Scooby-Doo! and the Witch's Ghost is a 1999 direct-to-video animated supernatural horror-comedy film, and the second of the direct-to-video films based upon Hanna-Barbera's Scooby-Doo Saturday morning cartoons. It was produced by Hanna-Barbera Cartoons. The film was released on VHS on October 5, 1999, then on March 6, 2001 on DVD.
The plot involves Mystery Inc. traveling to a New England town called Oakhaven after being invited by horror writer Ben Ravencroft. Like a number of direct-to-video Scooby-Doo animated films released in the late-1990s and early-2000s, The Witch's Ghost features real supernatural elements instead of the traditionally fabricated ones the franchise is associated with, giving the film a darker tone. The film has been adapted into a book.
It is the second of the first four Scooby-Doo direct-to-video films to be animated overseas by Japanese animation studio Mook Animation. The film marks the first time voice actor and radio-personality Scott Innes voiced Shaggy, as Billy West (who voiced Shaggy in Scooby-Doo on Zombie Island) needed time for his voice work on Futurama.
Plot[]
After Ben Ravencroft, a famous horror writer of whom Velma Dinkley is a huge fan, assists her and Mystery Inc. in solving a case at a museum, he invites them to his hometown, Oakhaven, Massachusetts. When they arrive, they find the town converted into a tourist attraction by Mayor Corey, with 17th-century replicas based on the ghost of Sarah Ravencroft, an ancestor of Ben's who was persecuted as a witch and executed by the Puritan townspeople in 1657. Ben disputes this, claiming that Sarah was a Wiccan who used herbal remedies to heal the less fortunate, and he has spent years searching for her medical journal to prove her innocence.
Scooby-Doo and Shaggy Rogers are chased by a witch. The gang is drawn to an all-female gothic rock band, The Hex Girls, led by Sally "Thorn" McKnight. Fred Jones and Daphne Blake see Thorn performing a ritual and are convinced the Hex Girls are witches.
The witch is captured by Velma and revealed to be Mr. McKnight, Thorn's father and Oakhaven's pharmacist, and the townspeople were involved. Thorn explains the "ritual" Fred and Daphne witnessed was a herbal remedy made for soothing her vocal cords and that she is actually 1/16th Wiccan. Corey and Mr. McKnight apologize to Ben for using his ancestor in their publicity stunt. The witch was created to boost the town's failing tourist economy and they found inspiration from digging up the head marker for Sarah's grave. It is revealed that a shoe buckle Scooby had found was actually the lock from Sarah's journal.
Scooby digs and finds a box containing the buried journal, which is actually a spell book. Ben reveals that Sarah was a witch who wielded her witchcraft against the townspeople before the Wiccans used their nature-based powers to imprison her within her own spell book; his ancestry, therefore, makes him a warlock. He engineered the mystery at the museum just so he could meet with Mystery Inc., knowing they could lead him to the book. Ben summons Sarah but discovers that she has no loyalty to him and her ambitions are to destroy the world to avenge her imprisonment rather than rule it alongside him.
Disillusioned, Ben attempts to imprison her again but she tells him that only a Wiccan can defeat her, and traps him in a magical sphere. The gang launches an attempt to get the book while Sarah turns pumpkins and trees into monsters in order to stop them. Daphne and Velma convince Thorn to use her Wiccan power to imprison Sarah. The plan works, sucking her back into the book. Refusing to return alone, Sarah drags Ben into the book with her. A burning branch falls onto the book and incinerates it, ensuring that the Ravencrofts can never return. The gang and townsfolk celebrate with a concert from the Hex Girls.