THE AMAZING GHOST FIGHTER

The Secret Origin of The Amazing Ghost Fighter™ REVEALED!

     Daniel MacAllister was born in 1934 in Arizona.  His father, Douglas MacAllister, moved the family to Gotham City in 1935 with high hopes of finding work in the city.  Unfortunately they found life in Gotham hard and unforgiving, with few prospects.  Still, Douglas and his wife Rose worked hard to support their three children; David the oldest (two years older than AGF), Daniel, and their younger sister Mary (born in Gotham in 1936).

     The family lived a hard life in Gotham.  They did their best to instill good values in their children, but surrounded by the cold violence of the worst parts of Gotham in the 1930's it was never easy.

     Douglas enlisted in the Army in 1942 and died fighting in Europe, leaving Rose alone to raise the children (David 10, Daniel 8, and Mary 6).  In 1948, Rose died of Polio leaving the children alone.

     David had been working for several years and now took the job of trying to keep the family together.  He worked hard to earn money to feed them, while not allowing Daniel to work so that he could care for Mary.  The strain was very great on David, who took to drink and violence.  He and Daniel, who never agreed on much to begin with, fought constantly.  Only their mother's memory and their devotion to Mary kept them together.

     One night, when Daniel was 16 (1950), David and some other boys were caught trying to rob a store.  Daniel had been out looking for David, worried that he was getting into trouble.  He saw what was happening and managed to get the drop on the policemen who were arresting David.  The two were able to escape.

     That night the two brothers had a terrible fight and again came to blows.  Daniel took the worst of it (as usual) and finally resolved to leave.  Before morning he was in a boxcar headed out of Gotham, not caring where he was heading.

     Daniel wandered around the country for a time, but in 1952 found himself drawn back west.  Originally he thought it was just a desire to return to his roots, but the closer to Arizona he traveled the more "right" it felt.

     Eventually he found himself wandering deep in the desert, lost among the mesas and half-delirious from the heat.  His journey brought him stumbling down into a cavern deep in the heart of a large, unusually gray mesa.  There he discovered an ancient Indian burial site.

     Daniel collapsed and had a vision in which the spirit of his great grandfather appeared and revealed an amazing™ story.

     Long ago an Indian shaman/warrior of noble spirit gathered great power and fought the spirits of evil.  He banished the dark spirits beyond the realm of men, but knew the battle was not over.  From time to time, the barriers between the domains would weaken and the evil spirits would be able to enter our world again.  The shaman sang songs of power and cast his enchantments out across the generations, so that his descendents would be gifted with portions of his massive powers.  Using these powers, his descendents became guardians of the gate, beings called forth to battle the spirits at the threshold before they could gain a power base in the realm of men once more.

     The invasion of Indian lands by the white man had nearly destroyed the traditions of the shaman and his people.  The knowledge and powers began to be passed on only when the need arose, when the forces of darkness assailed the gate.  The last time was when Daniel's father had been summoned to the mesa, just as Daniel had been, to the site of their ancestor's grave.

     Daniel was transformed into The Amazing Ghost Fighter™ and fell into a deep trance.  While dreaming, the spirit of his great grandfather taught him how to use the powers that had manifested within him.  He learned to move with stealth, to track his prey, and the martial skills needed to defeat his foe.  In addition he learned to walk on the very air itself, allowing him access to the high forbidden places his spirit quarry often seek for their sanctuaries.  His body gained supernatural resiliency to sustain him through the rigors of battle.  Lastly he learned to summon his ghostly weapons of justice, the Spirit Lash and the Ghost Bow.  The Spirit Lash is a spectral whip that destroys the "Weapons of the Oppressors", weapons carried by the human servants of injustice who dominate the helpless.   The lash disintegrates such weapons in a burst of freezing flame.  The Ghost Bow holds the power to unleash arrows that can destroy spirit beings, creatures untouchable by mortal weapons.  The bow's arrows also hold the power to immobilize mortals, striking them down with the "Chill of the Netherworld".

     Armed with his newfound powers and skills, Ghost Fighter quickly found himself thrust into battle with the demonic spirits trying to gain entrance to our world.  After a desperate battle, Ghost Fighter was able to force them back into the void, locking the gate once more.  However one spirit escaped into our realm, and Ghost Fighter set out to find and destroy it.  The spirit eventually revealed itself to Ghost Fighter, turning out to be the criminal Murder Legendre, an evil spiritualist and old foe of the Prowler, who had become a shaman devoted to the evil spirits and working for their return to the realm of men.

     Daniel's quest to find Murder Legendre brought him back to Gotham City in1953.  Daniel, changed by his experiences and longing for his family, sought to be reconciled with David and be reunited with Mary. However David and Mary could not be found and had apparently both been gone for some time.  Daniel spent a great deal of time trying to locate his family, but to no avail.

     Attempting to live up to his birthright, the Amazing Ghost Fighter became the newest defender of justice in Gotham City.  He was its gray-clad warrior of the night, who walked upon the air from rooftop to rooftop and struck down villains with the chill of the netherworld released from his Ghost Bow and destroyed their weapons of oppression with his Spirit Lash.

     His early attempts were unsuccessful at best.  The Amazing Ghost Fighter had been trained to fight spirits.  Crime fighting was something very different, and the crime of Gotham City was unlike crime found anywhere else in the world.  He needed a mentor, someone who had been fighting crime in Gotham for a long time, someone who understood the madness of the Gotham underworld.  That someone was The Joker.

     The Joker took the young hero under his whoopie cushion and showed him how to survive the dark streets of Gotham City.  Joker gained the police's trust for Ghost Fighter and sponsored him for membership in the JLA.  When the Joker and his new wife, Harley Quinn, left Gotham City to protect New Orleans, he left the Amazing Ghost Fighter as Gotham's main defender.  Since the Joker's return to Gotham, the Ghost Fighter has continued operating mostly solo, finally confident in his abilities as a crime fighter.

     Ghost Fighter has had an on/off relationship with the Catwoman, sometime heroine sometime jewel thief.  He is able to overlook her thief habits as long as she keeps them low key and not on his watch.  He is unlikely to turn her over to the police if he would catch her in a theft, but he would attempt to make her return the items.

    The Ghost Fighter has recently begun a Vision Quest to learn more about himself. During the initial stages of it, he discovered that his mysterious new enemy, Windom Earle, might have stolen his brother David's soul. This dire news, however, was leavened when he found his sister Mary alive and well in New Orleans. His Vision Quest was then interrupted by The First Patchwork Man War, in which the Amazing Ghost Fighter played a pivotal part. Although Mary nearly sacrificed her own life to save a pregnant Harley Quinn during the struggle, she was revived thanks to a Taskforce medical team led by Nick Fury, and is currently completing her recovery at Gotham Central Hospital.

     Daniel MacAllister lives in a tiny one room apartment in a hotel for men in Gotham's south side.  He earns a meager living doing day labor on the docks or at the rail yard.  When he can afford to and when he isn't patrolling the streets, he spends his time in Jazz clubs.  Daniel is known for his prodigious coffee consumption.