The House By The Sea a la Ocean Grove, NJ

[Bob_the_Bartender]

Hey, gang,

One of my favorite aspects of the Adam storyline on DS was warlock Nicholas Blair’s cool home, the House by the Sea, located on the rocky shores of Collinsport, Maine. I wonder if Mrs. Stoddard would have ever rented the house to Cassandra’s brother, if she knew that a Collins property would house a warlock, a female vampire, a man-made monster and his presumptive mate, not to mention a “resurrected” male vampire? A lot of weird stuff took place in that house, including a Black Mass, celebrating Nicholas and Maggie Evans’ unholy “union.”

Anyway, I was driving along the beautiful New Jersey shoreline the other day, and as I drove through Ocean Grove, just below historic Asbury Park, I spotted a Victorian-style hotel on the beach, called, I kid you not, “The House By The Sea.” Wow, I almost expected to see Nicholas and Angelique, chilling out on the veranda!

Ocean Grove is a Christian seaside resort, which was founded in 1869. The architecture of the homes there resembles the 19th century architecture you see in New England, like in Collinsport, Maine, for example. A block away from the New Jersey “House By The Sea,” is Ocean Grove’s magnificent, “The Great Auditorium,” site of Sunday religious services and seaside concerts by such notables as Tony Bennett, Johnny Mathis, the late Davy Jones and Flo & Eddie, a/k/a Mark Volman and Howard Kaylan of The Turtles. No doubt, David Collins and Hallie Stokes would have enjoyed hearing “Daydream Believer” and “Happy Together” performed on the Jersey shore.

Of course, literally just up the block from “The House By The Sea” in Ocean Grove is Asbury Park’s famous Breeze Way, site of the dramatic scene in “The Sopranos,” where in a dream sequence (like so many landmark dream sequences in “Dark Shadows”) Tony Soprano realizes that Sal Bonpensiero is the traitor/rat and where Tony symbolically shoots Paulie “Walnuts” Gualtieri. I bet that Barnabas and Willie would invariably show up at Collinwood on Sunday night, just as Elizabeth, Roger, Carolyn, Maggie, Dr. Hoffman and Quentin were all assembled in the study to watch the latest episode of “The Sopranos” on HBO.

So, I guess there is an uncanny synchronicity between “Dark Shadows,” “The Sopranos,” Nicholas Blair, Tony Soprano and the seemingly ubiquitous House By The Sea.

[Bob_the_Bartender]

One thing that bothered me after the Collins family fled, en masse, from Collinwood to the Old House by the evil ghost, Quentin Collins, is that no one ever considered taking up residence at any of the other houses on the estate.

I mean, after a couple of days of being all crampe

Hey, gang,

One of my favorite aspects of the Adam storyline on DS was warlock Nicholas Blair’s cool home, the House by the Sea, located on the rocky shores of Collinsport, Maine. I wonder if Mrs. Stoddard would have ever rented the house to Cassandra’s brother, if she knew that a Collins property would house a warlock, a female vampire, a man-made monster and his presumptive mate, not to mention a “resurrected” male vampire? A lot of weird stuff took place in that house, including a Black Mass, celebrating Nicholas and Maggie Evans’ unholy “union.”

Anyway, I was driving along the beautiful New Jersey shoreline the other day, and as I drove through Ocean Grove, just below historic Asbury Park, I spotted a Victorian-style hotel on the beach, called, I kid you not, “The House By The Sea.” Wow, I almost expected to see Nicholas and Angelique, chilling out on the veranda!

Ocean Grove is a Christian seaside resort, which was founded in 1869. The architecture of the homes there resembles the 19th century architecture you see in New England, like in Collinsport, Maine, for example. A block away from the New Jersey “House By The Sea,” is Ocean Grove’s magnificent, “The Great Auditorium,” site of Sunday religious services and seaside concerts by such notables as Tony Bennett, Johnny Mathis, the late Davy Jones and Flo & Eddie, a/k/a Mark Volman and Howard Kaylan of The Turtles. No doubt, David Collins and Hallie Stokes would have enjoyed hearing “Daydream Believer” and “Happy Together” performed on the Jersey shore.

Of course, literally just up the block from “The House By The Sea” in Ocean Grove is Asbury Park’s famous Breeze Way, site of the dramatic scene in “The Sopranos,” where in a dream sequence (like so many landmark dream sequences in “Dark Shadows”) Tony Soprano realizes that Sal Bonpensiero is the traitor/rat and where Tony symbolically shoots Paulie “Walnuts” Gualtieri. I bet that Barnabas and Willie would invariably show up at Collinwood on Sunday night, just as Elizabeth, Roger, Carolyn, Maggie, Dr. Hoffman and Quentin were all assembled in the study to watch the latest episode of “The Sopranos” on HBO.

So, I guess there is an uncanny synchronicity between “Dark Shadows,” “The Sopranos,” Nicholas Blair, Tony Soprano and the seemingly ubiquitous House By The Sea.

d together in that cold, dreary house with no electricity, no central heat and, most importantly, no running water (read: hot showers and working toilet bowls), you’d think the patrician Roger would finally say to his sister, “Screw this, I’m off to the House by the Sea with David and whomever else wants to take a hot shower and not have to use a bed pan at three in the morning!”

Heck, Carolyn, Maggie and little Amy could have also gone to the carriage house (where newlyweds Carolyn











and Jeb Hawkes once briefly stayed) or even the shack at Findley’s Cove, which compared to the Old House, would seem like the Essex Hotel on Central Park South.

And, while I think of it, did Dr. Hoffman and Willie Loomis think they could keep the precocious and perpetually curious Amy Jennings from sneaking into the Old House basement and finding Barnabas, sitting there in an I-Ching induced trance, looking like he was in rigor mortis? Yeah, I’d like to see Julia and Willie try and explain Barnabas’s present “condition” to Mrs. Stoddard and the rest of the family. Lotsa luck with that one!