The dependably thoughtful series “American Experience” (8 p.m., PBS, check local listings) enters a new season with “Oswald’s Ghost,” a documentary by Robert Stone (“Guerrilla: The Taking of Patty Hearst”).

“Ghost” offers a brooding meditation on the psychic wounds that still reverberate from the grim events of Nov. 22, 1963.

Employing a wealth of interviews, rare footage, haunting photographic effects and a chilling score and sound track, “Ghosts” chronicles America’s reaction to the murder of a president over several decades.

The assassination and people’s suspicions of a cover-up and conspiracy become background noise to a string of tragedies from Vietnam to the murders of Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert Kennedy, and the Watergate fiasco. Post-Nixon investigations into the CIA only fan the flames of conspiracy and suspicions that the spies who had tried to kill foreign leaders (sometimes with the help of mobsters) could have done the same thing at home.

But just when “Ghost” reaches a kind of fever pitch, it returns to the scene of the crime and the story of the alleged killer. The film begins with the commonly asked question: Just how could Oswald, a nobody, have killed the world’s biggest somebody?

The late novelist Norman Mailer, who admits to decades of conspiracy mongering, comes to the conclusion that Oswald, while poor, frustrated and uneducated, was hardly incapable of changing history. The film ends with Mailer contemplating Oswald as one of history’s enigmas, a dead man who tells no tales and answers no questions.

The film also evokes more recent ghosts and contemporary echoes. It’s impossible to watch this film and its tale of the national tragedies of Dallas, Vietnam and culture of distrust without seeing parallels to 9/11, Iraq and the toxic residue of official corruption and deliberate deceit.

¢ Martin Scorsese narrates a homage to one of his favorite movie producers in the documentary “Val Lewton: The Man in the Shadows” (7 p.m., TCM). A protege of Hollywood’s exacting producer-prince David O. Selznick, Lewton was hired by RKO with a mandate to create horror movies on a tight budget and a quick schedule.

Lewton churned out a series of evocative and poetic dramas that elevated the horror genre with stunning cinematography, moving scores and stories that evoked a wartime audience’s subconscious fears and desires. While many films of the 1940s seem quaint and dated, Lewton’s dramas, shown tonight in marathon fashion, remain timeless. They include “Cat People” (9:30 p.m.), “I Walked with a Zombie” (10:45 p.m.) and “Curse of the Cat People” (3 a.m. Tuesday).

“Shadows” makes the case that Lewton, like many of the characters in his films, was a tortured and restless soul who literally worked and worried himself to death. After his run at RKO, his style fell out of favor, and he bounced around Hollywood before suffering a succession of heart attacks and dying at 46.

Tonight’s other highlights

¢ Preschool favorites “The Backyardigans” get their own movie musical, “Tale of the Mighty Knights” (6 p.m., Nickelodeon).

¢ The mystery continues on “Kyle XY” (7 p.m., Family).

¢ “Unabomber: The Secret History” (7 p.m., National Geographic) looks at the anti-technology terrorist.

¢ Time spent in a not-so-safe house on “Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles” (8 p.m., Fox).

¢ Ariel’s dream takes her to Allison’s 1987 nightmare on “Medium” (9 p.m., NBC).

¢ Scientists explore ancient rites of burial and mummification on “The Bone Detectives” (9 p.m., Discovery).

Cult choice

A chilling tale of devil worship and murder, the Val Lewton-produced 1943 shocker “The Seventh Victim” (1:45 a.m. Tuesday, TCM) seems about three decades ahead of its time.