Project 365

Chester McCormick was a Classics professor and archeologist during the late 1920's when he found a Roman breastplate and cloak seeming to have been untouched by the march of time near a sight believed to be the hill of Christ's crucifixion. During the night McCormick was contacted in what he thought was a dream by the armor and the cloak themselves. They related to him the story of a Roman soldier who had taken part in the torture of Christ, but during the torture changed his mind and refused to drive in the nails and was himself killed.  Donning them upon returning to the states, McCormick found they gave him abilities to pass through solid objects, become invisible, and move objects at a distance without touching them.  All the abilities of a ghost.  Wearing the breastplate under a regular three button suit, using the cloak as it would have been worn centuries ago, and a simple domino mask, McCormick then became Red Wraith, one of the first masks along with Mr. Wonder and Gauntlet, fighting crime and the mob in his home town of Chicago. Death finally came at the hands of the Syndicate of Sin in 1947, killing him after finding out his secret identity and gunning down McCormick on his way home. The fate of the Wraith's breastplate and cloak are unknown though they apparently did not fall into the hands of the Syndicate of Sin. Some have speculated that McCormick may have placed the items from time to time as actual parts of Roman history diorama displays at the Museum of Natural History where he was the Head Curator of Antiquities, thereby hiding them in plain sight, and hence have been innocuously boxed up and stored by those unaware of what they had.