This is getting more complicated than I thought.  Trask said "There are four secret rooms OR passageways in the Old House."  So I think the underground tunnel from the basement is one of those four.  I don't remember if the cell in the basement was secret or not, but I do seem to recall it vanishing at a later time.  But I think I would consider the cell and the tunnel, being connected, as one of the four secrets passages.

I'm hazy on this since I didn't see these eps on the most recent run, but when Maggie escapes from the cell in the basement of the Old House, doesn't she wander up and down some stairs and even through other rooms? Could that be what the ghost of Sarah Collins (poster, above) is referring to?

Josette, I think Cassandra B. is right and that you may be thinking of Barnabas coming to Josette through a hidden panel when she was staying in the "Big House" rather than the Old House.

Speaking of the cave, it seems rather amazing to me that Barnabas' coffin is there for anyone to see who might happen to wander in off the beach!

Did anyone catch what "Rev." Mr. Trask said the other day when he was looking over blueprints of the Old House (boy, he sure gets the run of the house at Collinwood ...):

"There are four secret rooms or passageways in the Old House."

[He might have said "passages" not "passageways"; I didn't rewind the tape to double-check.]

Let's see, there's the secret room behind the bookcase (the secret lever to which Trask had not the slightest difficulty in locating), and the underground tunnel running between the "cellar" (what I would call a "basement," a "cellar" connoting something like a dirt-floor root cellar) and the cave opening below Widow's Hill.

Any ideas what the other two are?

I am under the impression that Count Petofi slaughtered nine gypsies and was turned into a werewolf because of this? Hence the slaughtered nine...am I wrong (as usual, lol)?  

Dom -- That's very interesting and makes a lot of sense. I'm not sure how you came up with your theory as I don't remember hearing what Petofi had done to anger the gypsies. Maybe I missed an episode last time when this was referred to.



****SPOILER******


Is it ever explained how Petofi is cured of his lycanthropy (or whatever it is)? By sacrificing his hand?


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Jennifer -- If you don't get the incantations you need regarding people at work, I do have a charm in Finnish (with translation) to prevent frozen fingers!



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Midnite -- very illuminating comments about the Custodian of the 12 Days (despite the historical detour on the Romanov family, though that made for some interesting reading anyway  )!

Your comment shows that the DS writers possessed some interesting knowledge ...

No, I'm not updating this to say there's been a change of plans and I am going to be moving into my local "Collinwood" after all.  (For one thing, I've since discovered that I have a one-year lease renewable each year that I can't get out of unless I pay $100 more each month for a different type of lease.  But don't get me started on rental property management's robbery of the working poor ... )

Cassandra Blair, the house/museum that you provided a link for is fantastic!  It really does look like Seaview Terrace, especially the way the round tower is nestled in there ... It looks more like the original Collinwood, whereas "my" Collinwood really does look more like a cross between the original and the movie version -- it's more gothic in architecture than Seaview Terrace, and also the great cut gray stones are similar to Lyndhurst.

The moderator has offered to put up a photo, but the ones said moderator has seen aren't as good as those I took later -- and I'm not sure where I have those newer ones.  Regardless, it is a private residence, and the owners might rightly view it as an invasion of privacy if they were to find out their home was pictured on the Web.

BTW, Castlebee, I've dug up your hot toddy recipe in light of the frigid temperatures of late!

I bet if you asked Dan Curtis, he'd say Vicki
is Elizabeth's daughter.
Julianka

Yes, he would. Mark Rainey has told us that the position of DCP was that Elizabeth should be Vicki's mother.

In the aforementioned thread, this was also thoroughly discussed. There were two or three DS writers who were writing during the early period on DS when the Vicki mystery was being played out.

It is my contention that the plan of author Francis Swann, who took over this aspect of the storyline from Art Wallace, was quite different.  All of these points were discussed in exhausting detail, so I won't rehash them here.

Birdie, I've been thinking on the exact same wavelength as your topic for the past few days ... maybe it has something to do with my just having purchased one of the Josette's Music Box replicas ...

Besides having the music box now, as well as a Barnabas ring (which just sits closed up in the box), I have a couple of other items that remind me of DS.  Both of these are placed on the very crowded top of a large oak bookcase I have with four glass doors.

One is a tall glass antique-style oil lamp I've had for some years.  I hoped to actually use it and thought it would cast a warm, comfortable glow, especially during the winter.  Unfortunately, I haven't been able to use it.  The lamp oil I purchased was called "pure and odorless," but it still gave off fumes that really bothered me.  In the 19th century, my understanding is that the finest oil used was whale oil, which probably didn't have the irritating effects of kerosene (which is all that today's lamp oils are, though supposedly more refined).

The other item is a hand-crafted model ship from the East coast that was given to me when I was 10 by a distant cousin who was visiting from Europe. I mentioned this model ship once in the past and referred to it as a schooner (thought I'd try to get technical in my description), but my nautical knowledge is practically nil and I realize now that it isn't a schooner.  It looks exactly like the ship used in the movie "The Bounty" (the Mel Gibson version) and also like the one in the movie "Moby Dick" (the TNT version -- don't remember the ship from the original movie). Does anyone happen to know what kind of ship this might be a replica of?

Finally, when I was growing up my sister and I sometimes played on the grounds of a Jacobean-style mansion built in the early 1900s and situated on a lake shore. Although the exterior doesn't resemble Collinwood, there is a small 19th-century-era cemetary adjacent to the grounds that's enclosed by a wrought-iron fence. The interior of the mansion, which I've seen a couple of times, does remind me of Collinwood, with the dark carved wood paneling and stained glass windows on the landing.

Not to mention the fact that I came very close to moving into yet another "Collinwood" just a couple of weeks ago ... and the fact that there is still another house, even closer to where I now live, that is built in the same style as the Old House (albeit on a much smaller scale). It has the same white columns built around the circular rotunda (I know that's not the correct term but I can't think of what it's called -- similar to Monticello.) When I walk by, I often wonder if Barnabas is home and am tempted to go up and knock...

*  *  *

Midnite, did you have to rub it in about sitting outdoors in a tropical garden?!?

I was sorting through some stacks of papers the other day, and I coincidentally discovered a printout of a post made to the VantageNet board on 3/6/00 by Sheila March regarding the original Josette's music box. Apparently this question had come up at the DS festival in 1999, and it was stated that many costumes and props from DS were donated to Fordham University, so that is a likely place where the original music box might have ended up. (I wouldn't be surprised, though, if it ultimately ended up in someone's personal possession after that!) According to Sheila's post, KLS remembered the music box as a lovely item, while Stuart Goodman recalled it as a tacky thing held together with tape.


* * * * *

Financial considerations, sadly, preclude my attending the festival in NYC this year, so upon a little deliberation I decided to console myself and purchased one of the few remaining Josette's Music Box replicas now in the hands of the Dark Shadows festival.

I just knew that if I didn't buy one now, I'd be unhappy the rest of my life -- and would probably return from the afterlife in search of one ...  I had seen one of the replicas at the festival in Anaheim, so I knew pretty much what it looked like, the size, etc.  I know some posters a couple of years ago complained that it was tiny, plastic and chintzy.

Well, I must say that I was delighted when I received my mint-condition music box within a week of ordering it from the festival.

The music box actually looks quite attractive on one of my bookshelves.  The plastic base with the filagree looks the best; but the plastic lid, though it reproduces the design of the original cover exactly, so far as I can tell, does have more of that "plastic" look.  However, we could hardly expect that a collectible item for a TV show would actually be glass and copper (as I take it the original box is supposed to be).

The size seems to be perhaps 2/3 scale, based on visual comparisons with the music box in "House of DS" (the quickest way I was able to do a comparison).  Does anyone know if the music box in HODS was the same one used on the show?

A close comparison between the music box in the movie and the MPI replica shows that the original is much bigger around and slightly taller and the filagree pattern does not go up as high on the glass as it does on the plastic model.

The music piece in the replica plays "Josette's Theme" with a clear, ringing quality ... It seems to play perhaps a dozen bars, and I can't recall for certain if that is the extent of the original song or not.

Does anyone know if the 1996 MPI music box (which is the one I purchased) is identical to the one offered in conjunction with DS back in 1970?  Were the materials used, the size, shape, pattern, design, decorative features, color, and tone of music exactly the same?

Who produced/distributed the 1970 version of the music box?

One other difference between the replica and the one on the show is that the top lifts off the replica completely (rather than tilting back), and the melody doesn't play when you lift it off -- you have to wind the bottom!

To be continued ...