A lot of the kids in my neighborhood went to Saint John’s parochial school, not a majority, but enough that they were a danger when they were set free in the afternoon. Local public-school kids tried to stay out of sight when Saint John’s let out. The St. John’s kids’ spirits were so crushed, and the boys so full of pent-up anger, that anything could happen. The exception to this was the Doheny kids, perpetually in a rage; there were six of them and they could go off at any time, not just after school. Anyone who crossed a Doheny kid had to deal with them all. They lived a block away from me, but their house was not on the way to my school, a public school, so I could avoid them.
St. John’s school took up one corner of St. John’s cemetery. On top of its domed roof was a floodlit statue of Jesus Christ . At night, the statue seemed to float above the dark cemetery, its arms outstretched, either welcoming or threatening depending on the state of your conscience.
When I walked home late at night from setting up pins, I encountered a double dose of creepiness. From two blocks away I could see Floating Jesus; then I had to walk past the cemetery itself. I stayed on the other side of the street, because the high, stuccoed walls always seemed to be leaning outward. I knew the level of the earth inside the walls was higher than outside, and that the graves were old, with many burials at least two caskets deep, and I imagined a great pressure against those walls. It didn’t help that I had been reading Tales from the Crypt comics and a lot of Edgar Allan Poe.
Years later I was doing family research, and discovered that my great-grandmother Bridget had owned a family plot there. When I located it, it was mostly grass and bushes, with very few grave markers, and none of them with a family name. I think some fishy stuff goes on with ownership in these old cemeteries.
Mimi went to parochial school, in Pennsylvania, where she grew up. She had a story she told me in private, but I have repeated it so often that I might as well tell it one more time. I call it “The Fart-Detecting Nun”. When Mimi was in the early grades of parochial school, Sister heard someone fart and demanded to know who it was. When none of the girls confessed, she searched the classroom by sniffing her way up and down the aisles.
One last creepy story. When we lived in Newark, we sent my older son to the parochial school at Sacred Heart Cathedral because the Newark public schools were failing. On rainy days, if his class had to travel between the school and the church, they went underground, through the Crypt of the Cathedral Basilica of the Sacred Heart, where deceased parish priests and higher ranking members of the clergy were said to “await the Lord’s return” in their marble vaults. My son said it was ‘spooky’.
Three-minute YouTube tour of the crypt – courtesy egermainet
Epilogue
St. John’s parochial school closed in June 2018. The diocese now rents its classroom space to the Orange public school system.