Old Biloxi Cemetery comes to life with history

The dead came back to life at the Old Biloxi Cemetery, but it might not be as spooky as you think.

Biloxi hosted its 17th Annual Cemetery Tour. Actors brought the cemetery’s historic inhabitants back to tell their stories!

Each year, the Preserve Biloxi Committee chooses a new theme for the tour, the theme this year was all about Biloxi love stories.

“I’m here to pass down a beautiful love story, one I wrote about long ago,” said Laura Hindsdale, the author of “Legends and Lyrics of the Gulf Coast.”

Hindsale said she fell in love with the beauty and history of Biloxi, which served as the inspiration for her poetry.

She shared the legend of the ring and the oak about a Biloxi girl and Natchez boy, which she called the oldest love story on the coast.

“So the legend goes: The chief said when a ring grows in that tree, you may marry my daughter,” explained Hinsdale. “And a huge storm came by, and the next morning, they woke up, and there was a huge ring in the tree, and the rest is history.”

Tina Ross Seamans, the executive director from the Biloxi Chamber of Commerce, talked about how the Preserve Biloxi Committee chose the year’s theme.

“We sit around we think of what would be interesting to have characters portray? Then we come up with the theme. and then we come up with ideas for stories that might come out of that theme,” said Seamans. “We start looking at who’s buried here? Who can we have actors recreate, those people who were here? And then it just goes from there, it takes on a life of its own, no pun intended.”

Seamans said the funds collected during the cemetery tour go towards preserving and restoring historic gravesites.

She says they have already restored two sites in Biloxi and plan to restore five more.