The Millvale Apparition: Maxo Vanka's Ghost at St. Nicholas Croatian Church

In 1937, Father Albert Zagar wanted murals for St. Nicholas Croatian Catholic Church in Millvale, just outside Pittsburgh. He found his painter through the writer Louis Adamic. The painter was Maxo Vanka. The church had a past of its own. The first building burned in March 1921, and arson was suspected. The present church was dedicated on May 30, 1922.

Vanka began that spring. Time reported that he ground his pigments from 7 a.m. and worked "virtually all day and usually until 2 or 3 a.m." He painted at night, Duquesne archivist Thomas White explained, "so he wouldn't be disturbed."

The fourth night of work. Vanka was up on the scaffolding, by one account 38 feet above the floor. He heard a mumbling. He looked down and saw a robed figure making movements with its arms. He took it for the pastor. Perhaps Father Zagar had come in to pray. From that height he could not see or hear clearly. The figure seemed to walk up and down the aisle, gesticulating, making gestures at the altar.

Then, in White's words, "The ghostly figure walks up to the eternal flame and blows it out."

It did not stay away. Dogs barked outside whenever the figure appeared, Father Zagar's dogs in one version, the neighbourhood's in another. Atlas Obscura adds occasional ghostly organ music, and an occasion when the figure lit the altar candles.

Vanka grew uneasy. He stuffed his ears. He wore blinders, made out of newspaper by one account, to keep the ghost out of his peripheral vision. He did not want to deal with the spirit. He came to believe it was a former priest, doing penance for neglecting his duties.

Zagar, it seems, already knew. He stayed in the church at night and prayed while Vanka worked. One account says he had spent night after night in dread, afraid that Vanka would see the ghost, take fright and fall from the scaffold. The story, he told Vanka, had been circulating at the church for about 15 years. Several parishioners claimed encounters. Accounts differ on what Zagar himself witnessed. White says he never saw the figure but did see the sanctuary lamp go out, a shielded flame that is hard to put out by accident. Atlas Obscura says only Vanka saw the black-robed figure. Astonishing Legends says Zagar reportedly witnessed the same phenomenon.

No police, scientific or church investigation was ever recorded. The story rests on one contemporary text, Louis Adamic's essay "The Millvale Apparition," published in Harper's in 1938. Adamic was Vanka's friend. Pennsylvania Heritage calls him Vanka's "de facto publicist," and CBS Pittsburgh notes that the article both promoted the murals and helped launch Vanka's American career. Time's 1937 review of the murals did not mention a ghost. Still, no source calls the story an outright hoax, and neither Vanka nor Zagar is known to have taken it back.

The church became a Pittsburgh landmark in 1979 and joined the National Register of Historic Places in 1980. Pennsylvania Heritage writes that the murals have "been steeped in myth since their completion," and that "tales of a ghost (a former pastor) visiting Vanka in the dead of the night persist to this day." Thomas White retells it in his writing on Catholic ghost stories of western Pennsylvania. Karen Mocker Dabson turned it into a novel, The Muralist's Ghost. In 2025, Astonishing Legends returned to the scaffold, the shielded flame and the robed figure at the altar.