Editing Shadows Hills Anna (section)

==== Background ====

Several years back, a rumor was flying around in a small town that one of the local houses was haunted by the ghost of a woman who'd committed suicide there. It wasn't, but so many people thought that it was that the power of their belief gave rise to a tulpa. That's when the rumors really started to spread; the tulpa was so much like an actual ghost, that it attracted the attention of an investigative team from a big city nearby. They were skeptics to the last, deadset on proving the story false. When they were finally confronted by the tulpa, in her glowy, ghostly form, their first and strongest thoughts were that she must be a prankster, a hoax. They were so completely convicted on this idea that it became true. The tulpa became a clever young girl in makeup, and thanks to the quick thinking of the trickster archetype that the researchers had thought up for her she was able to talk her way out of having the police called on her.

She beat feet out of the town quickly, all the same, and made her living however she could for a few months. It was pretty easy finding jobs, really; when she lied on a job application, so long as the potential employer believed it she actually had the skills she claimed she did. Unfortunately, she must have done this one time too often, or maybe the suits were on her from the moment they heard about the too-neat ghost story, but one day at work she was taken by Section M, a special investigative unit tasked with solving supernatural mysteries. She spent months at one of their facilities, while Section M scientists did experiments to find the limits of what she could become.

Eventually, they probed too far, and turned her into a ghost again. She walked through the walls of her cell and possessed one of the researchers before he could sound the alarm. Now that she had a body that Section M wouldn't be suspicious of, she was able to escape, and she left the scientist locked in a broom closet at a nearby motel after taking his money, keys and an experimental memory-altering device she'd stolen on her way out of the facility. She called the front desk to say she was checking out of her room; naturally, the clerk believed she was human, so she became one again.

She went on the lam again, and eventually found herself drawn to Shadow Hills, a place where everyone has a secret. With the clever application of stage makeup and a liberal dose of lying her ass off, she convinced the school registrar that she was a Tanuki. Time will tell whether the disguise will hold up, especially given her mischievous nature that seems to demand that she give conflicting stories to everyone she meets.