Santa Clara University

Santa Clara University is the oldest institution of higher learning in California, founded in 1851 on the site of Mission Santa Clara de Asis. The university's student paper has confirmed the campus sits on several Native American burial grounds. The historic Mission Church and surrounding grounds date back to the Spanish colonial era.

Mission Santa Clara de Asís was founded on January 12, 1777, as the eighth in Padre Junipero Serra's chain of California missions and the first named for a woman, St. Claire of Assisi. Flood, fire, and earthquake forced five relocations before the mission finally settled on its current site in 1822. The Jesuits took over from the Franciscans in 1851, transforming it into California's oldest institution of higher learning. But beneath the campus lies a history written in bones—more than 7,500 Native individuals from the Ohlone, Yokuts, and Miwok tribes are buried in the mission's cemeteries, their deaths the result of violence, forced labor, and disease during missionization.

Campus archaeologist Russell Skowronek has documented three graveyards under university grounds: 20 bodies dating from 400 B.C. to A.D. 800 unearthed near Kenna Hall and Walsh Administration, approximately 1,000 19th-century burials between the Mission Church and O'Connor Hall, and 2,000 more graves near The Alameda at Franklin Street. High-tech sensing devices and bone-sniffing dogs have been deployed to locate the exact boundaries of remains long obscured by time.

The most revered figure in the mission's history is Father Magin Catala, the "Holy Man of Santa Clara," who served from 1796 until his death on November 22, 1830. Contemporary eyewitness accounts—still preserved in the university library archives—describe Catala as a mystic, miracle worker, exorcist, and prophet. Witnesses swore they saw him levitate while praying before a crucifix, and that "the figure of Christ detached his hands from the cross and laid them on Father Catala's shoulders." Like St. Padre Pio, he was reportedly seen in two places at once.

Most chillingly, Father Catala prophesied the fate of San Francisco, then a tiny settlement called Yerba Buena. He predicted "a great city will arise" but warned it "will become very wicked, and will be completely destroyed by earthquake and fire." Seventy-six years after his death, the 1906 earthquake and fire devastated San Francisco exactly as he foretold.

On October 24, 1926, faulty wiring in the north bell tower sparked a devastating fire that consumed the Mission Church. Students rushed to save what they could. The crucifix before which Father Catala had levitated somehow survived and remains displayed above the altar today. But Father Catala's body, which had been placed in a coffin in the church after crowds stripped his clothes as holy relics, vanished. When the church was rebuilt in 1928, his remains were supposedly transferred to a hermetically sealed container behind a marble plaque—but Skowronek searched and could not find him. "No one knows what happened to Father Catala," he said. "So we are missing a priest who may be a saint." His canonization cause, submitted to Rome in 1909, remains pending.

The paranormal activity on campus is persistent. In Walsh and McLaughlin Residence Halls, students and staff have encountered a ghost they call "Buddy"—an apparition resembling an American Indian child. Campus ministry staff member Matt Smith, who experienced the entity while serving as resident minister in Walsh, confirmed the reports. "A lot of people say it sounds like furniture moving upstairs," Smith said, adding that others hear the sound of marbles rolling across floors above them.

Near the mission bell tower, darker presences stir after dark. Ghosts of Jesuit priests in robes have been seen praying in the shadows. From the mission cemetery, the sounds of moaning waft through the night. Students studying late in the older buildings report feeling watched—an unsettling presence that follows them through the historic halls.

Whether it's Father Catala's missing body, the 7,500 Native souls buried beneath the campus, or the spirits of Jesuit priests who never left their posts, Santa Clara University sits atop layers of the dead. The bell tower rises above them all, and after dark, those who walk past swear the robed figures in the shadows are not students.