School Spirits

October is full of spooky spirits, good-natured yelling and creepy costumes – but it’s not all Halloween-related. There is also school spirit haunting the stands at homecoming, in the exciting shouting of the cheerleaders, and the creepy costumes – of the mascots.

Sometimes the mascots embody the school “spirit” in more ways than one. Scary mascots make sense if the goal is to intimidate the other teams. Throughout the years Virginia high schools have adopted scary, creepy, and fantastical mascots to represent them, and who could be more terrifying than the actual devil?

Schools such as Christiansburg High School in Montgomery County, Castlewood High School in Russell County, and Gate City High School in Scott County have used the Devil, a Blue Devil, and a Demon for their representative on the field.

Phoebus High School in Hampton started with a school spirit which morphed into a Phantom, which by the 1980s had become another kind of fictional character – a superhero.

Jefferson High School took its real-life hero and namesake and turned him into a fictional spirit. “Lil Jeff” began as a newspaper mascot and feature before being embraced by the whole school in the 1950s and 60s. However, Lil Jeff, being both the spirit of Thomas Jefferson High School and Jefferson himself, did not get much play, perhaps given the difficulties in creating an unequivocally recognizable ghost costume that could not be misconstrued.

Likewise, it must be difficult to create a costume for a creature no one has seen save for one blurry photograph, but as soon as you hear the name “Nessie” you know who she is regardless of how unsettling she may look. So, if you are still trying to find a creepy costume, maybe contact your local school!