FLORENCE TANNER
Real Name: Florence Tanner
Occupation: Minister of the First Spiritual Church, Psychic, former actress
Known Relatives: father, mother (names unrevealed, possibly deceased), David (brother, deceased)
Base of Operations: Los Angeles, California
First Appearance: Legend Of Hell House (1973)
History: Florence Tanner is a renowned Spiritualist and founder of the First Spiritualist Church in California. A known psychic, she is well-known to paranormal researchers and parapsychologists for her ability to communicate with spirits.
Born in 1927 in the Hollywood Hills, Tanner was the daughter of Spiritualists who greatly encouraged her abilities. She also had a younger brother, David, who died in his youth from spinal meningitis. An effervescent child, she loved entertaining guests with her abilities, but she rarely dated as teenager. Through her life, she never married, never finding a man with whom she chose to share her life.
After some time working as an actress, Tanner opened the First Spiritualist Church in an old store in Hollywood, not far from her home. A respected medium among the Los Angeles elite, on December 1970, she was one of two mediums with psychic B.F. Fischer suggested by businessman Rolf Deutsch to physicist Dr. Lionel Barrett in a renewed investigation at the Belasco Mansion in rural Maine. Deutsch was in ill health, and expected Barrett's research would be able to confirm existence of an afterlife. Tanner went into the investigation as a full test of her abilities and convinced she could cross over the trapped spirits though, one of which she believed was that of Daniel Belasco, the son of the builder. However, her religious beliefs were constantly being by Barrett's pragmatic approach, and whenever her doubt in her beliefs became evident, Daniel's ghost can back to her. Tanner was also being accosted and attacked by the ghost of Daniel's father, Emeric Belasco, to keep her weakened. However, after Barrett revealed his plan to scientifically exorcise the ghosts, she rose to defend Daniel, only to realize that he and his father were one and the same to manipulate her. There never was a Daniel Belasco haunting the structure. Belasco's ghost dropped a cross in the house's chapel on her, crushing her spine.
However, after Barrett's machine partially cleared the house, Tanner returned as a pure spirit to Fischer to help him defeat Belasco and reveal his hiding place under the chapel to him. After confronting the apparition, Fischer re-activated Barrett's device to destroy him. Tanner, however, ended up somehow surviving. Her body was missing when the authorities returned to claim it and Barrett, who had also been killed in the house. Five years later, she was a visiting psychic in a wheelchair from out west at the Lilydale Assembly, a Spiritualist community in New York. Around 2010, she was an associate of the Russo Family of Waverly Place in New York City and an authority on spirit activity. Whether these were imposters or if Tanner survived her experience at the Belasco House is unrevealed.
Powers/Abilities: Florence Tanner possesses the latent ability to see and communicate with ghosts, the astral spirits of human beings who have died but for some reason have not passed on to the next level of existence. A Class Two psychic, she can actually perceive ghosts and convey messages from them, but she cannot see or visualize them as physical beings as Melinda Gordon or Frank Bannister. She can detect their presence while in the invisible spectrum and communicate and interact with ghosts on the same level of human beings. She can also extend her presence through the spirit realm through the spirit realm through the use of astral companions or "spirit guides," usually benevolent and protective ghosts like Chief Red Cloud, who relays to her information from the locations she visits and messages from other spirits. He could also bring to her the spirits of human beings who have passed on to the spirit realm ("the afterlife").
Comments: Florence Tanner is a character created by writer Richard Matheson in the book, "Legend of Hell House." In the film version, she was played by actress Pamela Franklin. The rest of the cast was played by Roddy McDowell (B.F. Fischer), Clive Revill (Dr. Lionel Barrett) and Gayle Hunnicutt (Ann Barrett).
According to the book, Tanner is forty-five years old when she visits the Belasco House. Pamela Franklin was born in 1950 and was twenty-years-old when she played the character.
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