Yes, You Care: Ghostwriter’s Secret Past Finally Revealed

Be honest. Have you kicked over a trash bin in sheer astonishment today?

An interesting revelation of the “the internet has tainted another childhood memory of mine but I’m adult enough to handle it now, I think” variety about popular 90′s kids television series ‘Ghostwriter’ is heating up Tumblr dashboards.

An article that originally appeared in The New York Times’ Local in 2010 about filming locations around the Fort Greene and Clinton Hill neighborhoods in Brooklyn for the series, highlights the following tidbit:

“Ghostwriter was a runaway slave during the Civil War,” he said. “He was killed by slave catchers and their dogs as he was teaching other runaway slaves how to read in the woods. His soul was kept in the book and released once Jamal discovered the book.”

How the book got into Jamal’s basement was never revealed, but the story fits in with Fort Greene’s history – the Lafayette Avenue Presbyterian Church was a stop on the Underground Railroad.

“We wanted the history, even though we never got to tell the story,” Ms. Nealon said.  “Fort Greene was a place that Ghostwriter, when he was alive, would have stopped in.” [via]