Though it certainly does sound like you're making him up, the Funky Phantom was very real. Well, relatively real.

He was the main character in a short-lived 1971 series called, appropriately, "The Funky Phantom." In it, three teens who are driving around aimlessly with their dog inadvertently free the ghost of a Revolutionary War soldier. The ghost (who, it should be said, was not particularly funky -- certainly not by 1970s standards) follows the kids around, helping them solve mysteries.

If the teenagers-and-a-dog-solving-mysteries premise sounds familiar to Hanna-Barbera watchers, it gets worse. The Funky Phantom was voiced by HB mainstay Daws Butler, doing the exact same voice he used for the much better-known character Snagglepuss (Butler voiced loads of characters for the company over the years, including such notables as Yogi Bear, Huckleberry Hound and Quick Draw McGraw).

The advantage to the fact that the show didn't last very long is that now, true fans can get the complete series in one DVD boxed set.

And, in fact, a single-season run wasn't that uncommon for Hanna-Barbera, which produced dozens and dozens of TV shows from the 1950s onward. This resulted in a huge stable of characters that the company reused frequently, such as in the series "Wacky Races" (which also only lasted a single season), which pitted characters from the company's various shows against each other in a sprawling road race.

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