Forced to stop and ask a local farmer for gas, the gang stumbles on another mystery when the farmer mistakes them for reporters after the story of a ghostly alien spacecraft.
This episode includes examples of the following tropes:
- Absurdly Ineffective Barricade: Shaggy and Scooby bar the door, only to find it opens the other way.
- Beneath Suspicion: Subverted. The gang meets a rather creepy-looking farmer who tells them about a ghost haunting a nearby abandoned airfield. They investigate and find out that the phony ghost is not the farmer, but the farmer's unseen next-door neighbor who was trying to scare the farmer off his land. And the police who show up at the end? The creepy farmer called them himself when he got worried about the Scooby gang's own safety!
- The Cavalry Arrives Late: The police do show up at the end, but by that time, the gang has already solved the mystery. They capture the bad guy as he tries to escape, without the officer's help.
- Distressed Dude: For once it's Fred who gets caught, when the ghost hooks a cable into his pants and lifts him up to the ceiling. Nothing worse than that happens, though Fred comments grumpily that he feels like a slab of meat.
- Evil Laugh: The Spooky Space Kook has a spectacular one, provided by Don Messick.
- Fear-Induced Idiocy: When fleeing the eponymous villain, Shaggy and Scooby find themselves locked in a room with the spectral spaceman. They leap out a window to grab the key to open the door, reenter the building, unlock the door, then flee the Space Kook.
- Fine, You Can Just Wait Here Alone: Shaggy and Scooby declare they aren't going any farther. Fred responds, "Fine, if you want to stay here — alone." A ghostly laugh sends the two running to catch up.
- First-Step Fixation: Shaggy locks himself and Scooby inside of a building to hide from the Space Kook, and Scooby tosses the key outside to get rid of it. Then when they are cornered by the monster (who enters through the back door), Scooby and Shaggy jump out the window to grab the key, then climb back into the room so that they can use the key to unlock the door to get back outside.
- Immediate Self-Contradiction: When the farmer asks if the gang was scared like everyone else, Shaggy tells him that mystery-solving is their hobby and they don't scare easily. Fred mischievously turns on the tape of the Space Kook's laughter, causing Shaggy and Scooby to freak out.
- Noodle Incident: However Shaggy and Scooby get Freddy down from the ceiling where Velma and Daphne were unable to is never shown.
- No Escape but Down: The "ghost" corners Shaggy and Scooby in the watchtower after they discover his sound system. Despite Velma's pleas, Shaggy (holding Scooby) jumps off the tower to get away from him. Fortunately, they managed to find a working parachute which gets them safely to the ground.
- Obligatory Joke: When she and Daphne catch up to Shaggy and Scooby, Velma refers to Fred's predicament of being caught with a meat hook through the pants as "getting hung up."
- Skull for a Head: The Space Kook is an alien in a spacesuit, whose head has become a skull.
- Stranger Behind the Mask: The "ghost" was the farmer's neighbor, who had never appeared before being caught.
