Michael Watts was the captain of the NASA shuttle Victory. Upon re-entry into the atmosphere, the Victory's heat tiles failed and the shuttle exploded, disintegrating into millions of fiery pieces. Hours later, Watts was discovered in a small impact crater, in the middle of a dry lake bed outside of Lancaster, California, covered in second- and third-degree burns. How he survived the explosion — and how he survived the 50,000-foot freefall — remains a mystery.
He retired from the space program with distinction, though he still carries around more than his fair share of survivors guilt. His inability to remember what happened immediately prior to the accident and give NASA any information left the incident... unfinished. For Michael, for NASA, for the grieving widows of his crewmates, for the country.
Shortly after recovery, The Orpheus Group contacted Watts about a special program they had for people with near-death experiences. In an effort to discover the mystery to his survival, and to discover where The Albino fits into his life and the event aboard the Victory, Watts signed up.
It used to be that when Watts projected in spiritus, he looked as he did before the accident. Unscarred. Unburned. Plenty of body hair, though a vague hint of smoke around his body. More recently, though, it appears that, perhaps, his subconscious is accepting what he should be, and his projected self appears burned and encased in fire, though it's not actually touching him.
Watts was killed by the ghost Rook in a coordinated assault on Orpheus Group Headquarters. He is survived by his brother, Daniel, a good-hearted screw-up, who was indirectly involved in the Warehouse D poisoning.
Watts is now a fully functioning ghost with complete memory and cognition. He was trained in the Flicker, Enshroud, Shadowland, Phantasm, and Nimbus emanations, and is still able to use them after his death. His spite stains are a carapace-like armor that manifests as the charred remains of his old NASA flight suit, with shards of metal and glass from the shuttle crash protruding from his flesh; and burning bile that drips from his eye-sockets.