Steve Johnson portraying Civil War Medal of Honor recipient, Henri Brown, during last year’s “Saints & Sinners” tours at Lake View Cemetery in Jamestown. Photos by Daryl Simons Jr.

The Saints and Sinners Cemetery Tours at Lake View Cemetery have been a staple for Jamestown’s Halloween celebration for 14 years now.

The cemetery and mausoleum tours are both hosted by the Fenton History Center. The mausoleum tours are fairly new to the Fenton’s list of events, and both tours are looking back into the history of those buried at Lake View Cemetery, located at 907 Lakeview Ave. in Jamestown. The Saints and Sinners Tour has carriage rides and walking tours.

“I love how excited people get about the tours,” said Noah Goodling, the director of the Fenton. “The tickets go on sale in August, but we get people calling us in July. We add more spaces for the walking tour because they fill up so fast.”

The tours consist of visiting graves or mausoleums of famous and ordinary people buried in Lake View Cemetery, with costumed volunteer actors conveying their stories. The people, in keeping with the theme of the tour, range from dark and depressing to light and inspiring.

“We have an immigrant family who came from Germany and started a furniture factory with great success, wonderful life kind of thing,” Goodling said. “Then we have darker stories like a Swedish family that came here and died almost immediately. Then we have more informational people. There was a chief of police for 30 years, and we’re looking at some of the cases he covered.”

Fenton substitutes which characters appear every year. There are a few recurring characters, but for the most part, many are different. Goodling said the Fenton research people who lived in Jamestown throughout the year in order to come up with who appears in the tour.

“It’s one thing to just read about these people’s stories,” Goodling said. “It’s another thing entirely to see these people come to life and tell you their story.”

Jamestown is not the only place to participate in cemetery tours this year. The Patterson Library, Lake Shore Center for the Arts, Chautauqua County Historical Society, Westfield Cemetery Association, the Westfield-Barcelona Chamber of Commerce and the village of Westfield have announced Westfield’s first cemetery tours.

The Westfield Cemetery tours, located at 180 E. Main St. in Westfield, also include horse drawn carriage tours and walking tours, beginning with the maintenance building in the cemetery. All tickets come with a complimentary LED lantern and refreshments.

“Come enjoy an evening of spooktacularly good history with us,” the Patterson Library said in a news release. “Let’s all enjoy this season together, as we learn about some of our local predecessors.”

The Saints and Sinners tours continue this Saturday, going from 3-6 p.m. for the walking tours and 6-9 p.m. for the horse drawn carriage tours. The mausoleum cemetery tour goes from 8-11 p.m. on Sunday. Westfield Cemetery Tours take place Oct. 25 and 26, from 6-10 p.m. Parking for the Westfield tours are available on Academy Street and Plank Road.

“To see the enthusiasm of the people from Jamestown and the surrounding region who want to know these stories, who want to know more about the cemetery and more about what it contains — it’s just wonderful to see that,” Goodling said. “It’s very uplifting for someone in my position.”

To order tickets for the Lake View Cemetery tours, call the Fenton History Center at 664-6265. Tickets for the Westfield Cemetery tours are available at lakeshorecenterforthearts.ticketsprice.com/westfield-cemetery-tour. For more information on the Lakeview tours, go to fentonhistorycenter.org, or go to its official Facebook page. More information can be found for the Westfield Cemetery tours by calling 326-2154 or emailing director@pattersonlib.org.