Parapsychologist Peter Guthrie calls on blonde fire witch Laura Murdoch Collins at the cottage where she is staying. He tells her that the charred remains of an unknown woman found in the burned ruins of her apartment in Phoenix, Arizona have inexplicably vanished from the morgue where they were being kept. Laura reacts to this news with shock. Guthrie asks her why the news means so much to her. She denies that it means anything to her, and demands he leave. She warns him that something will happen to him if he doesn’t leave her alone. He asks what she means by this warning, and she refuses to answer.
Guthrie was usually rather quiet and retiring from his second appearance, in #161, until yesterday. He first showed anger then. He’s agitated again at the beginning of today’s episode, and he holds his ground with Laura. Evidently he is ready for a confrontation.
Dashing action hero Burke Devlin charges into the cottage. He is rude to Guthrie, who makes a few pointed remarks and then leaves. Burke takes over asking Laura questions she won’t answer. When he too leaves, she looks exhausted. She hastens back to the hearth and sits by the fire, which seems to be the source of her energy.
Guthrie returns to the great house of Collinwood. He calls for well-meaning governess Vicki. Then Laura’s face is superimposed on the screen. Guthrie wobbles, takes his glasses off, and falls down.
Yesterday, we saw that Guthrie was considering the same three explanations of Laura’s relationship to the supernatural that the audience had in mind when we had the same information he has now. Perhaps a supernatural force has followed her to Collinwood and is doing things she knows nothing about. Perhaps a supernatural force is attached to her and acts on her unconscious impulses without her knowledge. Or perhaps she herself is the force, and is actively making the strange goings-on go on.
Today, Guthrie takes an interest in Laura’s reaction to the news of the vanishing corpse. A focus on this reaction makes us wonder just how Laura works. We have gathered that she is a humanoid Phoenix, who achieves a cyclical immortality by periodically incinerating herself at some point before reappearing as a living being. We also know that the charred remains of two other Laura Murdochs who died by fire were buried in the town of Collinsport in previous centuries- the body of Laura Murdoch Stockbridge in 1767 and of Laura Murdoch Radcliffe in 1867.
Now it is 1967. The corpse in Phoenix had been identified as Laura Murdoch Collins, and has disappeared. Perhaps we are to gather that when the humanoid Phoenix incinerates herself, she initiates a multi-stage process. The fire separates the woman into a dead body and a living Doppelgänger. The Doppelgänger is surrounded by magical occurrences, and as she gathers strength she is able to direct these magical occurrences to bring the process to its climax. Laura’s shocked reaction to the news that the body has disappeared, coupled with her signs of tiredness and her repeated assertions that she is running out of time, suggests that the disappearance of the body is an event outside her control. It marks the end of one stage of the process and the beginning of another. Evidently it means that Laura has even less time to complete her task than she had thought. If that is how it works, then we would expect that the charred remains deposited in the grave of Laura Murdoch Radcliffe and in the tomb of Laura Murdoch Stockbridge would also have vanished, and that the coffins in those places would also be empty.
Dark Shadows Commentary 