First appearance: Pilot
Portrayed by: Jennifer Love Hewitt
Episode count: 77 (so far)
Nicknames: Mel, Mely, Meloony (used in High School)
Aliases: Melinda Clancy (married name; never used)
Occupation: Owns an Antique Store
Family: Beth Gordon (mother); Paul Eastman (biological father; deceased); Tom Gordon (step-father; deceased); Mary Ann (grandmother); Gabriel Lawrence (half-step brother); Tessa Lucas (maternal great-great-great grandmother)
Spouse: Jim Clancy (Husband)
Melinda Irene Gordon is the title character of the American fantasy television series Ghost Whisperer created by John Gray. The character is portrayed by Jennifer Love Hewitt. Melinda has the ability to see and communicate with ghosts. She moved to Grandview after she married Jim Clancy, a paramedic who knows of her ability. She had always been able to speak with the dead, or “earthbound spirits” as her grandmother (with whom she shared this ability) called them. Her mother, Beth Gordon, possesses the same gift, although she denies it.
Melinda shared her secret with quirky Professor Rick Payne, an expert in occult beliefs and history who thrives on helping her gain insights into the more baffling paranormal phenomena she encounters.
Melinda is at least a fifth-generation medium (as her great great great grandmother, Tessa, was also a ghost whisperer). She is able to communicate with the spirits of those who are dead. She can see and speak with the earthbound spirits that reach out to her for help. She then helps them to cross over, either by speaking to loved ones or by doing things for them which they died before they could do/finish, giving them peace.
As a result of her abilities, Melinda often receives visions of things concerning the ghost(s) she is trying to help. For example, in the first season finale, Melinda kept receiving messages from ghosts on a plane that hasn’t crashed yet. In another episode, her powers transported from Grandview to a rainforest. In the second season finale, she sees people staring at her, looks out her window and sees that her house is under a large body of water and that a boat is sinking, is transported to a tunnel, and sees a large bridge in the sky with cars falling everywhere around her.
An inscription said : “you are the one”. At the end of second season, she is “designed” by four children from all over the world, one child drew a lantern, one sculpted a heart like pendant, another draw her out of chalk with the pendant and the lantern (the fourth child drew a field). They did this to help her, they said it had to exit of them, all of them died in separate occasions but were revived (near-death experiences).
Season 1
Melinda and Jim moved to the small town of Grandview where Melinda opened a small antique shop, named “The Same As It Never Was ANTIQUES”. She met and became friends with Andrea Moreno, who came to share management responsibilities of the store with Melinda. Eventually, Melinda gained enough trust in Andrea to tell her about her ability. 
In the later part of the season, Melinda began encountering a malevolent spirit (Romano) that wore a black hat while trying to “cross over” earthbound spirits. In the season finale, a plane crashes in Grandview. Romano used the massive death count to his advantage, “keeping” the souls that Melinda was unable to cross over- one of which was Andrea who died when the plane crashed.
Season 2
After losing her friend and business partner to the plane crash, Melinda succeeds against the dark spirit in helping Andrea and many of the other ghosts from the plane crash cross over.
Melinda ends up meeting several new people in season two: an occult professor, Rick Payne, who often helps Melinda with a troublesome ghost without realizing it, until she tells him about her gift later on in the episode “Cat’s Claw”. She also meets widow Delia Banks and her son Ned. After a few episodes, Melinda invites Delia to take the place of Andrea as her business partner, and confides in Ned about her gift. While trying to crossover Delia’s husband, in the episode Delia’s First Ghost, Melinda reveals to Delia her gift. Delia, a skeptic in anything beyond the norm, slowly begins to believe Melinda.
Throughout the season, events occur showing that the “veil” between the living and the dead is thinning. With the introduction of a second ghost whisperer, Gabriel Lawrence, it is learned through the earthbound spirit of Payne’s wife that dark forces “are trying to make the dead stronger than the living.” In the season finale, she learned that she might have a brother from her dead father. Before she had learned this, she had died momentarily after a tower of poles collapsed upon her. Four children help revive her (as noted under “Abilities”). She is stunned when she returns to consciousness, stating “I think I have a brother”. She looks around and, from a distance, Gabriel is looking at her very crossly.
Season 3
Melinda searches continually for her father, strongly believing him to have died, and for her brother. She speaks with her mother who does not give her much information other than that Melinda and Jim have to leave Grandview because of all the evil spirits. Melinda also learns that Beth had once lived in Grandview. In the fifth episode “Weight of What Was” Gabriel arrives at her home saying that he is her half-brother and that he is also looking for their father. He was staying in a hotel under the name Gabriel Gordon. He hands Melinda a package that leads her to an underground church that had been buried as well as to her ancestor, Tessa, who was also a ghost whisperer. Tom Gordon reveals to her a little bit about her past. Melinda and Jim later on have a discussion about having children and Melinda agrees on having one.
From some point in the show Melinda is haunted by a ghost who is known as (Masked Man) at first. Towards the end of the season, Tom Gordon shows up in Grandview alive. It is revealed, however, that Tom Gordon is not her biological father. She asks her mother to be absolutely honest with her and tell her everything. Her mother reveals the fact that her birth father is really a man named Paul Eastman. At the very end of the season, what seems to be a happy moment is spoiled when Payne makes a shocking observation. He points out the fact that there are six people lined up (Delia, Beth Gordon, Ned, Jim, Melinda, and Payne himself), yet there are only five visible shadows.
Season 4
In this season, Melinda and Jim talk about having children. In the beginning of the season, Melinda meets a man who had a ghost haunting him – one of his patients. Eli suffered a near-death experience, and when he was revived he discover that can hear the dead. Eli is extremely confused and refuses to listen to Melinda, but in the end they develop a good partnership.
Professor Payne went on a trip for a long time. In “Big Chills”, Melinda helps a ghost that has to have the truth come out about an accidental death on a boat. In the next episode, Melinda finds a man that is dead and trapped in an online chat game. She soon realizes that the man is actually the teenager’s father, who is trying to protect his daughter from an online predator. Melinda and Jim went on a trip to find another ghost (or many on the boat), but the main reason is to talk to the boat owner’s son, who is planning to tear down the boat and rebuild it. Many spirits were worried that their home would be ruined, so they were bothering Melinda to help them. But one girl needed help to talk to the owner of the boat about the accidental death, when she waited for him in the same room she met him many years.
Then Melinda meets a teenage ghost who dies on the tennis court from a blood clot in her lung and Melinda watches the dead teenager follow her friends’ family home (both families used to be friends, but one moved away and they stopped talking, and the families are no longer friends.) The two families soon find out that the hospital made a mistake and they switched the girls at birth. In the end Melinda and Jim think she is pregnant, but are disappointed when they get they discover that Melinda had a miscarriage. This episode is the episode of which the tagline is: The episode that will change everything.
In this episode Melinda and Jim goes to the woods and they stay in a cabin for Jim’s friend’s wedding. The spirit wants the bride to play a game which will let her know the truth about her fiance. She discovers that the ghost (Owen) used to know the bride when they were young. When she finds out the truth, she calls off the wedding. Later Jim goes back to clean up and finds the groom still in the cabin, with a gun. Melinda finds out and calls a detective. When Melinda and the Detective get there they see two shadows through the door windows and they see one man with the gun and one man without. Then the detective pulls out the gun and shoots. Then in the window Jim falls. Melinda is in the hospital waiting for Jim to wake up from the surgery. Then when Melinda wakes up she sees Jim’s ghost. He says “Remember me this way; I’ll always love you” Nurses suddenly rush in, and Jim begins to flatline.
In the next episode Jim keeps saying throughout that he is will not crossover, no matter how hard Melinda tries. There is a teenage ghost who keeps saying she’s sorry and that it’s all her fault that Jim is dead. It turns out that the teenager was anorexic and that made her heart stop. Her step-father was very depressed, and he went back to work before he was ready to. Later we find out that the girl’s step-father is the detective who shot Jim. Melinda says to Jim “You have to do the right thing.” He replies “I will.” and posesses a dead man’s body Sam to live again in episode 4.07 “Treshold”. After Jim jumps in Sam’s body he has no idea who he is.
Melinda begins dating Jim/Sam in episode 4.14 “Slow Burn” when Sam’s ex girlfriend Nikki leaves Grandview. Melinda revealed her gift to Jim/Sam in episode 4.16 “Ghost Busted” and his response was unexpected. Melinda told Jim/Sam he is really Jim in episode 4.17 “Delusions Of Grandview”. Melinda will learn she is pregnant with Jim’s baby in episode 4.21 “Cursed”.
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