Bridgeport: Alanna Spiegelman

- Edited to sound a bit less cheesy, condensed and unnecessary details removed. -

Well the gist of it is there isn't it? Alanna grew up part of a fairly normal family and had a fairly normal childhood. As a child she was more interested in books and science than playing make believe or listening to spooky stories, thus having no clue as to the secret lives of some of Bridgeport's more... fascinating and gifted residents. Of course that is slowly becoming less and less true due to an unfortunate mishap.

Alanna was late for an evening lecture at the university where she was earning her doctorate in Psychology when the accident occurred. An SUV roared out of an hidden parking lot and sent her car over the edge of the road, a hit and run. Rescue crews had difficulty recovering her injured body and she had lost a great deal of blood by the time they were able to get her into the ambulance. On the way to the hospital her heart stopped and she died but fortunately this was only a temporary setback. A fleeting glimpse of the afterlife was interrupted by the very skilled doctors and nurses at the emergency room who managed to resuscitate her. Though her life had been spared her right leg was so utterly mangled in the wreck that there was no possibility of it being reconstructed and instead had to be amputated.

Not until after she was discharged from the hospital did Alanna start to "see" things. In the beginning she attributed it to hallucinations brought on by her medication but the visions only occurred in certain areas, continuing well after she was no longer on any drugs. She would eventually realize her new abilities when she started her own practise. In her search for an office to rent she came across one that was far under priced for it's location and the charm of the art-deco styling retained from when the building had been built. The landlord wouldn't discuss his reasons for the price, only that people couldn't stick to their contracts and would relocate.

Being a new practise and just moving in Alanna was spending late nights at the office, taking some of the more difficult, desperate and absent-minded clients that other psychiatrists tended to ignore. It was during these late nights when she was alone that her first "speciality" client appeared. She at first presumed he was an hallucination but after several visits she began to listen to it. As the visitations became more frequent Alanna was able to get a great deal of information and combined with research from the local library was able to learn about the spectre's history. The original owner of the office had been a private investigator who had been killed in the 1940s during a case following a big-time drug baron.

At their next session she showed her "client" some newspaper clippings photocopied from the library. They told how the drug baron had been convicted of the P.I.'s murder in addition to drug charges and other crimes, thanks to evidence kept in a safety deposit box which his secretary delivered to the local newspaper. After Alanna read him the clippings her client smiled, tipped his hat, walked through the door and was never seen again.

With her first successful paranormal cased completed Alanna began an after-hours business under the table. When she isn't dealing with more run-of-the-mill clients she's counselling spirits and ghosts in some of Bridgeport's more historically interesting buildings. Of course as a young professional trying to get a start in the city she's become very open-minded to "other" types of clients as well.

Alanna enjoys her work immensely and is extremely professional. On the clock she is referred to as Ms. Spiegelman. Though she can appear quite formal she knows to leave the office at the office and enjoy herself. Even with her unique ability she still knows almost nothing about Bridgeport's more interesting and possibly dangerous quirks. But being a new practise she does tend to attract some more interesting clients, during regular hours and off the clock as well.

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Ah ha ha oh Christ that is so cheesy. Uggh I'm gonna have to try and rewrite that later to be something better. Anyway whenever someone exposes me to a "world" I have to make a character for it. Most never leave my head and most are just rehashes of the same self-insertion fantasies. But when and started asking me to make my own Bridgeport resident a little kernal of an idea once swept away came back; someone who dealt with ghosts not by exorcism or 'busting, but by counselling them. The leg thing is just because I have a thing for amputee characters. Srsly. It's a sickness.

Done for in the hopes that she might be of use to someone. Drawn and coloured by me. Except for the background, the pants and the notepad. Those were from GIS. Because I can't draw or colour stuff that complicated.