The Headless Horseman of Halloween

For other uses, see Headless Horseman (disambiguation).

This needs a stretch. (Feel free to remove when satisfied of completion.) Needed: Synopsis is missing real ending.

The Headless Horseman of Halloween
Details
Episode #	105
Air date	October 9, 1976 (ABC)
Written by	See below
Directed by	Charles A. Nichols
Chronology
Previous episode	Watt a Shocking Ghost
Next episode	Scared a Lot in Camelot

The Headless Horseman of Halloween is the fifth episode of The Scooby-Doo/Dynomutt Hour, later repackaged as the fifth episode of the first season of The Scooby-Doo Show.

Premise

In Sleepy Hollow, the gang investigate 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 horseman rides by, with 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 split up to look for clues. Velma, Scooby, Scooby-Dum, and 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 go to where 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 Headless Horseman to trick Mrs. Crane into believing 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 that APEX, Elwood's shoe company, had filed for bankruptcy, so he tried to steal the diamonds.

Characters

Main characters:

• Mystery Inc.
  • Scooby-Doo
  • Shaggy Rogers
  • Fred Jones
  • Daphne Blake
  • Velma Dinkley
• Scooby-Dum

Supporting characters:

• Gertrude Crane ^{(only appearance)}
• Beth Crane ^{(only appearance)}
• Tarlof ^{(only appearance)}

Villains:

• Headless Horseman ^{(only appearance)(Elwood Crane's disguise)}
• Elwood Crane ^{(only appearance)}

Other characters:

• Headless Horseman's horse ^{(only appearance)(no lines)}
• Party guests ^{(only appearance)(miscellaneous speaking)}
• Ichabod Crane ^{(only appearance)(portrait)(deceased)}
• Sheriff ^{(only appearance)}

Locations

• Sleepy Hollow
  • Crane Manor
  • Cemetery
  • Airport
    • Waiting room

Objects

• Elwood's passport picture
• Newspaper clipping

Vehicles

• The Mystery Machine
• Elwood Crane's car
• Elwood Crane's plane

Suspects

Suspect	Motive/reason
Tarlof	His hands were ghostly white, just like the Headless Horseman's.
Elwood Crane	Told his aunt that the Headless Horseman was after her necklace.

Culprits

Culprit	Motive/reason
Elwood Crane as the Headless Horseman	To steal his aunt's diamond necklace when his company went bankrupt.

Cast

Don Messick	Scooby-Doo
Casey Kasem	Shaggy Rogers
Frank Welker	Fred Jones Headless Horseman's horse
Heather North	Daphne Blake
Pat Stevens	Velma Dinkley
Daws Butler	Scooby-Dum
John Stephenson	Elwood Crane Headless Horseman
Janet Waldo	Beth Crane Gertrude Crane
Alan Oppenheimer	Tarlof

Full credits

The following credits reflect as closely as possible to how they are seen on-screen.

• Executive Producers: Joseph Barbera and William Hanna
• Director: Charles A. Nichols
• Creative Producer: Iwao Takamoto
• Associate Producer: Alex Lovy
• Storyboard Direction: Jan Green, Cullen Houghtaling, Don Sheppard, Paul Sommer
• Recording Director: Alex Lovy
• Story Editor: Ray Parker
• Story: Larz Bourne, Haskell Barkin, Dick Conway, Tom Dagenais, Willie Gilbert, Tony DiMarco, Duane Poole, Dave Ketchum, Norman Maurer, Dick Robbins, Dalton Sandifer
• Voices: Bob Holt, Allan Melvin, Casey Kasem, Don Messick, Pat Stevens, Janet Waldo, Mickey Dolenz, Linda Hutson, Virginia Gregg, Hettie Lynn Hurtes, Shirley Mitchell, Heather North, Alan Oppenheimer, John Stephenson, Lennie Weinrib, Frank Welker
• Production Design: Bob Singer
• Character Design: Alex Toth
• Production Supervisor: Victor O. Schipek
• Graphics: Iraj Paran
• Musical Director: Hoyt Curtin
• Musical Direction: Paul DeKorte
• Layout: Mike Arens, Hak Ficq, Jack Huber, Ray Jacobs, Tony Rivera, Jim Mueller, Tony Sgroi, Terry Slade, Owen Fitzgerald, C.L. Hartman, Alex Ignatiev, Ziggy Jablecki, Homer Jonas, Warren Marshall, Steve Nakagawa, Bob Singer, Linda Rowley, Adam Szwejkowski, Wendell Washer, Al Wilson, George Wheeler
• Unit Director: Bill Keil
• Animation: Ed Barge, Bob Goe, Bill Hutten, Tony Love, O.E. Callahan, Lars Calonius, Rudy Cataldi, Steve Clark, Hugh Fraser, Bob Hathcock, Jerry Hathcock, Volus Jones, Ken Muse, Rod Parkes, Veve Risto, Jay Sarbry, Xenia, Margaret Nichols, Don Patterson, Morey Reden, Ed Soloman, Ken Southworth, Dave Tendlar, Dick Thompson, Carlo Vinci, Russ Von Neida
• Backgrounds: Fernando Arce, Dennis Durrell, Al Gmuer, Richard Khim, Fernando Montealegre, Marilyn Shimokochi, Dennis Venizelos
• Technical Supervisor: Frank Paiker
• Checking and Scene Planning: Evelyn Sherwood
• Ink and Paint Supervisor: Billie Kerns
• Xerography: Star Wirth
• Sound Direction: Richard Olson, Bill Getty
• Supervising Film Editors: Chip Yaras
• Music Editors: Larry Cowan, Pat Foley, Joe Sandusky
• Effects Editors: Richard Allen, Tom Gleason, Terry Moore
• Negative Consultant: William E. DeBoer
• Post Production Supervisor: Joed Eaton
• Camera: George Epperson, Curt Hall, Ron Jackson, Norman Stainback, Roy Wade
• Production Manager: Jayne Barbera
• A Hanna-Barbera Production
• © 1976 Hanna-Barbera Productions, Inc.
• RCA Sound Recording
• Hanna-Barbera Productions, Inc.

Continuity

The gang previously met Scooby-Dum in The Gruesome Game of the Gator Ghoul.

Notes/trivia

• Mystery Inc. all are wearing different Halloween costumes:
  • Velma: Witch
  • Fred: Pirate
  • Daphne: Fairy princess
  • Shaggy: Vampire
  • Scooby and Scooby-Dum: Horse
• At the time this episode aired, "Sleepy Hollow" did not exist geographically. The village of Sleepy Hollow located in Westchester County, New York then, was known as North Tarrytown. The name was changed in 1996.
• The closest airport to Sleepy Hollow, NY is the Westchester County Airport in White Plains.
• Elwood Crane was likely inspired by Brom Bones (whether he actually existed or was a fictionalized character made for the Washington Irving story is irrelevant) who dresses up like the headless horseman in order to scare Ichabod Crane away.
• In this episode, the Headless Horseman wears a jack-o-lantern for a head. The basic premise for this came from the original story, where Brom Bones dressed up like the headless horseman and used a regular pumpkin to simulate a head that he later threw at Ichabod Crane across the bridge. This was built upon in the Disney adaptation, where in order to fit Disney's style better, the regular pumpkin was changed to a flaming jack-o-lantern. While in neither of these did he actually wear them, it has since become the standard image for the headless horseman to wear a grinning jack-o-lantern for a head.
• This episode inspired a set in the LEGO Scooby-Doo! line called Mystery Plane Adventures. The set includes minifigures of Shaggy, Scooby, the Headless Horseman, and his horse. It also includes a small airplane in the Mystery Machine's color scheme.

Animation mistakes and/or technical glitches

• None known.

Inconsistencies/continuity errors and/or goofs/oddities

• In this episode, Shaggy mentions that Scooby Dum is Scooby's brother, although this was corrected when he later referred to them as cousins; it had already been established in a previous episode that Dum and Doo are cousins.
• The Ichabod Crane described in the Legend of Sleepy Hollow did not start a family before he disappeared (he failed to marry the woman he was courting). It could be assumed the Washington Irving story fictionalized some details.
• When Velma says Shaggy found the most important clue, Shaggy says "yeah" in his normal voice, and then says, "I did?" in another voice.
• Sleepy Hollow looks nothing like it does in the episode though large mansions like the one seen in the episode do exist in that part of Westchester County.
• Modern day viewers will be puzzled about the phone call clue as they will likely go "But he could have used a cell phone to call the bank." The first commercially available cell phone didn't became available until 1983, five years after this episode was first aired.

Home media

• Scooby Doo: Volume 3 VHS released by Kids Klassics in 1986.
• Scooby-Doo: The Headless Horseman of Halloween VHS released by Turner Home Entertainment on September 10, 1996.
• Scooby-Doo's Spookiest Tales DVD released by Warner Home Video on August 21, 2001.
• The Scooby-Doo!/Dynomutt Hour: The Complete Series DVD set released by Warner Home Video on March 7, 2006.
• Scooby-Doo! Favorite Frights DVD released as a Walmart exclusive on September 15, 2015.

External links

• Buy from Amazon (US)
• Buy from Amazon (UK)
• Buy from iTunes (US)
• Buy from iTunes (CA)
• Buy from iTunes (UK)
• Buy from VUDU

Previous episode:	Series:	Next episode:
Watt a Shocking Ghost	The Scooby-Doo Show Season 1	Scared a Lot in Camelot