I had never heard of this short novel until coming across it on amazon a few weeks ago and quickly ordered a copy in time for this year's Halloween reading. I've only read a few pages so far and it's fascinating ... anyway, it's called "The Lifted Veil" and it's by George Eliot. Yes, the same George Eliot who penned "Silas Marner," "Middlemarch," and other highly esteemed English classics. Apparently her publisher attempted to dissuade her from publishing "The Lifted Veil" lest it tarnish her high literary reputation with a Gothic thriller ... It's quite a bit easier to get into than "Silas Marner" ...

I've been thinking recently about that crew of cutthroat pirates who manned "The Java Queen" under Gerard Stiles (or whatever his name might have been, I think he had bee called "Ivan Miller" or somesuch at one point). I think the ship is first mentioned in the Summer of 1970 and when David waves the green flag from the tower room window of Collinsport, it's a signal for the pirate crew to rise out of their graves and begin marauding Collinsport at the end of 1995 as a prelude to 1840 (if I have my storylines straight)!

What I'm wondering is how the DS writers came up with this idea. I've never heard of any source story where that this might have been taken from.

This has gotten me to thinking further about Gothic fiction, which I'm surveying in my spare time. I can't find any examples of the dead rising from their graves in any old Gothic novels I've read about --the Gothic genre begins with "The Castle of Otranto," and then there's "Melmouth the Wanderer," "Vathek," the Ann Radcliffe novels, and so one. But unbelievably, I can't find any examples of the dead literally rising from their grave. Now, there are ghosts, there are vampires, and there are zombies. I suppose the DS pirate crew were closest to being zombies, but I'm not sure if they were exactly that.

Anyone have any ideas or thoughts about sources / origins / early gothic fiction that presents such a scenario? "Frankenstein" is quite different, since the creature is a creation, not a resurrected person. Stories of necromancy go back to the Old Testament, but that seems possibly another sort of thing since a sorcerer of some type is involved. And vampires have been transformed into a different undead creature of the night. Maybe something called "revenants"? Or maybe Gerard Stiles in this case could be deemed a "necromancer"?

I'll try to catch "The Maltese Falcon" again next time it airs on TCM. I've only seen it once and I confess that Petofi - Aristede didn't come to mind, but I'll watch closely in the future! But now that you mention Sidney Greenstreet, he's another actor (the only one who comes to mind) who I could also see portraying Count Petofi.

Gothick, I may have mentioned to you several years ago that I had "discovered" the origin of DS's Count Petofi, but I don't think I've told anyone who that might have been. I've been waiting for the right timing when I could write something about this. Well, it has been years now and maybe others have come across the same information in the intervening years. I don't have time to write more right now, but the following link will make the matter self-explanatory, I think. In my opinion, the name and inspiration for creating the character of Count Petofi on DS was a real-life Polish count named Potocki. 

https://www.tor.com/2009/03/10/jan-potocki-and-the-manuscript-found-in-saragossa/

Just to clarify, I've wondered whether Henry James's "The Sense of the Past" was James's response as a man of letters to H.G. Wells' popular science-fiction "The Time Machine," given the shared theme of time-travel.

I'm not quite sure what I had in mind when I wrote: "the main character has a deep-seated fascination with his ancestor," as there isn't really a parallel to this in Dark Shadows - although the Collins family does take an interest in their ancestors and their family history. I watched the first half hour of "I'll Never Forget You" last night, and I was struck by one rather significant parallel - the portrait of an ancestor is prominently noted, including the hero's resemblance to him. Now that does have a very close parallel with Barnabas's portrait.

It has been many years since I skimmed through James's nearly impenetrable "The Sense of the Past," and I don't recall whether a portrait played a role, though I think it quite likely.
 

I don't remember ever noticing his name in the credits, but maybe I overlooked his name if he hasn't been discussed much on this forum ...

It does seem more likely that the grandfather clock came as part of the set design ... if it is mentioned in "Shadows on the Wall," I don't think it's given any significance, just part of the set description, though I don't really remember anything about how the set may have been described. But you're right, the clock really does figure in the story - often just to let us know that it's midnight or early morning hours and people are still up at Collinwood ... or sometimes the clock gives us a countdown to some plot situation, like the Barnabas/Forbes showdown, if I remember correctly. It's interesting that clocks often have some symbolic significance in stories by Poe, thinking of "The Masque of the Red Death," for example.

Looks like there may be a DS fan on staff ... I was so fortunate to have a fellow librarian where I worked also a DS fan. She had organized something similar about the time I started working there and I did a display. Unfortunately we only had a couple of people show up a few times.

As an aside, I recently taught a class on Edgar Allan Poe at my local College for Seniors!