Jesuit Tales

The devil’s face appears, floating nuns spook kids, Wounded Knee ghosts

By Tim Giago
For The Weekly News

On moonlit nights on the Pine Ridge Reservation, the Holy Rosary Mission School graveyard could be seen clearly through the tall windows of our third floor dormitory. As the moonlight reflected off of the tombstones those of us sleeping near the big windows hid our heads under the covers.

One night many years ago a Jesuit priest saw something burning in the graveyard. He went to investigate and saw the image of the devil glowing on a tombstone. He put out the fire and called a brother to chisel the image of the devil off of the tombstone.

To this very day, if one comes across that tombstone, the face of the devil, now nearly obliterated, can still be seen and the tips of its horns are still visible. One Halloween KEVN-TV in Rapid City sent a news team to the mission school to tape the image on the tombstone for the nightly news. There were many spooky stories that emanated from the mission boarding school, now called Red Cloud. One story I can verify was the organ that played eerie tunes and could be heard in our dormitory into the wee hours of the night.

More on Jesuit history at Red Cloud (here)

Link (here)