How & when you discovered Dark Shadows

[BenStokes]

Hey Everyone, I'm new here and still getting acquainted and I thought I'd just mention that the suggestions to get acquainted helped alot.

Anyway, I'm 19 years old ( much younger than many viewers of the show... that's probably why everyone who saw me watch the show when I had taped it at college couldn't understand what I saw in the show ) but that's just it they wouldn't understand. I stumbled upon the show probably in `96 or `97 ( I guesstimated seeing as I picked up when Jeremiah's ghost was tormenting the house, and now I have finally seen the run all the way through to the end twice and only seen the pre Barnabus episodes once). I found the show absolutely astounding. I didn't realize it was a "Soap Opera" until a couple weeks later when it had dawned on me. I got very interested in the show and began taping it because of school, VCRs are wonderful.  For a while, I just watched the show and then I wanted to put some of the pieces together so I got online and found darkshadows.com which at the time was updated regularly but now the website has no activity. When I found out the show was to be cancelled I didn't know what to do I thought maybe this would spark ds.com into some aggitation but no, nothing. So I began searching and found this forum. I want to say thank you to the Administrators for setting it up. I was a part of an old forum but my use fell off quickly because it was very difficult to keep up with.... in fact I believe ProfStokes was a member also, my username was youngshadow and my stint was very brief just thought I'd mention it.

Anyway, I am really excited to hear of remake talk and I am working on acquiring the DVDs but being a poor college kid that's gonna take a while...I've got expenses like crazy. Again thanks, and just to mention it I had a very large aspiration of putting together a magnificent website together regarding the show sometime in the notsonear future because I don't have the skills to do it quite yet but anyone interested in sharing knowledge, pictures, or questions let me know.

P.S. * A funny happenstance concerning Dark Shadows, I attend Washington University in St. Louis and my Acting I teacher was telling us about an actor he worked with who could rarely remember his lines because he never had time to apply repetition instruments to learn them due to his rigid schedule.  It just so happens that he was speaking of Dark Shadows own Louis Edmonds. I nearly jumped out of my shoes and let him know quite enthusiastically that I was abreast of the show and got a few wierd looks from classmates (*embarassing sort of ) He was saddened to hear that he had passed away. I was very touching and coincidental.

JUST THOUGHT I'D SHARE

BenStokes

[dom]

Hi BenStokes. Welcome.

A quick word to say that I am thoroughly enjoying reading through this thread. The commonalities make for fun discovery.

**Spoiler ahead for those who haven't seen the pre-Barn eps yet**

My first glimpse of Dark Shadows happened during a stroll thru our living room. My older sister and her girlfriends were watching it during it's original run. It was the scene where...
 [spoiler]Laura Collins was attempting to get David to come into the flames with her as Viki was trying to save him.[/spoiler] I stood there mesmerized. It was by far the weirdest thing I'd ever seen. It made no sense to me at age nine.

I caught back up with the show and started watching on a regular basis during 1897 sometime after Petofi came on the scene and stayed with it through about half of 1840.

I tuned in for the last episode and was so disappointed because I didn't have a clue as to what the heck was going on. But it was still a sad and sentimental farewell nonetheless.

My family still ribs me about my past DS viewing. I used to put blankets over the windows so that it would be as dark as possible in the apt when I would watch the show, lol. They busted me once but that was enough to have to hear about it the rest of my life. 

Thank goodness they never caught me during my other "secret" DS related activities of which only one I'll admit to here. I used to play the DS album for background music and create my own episodes on cassette tapes.

[Connie]

Thank goodness they never caught me during my other "secret" DS related activities of which only one I'll admit to here. I used to play the DS album for background music and create my own episodes on cassette tapes.

Oh!  That is so cool, and a great idea.  Did you act out the parts or were you just narrating??

I can't remember the sort of details a lot of people can - it was just tooooooo long ago.  But I know I started watching from the beginning, in 1966.  No one told me about it, so I must have seen promos or was watching something else in that time slot beforehand.  Does anyone know what was on back then?  Only thing I can remember watching in the afternoons was a show called Where The Action Is.  LOL   (very groovy)

I remember being quite into it from the very beginning -- Carolyn, Vicky, David, etc. but don't remember the plotlines (haven't seen the black and white stuff since the 60's).  I remember more, the sort of DS-related nonsense and fun my best friend and I used to have.  Ya know something we used to do in school when we were bored?  We'd draw little scenarios for each other and exchange them in class.  I recall mine usually took place in the Old House.  I'd draw the fireplace with the portrait over it, a piece of furniture or two, and it would almost always have Barnabas (and probably Julia) in it.  I couldn't draw for shit, but you knew it was Barn 'cause of the pointy bangs.  I'd have them saying I don't know WHAT to each other.  Sometimes I'd do one at home (while I was supposed to be doing homework) and give it to my friend in school the next day.  The ones done at home were better 'cause I could cut the different characters' faces out of teen magazines and paste them on bodies.  (More realistic)  LOL   Only one weird thing -- sometimes we'd have other characters in the scene that didn't belong there.  I can remember drawing George Harrison sitting on the floor in the drawing room in a yoga position, playing the sitar.  (Go figure) Anyway, we called these little creations, "Pidger and Writty" (the term taken from one of John Lennon's books)

I THINK it was Fall of 1999 when I was flipping through channels one morning and lo and behold, there was Barnabas!!!!  I freaked.  It was around the time in the '68 storyline when Angelique had bitten him.  So, if that's what was showing then, then it was 1999.  Sometime not long after, I discovered there was Dark Shadows stuff online.  One day I was looking at screen grabs and this silly stuff came to me.  I put the grabs together with some dialogue and emailed it to my friend (the same friend -- who is my best friend to this day) as a joke.  It was called Revenge Of Julia.  The rest, as they say, is history.  Oy vey.

-CLC
Who wants to know about some of dom's other "secret" DS activities.   
(Hey - awhile back I admitted that phony phone call to Grayson!)
Shameful - simply shameful

[Raineypark]

Only thing I can remember watching in the afternoons was a show called Where The Action Is.  LOL   (very groovy)

OH!!  SWEET MOTHER!!!

"Where the Action Is"??!!

Connie, you just triggered a psychedelic flash back beyond belief!!
The clothes on the guys were enough to make you shriek!

I wonder if that was a New York based production, and was it shown anywhere else in the country?

[Gothick]

Hi Connie and Rainey, I'd love to see old episodes of Where the Action is!  From voiceovers on the early MPI collectors series tapes, I gather it followed DS at 4 in the afternoon.  They may have promoted DS on that show's commercial breaks during June 1966 and that may be how you found out about it.

I love watching old rock and roll shows from that era.  I just got some 1967 tapes of a German show called the Beat Club and, believe me, the groovy threads those guys were wearing made *me* shriek, though perhaps not in the way you intended.

cackling obscenely,

Gothick

[dom]

Where The Action Is was hosted by Paul Revere and the Raiders, right? My sister (and her now infamous girlfriends) used to watch that also, along with all the other Rock and Roll shows. I only watched for two reasons, The Supremes and The Shangri-las. Don't ever recall seeing them on WTAI though.

I had a friend, Albert, who used to do an hysterical imitation of Barnabas dancing to those 60's tunes.

Fangs for the memory,
dom

PS - Connie, I used to verbaly act out the parts (the dialog) into that tiny portable cassette player.

[Midnite]

OMG, "Where the Action Is"...   you can bet it was shown in L.A.!  For some bizarre reason the theme song is in my head.  MY sister always made fun of DS but I make up for it by teasing her about the time she came home from a Paul Revere & the Raiders concert swearing she would never wash her hand again cuz Mark Lindsay touched it. 

Hey, BenStokes, welcome!

[Raineypark]

Okay....now that we've made it official  just how freaking old we are.....!   

[Midnite]

My best friend (we had the same first name-- weird, huh?) would go straight home after school to watch DS, but she couldn't convince me to see it too until one day she announced that they'd added a vampire.  We were in the 6th grade, sigh.  Growing up on Universal monster pictures, how could I resist?  I lived the closest-- her family was rich so they lived "on the hill", as it was called then ( to victoriawinters)-- so we went to my house that day and I thought the show was so darn spooky that I was instantly hooked.  From then on we'd take the bus there everyday, watch the show, sometimes would do homework but mostly we goofed around, and her dad would pick her up later.  She developed a crush on Barnabas and I only had to take one look at Quentin before I was a goner.  If someone had told little Midnite that she'd meet David Selby one day, she might've fainted on the spot.

It always intrigues me to read about the discussions that went on in the schools concerning what happened on DS the preceding day.  In my school it was NOT cool to watch DS, so my friend and I kept it to ourselves.   The likely scenario, however, is that all my classmates watched it but didn't admit it.  I tried to get my mom to check it out when she wasn't working, but except for passing by the room now and then to make a comment about Joan Bennett, she wasn't interested.  It was over the recent holidays that she told me I kept pleading with her to watch it because the show "has a vampire, and a witch, and ghosts, and a werewolf!"

I gave the show up during the infamous Leviathans storyline, which was also around the time I started high school.  That year I met my current best friend, but it wasn't until years later that we learned that we'd both watched DS before that.  It's probably not surprising that we both dabbled in different occult things during our teen years.

Flash ahead to 1996 and I'm getting my kids ready for school when my mom calls to leave a message that I'm supposed to turn on the SciFi channel NOW because there's something on there from my childhood.  I did and was blown away seeing Barnabas, newly made a vampire by Angelique.  It made me think of my friend a lot that got me hooked on it and who had passed away a few years earlier.  I saw the DS eps every day after that, taping them usually, til I'd seen them all.  Funny thing is that my mom started watching too at the same time and LOVED it; she even got herself a "handle" and joined me for a while on the SciFi DS boards.  I'm, of course, not one to say "I told you so", but...

[ProfStokes]

Welcome, BenStokes!  I seem to recall the name "youngshadow";did you used to post on Stuart's messageboard at darkshadows.co.uk?

Incidentally, your mention of how your fellow students fail to understand the magic of DS rings a bell. None of my schoolmates were DS fans either, and the two whom I was able to persuade to watch a few episodes never developed an interest in it.  Fortunately, the people here are far more understanding. 

Ya know something we used to do in school when we were bored?  We'd draw little scenarios for each other and exchange them in class.  I recall mine usually took place in the Old House.  I'd draw the fireplace with the portrait over it, a piece of furniture or two, and it would almost always have Barnabas (and probably Julia) in it.  I couldn't draw for shit, but you knew it was Barn 'cause of the pointy bangs.  I'd have them saying I don't know WHAT to each other.  Sometimes I'd do one at home (while I was supposed to be doing homework) and give it to my friend in school the next day.  The ones done at home were better 'cause I could cut the different characters' faces out of teen magazines and paste them on bodies.  (More realistic)  LOL   Only one weird thing -- sometimes we'd have other characters in the scene that didn't belong there.  I can remember drawing George Harrison sitting on the floor in the drawing room in a yoga position, playing the sitar.  (Go figure) Anyway, we called these little creations, "Pidger and Writty" (the term taken from one of John Lennon's books)

How fun (and funny) that must have been!  No wonder you got to be such a talented writer and storyboard narrator, Connie.

dom, do you still have those homemade cassettes and if so, is there any chance of you posting a transcript of some your DS episodes?

ProfStokes

[dom]

How sweet of you to be interested, ProfStokes. I'm afraid none of those cassettes have survived my torrid life, (it's a miracle that I have, lol). Back then we practically rerecorded over those 120 minute tapes until they broke. But to be totally honest, had they survived, I'd be much too embarrassed to transcribe them for public consumption.

[Raineypark]

Exactly the same reason all the thousands of pages of "stories" (never heard of fan fic until I got here) that Abbeymarch and I tandem-wrote together were consigned to the flames.

Never leave the evidence of one's adolescence just lying around!! 

[VictoriaWintersRox]

I think I first heard of it on some television news website (I'm addicted to classic television and researching it...I'm an odd teen, lol), which mentioned that the 'Barnabas' episodes of some serial named Dark Shadows were soon going to air. I thought that Barnabas was an odd name, but didn't really think about it after that. One day, a few months later, I was at IMDb looking up information on Kate Jackson (who I knew from Charlie's Angels) and stumbled across a listing for her Dark Shadows work. I decided to watch the series.

The first time I ever watched Dark Shadows was at the very beginning of February 2002. The first episode I saw was #341 -- in which Julia and Barnabas murder Dr. Woodard. I kept watching from that point on, but what really hooked me was the 1795 storyline, which began the third week after I had discovered it. During those first weeks, my favorite characters included Victoria (partly because she was the only present day character other than Barnabas in the 1795 storyline), Burke & Jeremiah (Anthony George has remained my favorite in the role of Burke, despite me liking Mitch Ryan's Burke a lot), Millicent & Carolyn (Nancy Barrett is my favorite actress on the show), Julia & Natalie, and Angelique.

I've been watching it ever since, although I've missed an episode here or there. I also bought many of the MPI VHS volumes which cover the pre-Barnabas episodes, which are some of my favorites. Thus far I have all the DVDs and hope to collect all of them.

Sean

[DarkShadowyFigure]

Thanks, murph, for the welcome aboard (and congrats on your 100th post) and a welcome aboard to BenStokes (congrats on your first post)! I've really enjoyed reading everyone's introduction to Dark Shadows.

In my school it was NOT cool to watch DS, so my friend and I kept it to ourselves. 

Once I entered 7th grade, I learned the hard way (much teasing) how uncool it was to watch DS- and admit it at school. But I didn't mind as much because most of my neighborhood friends- who attended a different school- loved DS. Good thing too, as I'd often run to these friends' homes straight off the school bus in order to not miss too much of the show (my house was farthest from the school bus stop, naturally). All of us bought as much DS related magazines and merchandise as our allowances could afford (I hate thinking about what great DS memorabilia I've either lost, sold or *shudders* tossed out in the trash).

btw I think I remember "Where The Action Is", if there were go-go dancers in mini-skirts on it, I remember it. Unless I'm thinking of a different show...

[Mark Rainey]

I saw the first episode of Dark Shadows when it originally aired in '66, while I was at my grandparents' house in Georgia. I was seven at the time, and I doubt I understood much of what was going on except there was a girl on a train going to a creepy place. When we came back home to Virginia, we found that the local ABC affiliate didn't run DS at all, and I think I threw a bigger fit than at any time since they cancelled my cartoons for JFK's funeral.

I found out later that Channel 13 out of Lynchburg, VA, carried DS, but you had to have cable to pick up the station; back then, hardly anyone had cable, but one of my best friends did. I took every opportunity to invite myself over to his place so we could watch DS, and I managed it just enough to know that I was missing something very special. And of course whenever we visited my grandparents in Georgia, come DS time in the afternoon, nobody else could get anywhere near the TV.

We finally got cable at home in late '69, just as the Leviathans story was beginning. At the time, my only knowlege of the show was based on sporadic viewing, so I had no idea how the story racked up compared to all that had come before. As far as I was concerned, this was Dark Shadows, it was scary, and I was in heaven. (To this day, I still have a special fondness for the Leviathans story because that's where I really began with the show in earnest.)

Then the unthinkable happened. They went to parallel time and locked Barnabas in his coffin.

Good God, here I was finally able to watch DS every day, and what do they do but take Barnabas away. I can't count the number of times I raised my fist to the heavens and told anyone who would listen that if they didn't bring Barnabas back, I was gonna QUIT WATCHING DARK SHADOWS!

OK, so he came back, I kept watching the show, and all was well. Then of course, 1971 rolled around.... Oh, what a sad boy. On the Monday after DS's final episode, I tuned in, as I'm sure many young'uns did, certain the cancellation was a late April Fool's Day joke, or some horrible mistake. But it wasn't.

In '76, the reruns of DS started up, and I was again in seventh heaven, until my younger brother started pitching a fit that he wanted to watch Gilligan's Island on the TV downstairs (which was the only one that would pick up DS), never mind that it was in black and white and the black and white TV UPSTAIRS picked up Gilligan's Island just fine. Of course, Mom had no inkling of the profound gravity of the goings on at Collinwood, and so she made us alternate afternoons watching our shows. Therefore, I missed every other episode of DS until Gilligan moved to another time slot.

I repaid my brother by setting fire to all his GI Joes (and a few other toys I decided he had outgrown). But having gained so much maturity since those days, every now and then I look on Ebay, find old toys like those of his I destroyed, buy them, and send them to him -- along with a can of lighter fluid and matches so he can, after all these years, have the pleasure of burning them himself.

Tell me I'm not a really good brother.

--Mark