what happens to these people, in their last moments...

IT REALLY MATTERS.

MELINDA GORDON FROM GHOST WHISPERER.
INDEPENDENT, PRIVATE, & HIGHLY SELECTIVE.

• RULES.
• ABOUT.
• NEW CANON.
• VERSES.

RULES.

return.

ABOUT.

stats.

name. melinda may gordon.
aka: mel.
age: 25.
pronouns: she/her.
sexuality: bisexual.
species: human / medium.
birthday: may 15th.
positives: endlessly kind, gentle, passionate.
negatives: lonely, selfless (to a fault).
mental illnesses: c-ptsd, anxiety.
physical characteristics: petite, cheery smile, thick, dark hair, a mole below her right eye.

lore/abilities.

sight. this is melinda’s main ability. she is the bridge between the living and the dead, able to communicate with spirits who have not yet crossed on because of the unfinished business they have on this plane. they can give her visions of their past, usually about the events leading up to their death. when their needs are fulfilled, she guides them towards the light. she loves her gift, even if it hurts her sometimes.
auras. though this gift isn’t strong, she is able to see people’s auras, a halo of light around the body. she’s noticed by now that the colors have a meaning pertaining to the people’s personalities and morals, and has a notebook full of the connections she’s made tucked away in her purse.
possessions. being a medium isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. vengeful spirits have and can possess her, and while it’s not for long, it’s still alarming. they often do this to either put her in harm’s way, or use her as a mouthpiece. while she’s in this state she has limited control of her body, and describes it as ‘being backseat in her own brain’. this is uncommon, however, as most spirits aren’t strong enough to do so, but when it does it always leaves her shaken. she’ll only talk about this if she truly and deeply trusts you.
pain. if a ghost wants to hurt her, they very well can. dark spirits often leave her sick, giving her headaches, dizziness, and sometimes (but rarely) even causing her to faint. she thinks of this as a burden, and feels both guilt and embarrassment when people encounter her in this state.
psychic dreams. this one only happens when the ghost who’s visiting her had a connection to the spiritual world while they were living, and isn’t related to the flashes of the past she experiences by a regular visiting spirit. they can be prophetic dreams, or tether her to a connection she hasn’t experienced yet. she keeps track of these dreams in the same notebook mentioned above.

bio.

trigger warning: mentions of abuse, gaslighting, involuntary medication, cancer, familial death.

melinda’s nine years old when she finds out she has the gift.
she’s sitting in her third grade classroom when her teacher walks through the door, puffy-eyed, the remnant of a tear stuck to her cheek. “kids, do you remember sarah applewhite?” nobody speaks, not understanding the weight of the silence that their teacher has brought into the room, but they all knew sarah. words like glioma and cancer don’t stand out to a child— shouldn’t have to— but at the very least, melinda remembers sarah’s sick. sarah, a girl she played with in her backyard, their moms laughing, the summer sun shedding light over the grass.
“sarah...” her teacher coughs, her fingertips touching her lips, “i’m so sorry, but sarah’s passed away.”
“what does ‘passed away’ mean? ” a kid pipes up from the back.
“my mom says it means dead.” another girl answers.
that's a word melinda knows. her grandpa had died just the year before. her mother kept her away from her parents (for reasons she wouldn’t learn until much, much later), but sentiment had brought them back for the funeral. melinda remembers touching his arm. it was cold.
she watches the older woman choke back a sob. her classmates whisper around her, unsure of what to do. adults cry, too?
it’s then the rest of melinda’s life unfolds before her.
sarah appears more like an apparition than a person, her figure gently fading into the room. her hair is combed into two long braids, her hands fiddling anxiously with her nightgown. melinda lights up when she sees her, grinning at the girl. sarah looks back at her, blinking, before breaking into a smile, waving at her. hi, melinda!
“mrs. riley," she says, "sarah’s not dead! she’s right there!”
mrs. riley turns, confused, looking at the blank spot melinda’s pointing to. the kids giggle awkwardly around her. she never forgets the way her teacher looks back at her, then. as if she were worried. as if she were crazy.
“that isn’t funny, melinda.”
her face falls, cheeks burning with embarrassment. she can feel the gaze of everyone burning into her back.but sarah’s right there. she sees her. she’s right there. “ i mean it, look! she’s standing right behind you!”
mrs. riley is angry now. her lip quivers as she looks down at the girl, cradling her elbow in her hand. “that’s enough, melinda! take yourself to the principal’s office.”
the other kids— even herself— gasp. the principal’s office. nothing’s worse than that. tears prick hotly along her lashes, looking at the teasing faces of her classmates. her voice is small when she asks—
“why can’t you see her?”- : ✧ : -“i’m so sorry, mr. schmidt.” beth says, holding melinda’s tiny hand in her own, “you know how kids are. she was friends with sarah, i... i’m sure she’s just taking this hard.”
“but mommy, i saw her!” her daughter says exasperatingly, wiping at her cheeks, “she was right there!”
both her mom and the principal exchange glances with each other, beth looking almost... embarrassed. mr. schmidt clears his throat, shuffling papers at his desk. “well, to tell you the truth, ms. gordon, we’re worried about her, is all. we just want to make sure’s okay.”
“yes, i— i think i’ll just take her home for a couple of days, let this smooth over. i’m sure she’ll be alright when i bring her back next week.”- : ✧ : -beth is practically dragging her out of the school, melinda putting up a fight, looking for sarah once again. at least then she could show her mom that she wasn’t lying, show everyone that sarah was smiling and well and alive.
but sarah doesn’t show.
(she won't see her again until almost fifteen years later.)
“why don’t you believe me?” the young girl says as she gets out of the car, following her mom tightly at her heels. beth is exhausted at this point, finally snapping as she kneels down towards her.
“melinda! listen to me. what you saw, it wasn't important! it wasn’t real. you made it up.”
“no i didn't!" she stomps her foot impatiently, "i saw her! sarah was right behind mrs. riley, and she was in her pajamas, and—”
“we’re not talking about this anymore." her mother stands, distancing herself from the girl, " just... go to your room and think about what you’ve done.”
and melinda does. she plops on her bed, her face up to the ceiling, and thinks about what she saw. sarah, her hair in braids, waving at her and smiling. like she was never sick in the first place.
her mom books her for an appointment the next day.- : ✧ : -dr. mcdonald's hesitant to put a nine-year-old on antipsychotics, but beth was insistent, laying out the details (however exaggerated) of melinda’s ‘hallucinations’. “my mother has the same thing,” she says, “i won’t let her go through that. i can’t.”
and so the next two years pass by in a haze. if you ask melinda what happened between that day and the one she finally left her mother’s house, she couldn’t tell you much. it’s a gap, a black hole burned into the film of her childhood. the ghosts, however, never truly fade. they linger at the corner of her eyes, fuzzy, reaching towards her in hope. but the medication makes it hard for her to focus— and besides, isn't she just making it up, anyways? isn't that what her mother told her?
it’s the morning of her eleventh birthday when she hears a distant, but somehow familiar voice from the kitchen. her mom’s arguing with someone. melinda sits at the last step of the stairs, listening to the two talk.
“i didn’t ask you to come, mom. i didn’t ask you to butt into our lives like this—”
“you can’t hide it from her forever, beth. she’ll grow up, and she’ll know, and there’s nothing you can do to stop it. she’s a child, dammit! look at what you’re putting her through! do you really want your daughter resenting you for the rest of your life?”
“no, mom, i don’t. but i don’t want her to grow up like some... freak, as some crazy woman who has no idea what she’s talking about. i don’t want her to end up like you.”
“mom?” melinda calls, finally turning from the stairs. the silence splits the air in two. she hesitantly makes her way to the kitchen, and it’s then she sees the kindest face she’ll ever remember.
“melinda. it’s so good to see you again.”
“ ... grandma?”
the anger still seeps into the kitchen, so much so that the young girl lingers outside of the entryway, hands clutched in front of her. her grandma notices and smiles, reaching a wrinkled palm out towards her.
“it’s alright, sweetie. your mom and i were just talking. now, how have you been? it’s been so long!”
“i-i’m okay.” melinda replies, but she’s smiling this time. mary ann had that effect on people. she always made you feel safe.
beth rustles in front of them, her irritation flaring like a torch. her grandma gives a single glance up at her, as if answering a question that hadn’t been asked. but then she looks back at her granddaughter, chuckling, and the mood softens once again. “tell you what. how would you like to spend the weekend with me? just us girls?”
melinda’s eyes light up. she’d always wanted to know her grandma, share stories of cookie-baking and movies like all of the other kids in her class. she stares up at her mom, her grin wide. “can i, mom?”
a beat passes between the two women, one so heavy that melinda almost regrets asking. beth wrings a washcloth in her hand, looking around the room—at anywhere besides the two of them. she swallows finally, touching her head, and makes a decision that changes her daughter’s life.
“do what you want, melinda, i— i have a migraine. i’m going up to bed.” she pauses, sighs, and then leans down to kiss her forehead. “i love you. have fun.”
and that’s the last time melinda sees her.
a weekend becomes a week, then a month, then a year, until the postcards her mom’s been sending them stop coming in the mail. her grandmother slowly weans melinda off of the antispychotic, gently guiding her back. the affront of spirits that bombard her after the medication’s finally out of her system nearly knocks her off her feet, but whenever she feels weakest her grandmother’s at her side, holding her hand. they’re the only two who really understand each other. even at school, when the kids tease her for talking to the empty spaces only she can make sense of, melinda knows that when she returns home she’ll have someone to go to. she begins helping the spirits as she always wanted, listening to their stories, doing what they need to to help them cross over into the light. she doesn’t say as much, but melinda finally feels a part of something. she finally feels like she has a purpose, and love, and everything that could ever be right in the world.
all of that changes when mary ann dies.- : ✧ : -what does a 17-year-old girl do when her grandma, her best friend, her everything leaves her? what does melinda do when she presses her cold, ghostly lips to her cheek and wishes her one last goodbye?
she doesn’t go home to her mom— not that that’s much of a home anymore. she doesn’t ask any classmates for help, knowing they'd just turn a blind eye to her. no, she takes the money, the pictures, and the rest of the items that her grandmother left her and gets her own apartment. it’s only for the year, she decides. one last year, and then she can get out of albany— and away from everything she's lost— as fast as she can.
well, the year passes, and she does what she promised. there’s a community college in grandview, a city two hours away from her, that offers the degree she’s looking for. she packs up without a word to the last remnant of her family, making a cozy little apartment in the small neighborhood of grandview square her new home.
melinda graduates with an associate’s degree in business and a minor in history. with her whole future ahead of her, (and her new friend andrea at her side) she opens 'same as it never was', her very own antique store. she likes the items that the living once touched, people she never knew. it also offers an avenue closer to spirits, though the more she ages the more they come on their own. it doesn’t take finding an old, dusty tome for her to see them again; they look for her, reach out to her, and she helps them in any way she can. after all, places and things aren’t haunted. people are. and she’ll do whatever she can to cross their loved ones into the light. to carry the legacy her grandmother gave her.

return.

NEW CANON.

the general plot that follows melinda is overall pretty close to the arc of the original: she lives with her husband jim in grandview, where she runs an antique store with her best friend andrea— and then, following andrea’s departure, her new friend delia. melinda communicates with earthbound spirits to help them wrap up any unfinished business they have with the living so that they can cross on over to the other side. but not everyone is happy with her gift, and she finds herself an enemy of the shadow cult, a combination of the living and the dead whose goal is to trap the souls of wayward spirits for their army.
outside of this canon, i've created my own in order to share a better story.

canon divergence.

001. grandview is part of a much larger city. the city of grandview is approximately 200,000 people, with grandview square (where melinda lives and runs ‘same as it never was’, her antique store) as a sort of suburb of it, being where the origins of it all began. a lot of ghost activity happens in this borough, constantly keeping her busy.
002. melinda hasn't seen her mom since she was a child. her grandmother heard of how beth was raising her daughter and knew she deserved better, so the morning of her eleventh birthday she packed her up and gave melinda the best gift she's ever received: freedom. truth be told, beth hasn't reached out to her since mary ann passed away, and melinda's okay with that. she was never much of a mother, anyway.
003. andrea and melinda dated for a short time. andrea moves to grandview just shy of her twenty-fourth birthday, where melinda’s been living the past two years. they have a short-lived relationship, though in the end they decide they work better as friends than partners, and they crack many jokes about it while they run the store together. melinda meets jim just a month after they end things, and the rest is history.
004. andrea doesn’t die. the plane crash, however, does leave her comatose for a short while, in which her spirit lingers between the living world and the dead. she’s able to make contact with melinda during this time— and, likewise, is vulnerable to the man in the hat, who fights to take her soul for his own. andrea manages to break free, and awakens from the coma to a diligent melinda at her bedside. the whole ordeal leaves her shaken, and she packs up everything she has and heads back to new york. in a combination of andrea fleeing grandview and melinda trying to push her away to protect her, the two haven’t spoken since, and don’t until jim dies.
005. jim doesn’t come back. following his heroic act and getting shot in the heat of the moment, jim dies at the hospital, visiting her one last time as a spirit and wishing her goodbye before crossing over to the light. after this event is where melinda’s main verse takes place.

return.

verses.

coming soon.

return.