Ask a resident assistant in one of the older dorms and you will get the short answer: Northern Arizona University has campus legends, and students have passed them between roommates for generations. The best known belongs to Morton Hall, where a ghost the residents call Kathy has been reported for decades, famous enough that the university's own archive exhibit notes the hall's reputation. What nobody has ever produced is a record. This page tells the campus stories honestly: what students report, what the documents show, and how the legends sit next to the documented history a short walk north in downtown Flagstaff.
We hold ghost stories to a particular standard on our walks: say what people report, say what the records show, and keep the difference plain. Our co-founder Susan Johnson wrote Haunted Flagstaff from newspaper archives and county records, and that habit shapes how we treat campus lore too. So here is the honest version of the NAU stories.
Morton Hall and the legend of Kathy
Morton Hall opened in 1918 as a women's dormitory and is named for Mary Morton Pollock, who headed the English department and later worked to help students finish school when the money ran out. It is a century-old Georgian Revival building on the north quad, and it still houses students today. A long, layered history like that is exactly the kind that grows a legend.
The story residents tell goes like this. Sometime in the 1950s, the tellings usually agree, a student the legend calls Kathy stayed behind over winter break, kept from going home by hard news from her family, then jilted by the boyfriend she expected to marry. In the legend she took her own life in the hall, in the quiet days before Christmas, wearing a blue nightgown. Residents since have reported fifties music drifting from radios that are switched off, bathroom doors that hold shut though they have no locks, faucets that turn themselves on, tapping in the walls, and, now and then, a figure in a blue nightgown in the halls.
Here is what the records show: nothing. No newspaper account, no name, no date anyone can point to, and residence-hall staff have never confirmed a death in the building. The university library's own exhibit on campus history acknowledges Morton Hall is famous as the home of Kathy the Ghost, and offers no evidence that Kathy ever lived. The details shift from one telling to the next, which is how legends behave. So we call it what it is: a campus legend, and a good one.
Old Main, the oldest building on campus
Old Main is the building the campus grew from. Workers raised it in 1894 out of locally quarried Moenkopi sandstone, and the Territorial Legislature intended it as a reform school. Flagstaff wanted no such thing, and legislator Henry Ashurst pushed through the bill that created the Northern Arizona Normal School instead. First classes met on September 11, 1899, twenty-three students and a faculty of two, and for the school's first six years this one building held everything: classrooms, library, assembly room, and offices. A twenty-one month restoration finished in 1991 turned it into the art museum, gallery, and offices it holds today.
As for ghosts, Old Main teaches a useful lesson in how these stories work. A building that old collects rumors the way its sandstone collects afternoon light, and campus lore has attached whispers to it for decades: odd sounds after hours, lights where lights should not be. But the reports are thin, the details rarely survive from one telling to the next, and the university's archives keep a 1993 Flagstaff newspaper clipping headlined, bluntly, No Ghosts at Old Main. When the record pushes back, we say so. If any campus building has earned its haunted reputation, it is Morton Hall, and even Morton runs on testimony rather than documents.
Where the campus legends meet documented history
The campus stories run on memory. Downtown Flagstaff's run on newsprint. A short walk north of the residence halls, the blocks around Heritage Square carry hauntings with names and dates behind them: hotel rooms guests still request by number, theaters with resident stories, saloons that never quite emptied out. Our guide to Flagstaff's haunted history lays out how a rough young railroad town earned that catalog, and the haunted places guide walks it building by building, from the Hotel Monte Vista to the Weatherford Hotel.
If you are at NAU, the walk is close and the student price is real. Our post on ghost tours as an NAU student activity covers the student discount, the guides, and the truth about the campus steam tunnels, and visiting families make a tradition of the NAU graduation weekend tours each spring. The evening walk leaves downtown at 7 PM, and the stories it tells are the documented kind.
Questions people ask
Is NAU haunted?
NAU has campus legends rather than documented hauntings. The best known is Kathy of Morton Hall, a story students have passed down for generations: residents report fifties music, bathroom doors that hold shut without locks, and a figure in a blue nightgown, but no record confirms the death behind the tale. Old Main draws whispers too, though the university's own archives push back on those. For hauntings with newspaper records behind them, look a short walk north, in downtown Flagstaff.
Can you visit Morton Hall?
Not inside. Morton Hall is a working residence hall, home to current students, and it is not open for tours, so please respect the people who live there. You can walk the north campus paths and take in the building from the sidewalk. If you want a historic NAU building you can actually enter, Old Main houses an art museum and gallery; check the university's site for current hours. Our tours stay off campus entirely and walk downtown's documented sites instead.
What is the oldest building at NAU?
Old Main, built in 1894 from locally quarried Moenkopi sandstone, five years before the school itself existed. The Territorial Legislature intended it as a reform school, Flagstaff lobbied for a college instead, and the Northern Arizona Normal School held its first classes there on September 11, 1899. It has been the heart of the campus ever since, and today it holds an art museum, gallery space, and offices.
Hear the documented stories at 7 PM
The campus legends are a fine warm-up. The originals are downtown. The Downtown Flagstaff Haunted History Tour departs at 7 PM from Wheeler Park, 212 W Aspen Ave, runs 75 minutes, and costs $29 for adults, $25 for students with ID and $22 for children. The route passes the hotels, theaters, and alleys whose stories come from Susan Johnson's research in newspaper archives and county records, told on the sidewalks where they happened.
Company-wide, Freaky Foot Tours holds a 4.9 of 5 rating across 325+ TripAdvisor reviews as of July 2026 and ranks #1 of 65 Tours and Activities in Flagstaff on TripAdvisor. 1,000+ five-star reviews. Best of Flagstaff three years running. Check current departure times in the booking calendar below, and bring your roommates, your visiting parents, or both.
