The late Dr Eric Lang built a Frankenstein’s monster with the intention of draining the “life force” from recovering vampire Barnabas Collins into it. Wicked witch Angelique turned Barnabas into a vampire in the first place, and has returned to the scene to thwart this experiment and make Barnabas once more an undead abomination preying upon the living. Angelique struck Lang dead with one spell, and with another has started a “Dream Curse” that has for the moment compromised the ability of the senior mad scientist in town, Barnabas’ best friend Julia Hoffman, to pick up where Lang left off.
In Lang’s laboratory, Julia and Barnabas recap the plot. Under the stress of the Dream Curse, Julia is having trouble controlling her emotions. At one point she refers to her crush on Barnabas. Every time she has mentioned this before, Barnabas has been a huge jerk about it, ridiculing her and reminding him of the crimes they have committed together, including murder. This time, he is warm and kindly. His non-obnoxious response marks a significant change in their relationship.
Lang left an audio message for Julia on his tape recorder. He said that if she does the experiment and Barnabas and the Frankenstein’s monster, whose name is Adam, both live, neither Barnabas nor Adam will be a vampire. But if Adam dies, Barnabas will revert. His recovery is already hanging by a thread, as he feels ever stronger cravings for blood.
Julia and Barnabas play the tape today, but leave the room before it gets to the part with the message. Lang’s voice plays to an empty set. Addison Powell didn’t do a very good job playing Lang on screen, and he’s no better as a voice actor. Powell appeared in a number of feature films, including hits like The Thomas Crown Affair and Three Days of the Condor, but is best remembered for a series of commercials he did in the 1980s as “The Gorton’s Fisherman.” I remember those spots- I thought he was an actual fisherman they’d hired to read copy. Usually I’m uneasy with the idea of taking a job away from an actor, since I know lots of very talented people who have spent years training in that craft, never to make a living at it. But Powell was so bad I wish my original impression had been correct.
Julia has reached out to Professor Timothy Eliot Stokes, a scholar of the occult, for help with the Dream Curse. When she met with him yesterday, she did not identify Angelique as the witch. She couldn’t tell him anything about the experiment or about Barnabas’ vampirism without confessing to her many crimes. Today, Stokes is trying to fill in the blanks Julia left so that he can help to oppose the Dream Curse. He calls on Barnabas at Lang’s house. He breaks down Barnabas’ resistance and learns that the witch is Angelique, whom he knows under her alias of Cassandra Blair Collins.
Stokes next calls on Maggie Evans, The Nicest Girl in Town, at her house. Maggie was the first person to have the dream, and she gives Stokes a detailed description of it. This gives Kathryn Leigh Scott an opportunity to look into the camera and emote, which is always worth seeing.
There are a lot of shots today using mirrors. In their post on Dark Shadows Before I Die, John and Christine Scoleri include several screenshots of these and of ambitious camera angles from other episodes.
For its first 38 weeks, Dark Shadows was the story of well-meaning governess Vicki and her attempt to make her way through life on the great estate of Collinwood. One by one, Vicki’s problems were either solved or forgotten. From week 43 on, the show has focused on vampire Barnabas Collins. Barnabas has refused to involve Vicki in his life, leaving her confined to B plots at best.
The current B plot is about Vicki’s relationship with a man named Peter, who keeps trying her patience and ours by pretending to be named Jeff. Peter/ Jeff’s shouting voice, which he uses by default, makes him sound like he is suffering from severe gastrointestinal distress. He has a habit of manhandling people around him, causing them obvious discomfort. These bad habits, and several others, are less the product of the writing or direction than they are symptoms of the casting of Roger Davis as Peter/ Jeff. Alexandra Moltke Isles, like all the other actresses, is so ill at ease when she is in proximity to Mr Davis that it is impossible to believe that Vicki is in love with Peter/ Jeff.
Peter/ Jeff had been connected to the A plot through his boss, mad scientist Eric Lang. Peter/ Jeff has total amnesia. Lang released him from a mental hospital and told him that he was suspected of strangling two women by the waterfront in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. He used Peter/ Jeff as his assistant in an experiment that is supposed to free Barnabas from vampirism. Now Lang is dead, and Peter/ Jeff goes to his house to search for the file on his own background.
There, he meets Barnabas. The two of them display hostility to each other, but the scene fizzles out as it becomes clear that Barnabas has no motivation to oppose Peter/ Jeff’s goals and wouldn’t be in a position to stop him if he did. Peter/ Jeff finds a paper which proves that Lang was lying, and he is not a murderer after all. With that, he and Vicki both lose whatever reason they had to be on the show.
His file from the mental institution had those three magic words: “No homicidal tendencies.” As something to be proud of, that’s a pretty low bar, but he seems happy.
Unfortunately, that basically nerfs Jeff’s entire storyline. He’s not working for Dr. Lang anymore, and the secret that Lang was holding over him — the idea that he might be a murderer — has just dissolved.
This is just throwing a story point away, rather than advancing anything, and Jeff is left at a loose end. He has no job, no family, and no real connection to a story. Now he doesn’t even have homicidal tendencies. It wasn’t much, but it was all he had.
Danny Horn, “Episode 487: Precious Moments,” Dark Shadows Every Day, 24 September 2014
Peter/ Jeff goes to share this news with Vicki. It’s a tribute to Mrs Isles’ acting ability that she makes us believe Vicki is bewildered that Peter/ Jeff thought he had homicidal tendencies. Mr Davis usually seems angry enough to kill someone, as for example at various points in today’s episode when Peter/ Jeff’s joy leads him to wrap his hands around Vicki’s throat, plant a rather painful-looking kiss on her, pick her up, and point her underwear at the camera.
The highlight of this episode is a scene between Julia Hoffman and Timothy Eliot Stokes. Julia is Barnabas’ best friend. She has decided to take over the experiment after the death of her fellow mad scientist Lang. Wicked witch Angelique is trying to prevent her helping Barnabas, and so Julia turns to Stokes, a sage in the ways of the occult.
Stokes is the second such character on Dark Shadows, after the ill-fated Dr Peter Guthrie. Vicki recruited Guthrie into her battle against undead fire witch Laura Murdoch Collins in #160 and Laura killed him in #185. We haven’t heard about Guthrie since the end of the Laura story, but the show went out of its way to remind him of us when it showed Lang’s death yesterday. Like Guthrie, Lang died as the result of an indiscreet word from housekeeper Mrs Johnson to an undead witch in the drawing room at Collinwood. Also like Guthrie, Lang is a paranormal researcher who is deeply involved with a tape recorder.
While these similarities served to remind us of Guthrie, they also reminded us of the radical differences between him and Lang. Guthrie was as sane and law-abiding as Lang is crazed and lawless. Seeing Stokes today, we recognize him as Guthrie’s successor, and wonder if his fate will be any different.
Julia is deeply troubled because of a dream she had last night. She was so very upset by it that she was up all night chain smoking.* It was no ordinary nightmare, but part of “The Dream Curse,” a piece of mental malware Angelique has sent to infect one character’s mind after another. Julia recaps the Dream Curse to Stokes while looking into a convex mirror. It’s a striking visual.
It doesn’t look good for Stokes. Angelique is a supercharged force of destruction, and Julia withholds several crucial pieces of information while recruiting him to the fight against her. Julia does not identify Angelique as the witch. She can’t tell him about Barnabas’ vampirism or about Lang’s experiment without incriminating herself in many felonies, including murder. When Vicki was recruiting Guthrie to the fight against Laura, a far less formidable adversary than Angelique, she held nothing back and ensured that her friends gave him their full support. If Stokes is going to survive, he will need more backing than Julia can offer him.
*Fans of Dark Shadows wince when they see Julia smoking; Grayson Hall had asthma.
Recovering vampire Barnabas Collins receives a visitor in his home, Professor Timothy Eliot Stokes. Stokes agrees to lend Barnabas a twelfth century Sicilian talisman to ward off the power of a witch, and makes it clear he will not rest until he finds out why Barnabas needs it.
This scene is a tour de force for Thayer David as Stokes. I’ve already quoted Danny Horn’s remark in his post about it that David “plays to the balcony. Not this balcony, naturally; I mean the balcony in the theater next door.” David’s style works brilliantly in this context.
The rest of the episode is marred by some bad writing. When wicked witch Angelique, pretending her name is Cassandra, comes to call on Barnabas, he immediately calls her by her right name and tells her everything she could want to know in her campaign to restore his vampirism. This is a pattern of Barnabas’; he withholds information from people who would use it to help him, and blabs without inhibition to his deadliest enemies.
Barnabas takes the talisman to Dr Eric Lang, the mad scientist who has freed him of the symptoms of Angelique’s curse. Lang knows that Barnabas has been a vampire and knows that a curse made him one, but scoffs at the idea of witchcraft and refuses to touch the talisman. Jonathan Frid is a good enough actor that we can wonder if Barnabas has a reason for disclosing all his secrets to Angelique, but Addison Powell plays Lang so ineptly that there is nowhere to hide the fact that his skepticism makes no sense.
Angelique shows up in Lang’s office and casts a spell on him that is about to cause his heart to burst. He staggers to the desk, touches the talisman, and quickly recovers. He will not let her take it from him.
Barnabas comes back and asks Lang if he now believes that he must carry the talisman to protect himself from Angelique. He says he does not want to believe, and again walks off leaving the talisman on his desk.
Barnabas presses Lang for information on the final stage of the treatment that is supposed to end the curse once and for all. Lang takes him to the secret laboratory in his home. There, amid a lot of flashy equipment, is a partially assembled Frankenstein’s monster. Lang says that he will drain the “life-force” from Barnabas’ body and use it to animate the creature once it is completed. Barnabas’ old body will be dead, and Angelique will presumably believe that he no longer exists. But he will live in the new body.
In #365, well-meaning governess Vicki came unstuck in time and found herself in the year 1795. Now, Vicki is about to be hanged for witchcraft, and the last of the story threads that have been playing out around her are about to be tied up.
Yesterday’s episode ended in the study at the great house of Collinwood, where naval officer/ sleazy operator Nathan Forbes shot a wooden bolt from a crossbow into the chest of vampire Barnabas Collins. At the top of today’s episode, Barnabas pulls the bolt out, telling Nathan that the bolt didn’t hit him. Barnabas’ voice is dubbed in over this, clarifying that Nathan missed his heart. We then switch to Nathan’s point of view and see Barnabas approaching for the kill.
After the opening title, we see that Barnabas is still in the study. Time has apparently passed. Barnabas’ father Joshua enters. Barnabas asks him if Nathan has been buried. Joshua says that he has, and lists the stories that he will tell to cover up all the deaths that Barnabas has been involved with over the last few months. Barnabas wants Joshua to shoot him through the heart with a silver bullet right now and destroy him forever. Joshua cannot do that, but he promises that he will put Barnabas out of his misery come daylight, when he is in his coffin. Barnabas asks two more favors of his father, that he free much put-upon servant Ben and that he prevent the execution of the wrongly convicted Vicki. Joshua promises to do these things as well.
Throughout this scene, actors Louis Edmonds and Jonathan Frid hold back tears. Patrick McCray remarks: “Crying is not the most powerful thing an actor can do on stage. Rather, it is the attempt not to cry that seizes audiences. In these moments, Frid and Edmonds seize. In a medium of love scenes, there is none more poignant.”
The performers have a powerful theme to work with, one that Danny Horn explicates when he considers the question of why Joshua is still alive at the end of this storyline. When she made Barnabas a vampire, wicked witch Angelique decreed that everyone who loved him would die. Yesterday, Joshua confessed that he feared he was incapable of love, and Barnabas told him that such a disability might save his life. But when we see Edmonds and Frid struggling against the urge to weep, we know that Joshua loves Barnabas very deeply indeed, as we have in recent weeks seen that he loved others he has lost. Danny explains:
The reason why Joshua is spared from the curse is that the love he feels for Barnabas isn’t the kind of love that Angelique recognizes, and so he slips under her radar.
Angelique’s love is selfish, and spiteful. She uses it as a convenient excuse for running over anyone who gets in her way. She doesn’t understand love that arises from respect, and strength of character. And she will never feel the kind of deep, honest love that Joshua now realizes for the first time that he is in fact capable of.
Danny goes on to explain that, while others had love for Barnabas that included a selfless element, there was also something in their feelings that Angelique could recognize, while Joshua’s love for him comes entirely from this higher plane. The portion of Dark Shadows set in the years 1795-1796 turns out to be The Tragedy of Joshua Collins, not only because Joshua has the highest social status among the characters, makes the most important decisions, and is played by one of the best actors, but because he grows into the sort of person who is governed by this kind of love. When the world around him is being ground down into dishonesty and cheapness, largely due to the consequences of his own misguided actions, Joshua discovers a new kind of strength within himself. Even amid the ruins of a world he himself did as much as anyone to wreck, Joshua represents the hope that something better might yet come into being.
After daybreak, Joshua stands beside Barnabas’ coffin in the secret chamber hidden inside the Collins family mausoleum, the pistol in his hand. Joshua cannot bring himself to fire the silver bullets into his son’s heart. Ben enters. Joshua orders him to affix a silver crucifix to the inside of the coffin to immobilize Barnabas there, and then to chain the coffin shut. Joshua and Ben assure each other that Barnabas will never be released. Later, we see Ben in the chamber, alone with the chained coffin. He looks at it and says “Goodbye, Mr Barnabas, goodbye.” Thayer David delivers that line with an unforgettable simplicity.
Returning viewers know that Joshua’s plan to keep Barnabas confined will work only until April of 1967, when Barnabas will be freed to prey upon the living once more. That July, in #276, Barnabas will stand in the hidden chamber and say that, while in chaining the coffin rather than destroying him his father “thought he was being merciful, what he did was no act of mercy.” This remark, combined with a story he told Vicki in #214 about his conflict with Joshua, just may have been the germ from which the whole story of Joshua grew. At any rate, the promise ABC-TV made to its viewers when it aired this promotional spot in November 1967 has been fulfilled:
Back in the study, Joshua frees Ben and gives him a severance packet of $100, worth about $2500 in 2024 dollars. When Ben thanks him for his generosity, Joshua denies that he is being generous. I have to agree with Joshua there- that amount might get a fellow out of town, but he’d have to find a new job pretty fast if he wanted to stay in the habit of sleeping indoors.
Another servant brings a note while Joshua and Ben are in the study. The governor has refused Joshua’s plea that Vicki’s execution be stayed. She will be hanged tonight.
At the gaol, Vicki’s boyfriend, an unpleasant man named Peter, is brought to her cell. The gaoler tells them they have five minutes before Vicki will be taken to her death. It is little wonder Vicki’s last request was to have time with Peter. Spending five minutes with him is like living to a ripe old age. Peter vows to overcome death and reunite with her. The last time we heard that was when Barnabas died the first time. In #409, he used his dying breaths to ask gracious lady Josette to wait for him to return to her. Fool that she was, Josette did, leading to disaster for her. Returning viewers may well wince, not only at the ominous parallel with Josette’s grim fate, but also at the memory of the many tedious scenes in which Josette at first insisted that Barnabas was coming back and was then at a loss when asked to explain herself. Besides, we don’t want to see any more of Peter.
The scene of Vicki’s hanging is quite elaborate by Dark Shadows standards. They’ve built a fairly realistic gibbet, hired several extras, put hats on them, and given them burning torches to hold. They test the equipment with a heavy sack, slowly lead Vicki to the place of honor, ask her if she wants a mask, and command the Lord to have mercy on her unrepentant soul. The camera drifts up to the top of the rigging, leaving Vicki out of the shot. When the time comes, we hear the drop and see the rope tighten.
This marks the end of the 1795 flashback, but not necessarily of Dark Shadows 3.0. In #437, Vicki told Peter that she often had nightmares in her childhood, so often that she became a connoisseur of nightmares. She would stay asleep throughout the whole process, waking up only at the very moment she was about to be killed. That was a rather heavy-handed way of telling the audience that Vicki would ascend the gallows, put her head in the noose, and find herself back in the 1960s. Once she is back in her own time, what she has learned in the 1790s will have consequences for what she does next. So we can expect an epilogue of some kind before Dark Shadows 4.0 begins.
Like every episode of Dark Shadows, this one begins with a voiceover by a member of the cast. Unlike all the preceding voiceovers, this one is delivered by a man. Thayer David does the honors.
We open in the drawing room of the great house of Collinwood. For the first time in months, Barnabas Collins is there. Barnabas died and rose as a vampire in January, and has been concealing his existence since. But now his secret is known to several people in the house. One of those, his mother Naomi, reacted to the knowledge by taking poison. In his agony, Barnabas is pacing the floor, complaining to his friend, much put-upon servant Ben, that the doctor hasn’t come. Barnabas’ father Joshua comes downstairs and announces that there is no longer any need for a doctor- Naomi has died.
Joshua dismisses Ben and talks with Barnabas. He confesses his doubts that he is able to love anyone. Barnabas tells him that such a disability might save his life- the curse wicked witch Angelique placed on him means that everyone who loves him will die. Joshua says that he must end the curse, and will do so by destroying Barnabas. Barnabas asks if he will drive a stake through his heart. Joshua replies that he found a book in Boston that tells of another way. Come morning, he will fire a silver bullet through Barnabas’ heart.
This is the first we have heard that silver bullets will kill vampires. There is some lore that suggests vampires avoid silver, but we know that doesn’t apply to Barnabas- one of his chief trademarks is a cane with a mostly silver handle. The 1941 film The Wolf Man established silver bullets as a means of killing werewolves, and the Lone Ranger fires silver bullets to knock the guns out of the bad guys’ hands, so I guess they might have come to mind in the 1960s if you were thinking of exotic weaponry.
Barnabas has plans for his final night. It was naval officer/ sleazy operator Nathan Forbes who led Naomi to discover Barnabas’ secret, and who is to that extent responsible for her death. Ben enters to inform Joshua and Barnabas of another item to add to the list of Nathan’s misdeeds. Nathan has evidently apprehended bewildered time traveler Victoria Winters and taken her into town, where she faces death on the gallows after being unjustly convicted of witchcraft. The Collinses knew Vicki to be innocent and had been harboring her since shortly after she escaped from gaol. Joshua and Barnabas are certain that Nathan turned her in solely to collect the reward that has been posted for her capture. Barnabas vows to kill Nathan, and Joshua can’t talk him out of it.
We cut to Nathan in the Eagle tavern, where he is spending the money he sold Victoria for. The Eagle has changed pretty dramatically in the last several weeks. In #419, bartender Mr Mooney greeted a female patron with the announcement that the Eagle did not admit unaccompanied women. Since the Eagle is a public house on the waterfront, the management evidently thought this policy was necessary to keep the place from becoming a headquarters for the sex workers of Collinsport.
Now Mr Mooney is nowhere to be seen, and the only person in the barroom with Nathan is identified in the closing credits as “Barmaid.” She is played by Rebecca Shaw, whom we saw the other day as a streetwalker whom Barnabas was about to bite when good witch Bathia Mapes summoned him away with a magical incantation. She is sitting with Nathan, drinking with him, and flirting with him pretty heavily. A bat squeaking at the window frightens her, and when she catches her breath she announces that she will be leaving him alone in the bar for a bit while she lies down. Nathan replies to that by saying he will see her soon, and she turns to take a look at him, apparently expecting him to follow her to bed. It seems possible she is the same character who was working the docks, now employed in a similar capacity in the Eagle. If this is the person who has taken over from Mr Mooney, the management must have given up the hopes it formerly had for its reputation.
Once the woman leaves Nathan alone, Barnabas appears. He confronts Nathan about his many crimes. Nathan pulls a gun and tells Barnabas he will take him to the constable and turn him in as the Collinsport Strangler. Barnabas jeers. Nathan shoots, and Barnabas keeps standing there. He declares that Nathan cannot kill him, because he is already dead. He then informs Nathan that he will wait until 9 pm to kill him. Since it is now 8:30, this does not give Nathan a great deal of time.
At 8:45, Nathan appears at Collinwood. He finds Joshua and Ben in the drawing room, and tells them what has happened. They are neither surprised nor sympathetic. Joshua leaves the room, explaining that he would prefer not to see a gruesome murder. Ben is willing to stay for a while. When Nathan asks how Barnabas can be destroyed, Ben decides to have a little fun. He tells him that if he finds Barnabas resting in his coffin after sunrise and drives a wooden stake through his heart, that will take care of it. Ben is quite jolly when he points out that Nathan will be dead long before sunrise, so that this information would seem to be of little practical use to him. Ben then decides that he doesn’t want to watch the murder either, so he also takes his leave of Nathan.
With five minutes to go, Nathan tells himself that Barnabas will not kill him if Joshua is in the room. He finds Joshua in the study. He begs Joshua to stay. As Joshua is refusing, Nathan looks at the wall and sees a crossbow mounted there, with three wooden bolts next to it. Suddenly his cowardice gives way to wild hope. He tells Joshua he will wait in the study for Barnabas. Joshua goes.
Nathan takes a practice shot at the door, then stands waiting. Barnabas does open the door, Nathan does release another bolt, and does strike him in the chest, a bit to the left of the sternum. Barnabas cries out in pain, and as the episode ends it looks very much as if Nathan may have managed to stake him.
Barnabas is the reason the show is a hit, so we can be quite sure he won’t actually die. Still, the episode is good enough that it feels for a moment that he might. The contrast between the prospect of Joshua killing Barnabas in the stately manner he described earlier in the episode and the idea of Nathan killing him is instructive. Had Joshua carried out his plan or even attempted it, the result would have been what Aristotle was talking about in his Poetics when he described the majestic terror of tragedy. It would have been at once horrifying and awe-inspiring to see a father duty-bound to kill his son. But Nathan is a cheap bum, trying only to save himself so that he can live to abuse and exploit more people. When we root against Nathan destroying Barnabas, we do not want only to continue the pleasure of watching the show. We are rejecting a resolution that would be unworthy of what we have seen so far.
Nathan, indeed, is unworthiness incarnate. When he was first on the show, Nathan was a likable rogue, but in recent weeks he has become both cruel and dreary. So cruel that he has tried to arrange the murder of an eleven year old; so dreary that he works through a conspicuously dim-witted, relentlessly unappealing henchman. Many fans complain about Nathan’s turn, and some speculate that the show just ran out of villains sinister enough to be worthy of Barnabas’ vengeance. On that theory, Nathan’s grave crimes are a last-minute, slapdash invention.
I don’t agree. We met Nathan before Angelique came to Collinwood. In those days, there was room for light comedy, for grand gestures, for dashing heroism, for fairy tale whimsy, and for tender romance. But as her curses have done their work, everyone and everything has been ground down. The ceiling has been lowered, and there is no longer space for the bouncy good cheer of the Old Nathan, much less for the Satanic majesty of villains like Angelique or that Rev’d Mr Trask. The whole world is pervaded by cheapness and sordidness now, and growing more so by the minute.
The only grandeur left is in The Tragedy of Joshua Collins. Were Nathan to destroy Barnabas, that grandeur would vanish, not in sublime pity, but with a taunt. That would be a harsh ending indeed.
In December 1966, crazed handyman Matthew Morgan (Thayer David) abducted well-meaning governess Vicki and held her prisoner in a secret room behind the bookcase in the front parlor of the Old House on the estate of Collinwood. Vicki had run into Matthew there when she saw his dusty footprints leading up to the bookcase in #115. Vicki’s charge, strange and troubled boy David Collins (David Henesy,) did not know that Matthew had abducted Vicki, and was convinced that he had gone into hiding because he was unjustly accused of murdering local man Bill Malloy. So when David found out Matthew was in the Old House, he brought him food and water. In #120, David heard Vicki’s muffled voice behind the bookcase; in #123, he pulled the bookcase back and found her; in #124, he was too frightened to help her escape.
Now, Vicki has come unstuck in time, and found herself in the late eighteenth century. She made a promising start, landing a position as governess to the children at Collinwood, among them Daniel (David Henesy.) But she has adapted poorly to her new surroundings, so poorly that she has been convicted of witchcraft and sentenced to death. Accompanied by her boyfriend, an unpleasant young man named Peter, she has escaped from gaol. Vicki was shot in the arm while escaping, and is still bleeding. She and Peter have made their way to the Old House. There, much put-upon servant Ben (Thayer David) at once gives Vicki and Peter such help as he can.
When a knock comes at the door, Ben tells Vicki and Peter he will hide them. He goes to the bookcase, and Vicki whispers “The secret room.” When Vicki first saw Ben, they were in this parlor, and she was frightened because she mistook him for Matthew. In her hushed voice and the look of awe on her face when she sees Ben trying to save her life by putting her in the room where his Doppelgänger will try to kill her in 1966, Alexandra Moltke Isles’ Vicki conveys the thought that Ben and Matthew really are two versions of the same guy. Ben is a kind-hearted sort whose fierce loyalties sometimes overcome his good sense; Matthew a paranoid ogre whose single-minded devotion to matriarch Liz leads him to kill and menace those dearest to Liz. The difference between the two men begins in the events that have been taking place around Vicki in the 1790s. Ben grew up in the ordinary world of day and night, where natural laws apply and there is hope for goodness. Matthew has spent his whole life in a town laboring under an ancient curse. Matthew’s crimes would be the fruit of Ben’s virtues, had Ben been warped by the evil of centuries that hangs over the Collinsport of the 1960s.
While Vicki and Peter huddle in the secret room, Daniel bursts into the parlor. Ben tries to hurry him out, but the lad notices a trail of bloodstains leading to the bookcase. Before Ben can stop him, Daniel opens the bookcase and finds the fugitives.
Daniel is as convinced of Vicki’s innocence as David will be of Matthew’s, and he is eager to help her and her friend. Ben says he will take the fugitives to a safer hiding place, and forbids Daniel to follow them. Of course Daniel does follow them, and sees them enter the Collins family mausoleum in the old cemetery north of town. He cannot see inside, where Ben opens a secret panel and ushers Vicki and Peter into the hidden chamber behind. This chamber will be hugely important in 1967. Vicki will hear about it in that year after David, who spent a week trapped there ending in #315, tells people about it in #334. But David will be unable to show the chamber to Vicki or anyone else, and most adults assumed it was just something he had imagined. Vicki is astonished to see it today.
Daniel goes home to the great house of Collinwood, where his brother-in-law, naval officer/ sleazy operator Nathan Forbes, handles him roughly and demands to know where he saw Vicki. When Daniel denies having seen Vicki, Nathan asks him how he came to have a bloodstain on his sleeve. He tells Daniel that Vicki was wounded when she escaped from gaol, and declares that it is her blood on Daniel. He warns Daniel that it is a crime to withhold information about a fugitive. Daniel keeps denying everything.
Back in the hidden chamber, Vicki is asleep. She dreams that Nathan is trying to kill Daniel. Returning viewers know that this is in fact true. Nathan married Daniel’s sister, fluttery heiress Millicent, because wanted her vast fortune. He found out on their wedding day that she had signed everything over to Daniel. It has occurred to him that if Daniel should die, it will all revert to Millicent, so he is scheming to bring that death about. Vicki has been in gaol since all of this started; nothing she has seen or heard could have led her to conclude that Nathan was a threat to Daniel. We must take it as a message from the supernatural world. This is not the first time we have seen Vicki receive such a message while in a concealed place. In #126, when Matthew was bringing an ax to decapitate her, Vicki was visited in the secret room behind the bookcase in the Old House by the ghost of gracious lady Josette bringing her good news.
The segment of Dark Shadows set in the 1790s is nearing its end. They have killed off most of the characters, have stopped introducing new ones, and those who remain are all facing crises that can be resolved only by further reducing the number of people available to participate in the action. The echoes of #123 and #124 will underline that point for viewers who have been with Dark Shadows from the start. Not only did those episodes tip Matthew into the final part of his storyline, they introduced David’s mother, undead fire witch Laura Murdoch Collins, marking a new phase of the show. Calling back to those installments, and condensing the action of #115 through #126 into a few minutes, they are telling us that the end of the 1790s segment is near, and that when it comes it will come fast.
Vampire Barnabas Collins arises from the dead, goes to the front parlor of his house, and finds a friend of his passed out drunk in an armchair. The friend, much put-upon servant Ben Stokes, had left the house the night before after saying that he would no longer help Barnabas in his murderous schemes. Barnabas brings this up, but apparently Ben has decided he has nowhere else to go, so he’s back.
Barnabas tells Ben that he has two projects going at the moment. He dropped his cane with its instantly recognizable silver handle in the shape of a wolf’s head at the scene of an attempted murder last night; the victim, a streetwalker named Maude Browning, screamed and someone came running. Barnabas orders Ben to find the cane and bring it back before it leads to his exposure.
The other project is Barnabas’ attempt to take revenge on the Rev’d Mr Trask, a visiting witchfinder who has wrought considerable havoc in town. Barnabas recently discovered he had some magical powers, and he has been using those powers to drive Trask insane. He says that he will stay in the house and cast more spells on Trask while Ben goes to Maude’s room over the feed store to look for the cane.
In his room at a local inn, Trask can’t keep a candle lit. He hears Barnabas’ laughter, and declares that it is the voice of the Devil. Or as Trask calls him, THE DE-VILLL!!!! A knock comes at the door. Trask is fearful, but answers when the knocker identifies himself as naval officer Nathan Forbes.
Trask believes hapless time traveler Vicki Winters to be the witch. A court has agreed with him, convicting Vicki of witchcraft and sentencing her to hang. Trask tells Nathan that the witch has started tormenting him. Since Nathan testified against Vicki, Trask warns that she might do the same to him next. When Nathan takes Trask’s warning lightly, he responds with some overheated rhetoric. To this, Nathan remarks that it’s never man-to-man with Trask. When he listens to him, he gets the feeling that sitting in a pew and that the rest of the congregation is absent.
Trask then tries to tell Nathan about the terrible visions he has been suffering. While he does so, he hears Barnabas’ voice and sees his hand. Nathan, of course, can neither see nor hear these manifestations.
Lately Nathan has established himself as a rather cold villain, but he used to be a good-hearted sort, though with some glaring personality defects. We catch another glimpse of the friendly Nathan when he tells Trask the trial must have taken a toll on him. He offers to take Trask out of his room and give him a place to rest. Trask responds indignantly to this offer, and demands Nathan leave him alone.
We cut to Ben searching Maude’s room. When Ben leaves, Nathan catches sight of him. Nathan follows Ben back to Barnabas’ house. Nathan stands at the window and eavesdrops as they talk about Ben’s search of the docks and of Maude’s room, of his failure to find the cane, and of the drunken ramblings with which Maude has been confusing the barroom patrons who want her to tell them about the attack she suffered.
When the show was set in 1967, we saw several characters stand at this window and listen as Barnabas held incriminating conversations with his henchmen. Most notably in #274, seagoing con man Jason McGuire eavesdropped as Barnabas handled a box of jewelry and told his sorely bedraggled blood thrall Willie Loomis of his evil plans for Vicki. As Nathan has become more and more a villain, he has become more and more reminiscent of Jason. The night after Jason listened to Barnabas and Willie, Barnabas killed him. Seeing Nathan in this position, regular viewers will wonder if it implies that his death is as near today as Jason’s was then.
Barnabas and Ben leave the house. Ben suggests they leave Collinsport and go someplace where Barnabas will not be recognized. Barnabas will not hear of it. He moans that the house is the place where he and his lost love Josette were supposed to live and be happy. Ben pleads with him to let go of the memory of Josette. Having seen Barnabas in 1967, we know that this plea will fall on deaf ears. Barnabas calls himself “stupid” for leaving the cane at the scene of the crime; the ever-forthright Ben tells him he’s being more stupid now. None of Barnabas’ twentieth century confederates would have dared say a thing like that to him, making Ben’s boldness a refreshing change for regular viewers.
We cut back to Maude’s room. Nathan is bringing Maude home. She is much the worse for drink. He urges her to stay in her room with the door and window locked, then goes.
A bat squeaks at the window, Maude panics, and Barnabas materializes in the room. He asks her about the cane. She tells him she doesn’t have it, and he strangles her. It’s one of the most brutal on-screen murders we have seen so far.
From Maude’s room, we cut to the door to Trask’s. He stands in front of it and we hear him deliver a monologue in a recorded voiceover. This is the first time we have heard an interior monologue from Trask. He shouts so much that it often seems that if you could read his mind you’d see nothing but all-caps disquisitions about THE ALMIGHTY! and THE DE-VILLL! But in fact, he’s telling himself that Nathan must have been right and that all the visions he saw and voices he heard must have been the result of nervous strain brought on by his hard work during Vicki’s trial. He goes into his room, telling himself to calm down. He looks at his bed, and finds Maude’s strangled corpse sprawled there.
The opening voiceover is delivered by Vala Clifton, who makes her debut today as Maude Browning, a young lady whose profession it is to make herself agreeable to the gentlemen she meets. This marks the first time since episode #1 that the first voice we have heard was that of someone we had not seen previously. The rule lately has been that the introduction is always delivered by a woman who appears in the episode. Today, that leaves Ms Clifton as the only candidate.
At the top of the episode, vampire Barnabas Collins tells his friend, much put-upon servant Ben Stokes, of his plans for revenge on the Rev’d Mr Trask, a visiting witchfinder responsible for much misery and injustice. When he makes it clear that he plans to murder Trask and to do it in an especially atrocious manner, Ben puts his foot down and says that he will no longer help Barnabas in any way. Barnabas threatens to kill Ben if he doesn’t come back with the implements he has ordered. Ben says that he may as well kill him right away. He stands still and squeezes his eyes shut, evidently expecting Barnabas to accept the invitation. Barnabas does put on his strangling face and move towards Ben, but at the last second he relents.
We then see Ben at The Eagle tavern, demanding “More rum!” Maude is at his table, trying to engage him in conversation. He warns her against going out at night, bringing up Ruby Tate, a woman who died on the docks some nights before. Maude has already said that she arrived in town the day of Ruby’s death, but when she is explaining why she isn’t afraid to go out alone at night she suddenly becomes the expert on Ruby’s ways. “She talked to anyone. I don’t.” This is a delicious little moment, reminding us of all the people we’ve known who make up little stories to persuade themselves that they are immune from the misfortunes that have befallen others.
Untrustworthy naval officer Nathan Forbes enters the tavern accompanied by a man in sailor’s togs. Maude gives up on Ben and leaves his table; she chats with Nathan for a moment, her eyes on the bulge in his pants most of the time. That’s understandable, it’s rather a conspicuous bulge.
Maude leaves the tavern, and Nathan directs his companion to sit with Ben and to get information from him about Barnabas Collins. The man introduces himself to Ben, giving his name as Noah Gifford. Noah claims to be looking for work on the great estate of Collinwood. Ben tells Noah to stay away from there and to go back to the sea. He is drunk enough to mention Barnabas’ name, but doesn’t say much about him. He says that he wishes he could go to sea himself. He says that he likes tea, and wants to go to China to get a nice strong cup of it.
In #363, the ghost of Barnabas’ little sister Sarah mentioned that her father and his friends were always going to China on their ships. When Ben brings up China, regular viewers might remember that, and take it as confirmation that the Collinses were involved in trade with China in the 1790s.
Right before we watched this episode, I was reading an article by Amitav Ghosh in the 23 January 2024 issue of The Nationmagazine about trade between the USA and China. Mr Ghosh says that between 1784 and 1804, the USA shipped a wide variety of products to China, but that from 1805 on Americans sold nothing to China but opium. He likens the label “China trade” for that commerce to calling Pablo Escobar’s business “the Andean trade.” Right up to the beginning of the flashback in #365 the show was equivocating on whether Barnabas, Sarah, and the rest of them lived in the eighteenth century or in the 1830s. Choosing 1795-1796 as the setting for this segment turns out to be a way of lightening one of the darker shadows the history we know from our time-band might otherwise have cast over the world of the show.
Nathan’s connection with Noah will sound another echo in the minds of longtime viewers. The first unsavory mariner on the show was seagoing con man Jason McGuire, who spent several months in 1967 blackmailing reclusive matriarch Liz. Jason was accompanied by a henchman, dangerously unstable ruffian Willie Loomis. Nathan at first seemed to be a good-natured and likable fellow, if a bit free with the servant girls and regrettably mercenary in his engagement to marry heiress Millicent Collins. But ever since it turned out that he already had a wife and that she was blackmailing him into splitting Millicent’s inheritance with her, Nathan has been reminding us more and more of the sinister Jason. When he turns up with Noah in tow, the resemblance is complete. We can only wonder if Noah will follow Willie’s lead and get into some kind of terrible trouble at the Collins family mausoleum in the cemetery north of town.
On the docks, Barnabas meets Maude. He goes through the same struggle to keep himself from biting her that he had gone through with Ruby in #414. He is so slow to move in for the kill that she has time to scream and attract Nathan’s attention. Barnabas hears someone running towards them, drops his cane, and runs off.
Nathan sends Maude back to the tavern. He finds the cane and recognizes his old friend Barnabas’ signature wolf’s head handle. In the tavern, he asks Maude to describe her assailant. She mentions that the man wore a gold ring with a large black stone. Knowing that Barnabas always wore such a ring, Nathan is convinced that he did not go to England as his family has been telling everyone, but that he is in Collinsport and is the strangler who has been terrorizing the community.
Nathan seemed most virtuous when Barnabas was alive and he was his more or less loyal friend. So it is a jolt that his reaction to the idea that Barnabas might be a serial killer is to tell Ruby that, lucky as she was to escape the Collinsport Strangler, she “may not be the only lucky one tonight.” Since he has not made any move to contact the authorities, there can be little doubt that his luck is not an opportunity to stop the killings, but the discovery of information he can use to blackmail the Collins family out of every penny they have. He has completed his transformation from a good guy with a rakish side into a deep-dyed villain.
Closing Miscellany
As Nathan enters the waterfront scene, we see a sign behind him labeled “Greenfield Inn.” We saw weeks ago that the Collinsport Inn, familiar from the first year of the show, already exists in the 1790s, so evidently this is a different hostelry. In #214, when Barnabas had returned to Collinsport in 1967, high-born ne’er-do-well Roger Collins did mention that any place in town other than the Collinsport Inn where there were rooms for rent would hardly “qualify as a flophouse”; perhaps the Greenfield Inn is the ancestor of one of these frightful places.
Greenfield Inn. Presumably not the front entrance.
Originally broadcast on 29 February 1968, this was the only episode of Dark Shadows to air on a Leap Day. One of the reasons I started the episode summaries this blog when I did is that the calendars for the years 2022-2027 match those for 1966-1971, so that I can post on the 56th anniversary of each original broadcast, matching not only the date but also the day of the week.
In #70, the deserted Old House on the great estate of Collinwood was introduced as the favorite hangout of strange and troubled boy David Collins (David Henesy.) Several adult characters tried to keep him away from the house, notably crazed handyman Matthew Morgan (Thayer David,) and Willie Loomis, servant to David’s distant cousin, vampire Barnabas Collins. David’s visits to the house precipitated a number of crises, including one that began when he found that Barnabas and Willie kept the cellar door locked and became intensely curious as to why. We knew that they did this to conceal Barnabas’ coffin at the foot of the stairs. That was when the show was set in 1967.
Today, young Daniel Collins (David Henesy) is introduced as a boy whose favorite hangout is the deserted Old House on the great estate of Collinwood. He finds much put-upon servant Ben Stokes locking the cellar door. Ben is the friend and accomplice of Daniel’s second cousin, vampire Barnabas Collins. Daniel is intensely curious as to why Ben is locking the door. We know that it is to conceal Barnabas’ coffin at the foot of the stairs. Now the show is set in 1796.
Ben initially responds to Daniel’s curiosity with the same angry bluster Willie had used in his efforts to keep David away from the house. By the end of their scene together, he has engaged Daniel in conversation, as Matthew often did with David. Daniel confides in Ben that he is planning to run away. Ben points out that Daniel is in no way prepared to strike out on his own, and persuades him to go back to the great house and to make a list of the things he will need. Combining Willie’s responsibility for protecting Barnabas with Matthew’s ability to persuade a boy that he is his friend, Ben seems well-positioned to keep Daniel from coming into conflict with the vampire in the family.
Back in the great house, repressed spinster Abigail Collins, Barnabas’ aunt, finds Daniel’s list and asks him what it is. He evades that question. As it happens, it is not the one she most urgently wants answered. She sits him down in the drawing room and asks him about a charm bracelet she had found somewhere around the house.
Daniel confirms that the bracelet belonged to Victoria Winters, the governess who used to teach him and Barnabas’ little sister Sarah. Vicki is now standing trial on charges of witchcraft. Sarah is dead, and Abigail is convinced that Vicki’s evil spells caused her death, among many other recent tragedies. The bracelet seems to Abigail to be evidence against Vicki. Abigail points to a charm in the shape of a devil and asks Daniel what Vicki told him about it. He says blandly that Vicki told him and Sarah that it was a devil. She asks him if Vicki instructed him and Sarah to fall to their knees and worship the Devil, and he reacts scornfully, asking who ever heard of worshiping a devil.
Abigail presses Daniel for more information about Vicki. He keeps talking about how much he and Sarah liked her, and tries to paint her in a favorable light. He tells Abigail that Vicki used to say that the day would come when people could fly through the air, covering hundreds of miles in a single hour, that there would be machines that would pick up voices traveling through the air and make them audible with the turn of a dial, and that other machines would be able to solve arithmetic problems. We know that Vicki is a time-traveler displaced from the 1960s and that she is describing airplanes, radio, and electronic calculators, and we further know that her time-travel was not the result of a spell she cast, but that Sarah’s ghost yanked her back in time. But Abigail interprets her stories as promises of rewards from the Devil, and most of those whom Vicki has told of her chronological dislocation have taken it to be a confession that she is a witch.
It dawns on Daniel that everything he is saying in his attempt to defend Vicki is making matters worse for her. David Henesy does a marvelous job showing us how miserable this makes Daniel. Abigail tells him he must go with her to Vicki’s trial tomorrow and repeat to the judges what he has told her. He resists the idea. She breaks off their conversation to announce she will go to the Old House. Daniel has told her that he saw Ben locking the cellar door, and she has jumped to the conclusion that he was hiding evidence against Vicki behind it. Daniel pleads with her not to go, but she insists.
We cut to the front door of the Old House, where Abigail encounters Ben. He begs her not to go in. She accuses him of being in league with Vicki and declares that his own trial will begin before long. Ben may have been able to soft-soap Daniel, but Abigail responds with hostility no matter what he says. Finally, he watches her go in. She has said that whatever happens to her inside will be her own responsibility; after she is gone, Ben echoes this statement, a savage note of satisfaction in his voice.
Abigail unlocks the cellar door, goes down the stairs, and sees the coffin. Of course, it is sunset; of course, she is just in time to see the coffin open and Barnabas rise. She watches in terror. Clarice Blackburn does an extraordinary job of acting in the closeup of Abigail’s reaction; she gives the purest possible look of fear, and her scream is perfectly open and smooth.
Barnabas looks at her and asks “Abigail, what are you doing here?” The audience can’t be in much doubt how their reunion will end, though we will have to wait until tomorrow to see just what happens between them.
Dark Shadows was made with very little advance planning, though we do know that they had settled on the name “Daniel Collins” for David Henesy’s character well before the 1795 segment began. In #350, three full weeks before Vicki starts her uncertain and frightening journey to the past, heiress Carolyn slips and calls David “Daniel.” So it is inexplicable that they’ve waited until the segment has been going for more than thirteen weeks before bringing Daniel in. Vicki and David’s relationship was the only thing on the show that consistently worked in 1966, and David’s scenes with Sarah were among the highlights of 1967. So when in #372 haughty overlord Joshua tells Vicki that she will be tutoring both his daughter Sarah and his young cousin Daniel, the audience would have been excited to see the three of them together.
Presumably the makers of the show were unsure how long they would be able to stay in the eighteenth century before the ratings started to suffer and they came under pressure to get back to a contemporary setting. That might explain why they wanted to keep the number of characters to a minimum, so that they would be able to show the four necessary events- Sarah’s death, Barnabas’ transformation into a vampire, Josette’s leap from Widows’ Hill, and the chaining of Barnabas in his coffin- without starting a lot of threads they would have to hasten away and leave dangling. Even so, there were plenty of longueurs in the first weeks when they could have fitted in a few scenes of Daniel and Sarah together, if they had had the time to plan them.
As it happened, the ratings were great for the eighteenth century segment, so they were under no pressure at all to go back to the 1960s. But the breakneck pace of the early weeks and the lack of detailed planning has come back to haunt them. Three of the four big points have all been covered. All that is left is to chain Barnabas in his coffin and to send Vicki home, and they can do both of those things in any one episode. They are going to have their work cut out for them to fill the remaining time with stories that are anything like as interesting as some of those they passed up because they didn’t realize they would have time to tell them. The result will be that, while the last few weeks of the eighteenth century segment feature some great moments and several Genuinely Good Episodes, they also involve a lot of disappointment for the audience.
Fluttery heiress Millicent Collins thought that she had a bright future to look forward to when she became engaged to young naval officer Nathan Forbes. That prospect shattered when she discovered that Nathan was already married. Making matters worse, Nathan’s wife, Suki, had presented herself to the Collinses as his sister, and he had gone along with this imposture. Suki is now dead, strangled in an apparently empty house, her body discovered by Nathan when no one else was anywhere near and he had a great deal to gain by her death. For some reason, no one seriously suspects Nathan of the murder, but the whole thing rather tends to cast him in a poor light.
Millicent has recently seen her second cousin, Barnabas Collins. Barnabas’ father, haughty tyrant Joshua, has put the word about that Barnabas has gone to England. Like most people in and around the village of Collinsport, Millicent had believed this story. But the other night she spotted Barnabas in the cemetery. Now she is determined to find Barnabas and recruit him to avenge her honor by fighting a duel with Nathan. She is indignant that Joshua and his wife Naomi keep insisting that she did not really see Barnabas, and that he is not available to fight Nathan.
As it happens, Barnabas did not go to England. Joshua invented that story to cover up the fact that Barnabas had died. Joshua believed that Barnabas died of the plague, and that if that became known the men would not show up to work at the family’s shipyard.
Today, Millicent hears for the first time that Barnabas has died. The news comes from an unpleasant young man named Peter, who is acting as attorney for accused witch Victoria Winters. Peter comes to the great house of Collinwood looking for much put-upon servant Ben Stokes, hoping that Ben will testify for Vicki. Millicent is uninterested in Peter’s mission, but asks him to look for Barnabas. Peter has heard that Barnabas is dead, and passes that information along to Millicent. Since she has seen Barnabas with her own eyes, she simply laughs at this.
As it happens, Peter and Millicent are both right. Barnabas is dead, most of the time. At night he rises as a vampire and preys upon the living. No one but his friend Ben knows this.
In her scene with Peter, Nancy Barrett’s Millicent is slightly, cheerfully crazy. She doesn’t get much support from Roger Davis as Peter, and winds up playing the part a little bit bigger than she might have wished. In her next scene, she has a partner who helps her stay on firm ground.
Millicent answers the front door, as she had done when Peter knocked. This time she is appalled to find that it is Nathan. He puts his foot in the door and refuses to leave until she has heard him out.
Nathan spins a tale to Millicent that he and Suki were in the process of divorcing. We know this is false, and Millicent should as well. When they became engaged, Nathan insisted on the earliest possible wedding date. Since Suki did not show up with a final decree, Nathan could not have been sure that the divorce would be official by that date. Of course, we also know that there was no divorce in the offing; Nathan had abandoned Suki, she had tracked him down, and when she found out about Millicent, she planned to force Nathan to send as much of Millicent’s vast inheritance her way as possible.
Millicent doesn’t know about those details, but she is quite sure Nathan is lying. When he tries to embrace her, she takes a letter opener and tries to stab him.
Millicent is not supposed to be particularly brainy, but she is a smart character in every sense that matters. She absorbs the facts presented to her, interprets them reasonably, forms plans, and pursues those plans by means which, if her interpretations are correct, might well succeed. She believes, correctly, that Nathan has mistreated her and made her look like a fool. She believes, as a young lady of the late 18th century well might, that matters can be set right only by Nathan’s violent death. Having seen Barnabas and knowing that he once fought a duel, she hoped that he would be her avenger. Since Barnabas is being kept from her for no reason she can fathom, she has decided to take matters into her own hands. Her actions may not be the optimal response to the situation, but we can follow her train of thought at each point and are in suspense as to what it will lead her to do next.
Joshua interrupts Millicent before she can accomplish her purpose. He sends her out of the room and confronts Nathan. He tells Nathan he will soon inform the Navy department of what he has done, and that he is sure they will share his eagerness to resolve the issue discreetly. Joshua’s horror of scandal, which we have seen many times, most spectacularly in his cover-up of Barnabas’ death, explains his willingness to believe that Nathan is innocent of Suki’s murder. There would be no way to settle that entirely out of the public eye.
Joel Crothers brought a great deal of wholesome charm to the role of the scoundrel Nathan. We are impressed when Millicent does not give him an inch, even though we can see that she is tempted to do so. We can understand why Joshua several times seems to have to remind himself that he disapproves of Nathan. When, as Joshua, he says he does not believe Nathan killed Suki, Louis Edmonds gives a little smile which flashes real affection for the man he is condemning. It is a testament to Crothers’ talent that his partners are able to achieve these subtle effects in the scenes they share with him in the drawing room.
We cut to the cemetery, where Ben is digging a grave in a heavy fog. Peter shows up to shout at him about testifying for Vicki. Thayer David answers him with an impressive simplicity. Roger Davis is as loud and monotonous as he usually is, but David’s Ben doesn’t waste the tiniest energy on any uncalled-for displays with his voice or face or gestures. It really is a master class in acting under difficult circumstances.
Joshua shows up and shoos Peter away. Joshua insists on going with Ben into the secret chamber where Barnabas’ coffin is hidden. The other night he went into the chamber alone, opened the coffin, and found it empty. Today he goes in with Ben and opens the coffin again. Unaware of the vampire curse, he is as shocked to find the body there as he had earlier been to find it missing.
Acilius on Dark Shadows 
