Newt doesn’t tell others about his gifts. They’d shown up when he was just a boy. He’d seen his first after his grandmother passed away. She’d just shown up when he went to bed one evening, brushing a hand through his hair as she usually would have might. Then he saw her following his mother around as she cooked and cleaned the house, a sad look upon his features. The first time he said anything it was dismissed– Reasoned away as a child’s mourning. His grandmother eventually disappeared and he thought, perhaps, they were true but nothing had ever felt so real.
The next time was when an automobile accident had happened at a street corner– a young boy was hit and killed. Every time they passed by it he’d dart over to his mother, griping her hand tightly as he watched a boy with sad eyes calling for his mother. This time he wisely chose to say nothing. And so his life continued on this way– He could see those who had died and clung to the life they had. For a long time he tried to ignore them, to agree that it was an over-active imagination.
It’s not until the war happens and he’s enlisted to go that it changes. Watching as worldly bodies fell and spiritual bodies rose to the Earth, searching for answers to why this War to End All Wars had destroyed every future they had. He’d vowed to help these people who no one else could see– who were thought to be gone– from then on. Instead of returning to England to join the political side of things as his father wanted he took his small inheritance and traveled the world. He’d stop in “haunted villages” and assist there, only taking pay when he needed it and finding the job itself rewarding. By the time he’s twenty-nine he’s spent more time with the dead than the living.
When he arrived in New York he didn’t expect to find others like him. He didn’t expect the rumors of demonic spirits plaguing the living to have been real. He didn’t expect to be anything more than the medium he was but the experiences unveil he was more powerful than he’d thought, though he wasn’t quite capable of utilizing those powers. But that didn’t bother him– It was others like him that drew him in.
It was the reason he was still in New York and not in the steamer heading back to London. Particularly why he was now sitting in the living room of an impoverished apartment that made his skin tingle with the other-world. His eyes skating around the apartment in search of something and nothing at all before halting on the form of the woman, not quite meeting her eyes.
“Ah,” he breathed out when she spoke, “I don’t think that’s strictly necessary.” His lips quirked upwards in amusement as a hand tapped the side of his knee. There was something here, he noted, but it’s hidden– That’s not entirely unusual. More experienced spirits could mask their presence. Could move within objects, he just had to figure out which one– It didn’t seem particularly harmful (most spirits weren’t harmful, he’d learned, just lost and confused).
Newt forced a grin onto his features, “I’ve found that most like to use it to play tricks than anything useful. They get awfully bored.” It’s said with amusement, but there’s a hint of sadness. He’d seen many spirits who’d been there so long that they’d take any kind of attention. It just happened that people reacted to “scary” noises more than anything else.