Record crowd turns out to hear Brackenridge ghost stories

After five or six years portraying one of the region’s most iconic settlers — the late Henry Brackenridge — actor Hugh Fox said he slips easily into the role each year for the Prospect Cemetery ghost tour.

“The organizer thinks I fit the bill and I quite like it,” said Fox, who dons a long black robe and top hat in his adaptation of Brackenridge.

This year’s tour on Thursday drew one of the largest crowds in the event’s 11-year history.

“People seemed really happy to be back after we couldn’t do it last year (for covid-related reasons),” Fox said.

More than 250 people paid $10 each to meander through the cemetery along Freeport Road and were greeted by 15 “ghosts” who relayed stories of early inhabitants of the Alle-Kiski Valley. Proceeds benefit cemetery maintenance.

Fox’s Brackenridge is the first stop for participants. They hear about his life as a congressman, judge and author who donated land for neighboring Tarentum.

“I live in Tarentum so I think that’s pretty cool that I get to play him,” Fox said.

Tours went out every 10 minutes. People strolled past 13,000 graves, which include early settlers and those who helped shape adjacent communities.

There are business owners, teachers, librarians, superintendents, soldiers and politicians buried there.

During this year’s tour, actor Cassie Barch told crowds about the late Julia Hudepohl, a well-known teacher in Harrison and Tarentum schools. Hudepohl was a theater-lover who produced community plays and gave readings throughout the area.

Fawn resident Fran Jones was the second stop on the tour and gave participants a detailed rundown of the late Anna Bell Walker, the wife of Alexander “Daddy” Walker, a beloved preacher, teacher and librarian.

Walker’s husband was assistant principal at Tarentum High School, interim pastor at First Presbyterian Church and later the Tarentum librarian.

“We were beloved in the community,” Jones said, as Walker.

Tarentum resident Paula Richards portrayed the late Rachel Belle Reed, whose family was among the area’s early settlers. Reed lived in an apartment in the Butler store building along East Sixth Avenue and died in 1925 of suspected pneumonia.

Richards said then-police Chief W.J. Hazlett tried to recover Reed from her apartment but couldn’t break down the door. Instead he had to crawl through a transom (a small, wide window above the door) to find her.

“This year’s tour was wonderful,” organizer Cindy Homburg said.

She’s been flooded with phone calls from people who missed the tour, asking for a repeat event.

“It’s a lot of work,” she said. “But I’m glad that people love it.”

There’s so much history to be revealed at the cemetery that Homburg said she begins each spring researching whose stories to tell.

Henry Brackenridge is the only role that returns each year, she said.

“He’s a favorite,” she said. “He donated all the land for the cemetery, and I think it’s only right we highlight him every year.”