Shadows of the night … falling silently … Echoes of the past … calling you to me.

What else could it be, but … DARK SHADOWS!!??!1!

Mom and I are watching part of it on DVD: the part from Quentin’s ghost’s earliest mischief through the 1897 episodes. That is to say, the good parts version. Once the Naugas got into the act, bleh. Skip ahead to the parallel universe bits, yes?

I remember hurrying home from the bus stop every day after high school, just in time to tune in. For the longest time, I thought Jonathan Frid’s character was named Bonovitch because of Willie Loomis’ (John Karlen’s) accent. But, of course, it was Barnabas.

In college, my pal Jane and I used to fill black-and-white composition notebooks with Dark Shadows fan fiction. Hers was usually serious and angst-ridden, mine was usually insanely stupid. Here is a picture of one of her drawings and a page of one of my silly stories.The title of the story is “I Have No Ship And I Must Steam”.

Oh, yes, it is.

We stayed over off-campus one summer and worked at school. I worked in the library, and talked my boss into letting me come in for half a day on Saturday and leave an hour early on weekdays. Why? So I could run into the dorm next door to the library and watch Dark Shadows, take notes, and snap pictures of the television.

The 1897 sequence featured the I Ching, and OF COURSE we got copies and dipped into it. The characters traveled through time by envisioning a door with The Pentagram of Change on it and walking through; we made I Ching wands out of cardboard and marking pens and taped them to our door.

What larks!

If you can’t get enough of Dark Shadows, check out this wonderful Wiki. Or you can attend the Dark Shadows Festival. Or you can buy the television soundtrack album and spend your days and nights like Quentin, drinking brandy and listening to … listening to what, children? … Shadows of the Night!

MA