A Night of Fright is No Delight

On-screen title card.

"A Night of Fright is No Delight" is the sixteenth episode of Scooby-Doo, Where Are You! season one. It aired on December 20, 1969 on CBS. It was produced and directed by William Hanna and Joe Barbera, the co-founders of Hanna-Barbera Productions.

Scooby is in the will of a rich Southern colonel, and could win his estate, if he can spend the night in his mansion, with the colonel's relatives, who soon disappear one by one, leaving Scooby in a fright for his life.

Detailed summary

Scooby, Shaggy, Freddy, Daphne and Velma are boating 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, Cosgood 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. Cosgood 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 and 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 taking turns reading a book 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 decide 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 suddenly 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 which turns out to be 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 collection 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 inside the uniform, which flies away scared.

Shaggy and Scooby go up in the elevator, which takes them to a secret entrance to Cousin Slicker’s room. Cousin Slicker is missing as well. The gang all meet up and realize that all of the other heirs are missing, and Scooby is the only remaining heir.

The gang follow 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 organ 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 climb down steps to the catacombs. There they see the heirs inside coffins, and one more coffin that is empty and dog shaped.

Two Phantoms appear, and the gang runs away. Scooby faints, but a Scooby Snack revives him. They continue running and finally hide in a chandelier, but one of the Phantoms cuts it loose and it falls to the floor. Separated, Scooby and Shaggy find a wine rack and use the corks as ammunition against the Phantoms. They then run into a closet and emerge wearing dress clothes, set up a record player and start dancing with the Phantoms. Leading them into the organ room, Shaggy opens the trapdoor and they send the Phantoms falling into the basement.

After the gang meets up, Velma notices that Shaggy has gotten green paint on his hands. That gives Fred an idea. They devise a trap, including a fan, soap suds, a spring-loaded ironing board, and a washing machine. It backfires when Scooby turns on the fan not only too soon, but also the wrong way, and the entire contraption goes airborne; however it still catches the Phantoms, who are unmasked as Cosgood Creeps and 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. As the only heir still on the mansion grounds, Scooby inherits the million dollars, only to learn it's all worthless Confederate money. Then a floating bone materializes, but that's one thing that Scooby isn't afraid of.

Characters

In order of appearance:

Locations

• Beaugard Sanders's mansion

Objects

• Scooby Snack

Vehicles

• Mystery Inc.'s boat

Development

Joe Ruby and Ken Spears either wrote or story edited, as they were unable to remember what they specifically did past the fifth episode.

Everlasting influence

This episode has been adapted several times in the following decades:

In other languages

Language	Name	Meaning
Greek	Μια Νύχτα Τρόμου δεν είναι Ωραία	A Night of Terror is not Nice
Hungarian	Örökölni nem öröm	Inheritance is no delight
Latin America Spanish	Una noche de espanto causa quebranto Una noche de terror, no es un primor	A night of fright causes brokenness A night of terror is not a babe
Polish	Milion w spadku po upiornym dziadku	A million in inheritance after a scary grandfather