The Headless Horseman of Halloween

The Headless Horseman of Halloween is the fifth episode of the first season of The Scooby-Doo Show.

Premise
In Sleepy Hollow, the gang investigates the legendary Headless Horseman when he shows up at a Halloween costume party at Crane Manor.

Synopsis
A raging Halloween party is happening at a fancy mansion. Outside, in the foggy night, a horesman rides by, a grinning pumpkin for a head! The mansion is the huge and studious Crane Manor, and Mystery Inc. has been invited by Mrs. Crane to the Halloween Party. Scooby Dum, Scooby's cousin, is also there with Mystery Inc. Fred, Daphne and Velma bob for apples and Shaggy and Scooby are hitting up the buffet table, as usual.

Scooby, Shaggy and Scooby Dum encounter the Headless Horseman outside and run back inside to tell the others. Daphne, Fred and Velma are in the library with Mrs. Crane's niece, Beth. Beth mentions her great, great grandfather was Ichabod Crane. Scooby and Shaggy run in and tell their story, and Beth fears that the Headless Horseman has come back to haunt her family, considering her grandfather Ichabod was chased by one years earlier. Back on the party floor, the Headless Horseman makes an entrance causing havoc. He claims he wants a head. The Horseman scares away the guests, but not Mystery Inc.

The gang splits up to look for clues. Velma, Scooby, Scooby-Dum Shaggy search upstairs. They start looking into rooms, but find nothing. Velma returns downstairs and Shaggy, Scooby and Scooby Dum run into the Headless Horseman who gives chase. Shaggy and the two cousins run downstairs to tell the gang, but when they all return upstairs, the Horseman is gone. Mrs. Crane is nearly grabbed by the Horseman and Mystery Inc. tries to comfort her, when a man appears and explains that the Horseman is not after her head, but is after Mrs. Crane's necklace. Beth says this is her cousin Elwood. Elwood states that ever since Mrs. Crane brought the necklace into the house, the Horseman has been appearing. Elwood makes an exit and Daphne, Fred, Velma, Scooby, Shaggy, and Scooby Dum get to work.

Elwood takes Mrs. Crane's necklace to the bank and the gang watches him drive away, and witness the Horseman ride by and snatch Elwood's head off and place it on his own shoulders! The Horseman disappears afterwards. The gang looks around Elwood's wrecked car and finds a small picture of Elwood with glue on one side, the ignition keys missing, and a newspaper clipping that tells about a flying saucer spotted at a beautician's convention. They bump into Tarlof, Mrs. Crane's butler. He explains that someone chopped a tree down and it fell on the power lines cutting the power to the mansion, and he was walking to the neighbor's to complain. The gang goes to wear the Headless Horseman is supposedly buried. Fred and Velma figure it out and race to the airport. Sure enough, the headless horseman is there, about to take off in a plane. Scooby and Shaggy accidentally hop on the plane with the horseman and manage to elude him as the plane soars through the air. Finally the plane wrecks and the Headless Horseman is unmasked as Cousin Elwood. He was after Mrs. Crane's diamond necklace all along, so he made up the horseman to trick Mrs. Crane into believeing the necklace was cursed. Elwood was taken to jail by the Sheriff.

The clues are explained as well, the missing keys, Elwood grabbed them out of habit when he left the car, and the picture was a passport photo for Elwood to fly out of the country. And another thing, Elwood was lying when he said he called the bank, because the butler said the phone lines were down. Shaggy found the biggest clue; on the other side of the clipping, it reads shoe company goes bankrupt. Elwood owned a shoe company; and it went bankrupt, so he tried to steal the diamonds.

Cast and Characters

 * Don Messick as Scooby-Doo
 * Casey Kasem as Shaggy Rogers
 * Frank Welker as Fred Jones
 * Heather North as Daphne Blake
 * Patricia Stevens as Velma Dinkley
 * John Stephenson as Elwood Crane and Headless Horseman
 * Janet Waldo as Beth Crane
 * as Catherine Crane
 * as Tarlof

Villains

 * Elwood Crane/Headless Horseman

Suspects

 * The butler, Tarlof
 * Elwood Crane

Culprits

 * Elwood Crane as the Headless Horseman (to steal his family's money when his company went bankrupt.)

Locations

 * Sleepy Hollow
 * Crane Manor
 * The Graveyard
 * The Airport

Notes/Trivia
Mystery inc. all are wearing different Halloween costumes.

Velma: Witch

Fred: Pirate

Daphne: Fairy/Princess

Shaggy: Vampire

Scooby and Scooby Dum- Some kind of animal, maybe a horse?

Inconsistencies/Continuity Errors and/or Goofs/Oddities

 * In this episode, Shaggy mentions that Scooby Dum is Scooby's brother. But in a previous episode, The Gruesome game of the Gator Ghoul, Scooby Dum is mentioned as Scooby's cousin.
 * The Ichabod Crane described in the Legend of Sleepy Hollow did not found a family before he disappeared (he failed to marry the woman he was courting). We might assume the Washington Irving story fictionalized some details.

Home Media

 * The Scooby-Doo Dynomutt Hour - The Complete Series