Phantom Investigators is an American children's animated television show that aired on Kids' WB in 2002, premiering on May 25 and ending on August 17 for 13 episodes. It was created using a special mixture of stop-motion (used for the main cast and the other citizens), puppetry (used for many of the supernatural creatures that are encountered), and live-action (used mainly for ghosts). The show was created by Stephen Holman, known for his work on Joe Normal for MTV's Liquid Television and Life with Loopy for Nickelodeon's KaBlam! which ran during all the duration. In 2024, the series became available on the Indoor Recess YouTube channel.

Synopsis

The show revolved around four 13-year-olds who attend Lugosi Junior High School in San Francisco. The group is known as The Phantom Investigators, or "P.I.s" for short, who solve supernatural mysteries that occur all over town ranging from ghost hauntings to demonic encounters. While leading double lives as P.I.s, the group must also balance everyday issues such as homework, personal hobbies and friendships.

Characters

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Episodes

Phantom Investigators only ran for 6 weeks before Kids' WB pulled it from their schedule and replaced it with X-Men: Evolution. Holman would say in a 2019 podcast interview that its cancellation came in spite of it being the top-rated program in its time slot because it failed to catch on with the demographic the network wanted. Kids’ WB was looking to attract and maintain a strong viewership with young boys. Phantom Inspectors was attracting more and more girls and losing the boys each successive week. After the cancellation, Sony cut the funding to the show killing any chance of finding a new network to take it on. The remaining episodes eventually aired outside of the United States, first debuting on Teletoon in Canada.