Lynchburg’s creative minds converge at Old City Cemetery to bring history back to life

When actress Makeda Payne steps into her character of Agnes Langley, she’s not just playing a role. She’s bringing a Lynchburg resident back to life. 

The boots of Payne’s 19th-century-inspired costume don’t clack on a stage. They balance on the stones that outline the Langley family plot on the grounds of Old City Cemetery. The wind is Payne’s orchestra, the spirit of the dead her director. 

Payne is not merely reciting lines, singing a song or telling a ghost story. She’s welcoming guests to a world of local history that would otherwise be hidden from them.

“I just like to inspire curiosity when I introduce any of these historical characters,” said Payne, who’s been acting in Old City Cemetery’s Candlelight Tours since 2011. “We have this tendency to look at history as a monolith. I think it would be awesome if we started to question the individual stories of the people who existed here, because we can learn a lot from them.”

Langley’s story is one of many in this year’s Candlelight Tours, a project 10 months and dozens of creative minds in the making. The tours begin Friday and run every weekend this month at Old City Cemetery, the oldest active municipal cemetery in Virginia.

The tours take guests on an after-dark journey through the cemetery to meet the people buried there, who come to life with the help of local actors and original scripts, costumes and music. It’s all part of the cemetery’s mission to make local history accessible and engaging, said Ashleigh Meyer, the organization’s managing historian.   

The tours have grown in scope and production over the past two decades that they’ve been hosted at the cemetery, Meyer said. Now, they welcome about 3,000 guests per year from across the state and region. 

While the tours change every year with different routes, characters and tales to tell, their core mission remains the same, Payne said: breathing life back into the people who shaped Lynchburg.

“For every character that I’m going to play, I find their grave and just introduce myself,” she said. “I’m taking on that persona.” 

History is human, tour leaders say

Old City Cemetery was founded in 1806 and has 22,000 people buried on its grounds, Meyer said. In other words, it’s a stockpile of small personal stories that add up to model the big patterns and events of local, state and national history, she said. 

“We have the luxury of having a broad and diverse list of stories to tell,” Meyer said. “My role is to make sure that those stories are told and not lost, and my approach to that is using unique individual stories to talk about the broader picture.”

About two-thirds of the people buried at Old City Cemetery are African American, Meyer said. It’s rare for a location of Old City Cemetery’s age to be integrated, she added; it was founded decades before emancipation and more than a century before desegregation.  

Before the Civil War, Old City Cemetery was the main burial ground for Lynchburg’s enslaved people, Meyer said. As Lynchburg grew throughout the late 19th and early 20th centuries, more cemeteries were opened, but they were privately owned by and reserved for Lynchburg’s white residents. As a result, Old City Cemetery became a home for Black history.  

Melora Kordos, the tours’ director, said Black stories that have been buried by time are important to revive. 

“It’s a challenge to find their stories and their histories in the first place, because historically we don’t like to write down the stories of people of color,” she said. “That’s why we’re absolutely dedicated to continuing their legacy here.”

Of the six characters reliving their stories in the Candlelight Tours this year, Kordos said Agnes Langley, played by Payne, is the most fascinating. 

Langley lived from 1789 to 1874 and ran a successful brothel in Buzzard’s Roost, Lynchburg’s 19th-century district for gambling, drinking and prostitution. “She was an extraordinary woman of color because she was one of the richest in the city during a time period when even being free was almost unheard of,” Payne said. 

Payne added that she’s most inspired by Langley’s agency to chart her own path forward. 

“She took what she had and she turned it into a little empire, not just for herself but for the women who likely didn’t have any place else to go,” she said. “It was the position that gave them agency over their own bodies and their own money and the ability to be independent and control their own stories.” 

The combination of history and performance teaches empathy like no other medium can, said Kordos, who’s in her third year as director of Candlelight Tours.

“While circumstances can be vastly different because of changing times, we’re all still human,” Kordos said. “In remembering [Candlelight Tours characters], we need to think about how we can honor them and do better for them in our actions today.”

Plus, the story teaches audiences about the broader chapter of American history that Langley was a part of — a chapter in which free Black people established livelihoods and legacies in an environment that gave them few opportunities to succeed.

“National, even global, history finds us here at home,” Meyer said. “It’s important for us to recognize that the past is not always pretty, and that that doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t talk about it.”

Meyer calls the tours “covert education”: a fun Halloween tradition of discovering local haunts that secretly reminds people just how human history is. 

“We’d like to make them laugh and cry in the same night. And we’d also like them to walk away saying, ‘I didn’t know this about American history,’” she said. 

Scripts and scores made from scratch

In all 18 iterations of the Candlelight Tours over the past two decades, the cast of characters and tour route have been different. That means everything from scripts to costumes to songs are created from scratch each year, Kordos said.  

The creative effort begins in January, when characters are selected and researched, Meyer said.

By October, it’s time for the final touches of weaving together the original work of all the artists involved in the Candlelight Tours, Kordos said.

“For years, we’ve attracted some of the most talented and creative and smartest people to be involved on all aspects,” she said. “It’s such a unique experience to see those creators come together.”

The show is just as much of a science as it is an art, Kordos added. A production crew measures the placement of 600 candles along the tour route and sets them out each night; cues are carefully coordinated over walkie-talkies so performers on opposite sides of the cemetery can stay on pace; scenes and walking distances are precisely timed so no tour group overlaps. 

This year, Old City Cemetery is offering two seated, accessible Sunday matinee performances in which actors and audience members gather at an outdoor stage. The option is ideal for those who prefer not to walk over the cemetery’s uneven terrain, Meyer said — or those who are just afraid of the dark, she joked.

Payne said there are many creative elements of the show to look forward to.  

“The costume is almost as important as the person wearing the costume, it tells as much a part of the story,” she said. “And I’m also really loving the original song. No one else has ever heard it before, and I’m the first person singing it, so I can play with it and make it my own.”

James Ballard has been writing music for the Candlelight Tours since 2021 and wrote Payne’s song this year. The New York-based freelance composer, arranger and music director has roots in the Lynchburg area as a graduate of Jefferson Forest High School. 

He said he takes many factors into consideration when writing music for the Candlelight Tours, including where in the course of the tour the song will be performed, what time period the character lived in, and how contemporary musical elements can be incorporated to dramatize a character’s story. 

For Langley’s song, Ballard said he was immediately inspired by the style of John Kander and Fred Ebb, the duo known for stage musicals such as “Cabaret” and “Chicago.”

“I think about these strong female characters like this, and my gut reaction was actually to go a little bit more contemporary, not necessarily 100% period accurate, to best represent her,” he said.

Creating ‘a living dead place’

The setting of the Candlelight Tours transports audiences to a past that is very much alive, unlike history books and lessons, Kordos said. 

“We acknowledge that this is a living dead place. We try and create the world of an active, dead community,” she said.  

Old City Cemetery is still in use as a burial ground today. It has one active potter’s field, where people who can’t afford burial expenses can be laid to rest with dignity and respect, Meyer said. The grounds also feature a scatter garden for the distribution of ashes and a columbarium for urns. 

But most areas of the 27-acre grounds are designed with the living in mind, Meyer said. Old City Cemetery has five small museums, hosts weddings throughout the year, and holds accreditation as a Level II Arboretum with more than 100 labeled species of trees.

“You’re not going to find a lot of cemeteries with a gift shop. You’re not going to find a lot of cemeteries with full-time staff who aren’t burying people,” Meyers said as she laughed. “The history of the grounds is why we’re here, but we bring in elements that allow us to tell these stories from a modern standpoint.” 

That’s the magic that keeps visitors and performers alike coming back year after year, Kordos said. She should know — she went to her first Candlelight Tour about 15 years ago and has stayed engaged with Old City Cemetery ever since. 

“It’s really fun talking to people after the shows, because if you ask the audiences what their favorite story is, usually there’s not one that rides above them all,” she said. “Different stories resonate with different people and stick with them forever, and I think that’s really magical.”