wrap up trick-or-treating before heading to the Sumter Cemetery for a history lesson with a spooky twist.
"Everybody sort of wants to be scared a little bit at Halloween," Roof told me. "But it's not scary enough where, you know, we're going to come out with a chainsaw or something, but it's scary enough that you're going to enjoy it."