Alva Keel
(Played by actor Angus Macfadyen)

The following facts about Alva Keel were gleaned from episodes 1-13 and other miscellaneous sources. A few of these are my (Laurel's) own interpretations of the character.

Things we know about Alva:

• He is Scottish.
• Alva's home life as a child was "chaotic" and not very happy. He has never fully explained what this means.
• His father is a surgeon.
  
• His family has some wealth from a publishing business, but Alva does not seem to share in this wealth, probably by choice.
• While he was a child, Alva's mother read to him from a children's book about a bloodhound named Mango. She adopted this nickname for him.
• Alva's mother died sometime in 1984.
• He blames himself for his mother's death for some reason. Clues were given by Mr. Friendly in "The Patient" when he said that Alva's father had done something to her, and Alva. What exactly was meant by that is completely up to interpretation at this point.
• Alva was pre-med at Cambridge University, minoring in Linguistics, when he had a major paranormal experience. He was recording raven song for his Linguistics project and transcribing it; on November 21, 1985, the sounds on his tape were different. Among the bird calls, he heard voices, including the voice of his dead mother, saying, "Mango." Because of this experience, he quit the pre-med program to pursue an interest in the paranormal.
• While at Cambridge, Alva had a friend named Charles Jurgenson, who was attending the college from America. They had different philosophies about the world and this somehow caused a rift between them. Their friendship, if there's any of it left, is strained.
• He was once a professor of Comparitive Religions at Harvard University. It is unknown exactly when, but it was sometime after he quit the pre-med program at Cambridge.
• Alva also worked as an investigator of miracles for the Congregation of the Faith in Rome for six years. It is unknown exactly when, but he most likely would have had to be a full-fledged priest to work there. He no longer works as a priest.
• He formed Sodalitas Quaerito by himself sometime after all this.
• Alva can speak just about any language you can name, including ancient Aramaic and Amish!
• He lives upstairs from the SQ office; the stairs you see in the main office lead to his apartment.
• Alva is not so much interested in distinctions between good and bad so much as simply knowing the truth about a particular phenomena.
• Although he keeps many of his emotions to himself, Alva is afraid of losing Paul and Evie and winding up alone.
• He appears to have a great deal of arcane knowledge and knowledge about the paranormal/occult.
• Alva's car is an early model Jeep Grand Wagoneer 4x4, one of the first SUVs ever produced.

Thanks to Deejay (AlvaFan) for providing some of this information.

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