One of TV's great guilty pleasures these days is CBS' Ghost Whisperer. Throw together Jennifer Love Hewitt, pizza and a six-pack of beer, and you have the makings of a very satisfying Friday night. In anticipation of the show's return this fall, I recently chatted up executive producer Ian Sander and costars Jennifer Love Hewitt (aka Love), David Conrad and Camryn Manheim to get a little scoop on what's coming up.

Ghost Town:  David Conrad jokingly pleaded ignorance about season three, saying, "I just know they're going to get more labyrinthian about it. I think it's going to be more 'signs and symbols.' But I'm trying to be like my character and know as little as possible."

Producer Ian Sander, on the other hand, seemed fully informed and was happy to spill, saying, "The town of Grandview has many secrets, and in fact, Grandview is built on another town that had been buried. Under the town Melinda discovers the physical ruins of another town, and those ruins have spirits, some of which are good and some of which are not so good and have a bigger plan. [It's something] that the town of Grandview has been trying to bury that now comes to the fore. Jennifer becomes someone who has to go up against this."

The history of the town seems to be tightly linked with Melinda's personal history. According to Love, "Melinda's mother lives outside the town, but Melinda finds out that her mom has something to do with the town."

Phantoms in the Phamily?  Love said this season on Ghost Whisperer digs deep into Melinda's roots. She said, "We start to find out some stuff about her dad, and her brother's missing...The dad and the brother are probably members of the dark side." 

Sander backed up Love, saying, "This season has a lot of family secrets. There's a dad, there's a brother, and they are complex and they might be evil. And they might be dead—or they might not. The father we haven't seen in a long time, and we don't know if the father is alive or dead, but he may have a hidden agenda that may not be altogether good."

On the casting for these pivotal roles, Sander said, "The father is being played by Martin Donovan. The brother we're not uncovering yet, [although] we've had some characters on the show that might, in fact, be the brother." Sander said that among the existing characters, Gabriel (Ignacio Serricchio) is a prime suspect to be Melinda's brother.

Burning Hot:  Cutie Conrad told me he knows only two things about his character arc this season: "I know that my hair is shorter, and I know I'm a full-fledged fireman now." Was Jim a junior fireman before? "I was kind of both a paramedic and a fireman. But now, they're like, You're more serious now, and I was like, Okay, cool."

Maybe Baby:  Now that Jim and Melinda have been happily (albeit often hauntedly) married for two seasons, I asked if there might be a little Gordon on the way. According to Hewitt, "I think if it does happen, it will not happen in the traditional way, because nothing happens in the traditional way on Ghost Whisperer." And Conrad said, "I think that might be the thing that's threatening. It could be." Ooh, Satan's spawn? "Demon seed—it could be."

In Love with Love:  Camryn Manheim expressed her excitement about returning to work, but apparently no one may be more excited about a new season of Ghost Whisperer than Camryn's son, Milo. She said, "My son is madly in love with Love. I mean really [in love]—he has a picture of her next to his bed, which he positions perfectly so he can see her. She will always be his first crush."

Ain't Feelin' No Spain:  According to Conrad, Ghost's appeal is not limited to the United States. He told me about a Ghost-related encounter across the pond: "I was in Madrid. I was standing in a train station, waiting for the train. And you know, in Europe, it's a bum rush, and you're waiting to find out what track you're going to be on. This guy walks up to me, and he's got the train-man uniform on, and he looks at me funny. Then he walks away, and I'm like, What the hell, you know? Am I a bad guy? Does he think I'm some kind of criminal? And they're serious about that s--t in Spain. Then he walks up to me, and he's like, 'Entre Fantasmas!' And I'm like, Uh, what? And he's all, 'Entre Fantasmas! Me-linda?' And I go, 'Oh my god, yeah, Me-linda. Husband, wife.' And he puts his hand over his heart, and he says, "Admiración." And he's all, 'I take you,' and then he showed me where my track was. So, we're apparently big in Spain."