Est. 1907 · First American Catholic saint connection · Tuberculosis preventorium history · Villa Cabrini Academy girls' school 1944–1970 · Historic Burbank educational site
Frances Xavier Cabrini arrived in the United States from Italy in 1889 at the direction of Pope Leo XIII, tasked with serving Italian immigrant communities. By 1907 she had established the Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart across the United States, and in that year she opened a preventorium in the Verdugo Hills above Burbank — a facility designed to house children at risk of tuberculosis before the disease progressed, providing fresh air, nutrition, and structured care. The location in the dry chaparral above Burbank was chosen for its elevation and climate.
Cabrini died in Chicago in 1917. She was beatified by Pope Pius XI in 1938 and canonized in 1946 by Pope Pius XII as the Patron Saint of Immigrants — the first American citizen to be canonized. Her work at the Burbank site predated formal canonization by nearly four decades.
The Sisters continued developing the Burbank property after Cabrini's death. In 1944 they constructed Villa Cabrini Academy, a 22-building boarding school and summer retreat for orphaned girls, with a chapel completed in 1950. The Academy closed in 1970 due to declining numbers of religious personnel. The California Institute of the Arts used the campus temporarily before it passed through several tenants.
Woodbury University, a private institution founded in downtown Los Angeles in 1884, purchased the 22-acre campus in 1985 and completed its relocation there in 1987. The 1950 Academy chapel was converted into the university's library. A life-size image of Mother Cabrini remains sculpted into one of the campus buildings, and the Villa Cabrini Academy Scholarship Fund maintains a formal connection between the institution's past and Woodbury's present.
Sources
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Villa_Cabrini_Academy
- https://library.woodbury.edu/history
- https://woodbury.edu/news/villa-cabrini-academy-scholarship-fund-past-present-meet-glenoaks-boulevard/
- https://myburbank.com/flashback-friday-villa-cabrini-woodbury/
Bell ringing without causeCold spots in former chapelGeneral unease in library after hours
The Woodbury University haunting accounts are concentrated in the building that was constructed as the Academy's chapel in 1950 and now serves as the campus library. Mother Cabrini founded the site in 1907, worked there during her lifetime, and died in 1917 — thirty-seven years before the chapel was built, though the Sisters who raised it understood themselves as continuing her mission.
The core account is simple: the bell in the former chapel bell tower rings at night without any person activating it. Students and faculty who have heard it describe the sound as deliberate rather than mechanical — slow, spaced, unmistakable. The attribution to Cabrini appears to have developed naturally given that her image is permanently affixed to the building exterior.
Secondary accounts describe unexplained cold spots and a general unease in the library after hours, consistent with a building that spent its first two decades as a sacred space before being repurposed for academic use. The campus's Haunted Hotspots writeup in El Vaquero, the student newspaper, documented these accounts in the mid-2000s.
The accounts are low-intensity compared to more theatrical haunted venues, but they are tied to a named, historically documented individual whose canonical status makes her one of the more unusual figures associated with any paranormal claim in California.
Notable Entities
Mother Frances Xavier Cabrini
