PARK CITY — Every year, on the Sunday before Halloween, Park City locals know they'll find more than a dozen restless souls roaming the town's historic Glenwood Cemetery.

For a couple of hours, the "spirits" will stand in front of tombstones in 1880s attire and tell their stories to anyone who strolls past at the annual ritual honoring those who inhabited Park City when it was known more for its rough and tumble streets than its glitzy boutiques.

By nightfall, when the miners, bandits, prostitutes and law officers are back home in their beds, "you're tired but you know it was worth it," says Hal Compton, 80, president of the Glenwood Cemetery Association.

"This is not only a way to preserve history, it's a way to make sure that the cemetery is taken care of for future generations," he says. "For too many years, it was abandoned, with headstones knocked over by hoodlums who just didn't care."

Now in its 16th year, Halloween at the Glenwood has become so popular, there is a long list of history buffs hoping to don period costumes and portray characters whose names are etched into the tombstones. Every year, actors are provided research materials about somebody buried at the Glenwood and assigned a script about that person's life.

"It's a way to honor those who came before us," says Tracy Knoeller, 33, an education curator at the Park City Museum who searched the archives to come up with 16 different stories this year, from the tale of a young policeman who accidentally shot himself after two days on the job to the legacy of Blanche Thatcher, a pianist and ski model who was the last person to be buried at the Glenwood in 1982.

"It's fascinating to learn how they lived and what was important to them — their passions and dreams," says Knoeller. "By telling their stories this way, we're bringing history to life."

Knoeller recently met me for a Free Lunch chat with Compton to share a few stories about the Glenwood, which opened in 1885 so that members of fraternal organizations who couldn't afford to be buried in the Park City Cemetery would have a final resting place.

Masons, Odd Fellows, Knights of Pythias, Woodmen of the World and their families are all buried at the five-acre graveyard, a sanctuary covered with shimmering aspens and tucked next to the Park City Mountain Resort.

The cemetery hasn't always looked this serene. When Compton first came upon it in the late 1980s, it was overgrown with weeds, full of garbage and broken headstones.

"There wasn't a fence, so hot-rodders would come in with their cars and motorcycles and tear everything up," he says. "It had been completely forgotten."