HEATHER BURTON
Real Name: Heather Burton
Occupation: Psychic Historian, former High School Librarian, former Actress
Place Of Birth: possibly Boston, Massachusetts
Known Relatives: Howard (father), Janice (mother), Joanna (aunt), Cassandra (sister), Nicholas Burton, Sara Burton, Noah Hawthorne (17th Century ancestors, deceased),
Base of Operations: Los Angeles, California
First Appearance: House of Bones (2010)
History: Heather Burton is the daughter of Howard Burton, a Massachusetts lawyer, and Dr. Janice Burton, of Boston Memorial Hospital. Her psychic skills were quite obvious from her youth. When she was nine-years-old her "imaginary friends" were actually spirits in her neighborhood, like Noah Hawthorne, a 17th Century lawyer who turned out to be one of her ancestors. Heather was never aware that these people she encountered were ghosts. Her parents treated her "friends" as creations of her imagination, but they eventually became alarmed when Heather was able to mention things about the history of the family she could not know. She also accurately predicted her mother's pregnancy with her future sister. Heather was then sent to live with her Aunt Joanna in Baltimore where Heather's visions were more potent in her aunt's historical neighborhood. A closet Spiritualist, Joanna Burton encouraged Heather's skills and taught her how to use them.
Briefly living in Southern California, Heather temporarily dabbled in acting as a teenager, but when her career turned bleak, her father got her job as a librarian and research assistant at Holloman Academy. It was here that Heather first began using her skills as a psychic to help pass over earthbound spirits, but her efforts were often strained by the belligerent ghost of former headmaster Algernon Danforth, who had been involved in the occult in life. She called upon the advice of the Collinsport Ghost Society in Maine to exorcise his spirit, and it was through their involvement with them that brought her into contact with the TV series, "Sinister Sites," for their last television episode at the Wicker House in Louisiana.
Following the cancellation of "Sinister Sites," Heather was given her old short-lived "spin-off" series, "Psychic Trails," which followed her as she visited random haunted locations, encountered individuals asking for psychic assistance and even helped the police in unsolved murder cases. Over time, Heather has made contact with several spirits needing help to cross over into the afterlife, and has discovered she seems to be almost consistently surrounded by at least one or two earthbound spirits at all times. Although she is persistently frustrated by skeptics and disbelievers of her paranormal abilities, she has found her main drive to be in using her skills to help other people.
Case Files: Holloman Academy (8-25-11), Wicker House (1-16-12), Adams House (10-13-12), Crumpet Manor (10-22-12), Vannacutt Sanitarium (10-31-12), et al.
Powers/Abilities: Heather Burton is a Class Two psychic possessing a susceptibility to paranormal activity and limited ability to see and communicate with ghosts, the astral spirits of people who have died. While she cannot directly communicate with spirits, she has greater ability to sense their presence than normal human beings but she must rely on her other clairvoyant skills, such as psychometry, to pull the information about them from the environment around them. She can pull visions of the past based on the energies left by the living from physical objects.
Comments: Heather Burton was played by Charisma Carpenter in the movie, "House Of Bones"(2008). Her history here is very loosely based on that of Heidi Wyrick ("A Haunting in Georgia") and Melinda Gordon ("Ghost Whisperer") along with historical incidents from the lives of Mena Suvari and Kris Williams of TAPS.
The stages of psychic awareness described here are as follows: Class One (telepathy, precognition...), Class Two (clairvoyance, psychometry...) and Class Three (direct spirit communication), reserved for fictional characters such as Melinda Gordon, Frank Bannister, Samantha Stephens and Sabrina Spellman. There is no known instance of a possible Class Three in the real universe. While all individuals have the potential for some psychic ability, it is possible that some individuals have more potential than others.
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