It’s hard to represent without sheet music, but here goes:
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O O O O O~~~ X X X X O
. . . . . . . . .
C Eb G C Ab G F Eb D C (may repeat)
It’s often done with pizzicato strings, or some other staccato sound, and is a staple/cliché of mystery and suspense scenes.
I know what you mean! But I don’t think it’s actually used, unless there is an attempt to sound hokey, or “cute”, or whatever. I know at the end of Around The World In Eighty Days (1956), that music is used to represent the detective Fix, sneaking around, and it was hackneyed even then.
BTW in that rendition there’s an extra G after the A-flat, but I don’t know if that’s the correct version or not.
You can enter a musical sequence into Musipedia and see if it can tell you.
I know I’ve heard it in movies and cartoons from the 1930s, so it’s at least that old.
A sample from the “Our Gang” short Captain Spanky’s Show Boat, (followed by the familiar tear-jerking "Hearts and Flowers).
The best match I could find in Musipedia is that it’s “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” in a minor key. 
It was listed as “Spookville” in my beginning trumpet book, round about 1983. Hope that helps.
Man, you’ve either ruined that song for me, or redeemed it.
I haven’t listened to it for a while, so I don’t know if this could be the actual source, but it seems Prokofiev’s Peter and the Wolf could be where it comes from? I remember that he used instruments to announce particular animals and people, and the music was supposed to hint at their actions and attitudes in the story. If Peter and the Wolf isn’t the exact source of this music, which it may well not be, it’s at least close enough in concept to that “sneaking around” music that appears in so many movies and cartoons. Many of the Hollywood composers were from Germany and Hungary, so they would certainly know a lot about music, including such a popular piece as Peter and the Wolf. Kids like it, too!
Nah, not Peter and the Wolf, though it is stylistically similar, especially to the bassoon theme (I think the theme in the OP is typically heard on bassoon or at least that’s the way I’m hearing it in my head).
I feel like I knew this at one point but I just can’t remember. I believe it was used in a particular Nintendo game (among others) whose name escapes me - maybe Wizards and Warriors?
Yup. In a track called Boss
No info on that page about the original composer of the melody though.
Can’t answer about the origins, except that, as a pianist, I’ve used that many many times to indicate spookiness and such. If you take that Ab and turn it into a D diminished chord (D F Ab Cb) and roll that chord for a bit it’s a nice effect.