Real Name: Plato Zorba

Occupation: Parapsychologist/Psychologist, Paranormal Researcher

Known Relatives: Cyrus (nephew), Hilda (niece-in-law), Medea (grand-niece), William (“Buck,” grand-nephew), Jean (grand niece-in-law, deceased), Robert (“Bobby,” great-grandnephew), Kathy (great-grandniece), Cyrus Kriticos (possible son), Arthur Kriticos (possible grandson), Kathleen ("Kathy," possible great-granddaughter), Robert ("Bobby," possible great-grandson),

Base of Operations: Los Angeles, California

First Appearance: Thirteen Ghosts (1960/2001) 

History: Plato Zorba was a prominent psychologist in the early 1930s, but part way through his career, he became interested in researching paranormal activity. He spent much of his later life researching and collecting tales of the supernatural, even creating many of the modern theories about ghosts, including their connections to electromagnetic energy. His interest in the paranormal, however, shifted him into investigating true accounts of the paranormal, and he became one of the first known experts in parapsychology. In the heyday of Hollywood, even traveling to California from the East Coast to serve as a paranormal consultant for horror movies. Many of his colleagues and fellow scientists soon began to cast doubts on his professionalism as Zorba began incorporating and mixing legendary occult mysticism and supernatural belief with traditional parapsychological methods. Using his theories, Zorba created a sophisticated pair of glasses that reportedly helped him to see ghosts and even tampered with movie making sound equipment to record sounds inaudible to the human ear. He also made several attempts to contact the heirs of Thomas Edison as well as the ghost of Edison himself in order to get the plans to a machine to contact the spirit world, which the great inventor was supposedly working on before his death. With psychic Elaine Zacharides and his lawyer and assistant Benjamen Rush, Zorba traveled the world visiting haunted houses as far away as Europe and the Far East. One location that always fascinated him was Vannacutt Sanitarium near Los Angeles where Dr. Richard Vannacutt experimented on his patients and later burned to death in an incredible fire in 1931.

In the later years of his life, Zorba became a recluse in his home in the Hollywood Hills and acted more and more eccentric and sometimes paranoid. He confessed to his lawyer Benjamin Rush that he had stumbled into secrets that he was not supposed to know. Irrationally believing the ghosts he had spent years chasing were haunting him, he confined himself up in his home. Whether it was his own doing is a matter of debate, but Zorba had brought to his California home as a souvenir a relic, possession, keepsake or detached body part that had supposedly belonged to every spirit he had explored, essentially trapping these eleven ghosts in his home. His own beliefs were that the spirits he had investigated could be tied to these objects. He allowed visits from virtually no one, but filmmaker William Castle sometimes came to him to get inspiration and ideas for the horror movies he was creating. Just before his death, Zorba eventually became completely paranoid and didn’t trust anyone anymore. He began to suspect he would become a spirit himself in his own house (a 12th ghost) and converted all his accounts into cash and concealed the money throughout hidden and inconspicuous spaces through the structure. In November 1960, he passed away peacefully in his sleep of what was believed to be a heart attack, but a year later, speculatory evidence proved he might have been murdered and suffocated by Ben Rush trying to obtain his fortune.

Zorba’s closest living relative, Cyrus Zorba, inherited the house after his death and confirmed the existence of the ghosts haunting the old edifice afterward. In a séance, his spirit predicted a 13th ghost would free all the ghosts he had trapped there. However, several years later, a young man named Cyrus Kriticos soon confronted the Zorbas claiming to be Plato Zorba's illegitimate son and the true heir to Zorba's paranormal research. Using the volume of data, Kriticos allied himself with several paranormal experts and psychics, such as Kalina Oretzia and Dennis Rafkin, managed to perfect Zorba's glasses to see ghosts and expanded on his work to capture and trap earthbound spirits in a house in upstate New York.

Case Files: Whipstaff (03/18/38), Vannacutt Sanitarium (1/13/43), Kane Manor (3/22/45), Edbrook (10/13/45), Wiltsett Castle (10/30/58), et al