But then Barnabas Collins came in to the story, portrayed so well by Jonathan Frid. I learned so much about his growing up years, early training in theater, interactions with Sir Laurence Olivier, and his successes as a Shakespearean actor. All I knew was that Barnabas Collins was riveting, seemingly charming yet sinister.
There did come a time when I couldn’t watch Dark Shadows. Barnabas had begun terrorizing young Maggie Evans, believing her to be his reincarnated love, Josette. That Barnabas was terrifying, cruel and cold. He menaced little David Collins, too curious for his own good, and then kidnapped Maggie and held her prisoner. It was when Barnabas shut her in a coffin that I began having nightmares.
My mother grew tired of being woken in the night and declared war on Dark Shadows. I wasn’t allowed to watch anymore. At first it was a relief but as months went by I began to miss it terribly. When Mom would leave the living room, I’d switch to ABC and catch what I could, knowing Mom wouldn’t be able to hear the episode. Eventually she caught on but things appeared to be going “nicely” and so she didn’t object when I began watching everyday.
Barnabas was “good” now and the storyline I had begun viewing was confusing at first but then I realized it was Frankenstein Dark Shadows style. Barnabas the vampire became human as long as the monster Adam lived.
My opinion of Barnabas changed with the change in my family’s dynamics. I saw that Barnabas was tormented & guilt ridden, carrying the burden of a “dirty secret”—that he was different, a reformed vampire. Well, we had family “dirty secrets” to keep too: we were different from the other kids. Our parents were Deaf, spoke with their hands and had “funny” voices. Beyond that, came the drinking and domestic violence. Barnabas became a sort of surrogate parent or big brother.
All good things must come to an end and the series went off the air in 1971. I knew there’d been a large fandom but wasn’t aware it carried on after the series ended. Instead of shrinking, the Dark Shadows fan world has just gotten bigger and bigger.
Around 1993-94-95, I was married to Rich and mom to three young kids. I turned on the TV one day, went channel surfing and discovered Dark Shadows being re-aired on the SciFi (as it was known then) Channel. We had an old computer that ran on DOS and I was inspired to start writing some fan fiction. Later, Rich was assigned a laptop to use at home and I became familiar with it, surfing the Net for information about Dark Shadows and fans. I found devoted websites, groups and chatrooms and I suddenly was reliving my Dark Shadows mania from my pre-to-HS teen years. Although Barnabas was always my hero, I was attracted to David Selby’s Quentin, the bad boy werewolf.
My passion was always for writing and now I was on fire to write Dark Shadows fan fiction. The issue with fan fiction is that it’s not really legal. The rights to a series belongs to other parties. But Dark Shadows fandom was such that the owner of the series, Dan Curtis, didn’t seem to object to it.
Over the years my interest in Dark Shadows fan fiction has waxed and waned. I’ve written some stories based on some of my childhood memories. I started a sort of memoir. Now, though, my Dark Shadows fanfic interest is waxing again. I’m going with the flow but still writing other pieces as well.
