How do you load characters in your Asset folder into an array, and select particular or random characters to add into a scene?

So i have scenes. Like a club, restaurant, park, and stuff ..you know public places. I have alot of characters in my Assets folder/CustomCharacters folder. A folder i created

Everytime i play the game i want to see different people. So my idea was to load the characters from the asset folder's subfolder into an array. Then select random characters for the scene. Then when the level loads, load the selected random characters and place them where they should go( I got that covered through scripting)

So in Essence that's my question. How to load characters from an Assets folder subfolder into a level without manually dragging the characters into the level scene yourself.

PS the characters have a script for movement and AI. just wanted to say that.