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Cathedral (Los Angeles) football team is 5-1 playing at home this season, twice preventing opponents from scoring any touchdowns. In most cases, visiting offenses showed no signs of life.
Neither did the bodies that arrived at the field 100 years ago, when the very same land served as a Catholic cemetery.
From the mid 1800s until the early 1900s, the land on which Cathedral rests was Old Calvary Cemetery, a final resting spot for Catholics of considerable means in the Los Angeles area. Speculation exists that for some families that could not afford proper burial at the cemetery simply snuck in at night to bury a deceased loved one.
By 1920, the cemetery had fallen into disrepair. Around the same time, the local bishop wanted the Christian Brothers to open a school in the area. With few options for space, the bishop decided to transfer bodies from Old Calvary Cemetery to New Calvary Cemetery in East Los Angeles.
He gave the land to the Christian Brothers and in 1925, Cathedral was born, and its mascot was inspired by the history of the land: the Phantoms.
Throughout the school's history, different renovations and construction has led to the school unearthing buried tombstones and even a coffin. Now, some of those artifacts decorate the school's campus, particularly the football field, where a donor paid to have tombstones showcased and lit up along the perimeter of the field.
"We're proud of our old heritage," Martin Farfan, Cathedral's president, told MaxPreps.
The tombstones may not be the only reminder of the school's former life as a cemetery. During renovations in 2006, the school dug into bones and religious artifacts buried with bodies.
There also have been more remnants of the school's past that are more of the phantasmal variety.
Various people, mostly maintenance workers, have reported hearing and seeing things, according to Farfan. Some have sworn to have felt some sort of presence at night.
It's something that students and teachers are not very aware of or discuss often, and Farfan has never personally experienced anything strange.
View gallery of photo shoot at Cathedral High School "I myself have never seen anything," he said.
Check out photos of Cathedral's campus as captured by MaxPreps photographer Daryl Chan.
Cathedral High School students look at one of the tombstones lit up along the perimeter of the football stadium before last Friday night's game.
Photos by Daryl Chan
