A statue of Jesus Christ is lowered off the roof of St. John’s School after it toppled during a wind storm on Sept. 19, 2012. – Julio Cortez / AP

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  knew 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; there were six of them and they could go off at any time, not just after school. Anyone who fought a Doheny kid had to fight all of them. 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.

Saint John’s parochial school, aka Columbus Hall, 1915

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 outstretched arms either comforting or threatening, depending on the state of your conscience.

When I walked home  late at night from my job setting up bowling pins, I encountered a double dose of creepiness. From two blocks away I could see floating Jesus; next I came to the cemetery itself. I walked on the opposite side of the street, because its high, stuccoed walls always seemed to be bulging outward. I knew the level of the earth inside the walls was higher than outside, and that the graves were old, with some burials done at least two caskets deep, so I imagined a great pressure against those walls. It didn’t help that I had been reading a lot of Edgar Allan Poe.

Years later I was doing family research, and someone in the church rectory told me my great-grandmother Bridget owned a family plot there. When I located the plot it was mostly grass and bushes, with very few grave markers, none of them with a family name. I think some fishy stuff goes on  with ownership in these old cemeteries.

My wife went to parochial school, in Pennsylvania. 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 my wife was in the early grades of parochial school, Sister heard somebody fart and demanded to know who had done it. When none of the girls confessed, she searched the classroom by sniffing her way up and down each aisle. That’s it, that’s the whole story, it’s not much but I think it’s funny.

Vocal performance in the Crypt of the Cathedral Basilica of the Sacred Heart

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.