Mireya's Full Length Biography
Portions of this backstory are still in need of editing.
Beginnings and Childhood
The daughter of a Catholic pastor on a small Spanish Island, Mireya grew up memorizing all of the Catholic stories. That's why, whenever young Mireya would see things, people from the past, hanging around her island, she would just think it was her imagination, bringing her history and bible lessons to life.
As she grew older, she learned differently. In her middle years, she would tell her mother what she saw, and while her mother wasn't as devout as her father was, she did not like hearing the stories her daughter was telling and would often pass it off as a wild imagination. The things she saw around the island were never harmful, just relics of a time gone by, so she never felt the need to claim they were dangerous... and she never mentioned them to her father, who never had much of a tolerance for different things in the first place.
It should be noted that while her father was intolerant of many things, including different cultures, his wife and Mireya's mother, is an American who met him on a trip to the island. Though she was different, her devout Catholic faith helped him see past their differences. Catholicism is perhaps the one thing that could change his mind, about anything.
As such, Mireya eventually learned to keep her sightings to herself. Unfortunately, the inability to relate her true experiences with her parents caused a rift.
As she grew in age, and was trusted to be out more, Mireya would wander the island, mostly the town and surrounding land where she lived. Many of the visions of the past she saw always stayed the same, like an old man fishing by the rocks. Others would come and go, as if drawn by date or weather, like the children climbing a tree, in the middle of the port. Occasionally, and Mireya didn't realize this until she was in her mid-teens, the visions of the past would change, and would notice her presence as well. Still swayed by her Catholic upbringing, she continued to keep it all to herself.
Beginning to Understand
Ibiza is a tourist island, so when Mireya hit 18, she went out with some friends and hit up some of the local clubs.
In one of the clubs, she didn't party or dance like her friends were. Instead, she was shocked that as soon as they entered the building, there was a murder happening in the middle of the dance floor.. and everyone was dancing around it! She just stared, unable to say a word. Her friends just laughed it off, thinking she was so unused to the atmosphere, that she was using exaggerations when she said that there was murder on the dancefloor. They left her so she could come to her senses at her own time. Then, someone whispered into her ear, "I see it, too."
That night, Mireya found a kindred spirit, another man who was able to see ghosts and spirits just like her. He was some retail shop owner from the mainland, out with his friends for a bachelor party weekend, but, like her, he was able to see the spirits of the dead left behind. The two went off to the side, and discussed her abilities- she had no one else to ask, so she picked his brain all night long. He didn't have very many answers, but he was more than happy to share his theories, and the two swapped stories about the different encounters, or visions, they had had.
Following that evening, Mireya tried to devote more time to studying the local spirits, as she now called them. She started with some of the more prominent spirits, and attempted to research them in local libraries and registrars. By doing this, she was able to learn more about some of the spirits that inhabited the island. Others still remained a mystery.
By doing this, she also accidentally learned how to coax some spirits to the world beyond. It happened when she found the fisherman-ghost's identity, and went down to the rocks to meet him. She asked, "Why are you still here, Pablo?" He looked at her, with a confused look on his face, and faded away. That was the last time she saw him.
That was also her last year in Ibiza.
College Life
She moved to Madrid to begin college. Officially, she went to school for teaching, but since she didn't need to report all of her classes to her parents, she also took what few classes in the paranormal the school had.
Most classes were the typical case studies, nothing much to learn but theories and incident reports. One of her teachers, Vidal Gonzalez, caught her eye. There was something about him that attracted her toward him. When she approached him one day, he revealed to her that he was a ghost hunter. After several more meetings, he invited her to go with him to go hunting one day.
They, along with other hunters, went to a small little village in a rural area outside of Madrid. There wasn't much, farms, a couple small shops, and an inn for visitors on their way between cities. Their stop was the inn.
While there, they investigated a paranormal occurence of people seeing sightings of an odd woman manifesting in one of the guest bedrooms. It was determined that the woman was not a hostile spirit, and the inn's guests shouldn't worry, so long as they are not nervous around spirits. As a thank-you, the innkeepers decided to reward the ghost hunters with not only the reward payment, but also a box of jewels that was kept in the room where the spirit had been seen. Mireya was given a ruby pendant from that box. Oddly enough, since their work there, the ghost had never been seen again.
Since then, Mireya had been bitten. She dove further into the paranormal than before, and soon found herself researching the occult, ghosts, and other supernatural beings. With Vidal as her mentor, she had more doors and oppurtunities to explore her newfound passion than before.
It was so prominent that her parents couldn't ignore it any longer, and gave her the ultimatum- give it up, or be disowned. Mireya couldn't discount the things she had learned, the things she had witnessed... and, so, she let her parents go. As well as her academic career.
After College
She now hunts the paranormal- sometimes with Vidal, or a different group, or sometimes on her own as she gets tips. She's not just interested in sitting in haunted houses, either. She will go rock climbing, spelunking, or hiking, if she thinks its worth it for some mystery she's working on- although she often has accompaniment on the more physical excusions. Over time, she has accumulated a collection of other items from her journeys. Some useful, some just mementos.
Throughout her journeys, she would come to learn some basic methods of "handling" the spirits she was dealing with, from items, to spells, and other tactics as learned by her partners, or through self-learned lessons. On one particularly harrowing investigation, she learned that her ruby pendant actually was the host of a spirit itself!
After a particularly daunting trip into the Astral Plane, she was contacted by a man named LaCroix, with an invitation to join a group called PARADIGM. While reluctant at first, she joined, hoping that her involvement in the group would provide more oppurtunities than operating freelance would.
More information will be provided at a later date
