In the Dark Shadows of Quarantine
Dark Shadows title card. Courtesy of Wikipedia.
By June Sylvester Saraceno
When I was growing up, I was forbidden to watch Dark Shadows—or any show that dealt with the occult, even Bewitched. So, I had to go to my neighbor’s every day to watch it with her. That show probably played a significant role in why we held séances, believed there were ghosts in her barn, and, I kid you not, once shoveled out, and pulled bones from, a grave that had mysteriously imploded. I realize this sounds not only obscene but implausible because of the way we bury folks now. This was in a family graveyard, though, in a fenced off area in their fields, and many of the graves dated back deep into the 1800s. These graves were dug by men with shovels, not backhoes, and the coffins were hand made from local lumber, usually pine. My friend lived in the farmhouse that used to belong to the family whose graveyard we desecrated. Someone else owned the fields by then, and the small burial plot enclosed in a black wrought-iron fence, went untended, falling quietly into ruin under the shade of a pair of old magnolia trees. It was a perfect spot for two moody pre-teen girls in 1970 to go about communing with spirits, seeing ghosts, and contemplating the possibility that the sunken grave had housed a vampire.
When COVID-19 hit and spread in much the same manner as any medieval plague, we were all encouraged to stay home and isolate. I did. I’ve rarely left my house for months now, except to walk the dog or stock up on groceries. During one of the long, quiet evenings, I was clicking around on the TV and discovered the complete Dark Shadows series. I smiled remembering my old fascination with the show. It presaged my love of gothic literature later in my teens: the governess in the eerie mansion, the dark figure of a man who is feared (but often later loved), the influence of supernatural forces. I clicked on the first episode of season one, and recognized nothing in that grainy, black and white footage of what I remembered. My memories were of the “olden days,” of Barnabas and Angelique and Josette in candlelight, of vampires, and velvet evening gowns. There was none of that, so I kept watching, waiting for Barnabas to appear. He didn’t, for a very, very long time. Instead, what I saw were fashions that I remember from real life, from my mother’s or older sister’s wardrobe. Somewhere in season three or four, I recognized a dress my grandmother had made for me from a Butterick pattern, my Easter dress that year. I was so excited I called my friend Robin to tell her about it. We’ve known each other since our teens, so she wasn’t surprised. She gets me. I wanted her to watch the show again, too, even though it’s a really bad low-budget soap opera from our childhood, just so we could talk about it. The shots are often out of focus, the score is full of heavy-handed da-da-dum! flourishes, the camera movements and angles are hilarious (the boom mic makes a regular appearance), the acting is hysterically bad (I’m convinced one of the performers is actually pretty drunk in most scenes), and don’t even ask about the plot—really, there is no redeeming quality. Except nostalgia.
Barnabas does finally make an appearance after countless seasons (first, only his hand…then…sorry, you’ll have to watch for yourself). I was still baffled about why my memories of Dark Shadows were in the “olden days,” not set in the late 60’s. So, I stayed tuned. The transition to 1795 finally comes in episode 365. By then, the blurry black and white has transitioned to color, so the lovely velvet ball gowns are in full splendor. Barnabas, played by Jonathan Fried who received an MFA from Yale School of Drama, brings a little old world culture to the show with his impeccable attire and bearing, along with his elevated diction (not to mention, he doesn’t forget or stumble over his lines with the alarming regularity of the other actors). I can see why my 12-year old self was rooting for him, perhaps my first anti-hero—that ill-fated, charming vampire.
Once Barnabas was on the scene, I’d finally arrived at the episodes that I had waited so eagerly for every weekday afternoon at 4:00, in installments constantly interrupted by commercials for Sanka, Doublemint gum, PF Flyers, Tang, and Wonder Bread. Now I could binge watch multiple episodes without distraction late into the night when I was useless for anything productive anyway. I watched with two minds. One snidely ridiculing this gothic caricature (at one point the show basically plops the whole Frankenstein story into the series), the other freely grieving for Barnabas and his doomed love for Josette. One caused me to laugh out loud at the bat squeaking and flapping toward the camera, the other identified with the emotional hardships and multiple transformations of Barnabas. More glimmers of the girl who first watched surfaced, aware of what the music was cuing, but still hoping that good would win. My own transition in time happened in pulses and flashes, not altogether unlike the sound of faltering lines from a half-remembered script, or a bat jerking on a visible string.
There are folks using their time in isolation to write books, bake sourdough bread from centuries old starter, become Zoom experts, organize junk drawers, build a garage, study sacred texts, maybe levitate for all I know. I know there are better things for me to be doing than watching a supernatural soap opera from the 60’s. But you know what I don’t think about when I curl up on the sofa with my popcorn for hours to watch these witches, vampires, ghosts, and hapless humans? COVID-19. For a while, the threat to humanity is an unrealistic living-dead-thing lurching around—not getting on a plane, going to a party, or visiting granny in her assisted living home.
As of this writing, I’m still watching the seemingly endless (though heavily repetitive) episodes of a story where you never have to worry if a character dies. They’ll be back. Maybe the series will outlast the current plague. Don’t tell me how it ends. I haven’t gotten there yet.
Photo/June Sylvester Saraceno.
June Sylvester Saraceno is the author of Feral, North Carolina, 1965, her debut novel, listed in BuzzFeed as one of “18 Must Read Books from Smaller Presses.” The Girl From Yesterday, her third poetry collection, was released in January 2020. Her previous poetry books are of Dirt and Tar, Altars of Ordinary Light, and a chapbook of prose poems, Mean Girl Trips. She serves as Humanities and English department chair at Sierra Nevada University, Lake Tahoe, where she teaches in the undergraduate and graduate creative writing programs. She is the director of the literary speaker series Writers in the Woods, and founding editor of the Sierra Nevada Review.
Thumbnail image: Screenshot courtesy of June Sylvester Saraceno.
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