Morton Hall

Morton Hall is one of the old dormitories at Northern Arizona University, from the era when the school was still a teachers college and the residence halls were small enough for every story to travel. Campus buildings of that age accumulate legends the way they accumulate coats of paint.

Morton’s is the most durable ghost story on campus, passed from one class of residents to the next for decades.

The campus telling calls her Kathy: a student who, by the story, died in the hall during a mid-century winter break, and whose room has carried the account ever since. Residents describe flickering lights, doors that will not stay latched, and blankets pulled from beds. The university archives keep no tidy file on Kathy, which is exactly why the story belongs to lore rather than the record, and the honest page says so.