Scooby Doo's Unsolved Mystery ~Part One: Shaggy's Story



Click here for the Table of Contents for Scooby-Doo's Unsolved Mystery.

Part One

It was February, and I was covering the final weekend shoot of Kiddyshack, the latest attempt of the direct-to-video industry in marketing a recognizable franchise to a family audience; and based on the footage I'd seen the idea was proving to be even worse than it sounded.

Still, it was good for the commerce. The miniature golf courses up in the mountains didn't get much use during the off season and the film shoot had attracted a bit of a surprise interest. And that was literally the only positive spin I could think of to promote the movie for my website.

So I'd been sitting in the local diner for about an hour, doing my best to transcribe the general optimism in the small Tennessee town into an article (with personal hopes of actually beating my deadline for a change) when he appeared in the diner's doorway.

His slender build with its carefree slouch was unmistakable. His hair was perhaps not as bushy as his Mystery Inc. days but the goatee and perpetual in-the-now grin on his face had been unchanged with time. The hostess showed him to a nearby booth and he took the menu out of her hands, skimming its contents the way one typically scans through TV channels.

This was too wonderful of as chance meeting to not take advantage of, so I waited for him to place his extremely detailed brunch order before leaving the tip on my table for the latte refill and casually working my way over to his booth.

"Excuse me," I said as softly and politely as I was able, "aren't you Norville Rogers?"

He smiled warmly and said "Like, call me Shaggy." At least I'm pretty sure that was the response; I know I heard 'like' which gave me enough delight to forget the rest of the sentence. For all I know he may have said "Like, yes I am," or "Like, the batteries in my viridian mangrove are swarming Universities." It didn't matter. This was THE Shaggy! Straight out of my childhood in the same green shirt and brown bellbottoms, gesturing to the seat across the table from where he'd just ordered several entrees.

I fell into the seat failing to maintain my professional composure as I insisted how high on the fandom scale I was of his. He seemed flattered and maybe a little puzzled, but in my line of work I've met many celebrities who truly were unaware of how much of an effect they have on their viewership.

Shaggy and I got to talking, and somewhere along the way I got it in my head that there might be some kind of a character study or expose I could write about him. I offered to pick up his tab (yes, that was a mistake, I think I paid a hundred and twelve dollars) if he let me record the conversation to use as a source for whatever my editor would allow. He agreed enthusiastically and we talked on the record for another hour.

Most of my conversation with Shaggy involved a lot of reminiscing about the criminals in the masks, and one of the things which surprised me a bit was how fondly Shaggy remembered his experiences with Mystery Inc. He cracked jokes about the time he'd been frozen in a block of ice and about being hypnotized into thinking he was a lion tamer, and he admitted with no shame at how easily manipulated he always was about accepting dog treats as bribes to put himself in danger. It wasn't at all what I expected from the guy who I always envision running/through the door/window/wall.

"So, was it always someone in a mask?" I asked him.

"You know," he shrugged, "half the time Scoob and I never could keep track. Like, there was this whole Vincent Van Ghoul period that was a complete blur. Most of the time we just did stuff and let the rest of the gang sort it all out. If Fred says we're meeting the Addams Family then I'm like, okay man we can go with that."

We laughed together. "So what got you guys into solving mysteries in the first place?"

"Velma. She was the driving force behind it all. Like, Fred was the glue that held us all together but Velma was the one who kept steering us toward the cemeteries that couldn't spell the word 'cemetery'. If she hadn't been so good at what she did I probably never would have seen Europe or Africa or any of the places we got to explore."

"Was there ever a mystery you guys weren't able to solve?"

Shaggy's demeanor changed slightly as he was about to tell me no on reflex but some lingering memory was evidently stirring in him. "Like, I don't know if you'd call it an unsolved mystery," he said after a moment's thought, "but there was this one where we all agree on what happened."



"It started the way it always did, Freddy was driving the Mystery Machine into the spookiest place he could possibly find for some reason that probably made sense to him. The sky was already getting dark enough without the trees reaching over us like they were ready to grab the van at any minute.

"Of course we stopped at the only general store we'd seen for miles to ask for directions. The creepy old man behind the counter was like "You kids better stay away from that big scary mansion just up the hill!" And I was like, "For once could we just listen to him?" And Fred says "Come on gang, let's check it out," which meant we were going up to the big scary mansion just up the hill that we had no business being in.

"We get up there, and man did it live up to the reputation! Everything about it said 'this place is haunted' so Freddy gets out the old flashlights and says "Come on gang, let's break in and rummage around a whole lot." So Scoob and I volunteer to guard the van to which Velma mutters something about us being spineless and they go inside.

"Like two minutes later this scary guy who looked like he must have been eight feet tall comes pounding on the windshield demanding to know what we're doing there. "Leaving!" I say and Scoob backs me up. It turns out he's the local sheriff and I'm like, no way I'd break any laws under his jurisdiction.

"So he tells us we need to leave, and we say that our friends are inside. He orders us to go collect them and get out. So we scramble inside and Freddy and the girls are nowhere to be found. And this place...it must have belonged to the Universal lot. I don't know what went on here, but they must have had some crazy fortune teller conventions. We see everything! Crystal balls, tarot cards, runic symbols on the wall; you name it, they knew you were going to name it.

"And that's when we saw him. This hooded figure with these glowing red eyes hissing "Beware" at us over and over. "Point taken," I said. "We'll be elsewhere." And we ran in and out of corridors until we smacked right into Velma, and I think we knocked off her glasses.

"Scooby and I dive into a couple of sarcophaguses and wait for someone to tell us the coast is clear when Freddy comes into the room with some glamazon woman who wasn't Daphne. We tell him about the spooky soothsayer and Fred says "Come on gang, let's split up and make ourselves easier prey for this thing." Velma tells us to go look for clues in the kitchen so we head that way.

"Scoob is searching through the pantry when wouldn't you know it? Old spooky soothsayer is back again saying "Beware" like there was something worse than him in that place. Scooby and I run and he follows, and we just can't seem to shake him. Finally we grab a tapestry off the wall and wait for the soothsayer to run through the doorway where we throw it over him and tackle him to the ground.

"But it turns out we've captured the wrong guy. It's some smiley weatherman type who's been hanging out with Velma. Fred and Daphne are with them and the glamazon is gone again, and apparently Velma has it all figured out and Freddy's been sorting out an overly complicated trap for the soothsayer, which means Scooby and I are the bait.

"Let's just say that never goes according to plan.

"Scooby probably has more of the details than I do, because I just remember tripping on something and winding up headfirst down a barrel and then rolling around a lot. I went down at least two flights of stairs and across what felt like some pretty unreasonable speed bumps before I found myself outside the mansion."



Shaggy trailed off as if he was surprised by the lack of resolution to his own story. It took him a minute or so to come back to himself and I waited without interrupting his thought process.

"You know," he said at last, "I've never forgotten a face. When it comes to the unmasking, you could show me any fiend we've ever come across and I could tell you exactly who it turned out to be. The soothsayer-"

It was like he didn't really know what he should be feeling other than confusion. "What happened?" I asked as gently as possible to remind him that I was still engaged in the story.

"The rest of the gang came out of the mansion, and they were...just not talking. Usually there's joking, and enthusiasm and...you know, a criminal being led away proclaiming how he would have gotten away with whatever it was. This time there was nothing. I said 'So what's up guys? You look like you've seen a ghost." Nobody made eye contact with me or each other. We all got in the Mystery Machine and drove away. It was the quietest the van had ever sounded. I even asked them at one point who was in the mask and I never got a response."

"Did you ever find out?"

"No. About a month later I mentioned the soothsayer to Scooby and he just whimpered so I left it alone. Occasionally the mystery would come up in the group, but we never really sat down and talked about it."

"What do you think happened?"

"I don't know, and frankly I'm fine not knowing. Because if whatever happened was enough to call off Velma then it's not something I ever want to revisit."

I glanced over at my recording device and thanked Shaggy for speaking with me for so long. I told him that I wasn't sure what would ever become of the transcript but I offered him a shot at any final word that he'd like to offer.

Yeah," he said with a trace of his smile returning to him. "Like, there is no amount of Scooby Snacks that could ever get me to set foot in that spooky place again."


Scooby Doo's Unsolved Mystery continues with Part Two: Velma's Scrapbook.