Halloween Countdown 2019, Day 19

This year is the 50th anniversary of Scooby-Doo! The anniversary seems relevant to our Halloween interests.

Fifty years ago, on September 13, 1969, Scooby Doo, Where Are You! premiered on CBS. The premise of the show was always the same: whether it was a ghost, a phantom, a ghoul, or a poltergeist, it was back from the dead and it was out a’haunting. “Meddling kids” Fred, Shaggy, Velma, Daphne, and their talking great dane Scooby Doo tackled the supernatural, followed clues, and uncovered the culprit. The mood of the show made up for its predictability; the mysteries were set in haunted houses, dark forests on full-moon nights, dilapidated ghost towns or deserted museums and circus grounds. Rife with suspense and tinged with horror that was watered down with slapstick comedy, Scooby Doo masqueraded as a cartoon mystery but really was surprisingly gothic….

Most of Scooby Doo’s episodes hinge on imagery of death. When the gang is in an urban environment, the buildings are overwhelmingly on the verge of collapse (e.g., “Mine Your Own Business”). Inside, the rooms are steeped in darkness, covered in cobwebs and, we imagine, the walls and floorboards are overrun with rot much like the houses found in the fiction of Edgar Allan Poe. Dark corners where the eye can’t penetrate, spiraling staircases, and endless hallways traditionally, in gothic literature, are terrifying because they alert the imagination, awakening its fears. Meanwhile the mind is suspended between knowing and not knowing: There could be someone hiding behind the curtain or in the corner, but in this darkness it’s hard to know for sure. Encountering a place that was once inhabited and now is in decay is undeniably uncanny—strangely familiar and for that reason, eerie—because it is witnessing a life that’s been extinguished.

- “How Scooby Doo Revived Gothic Storytelling for Generations of Kids: In a tumultuous era, a kids mystery show stirred up the old questions—and the atmosphere—of gothic storytelling” by Eleni Theodoropoulos

Here’s another relevant article: “50 Years Ago, Scooby Doo Was the Perfect, Weird, Hopeful Mystery Series 1969 Needed An unlikely gang of mystery-solvers set out to change the world” by Olivia Rutigliano

And here’s a compilation of Scooby-Doo’s spookiest moments!

"Scooby-Doo! | Spookiest Moments! | WB Kids #Scoobtober" (Watch on YouTube)