A Night of Fright is No Delight is the sixteenth episode of the first season of Scooby-Doo, Where Are You!.
Premise
Scooby is included in the will of eccentric millionaire, Colonel Beauregard Sanders because the former saved the latter from drowning years ago. He and some other heirs will each get a fortune, but with a twist: spend the night in the Colonel's haunted mansion. It proves right when two green phantoms frighten the heirs away.
Synopsis
Cosgoode Creeps
Scooby, Shaggy, Freddy, Daphne and Velma are boating across the ocean to a spooky mansion on an island. Scooby has been chosen as an heir to the late Colonel Beauregard Sanders, whom Scooby saved from drowning in a fish pond years before. It is a creepy night and there is thunder and lightning.
The Colonel's lawyer, Cosgoode Creeps, comes to greet them and ushers them into the house. The gang meets the other four heirs, Cousin Slicker, Cousin Simple, Nephew Norble and Sweet Cousin Maldahyde. Cosgoode tells the heirs that the only instructions from the Colonel was to play a record. The recording tells them they must stay the night to get the fortune. Creeps explains that the mansion is haunted, much to Scooby's and Shaggy's horror. The whole gang decides they’ll stay with Scooby.
Fred, Shaggy, and Scooby are getting ready for the night. Fred and Shaggy are in the bedroom while Scooby decides to take a bath. Fred tells Scooby to hurry up and he is scrubbing up when a ghost appears from a tile trapdoor. The bathtub slides through a secret passage and down a chute into a coal cellar with Scooby in it. While he is sitting on a pile of coal, a green, chain-rattling phantom shadow appears, laughing. Scooby is terrified and he breaks out of the basement. He frantically tries to explain what happened, but after seeing the bathtub in place and bolted to the floor, they dismiss it and go to bed.
The clock chimes midnight and a green ghost goes into Cousin Simple's room and stands over his bed, laughing. The gang wakes up and finds Cousin Simple gone. On a dusty mirror, a menacing message warns them to leave the island, signed the Phantom Shadow.
The gang decides to rig up a dummy of Scooby Doo to catch the ghost when he comes to grab the dummy. Scooby and Shaggy are watching from outside on the drainpipe, when the ghost pushes the drainpipe loose. Velma tries to help them, but gets pulled out of the window, too.
The drainpipe swings the three down into a cave that is a secret passage underneath the house. They find the Phantom Shadow’s footprints and decide to follow them. The footprints lead to a room with a stash of Civil War memorabilia. They find a wagon full of uniforms, and one starts flying and chasing them. It corners them in a elevator and Scooby starts growling and making faces at it. It turns out to be a duck and it flies away scared.
They go up in the elevator and it takes them to a secret entrance to Cousin Slicker’s room.Cousin Slicker is missing as well. They gang all meet up and realize all of the heirs are missing and Scooby is the only remaining heir.
The gang follows the sound of an organ playing. They find the organ and then see something written down on a music book. It reads "Feed the organ, and watch the floor". Scooby plays the piano and the door locks and the walls begin to close in! Scooby starts playing as fast as he can and the walls stop. Velma deduces that Feed means notes. F-E-E-D. Playing the notes, a trapdoor opens and the gang climbs down steps to the catacombs. There they see the heirs inside coffins, and one more coffin that is empty and dog shaped.
The Phantoms appear, except there are two and they are not shadows! They all run as fast as they can. Scooby faints, but a Scooby Snack revives him. They continue running and finally hide in the chandelier, but the ghost cuts it and it falls to the floor. Scooby and Shaggy find a wine rack and use the corks as ammunition against the ghosts. They continue trying different ways to get away from the green ghosts, and they meet up after they ditch them.
Shaggy gets green paint on his hands. That gives Fred an idea. They devise a trap, including a fan and a washing machine. It backfires, when Scooby turns on the fan too soon and the entire contraption goes airborne, but it still catches the phantoms, unmasked as Cosgoode Creeps, along with his partner, Crawls. They were trying to scare all of the heirs off of the island so they could keep the million dollars to themselves. The bodies in the coffins were dummies and they painted themselves to be green ghosts. The million dollars turn out to be confederate money. Then a floating bone materializes, but that's one thing that Scooby isn't afraid of.
Cast and characters
Villains
- Phantom Shadows/Cosgoode Creeps & Mr. Crawls
Suspects
| Suspect | Motive/reason |
|---|---|
| Cosgoode Creeps | Creepy appearence. |
| Cousin Simple | To inherit the million alone. |
| Cousin Slicker | To inherit the million alone. |
| Sweet Cousin Maldahyde | To inherit the million alone. |
| Nephew Norble | To inherit the million alone. |
Culprits
| Culprit | Motive/reason |
|---|---|
| Cosgoode Creeps and Mr. Crawls as the Phantom Shadows | They wanted the money in the will all to themselves. |
Locations
Notes/trivia
- This is the penultimate episode of the first season of Scooby-Doo, Where Are You!.
- The message on the mirror is: The first is gone, the rest will go. Unless you leave the island, and ROW! ROW! ROW! Signed, Phantom Shadow.
- The Phantom Shadow appears in Scooby-Doo! Night of 100 Frights.
Animation mistakes and/or technical glitches
- During the scene where Scooby is trying to tell the gang about the bathtub tipping into the basement, Freddy is wearing pajamas. One part shows Freddy suddenly in his regular white shirt and ascot. Then a few seconds later, he is back in his pajamas. Another scene shows Fred briefly in his regular clothes when the gang peak out their rooms after they hear spooky noises coming from Cousin Simple's room.
- When the drainpipe is falling towards the ocean, the pipe hits the ocean like it is glass. There is no splash!
- When Shaggy takes out his sandwich, the fishbowl beside him is completely empty, no water or fish. But a few seconds later, when he grabs the box of fish food, the bowl has water and a goldfish that bares teeth and snaps at Shaggy!
- When Shaggy, Scooby, and Velma were in the cave, one part shows Velma's glasses with no blue lenses.
Inconsistencies/continuity errors and/or goofs/oddities
- Although the boys wear pajamas for bed, the girls remain unchanged.
- How did the cousins escape the island? There were no boats, or any form of transportation for that matter, at least in sight, in the scene that overviewed the mansion at the start of the episode, aside from the gang's. The supposed boats may have been docked behind the mansion or out of sight elsewhere, but this seems unlikely, since the wooden dock that should have been and is typically used was shown in front of the house, completely unused, in the aforementioned scene.
Home media
- Scooby-Doo, Where Are You!: The Complete 1st and 2nd Seasons DVD set.
- Scooby-Doo, Where Are You!: Volume 4 - Spooked Bayou DVD.
- Scooby-Doo, Where Are You!: The Complete Series DVD set.