A group of New York City kids solves mysteries with the help of Ghostwriter, a ghost who manipulates words and letters in ways only they can see. The Children's Television Workshop (now Sesame Workshop) created the series as part of a multimedia effort to encourage literacy. The original series, in which storylines were stretched over four episodes, first aired on PBS stations in 1992; it was revived briefly as "The New Ghostwriter Mysteries," with one-episode mysteries, on CBS in 1997.