Spectra Vondergeist

Spectra Vondergeist is a character from the Monster High franchise.

She is a ghost and a student at Monster High. She is the reporter of Monster High, and a celebrity within the student body, editor of the in-school famous Gory Gazette blog, the former Ghostly Gossip.

In the AWA fics, Spectra is a student at the AWA Academy.

Appearance
Due to the fact that Spectra is a ghost, her skin is ghostly pale — almost stark white — and then fades to transparent at the beginning of her hands and feet. Her face is somewhat gaunt.

Spectra's hair is violet, with rather noticeable periwinkle and pinkish purple highlights. It is usually frisky; the ends sticking up and looking as if it were floating like a ghost (though straighter on the 'School's Out ' doll and in the CGI 3D TV specials).

Her eyes (irises) are a bright icy blue, with the pupils being a dark blue and the sclera or sclerae (or "whites" of the eyes) are not white, but instead a pale lilac. Her lips/lipstick are/is purple. Her fashion motif are Gothic, chains, black balls, and shackles. She wears a bracelet that resembles a silver hoop on her wrist in the artwork and on her doll, but in the webisodes, her bracelets are shackles and she wears two of them. Because she is a ghost, Spectra's skin is made of ectoplasm rather than real flesh.

Personality
Spectra is a floating mystery. She used to be shy and reclusive, whispering her phrases, hanging by herself, and comfortable with that and, in fact, benefiting of her mysterious aura to blend in and watch her stories unfold beneath her eyes, spying on the students for scoops. However, ever since the secret face of her gossip blog, the Ghostly Gossip, was revealed, she has become more outgoing and less secretive.

However, she has, or used to have, a very forceful personality and she often made quick judgments and leap to conclusions without supporting evidence. She regularly created stories from loosely related details that she may not have heard correctly, which she connected by means of her own imagination. Her method of journalism ran so deep in her psyche that she couldn't tell her fabrications apart from reality. Even when they pertained to her own person, she sooner believed her own fantasies than the documented truth. It didn't help that she was an avid gossiper either, as her desperation for scoops would lead her to take what was given, no matter what. Because of all this, Spectra is one of the most controversial students at Monster High. On one hand, she owned one of the two most popular news sources at the school, but on the other, she has hurt more than a few fellow students by spreading lies about them.

When confronted with the facts, she tended to dig in her heels. She drew the line at planting a fake story though, which is completely against her morals. That isn't to say she wouldn't publish stories she believes are true, even if they really were lies. This makes for an excellent gossip columnist, but not a friend you would want to share secrets with.

As of "Haunted", however, Spectra experienced first hand what gossip and non-verified information could do to people and since then has built a dedication to fact that turned her world inside out, turning her from a gossiper to a legit reporter. She has matured and drawn the line between acceptable and unacceptable, renaming her blog, to Gory Gazette.

But despite all this, she is seen as a kind monster and helps those in need of her, who can be a bit of a scatterbrain, which prevented her from seeing the damage she made, oblivious to others feelings. However Spectra is just as sneaky as she is naive, and incredibly intelligent, making it almost impossible to know what is real about Spectra, as she is also an expert at lying, making facades and arranging stories quickly, prone to trow and excuse into the fraction. Spectra is also known to easily get the truth out of other monsters which also gives her a detective/reporter complex. Her favorite food is Angel Food Cake, because it is as light as she is.

Abilities

 * Floating: As a ghost, Spectra can float like any other ghost.
 * Permeation: Spectra can go through solids.
 * Body-Age Imprisonment: Due to Spectra being a ghost, she is trapped within the body of the age she died at, though she is 16 in monster years now.

Skillset

 * Journalism: Spectra is noted to be a good journalist, usually not getting her facts straight first, but she makes good stories and interesting ones. She eavesdrops around the school through walls and hiding and such, such as to prevent being caught, but she usually does not listen to what the monsters of the whole story and she says she leaves it to her artistic side to "fill in the blanks".

Trivia

 * Spectra's first name comes from the word "specter/spectre", which means "ghostly appearance".
 * Spectra's surname "Vondergeist" is German ("von der Geist") and means "from the ghost/spirit". Interestingly, while Spectra made up being royalty, the "von" part of name does suggest she's nobility.
 * Her birthday is October 30.
 * The appearance of chains and locks on Spectra's outfits referances Charles Dickens' classic ghost-story "A Christmas Carol" where ghosts are bound to chains and locks apparently created by being bad people in life.