More than 100 people heard tales of El Paso's Old West history and the ghosts rumored to inhabit the historic cemetery during the third-annual event, put on by the Concordia Heritage Association.
Today is Día de los Muertos, or the Day of the Dead, a Mexican holiday with pre-Hispanic origins that is celebrated with altars in memory of deceased loved ones and visits to their graves. Monday was All Saints Day - Día de Todos los Santos.
Ghostly formations of soldiers and apparitions were among the tales of the cemetery, which dates to 1856.
Robert Brown, a multimedia journalism student at the University of Texas at El Paso, was well-equipped to capture any paranormal activity at the cemetery. He had a camera, a video camera and an audio recorder.
Brown, 45, said he had always wanted to take part in the ghost tours at the 54-acre cemetery, which is home to 65,000 souls. He had previously photographed a mysterious shadow during a visit to a historic saloon in Tombstone, Ariz.
"It was a big black shadow, like a person standing there," Brown said. "I caught something that couldn't be explained. At least not by me anyway."
Stella Ontiveros, wearing a witch's hat and with her face painted, carried purple roses to decorate the graves of her uncles in Concordia. Ontiveros can sense spirits, she said.
"For me, I've always had that kind
Ontiveros and her husband, Frank Elguea, believe their Lower Valley home is haunted. They've heard mysterious whispers, seen shadows and have a 10-year-old photo of a man's face appearing in a bedroom.
"We've grown accustomed to it," Elguea said of a ghost whom they suspect is an elderly man who used to own the home. "Every time when we show it (the ghost photo), they say 'Oh my God, you need to bless this house,' but we are used to it. It's part of the family."
Besides spooky tales, the attraction of Concordia Cemetery is its history that features gunfighters, soldiers and the pioneers of Old El Paso.
Martha Deen Underwood and her husband, Hamilton Underwood, just published a walking tour book about Concordia. Martha Deen Underwood said the dusty cemetery is brimming with stories.
"Every (grave) stone represents a life, a whole life," she said.
In 1863, a horse trader named John Savage rode up to Chepita Rodriguez's boarding house on the west bank of the Aransas River between the towns San Patricio and Refugio. Inside the horse's saddlebags were several pounds of gold. He was later found dead, hacked to death, and floating just down river from Chepita's home.
For centuries in the Port Isabel area, three miles east of Brownsville, fishermen have reported the vision of a Spanish galleon moving from the mouth of the Rio Grande into the Gulf of Mexico and out to sea.
"Buried Treasure" these two words spark the imaginative interest in almost every human being. Any adventurous soul has had fantasies of swashbuckling pirates, drinking spiced rum, smuggling a wooden chest full of gold, all the while shouting yo-ho-yo-ho.