I think there’s a big difference between a historical event and a ghoul event. We also have a small historic cemetery here; it was closed for years, but now that the preservation group has it open on certain days, the ghost tour people are circling like sharks. But they’re not being permitted in.
The cemetery has centuries’ worth of local history on its headstones and is of great interest in general, and of course it also has the ancestors of local families buried there. So we do give tours of it once a month, with trained docents, and we also open it for other occasions where we tell its history and a little about the significant people buried there. And it’s a Catholic cemetery, so we have occasional memorial masses and services there, even though it is closed to new burials.
These ghost tours and events like that are horrible, though; not only do they tell tall tales, but sometimes they make crude jokes about the people buried in the cemetery and do anything they think will get a laugh. Fortunately, they can only look in through the fence when they’re walking by or being driven by in the black train or hearse they use, and we have no intention of letting them get inside!
A friend and myself researched all the obituaries at the local library. It was grueling...but worth it.
The Civil War ghost tour in Raleigh is educational. The soldiers who are buried there “appear” from the shadows to tell about their war experiences. The soldiers are well researched through letters adn diaries, no tall tales told. Usually there are a couple vignettes set up that educate about some aspect of the war. One year it was a signal corp demonstration and another a hospital. I know many of the reenactors who participate and they are respectful of the graves and the people buried there.
Money that is raised goes to restore the cemetery.