MORTON HOUSE
Loc.: Central Downtown, Block of Ionia/Ottawa/Fountain Sts.

LINKS:
http://www.hauntedproductions.com/wwwboard/messages/222.html


To describe Morton House as "Decrepit", and "Strange" would be an
accurate description of both the building itself and the tenants. Downtown's
most well known low-income apartments, A room can be had for only $25
per month to the qualifying tenant, with housing being subsidized by the
State. With this low qualification for residence, the complex gathers a wide
plethora of, shall we say, "interesting" tenants. A collection of down-and-
outs, drug dealers, the viable insane, cash-strapped local students, and
people scraping by make up the population of this squalid vertical hole.

With as motley a group as this, Morton House has gained infamy among both
residents and locals. Stories abound: The man who often walked naked through
the hallways. A smell like beef jerky in a newly painted and remodeled
apartment. Was it true someone was electrocuted here? A rain of roaches coming
from the ceiling. Every so often there will be word of another suicide out
one of the building's twelve stories, and an honest realist wouldn't be
suprised, with the less than life-affirming atmosphere of cracked windows and
grubby carpets.

WALKTHROUGH:

OUTSIDE:
You are standing outside the Morton House. The doorway is flanked by an always-
present three or four people, hanging out, nursing cigarettes and watching
traffic, or waiting for a ride to arrive. The building stretches awkwardly
upward. The odd angle of Ionia and Ottawa streets gives the building it's
strange, angular layout. You walk in through a full-glass door with a gaudy,
pasted-on "=" Equal-Opportunity Housing symbol, and come to a decently-sized
entryway which still seems claustrophobic in the dim. You come to a second door,
this one pasted with stickers proclaiming who may visit and when they may come.
You see the wall of buttons next to the door, and hunt out the apartment number
where you are going. With dubious faith in the working of the system, you press,
and wait. You get an answer back, and eventually get buzzed in.

You enter into a spacious lobby, where, before you can get to the elevator, you
are called over by the tired security guard, and given a logbook. All guests must
sign in and out, have photo ID, and anyone under 16 must be accompanied by an
adult. You can feel the trust in the air.

After you finish scibbling on the pad, and the guard takes down much too much of
your personal information, your host finally arrives on one of the two elevators.
You begin to chat, and you stroll past the guard's desk into some sort of hall.

The room is wide and spacious, much more grandiose than you would have ever
expected in such a place. Like the lobby's tarnished elegance, it seems to have
a dusty, preserved magnificence. It is as if it had been simply forgotten in
some far-off happy year, to sit alone, to settle and grow old. An abused piano
sits futily in the corner. The whole buliding seems tired, like a terminal
patient reminiscing about bittersweet happier years, winding down to a
withering final breath. 

You continue back out into the lobby (there are two other exits out the atrium,
presumably to somewhere in back of the building) and press the "up" button for
the elevator. It soundlessly creeps open, and you both step in. Your host
presses an age-yellowed "12" button, and the elevator weakly strains upward
at an almost imperceptible acceleration.

After a seemingly endless elevator ride, you arrive on the twelfth floor of
the building, and step out into a hallway of traffic-flattened green carpet,
age-varnished dark wood, and anachronistic iron fixtures, such as the old
MAIL slot which pipes down to some unknown depth. A window looks down over
central downtown, somewhat obscured by the building across the street. You walk
a few doors down and come to what looks to be a standard effieciency apartment,
with a picture of the downstairs entryway still on the television.