The CBS hit series “Ghost Whisperer” returns for its new season tonight on CBS television and will bring back its series star Jennifer Love Hewitt as Melinda Gordon.

Melinda has the uncanny ability to not only talk to dead people, but to see them as well, many of them not aware that they are dead. It is Melinda’s job to help them through the crossing-over phase, working out what is keeping them earthbound and aiding them in a smooth transition to the “other side.”

This second season will also introduce several new characters, including a eerie bloody-handed fellow simply called “Bleeding Man,” and no, it’s not O.J. Simpson.

Last season we were introduced to “Laughing Man” and “Wide Brim Hat Man” with the latter being very creepy. In the season ending cliff-hanger, series regular Aisha Tyler, who played Melinda’s best friend Andrea, died in a strange accident in which a passenger jumbo-jet crashed into her car. It came as a real shock to fans and was totally unexpected as Andrea and Melinda both realized what had happened to her. Now, the big question for the season opener is whether or not Melinda will be able to help her friend accept her death and crossover.

Filling the void left by the death of Tyler’s character will be two very familiar names in show business, Camryn Manheim of “The Practice” and actor/comedian Jay Mohr. Manheim will play a real-estate agent with an office on the same shopping square where Melinda has her shop; Mohr will play a skeptical professor investigating supernatural phenomena.

“Ghost Whisperer” is one of those shows that has just enough good story in all its fluff to make it worth watching each week, and Hewitt’s natural beauty doesn’t hurt it any either. The second season of Ghost Whisperer premieres tonight at 8:00 PM ET/PT on CBS.