quentin,david and amy

Good point.... I'd like to have seen them try to explain away the glittery red vest the 1969 skeleton had on!    Either Quentin or Greg Trask must have paid off a member of a barbership quartet to take his place!

[spoiler]
so, when barnabas discovered why quentin was cursed, he should have gone back in time to prevent quentin from killing jenny racosi collins, thereby avoiding the curse.[/spoiler]

[spoiler]Not to mention that Barnabas had the solution right in his hands - and blew it -- when he didn't leave Quentin dead after Jenny stabbed him to death.   Which come to think of it leaves the question of whether, before all the mucking about with the timeline, that was orignally how he died. If not, how the heck did he get revived THAT time? (Yeah, I know, that doesn't explain the ghost of Beth.  One unsolvable paradox at a time, please!  [/spoiler]

[spoiler]And since Trask had been trapped in there with Quentin's exstensive library of books on black magic, do you think Trask's spirit might have perused those books throughout the decades and learned  a thing or two? Who knows, maybe Trask, wanting revenge on the Collins family, conjured up Quentin & Beth's spirits from the grave , took control of them & forced them to do his bidding by haunting Collinwood.[/spoiler]

Ooh, I LIKE that idea.  That would certainly explain the sociopathic ghost. Only one catch -- Gregory Trask never had a sense of humor in his whole life.  And the ghost of Quentin had a twisted sense of humor, as in his baiting Braithwaite-- and appearing to Roger.  Another idea I've seen used to explain the differnence in the ghost is that it's the ghost of PETOFI IN QUENTINS BODY. He, at least had the perquisite evil sense of humor....

And either one would explain Beth's ghost being more of an adversary to Quentin's ghost than a partner in crime   

later on however it's never quite satisfactorily explained as to why everyone readily accepts quentin into the household and no longer equate him with the ghost that caused them so much grief.

You can't tell the player without his sideburns and gramophone? 

Or maybe his previous alias was as Clark Kent - and we all know how different HE looks from his alter ego.

 

Another idea I've seen used to explain the differnence in the ghost is that it's the ghost of PETOFI IN QUENTINS BODY. He, at least had the perquisite evil sense of humor....

Hmm, I'm thinking that originally, Petofi wouldn't have inhabited Quentin's body as seen in the changed 1897 because Barnabas and Julia weren't there to start the time travel ball rolling.  Or did you mean that Petofi's ghost could have taken control of Quentin's body after their deaths?, cuz I think that would be an interesting twist.

You're right about Petofi not having been around originally -- or at least the best we can TELL,with the cats cradle Barn made of the original timeline.  Can't take credit for the idea myself-- I either read it on some discussion somewhere,or saw a
story based on it.Best I remember of the speculation is that if Petofi died before Q reversing the mindswitch,the ghost could have been his.

Which gives me my own plot bunny to worry at: what if they'd BOTH died  when Q tried to reverse the switch? That too would have had an interesting effect on the ghosts of 1969. 

Concerning Quentin...

Clearly he's solid and not a ghost, so they can't say otherwise.

I don't know about that.  [spoiler]Joanna seemed pretty darned solid to me...til she wasn't anymore.  LOL![/spoiler]

Judy

You're right about Petofi not having been around originally -- or at least the best we can TELL,with the cats cradle Barn made of the original timeline. 

As much as I love 1897, parts of it do get confusing.  But I wasn't saying that Petofi wasn't always there-- at least not in that post you quoted-- because I recently began to consider that he may have been there orignally, though my reasons are probably off topic for this thread.  But regardless of whether he was in the unchanged past or not, I doubt he specifically possessed Quentin because, IIRC, he wasn't interested in using Quentin's body (sigh) to get to the future until Petofi realized through his dealings with Julia and Barnabas that time travel was possible.

BTW, the mods have been adding spoiler warnings as needed to this topic and others.   

OOPS,sorry.  I thought I caught those.  Got to be more careful !

I agree with Midnite. I think it's hardly likely that [spoiler] Petofi took over Quentin's body in the unchanged timeline and that it was HIS spirit in Quentin's form haunting Collinwood because in unchanged history, Petofi never met Barnabas who was still chained up in his coffin and Julia hadn't been born yet so the idea of time-travelling never even occured to him, much less the means to get there.

However, in one of the older threads, somebody pitched the idea that in the Gerard/Daphne haunting, Judah Zachery had really been the one haunting Collinwood through Gerard's form. Now that idea I can buy since Judah did possess Gerard in 1840, something that I believed happened before in the unchanged 1840 before Barnabas and Julia went back and changed things. I do think that the circumstances of Judah's demise may have been changed due to Barnabas and Julia's presence. Maybe Judah really had been strangled by Gabriel, or Daphne or Quentin put a bullet into him, or maybe Gerard as Judah had been exposed and destroyed another way. Who knows? [/spoiler]