"The house of Collinwood seems to you then normal, Miss Starling? This house is centuries old. The design and construction of this house represented a marriage of the elegance of Europe and the vigour and enterprise of the New World. Its foundation, made from rocks left behind by glaciers, thousands of years ago, were brought over from England and with it every evil rooted in its stones. The beams and supports were cut from ancient forests. The plaster walls were made from crushed clamshells and horsehair. That dusty chandelier — brought from France — gleamed with hypnotic brilliance. That faded wallpaper was specially designed by a Belgian artist. The parquet floors were installed by an Italian craftsman. Cornices and mouldings were the effort of a Spanish craftsman. It was a house to be envied by a prince, but in spite of all this, the total effort was an agony to man. Men were driven to their limits. What should have been an act, a labour of love, became a hateful thing.

The history of the Collinses is one of savage degradations, brought from the Old World to the New, and always in this house. The pall of evil that lives in it is no illusion, Miss Starling. For hundreds of years, foul thoughts and foul deeds have been committed within these walls. The house itself is evil. This evil resides in all of Collins blood, my sister and I — and, yes, even Barnabas. Oh, there is great evil in him, such terrible evil.

If things were otherwise, I would welcome you in our home joyously, but under the circumstances, it is quite impossible. So I suggest you leave, Miss Starling. Collinwood crumbles. Perhaps this storm will finish it. You will not leave? No? So be it, be damned with us, Clarice Starling, and perish..."

That was a monologue by Roderick Collins from House of Dark Shadows series, where I admit the title was already taken, but it describes this series the best; it remains a "working title" for the moment. This poster and/or wallpaper was me goofing off in photoshop; I had no idea that the piece to turn out as well as it did. With this came the opportunity to introduce the dramatis personæ in much more detail:


Roderick and Madeline Collins (played by Vincent Price and Myrna Fahey) are illegitimate fraternal twins of Roger Collins and his mistress Allegra Logan, an heiress of Logansport. They were raised primarily by their stringent governess at their mother's family estate; they were seen but rarely heard. A great fire burnt down Logan Manor in 1971, killing the family, as the ten-year-old Roderick and Madeline were fortuitously able to escape through the (unbarred) nursery window. The care of the twins were transferred to their natural father, Roger Collins, who resented take any responsibility of the "bastard children" and wanted to send them away to boarding school, or better yet an orphanage. However, it was the order of his matriarchal sister, Elizabeth Collins Stoddard, that the Roderick and Madeline to remain at Collinwood as part of the family, much to Roger's chagrin. She had their surname "Logan" legally changed to "Collins" to avert any scandal.

They were placed under the supervision of the Collins' family governess, Victoria "Vicki" Winters. The twins' fragile health prevented them to be sent to outside schools. Roderick suffers from "a morbid acuteness of the senses," which include hyperesthesia (an extreme hypersensitivity to light, sounds, smells, and tastes), hypochondria, and detrimental addiction to opium and morphine. Yet physically, he is an immense, towering figure, broad-shouldered and robust, however is afflicted with a rare genetic disorder known as hypomelanism (or albinism), which causes his unnaturally pale skin, translucent white hair, and shock-blue eyes. His sister Madeline inherited the same sensory abnormality, in a slightly lesser degree, and has always been of delicate health; she is prone to catalepsy and somnambulism, and her weak, feeble heart causes abnormal cold extremities. As the years went by, Roderick and Madeline watched as the family succumbed to depravity, debauchery, death, and disaster; and yet brother and sister, as always, had each other. Their infatuation for one another is both intimate, sensual, and unmistakably perverse. After the suicide of "Aunt" Elizabeth's daughter Carolyn, they, as the last of the Collinses, were bequeathed the entire family estate and, in 1995, the aftermath of a 7.6 earthquake left much of the Collinwood Mansion malignant and decrepit.

Obsessed with the tragic history of the Collins clan, Roderick is convinced that their family blood is tainted by generations of iniquity and is resolved to end the Collins curse with himself and Madeline, so he could not help but he taken aback when a "cousin" named Barnabas Collins entered through the enormous oak front doors of Collinwood.


Barnabas Collins (played by Jonathan Frid) was born the son of English entrepreneur Joshua Collins and his wife Naomi during the latter half of the 18th century in Collinsport, Maine. Barnabas, during family business, travelled to the Caribbean island of Martinique in 1795, where he met and fell in love with Josette du Prés, the daughter of a wealthy sugar-cane planter, and they began a passionate romance with each other, but unbeknownst to her, he had a brief affair with her maidservant and witch, Angélique Bouchard, during their courtship. When Barnabas and Josette became engaged that year, Angélique Bouchard begged Barnabas to leave Josette, but he spurned her instead. Furious with jealousy, Angélique, using her witch powers, hexed Josette to fall in love with and marry Barnabas’ uncle, Jeremiah Collins, and Barnabas challenged Jeremiah to a duel, which ended in the latter's death. She then hexed Barnabas’ beloved ten-year-old sister, Sarah, with a fatal illness, forcing him to marry her if he wanted his sister to live. When he discovered his "wife" was a witch, Barnabas shot Angélique. With her final breath, she placed a curse upon Barnabas by summoning a bat to bite him. Barnabas fell extremely ill, and Angélique, who survived her gunshot wound, regretted her decision and tried in vain to keep him alive, but her attempts to remove Barnabas' curse failed and he died. When she went to his coffin, he rose as a vampire and despairingly explored the dark dimensions of his new life. He learned of the ramifications of his bloodlust, to be condemned to suffer this curse for all eternity. Appalled, he begged his father to kill him, but his father did not have the heart to slay his only son and, instead, chained him in a coffin in a secret room of the family mausoleum.

One hundred-and-seventy-five years pass and, in 1967, a ne'er-do-well named Willie Loomis broke into the Collins mausoleum in search of the fabled family jewels. He discovered the secret antechamber in the rear of the crypt and released the chains binding a coffin. Barnabas Collins was released from his imprisonment and attacked Willie, turning him into his personal slave. Donned modern clothing and introduced himself to the current family living at Collinwood, who was at his likeness of one of the family portraits, the vampire claimed to be a descendent of the original Barnabas Collins who moved to England to sire a European branch of the family in the late 1700s. He met the acquaintance of Maggie Evans, a waitress at the Collinsport Inn, who Barnabas saw as the image of Josette. He kidnapped and brainwashed Maggie into a voyeuristic personification of his long-lost love, but she escaped and was committed to Wyndcliffe Sanitarium, where she was placed under the care of Dr. Julia Hoffman, who would discover Barnabas' identity and later befriend him. In 1971, after adventures with ghosts, werewolves, zombies, and leviathans, Barnabas and Dr. Hoffman left Collinsport to marry; they lived happily together until her death from lung cancer. A crestfallen Barnabas wandered the world aimlessly to return to his home at Collinwood in 2000, introducing himself to Roderick and Madeline Collins as a long-lost "cousin from England."


Clarice Starling (played by Jodie Foster) started in the seemingly humblest of origins. From a small town in West Virginia, her mother died when she was very young, and she was primarily raised by her father, a deputy marshal. When she was ten years old, her father disturbed armed robbers while on patrol and was shot, where he died a month later, reducing the family to poverty. She was sent to live on a sheep-and-cattle ranch with her cousin that raised her after her father's murder. Haunted by the screams one night, she ran away in horror when she witnessed the raised lambs being slaughtered, and she spent the rest of her childhood in a Lutheran orphanage.

Graduated magna cum laude at the University of Virginia, with double majors in criminology and psychology, Clarice became the star student of the Federal Bureau of Investigation's training school at Quantico, Virginia. She was plucked from her training by Jack Crawford, the head of the FBI's Behavioral Science Unit, which deals with investigating serial murders, to consult with the brilliant psychiatrist turned celebrity serial killer, Dr. Hannibal "the Cannibal" Lecter, housed at the Baltimore State Hospital for the Criminally Insane to ask for his "professional" insight to help in apprehending the serial killer, Jame "Buffalo Bill" Gumb. During the investigation, Lecter escapes during a transfer to a state prison in Memphis, Tennessee.

Seven years after the "Buffalo Bill" case, not all is well in the world of law enforcement. Stuck in a career rut, the full-fledged Special Agent Clarice Starling is forced to shoot five people dead during the drug raid of queenpin Evelda Drumgo, who used her own baby as a body shield, in full view of a television news helicopter. Abandoned by the department in the glare of hostile media coverage, she is offered up as the FBI's scapegoat. Dr. Lecter, after murdering a detective in Florence, Italy, returned to the United States to stalk Clarice. Lecter, later, is kidnapped by his only surviving victim, the paralysed and mutilated billionaire Mason Verger, and Clarice attempted to save him but was wounded in the ensuing gunfight. Lecter nursed her back to health and treated her to a cannibalistic dinner, where she handcuffed Lecter, and he hacked off his own hand, rather than hers, to escape.

Disgusted by the corruption and betrayal of the Bureau, the disgraced Clarice quits the FBI and escapes north, far away from the pressures and problems, to the obscure town of Collinsport, Maine. After the locals warn her not to venture out at night because of a serial attacker, she begins to investigate the case, where she meets the acquaintance of the handsome and enigmatic Barnabas Collins, and becomes irresistibly charmed by elegant stranger. However, his peculiar behaviour begins Clarice to suspect him of the attacks and she discovers his secret — he's a vampire! And Clarice Starling is in a difficult position to either destroy him — or to help him.


Models - Myrna Fahey | Vincent Price | Jonathan Frid | Jodie Foster

Medium - Photoshop.

Roderick and Madeline Collins © Diane N. Tran (and Edgar Allan Poe).
Barnabas Collins © Dan Curtis.
Clarice Starling © Thomas Harris.