Podcast: Terror at Collinwood, Episode 3

Laura the Phoenix & Jason the Blackmailer!

Poet and writer Rachel Freitas joins Penny in episode three of Terror at Collinwood. They discuss the pre-Barnabas Phoenix storyline, examining the character of Laura Collins and her important role as Dark Shadows’ first supernatural antagonist. Next, they take a look at the Jason McGuire blackmail storyline and the challenges faced by Elizabeth Collins Stoddard.

Additional topics include Rachel’s writing and her introduction to Dark Shadows, DS’ influence on Port Charles, and a look at the unaired DS 2004 WB pilot. Join us for another eerie episode of the Dark Shadows podcast, Terror at Collinwood.

Podcast: Terror at Collinwood, Episodes 1 and 2

Who better to host a Dark Shadows podcast than a horror host from New England? The Collinsport Historical Society podcast might be as dead as Billy Butcherson (which is to say it's pretty dead, but still shambling around in the archives of iTunes) but there's still lots left unsaid about everybody's favorite gothic soap opera.

Enter Penny Dreadful, the host of Penny Dreadful’s Shilling Shockers, which aired in 200 cities and towns throughout the six New England states. She was a contributor to the last phase of the CHS podcast, and lucky for us she's decided to branch out on her own. Penny has two episodes in the can already, which you can stream below or follow on Podbay at https://podbay.fm/p/terror-at-collinwood-a-dark-shadows-podcast.

Welcome to the first episode of 'Terror at Collinwood', a podcast dedicated to the 1966-1971 gothic television serial, 'Dark Shadows'. Join Penny as she touches upon some characteristics of the gothic TV classic, followed by memories of her introduction to the show and its fandom.

Terror at Collinwood, Episode 2:  Artist and writer Eric Marshall joins Penny for episode two of 'Terror at Collinwood'. In this episode, they examine the show's earliest Pre-Barnabas storylines and characters as they discuss Victoria Winters' search for her parentage, Burke Devlin's quest for revenge, and the death of Bill Malloy. They also take several side trips into other storylines & touch on topics such as whether or not a 'Dark Shadows' remake could actually work.

Pdocast flashback: An interview with John Karlen

We lost John Karlen this week. As someone who runs a website that's supposed to be fun and engaging, it always feels a little ghoulish to use these kinds of losses to give my website traffic a bump. At the same time, I've got content that people want to see, so it's foolish -- maybe even selfish -- to keep it under lock and key. In this case it's a 2013 interview with Karlen counducted by Marie Maginity for The Collinsport Historical Society podcast. This is one of many episodes that were tossed into the vaults following the podcast's integration with Spotify. This episode hasn't been available to the public for a while now.

The episode is a little rough around the edges ... Karlen was recuperating in a hospital at the time, which didn't help is already cantankerous mood. But it's one of our most popular episodes, and features Karlen talking about his childhood, acting career and his experience as henchman/hero Willie Loomis on Dark Shadows.

You can listen to the interview streaming below, or download it as an MP3 by clicking HERE.

Podcast: Morbius the Living Vampire!

Have you seen the trailer for this year's Morbius yet? It's ... fine!? I'm too excited about the prospects of getting a movie adaption of "the living vampire" to nitpick at this point. And the release of the trailer feels like a good excuse to dig one of our podcasts out of the vault.

In the second episode of The Collinsport Historical Society Podcast, recorded way back in 2013, features an interview with comics legend Roy Thomas about creating Michael Morbius, Marvel's first vampire, in 1971. Also in this episode: Patrick McCray speaks with comics creator Joe Keatinge, who was writing a new Morbius series at the time.



What does this have to do with Dark Shadows? I'm glad you asked! Morbius was at the crossroads of several historic changes in comics. Not only was his introduction the first issue of The Amazing Spider-Man not written by Stan Lee, but he was also the first vampire character at Marvel following changes to Comics Code Authority's prohibition for supernatural characters. In our interview, Thomas speaks about the events that led to Morbius sparring with the web slinger in 1971, his script for the Marvel Comics Dark Shadows parody "Darn Shadows," and how the Marvel office was not allowed to disturb him when a television show featuring a certain cane-carrying vampire was on.

You can listen to the episode below.

Podcast: Return to House of Dark Shadows

Will McKinley loves House of Dark Shadows. As a high school student, working for actor Jonathan Frid nights and weekends on a series of one-man shows that had originated at fan conventions, the 1970 feature film was his gateway into the world of Dark Shadows.

Nancy Kersey, a creative collaborator with Frid in those days, does not love House of Dark Shadows, a film she believes does a disservice to the television series. On Oct. 19 they made a pilgrimage to Lyndhurst Mansion in Tarrytown, New York — the film's shooting location — to debate the merits of the big screen version of Barnabas Collins. Listen to it here!



They also snapped a few photos during their tour, which you can see below.

Podcast: The Dark Shadows Daybook

Diabolical Daybook diarist Patrick McCray is joined by the Fabulous Alexis Latshaw to resurrect Barnabas Collins and argue that TV’s greatest villain is its greatest hero in a bizarre act of unnatural fan love.

You can download the episode HERE, stream it below or listen to it on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, iHeartRadio and YouTube.

Podcast: Penny Dreadful and the Vampire of Collinsport

Penny Dreadful's alter ego Danielle Gelehrter discusses her favorite vampire, Barnabas Collins, and her memories of growing up a "second generation" Dark Shadows fan. You can download the episode HERE, stream it below or listen to it on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, iHeartRadio and YouTube.

Penny Dreadful ( the XIII, to be more specific) is a New England-based television horror host and two-time recipient of The Rondon Hatton Classic Horror Awards and a 2014 inductee of the Horror Host Hall of Fame. Follow her on Twitter at @Danielle13Penny and visit Shilling Shockers online at www.shillingshockers.com.

Podcasts! Weclome to Collinsport and The House by the Sea

If you subscribe to The Collinsport Historical Society Podcast, you might have found another episode in your download queue yesterday. The last few weeks have been incrediblt stressful, what with getting a child ready for kindergarten and all. So my wife and I took the day off yesterday to play videogames and depressurize, so there was no announcement about the podcast here at the website. But yesterday Big Finish's Welcome to Collinsport, and features a chat by the producers of Big Finish's line of Dark Shadows audio dramas about why extending the show's storyline has always been about extending the Collins family.

You can download the episode HERE, stream it below or listen to it on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, iHeartRadio, YouTube where ever you find your podcasts.




Today's episode is The House by the Sea with Jessica Dwyer. Jessica explains why the sins of Collinsport's royal family aren't always as sinful as they appear. You can download the episode HERE, or stream it below. If you've been keeping count, Jessica's episode marks the end of this week's "single serving" series, meaning you've got new episodes coming your way Monday!

Podcast: The Dark Shadows Daybook

Another day, another Dark Shadows podcast! Patrick McCray and Justin Partridge have a drink at The Blue Whale and talk about the Master of Dark Shadows documentary, how the series speaks to the lonely, and why the 1897 storyline is essentially an episode of Fantasy Island for Barnabas Collins. Pull up a seat at the bar and give it a listen!

You can download the episode HERE, stream it below or listen to it on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, iHeartRadio, YouTube where ever you find your podcasts.

Podcast: My Drawing Room

The first installment of the rejvenated Collinsport Historical Society podcast was a graveyard smash. But the kaiju-sized format has proven difficult to keep up with, so we're going back to formula. New episodes will be coming your way next week, but in the meantime enjoy these single-serving installements extracted from the first episode.

In the first episode of My Drawing Room, Alice Collins talks about discovering Dark Shadows on The Sci-Fi Channel while home sick from school at age 11, and seeing something familiar in the show's themes and characters.

You can download the episode HERE, stream it below or listen to it on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, iHeartRadio, YouTube where ever you find your podcasts.

Podcast: Jonathan Frid and the Clunes Reunion

We're chopping up the last podcast and spreading the remains all over the world. Every day this week we're disposing of another gory chunk of our massive episode "It Runs in the Family." We've already released the contributions from Dana Gould and Ella Minnope. Today's segment is The Clunes Reunion: On the seventh anniversary of Jonathan Frid's death this year, his production staff and creative collaborators reunited in New York City to remember the life and career of the man best known for playing Barnabas Collins on Dark Shadows. There are a LOT of surprising details revealed here.

You can download the episode HERE, stream it below or listen to it on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, iHeartRadio, YouTube whereever you find your podcasts.

The Dark Shadows theme is performed by Valentine Wolfe.

Podcast: Evolving in the Shadows

The first installment of the rejvenated Collinsport Historical Society podcast was a graveyard smash. But the kaiju-sized format has proven difficult to keep up with, so we're going back to formula. New episodes will be coming your way next week, but in the meantime enjoy these single-serving installements from the first episode. We're dissecting them into more manageable portions, posting an episode a day throughout the week. Yesterday, Dana Gould explained how Dark Shadows might have been gothic as all get out, it was still as American as apple pie. Today,  Ella Minnope talks about how the romantic aesthetic of the deep South compares to the dysfunctional Collins family in Evolving in the Shadows. You can download the episode HERE, stream it below or listen to it on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, iHeartRadio or whereever you find your podcasts.

Podcast: Dark Shadows is as American as apple pie

Mistakes were made.

The first podcast turned out better than I could have ever imagined, a two-hour sprawling epic with more contributors than I could count. The traffic on the episode was great, as well ... but trying to publish an omnibus podcast on a monthly basis proved to be beyond my abilities. I've got some good stuff already in the can for episode two, but trying to get everybody to manage their schedules at my whim is unrealistic. From now on I'll be releasing "single serving" episodes as they become available, collecting them into an anthology podcast at a later date.

Which means I have to break down the previous podcast into single serving installments ... beginning today. Each day throughout the week a complete segment from our first episode - "It Runs in the Family" - will be shared as an individual MP3 file. Hopefully this might also attract a few of you who blanched at the thought of a two-hour podcast.



First up: Night Rally by Dana Gould! Dana and Bobcat Goldthwait were injured Thursday in a car wreck in Atlanta, suggesting they might need to follow some sort of Air Force One protocol for future live appearances. Get well soon, guys.

Hey folks, we are okay! Broken rib and a bruised lung here, couple broken ribs and a concussion there. But the fact is, it could have been much much worse,and it wasn’t. We are alive and very grateful.https://t.co/qYA8ti7E1w

— Dana Gould (@danagould) August 17, 2019

You can download Night Rally by clicking HERE, or stream it below. The Dark Shadows theme is performed here by Valentine Wolfe.

Tomorrow: Evolving in the Shadows with Ella Minnope!

Podcast: MY DINNER WITH SHARON

UPDATE: We're in the process of reviewing our previous podcasts and getting them reinstated in our archives. First up, this 2014 interview with Dark Shadows alumnus Sharon Smyth Lentz! When this episode was first published, Sharon was scheduled to attend MonsterCon in Greenville, S.C. a few weeks later. The convention proved to be the last for actress Arlene Martel, who played T'Pring on the original Star Trek. (She passed away the following month at the age of 78.)

I was also scheduled to attend and participate in a panel with Sharon at MonsterCon ... the day of the festival, though, my wife went into emergency labor and I found myself a father about six weeks earlier than expected. My son will be hearing this story for the rest of his life. "Did I ever tell you about the festival that I missed, Edgar?!"

Anyhoo, here't the podcast, as well as the original post from 2014.

*********************************************************

Marie and Sharon.

Sharon Smyth Lentz joined the cast of Dark Shadows in June 1967, playing the ghost of Sarah Collins, the little sister of vampire Barnabas Collins. In this podcast, she talks about her experiences on the series, her decision to leave acting, and fields a few questions from online fans. It's a fun episode, and hosted by CHS contributor Marie Maginity.

Sharon will be among the former cast members participating in the annual Dark Shadows Festival this weekend, and will be appearing the weekend of July 18 in Greenville, S.C., at MonsterCon.

Listen to the episode streaming above, or download it as an MP3 by clicking HERE.

And subscribe to THE COLLINSPORT HISTORICAL SOCIETY podcast on iTunes for free by clicking HERE!  

Podcast: Barnabas Collins and the Bodice Tipplers

Jonathan Frid is on the cover of "Barnabas Collins," the 1968 Dark Shadows novel by Marilyn Ross, but he's otherwise absent from the book. You might even argue that Barnabas Collins, at least the character you might know from the television show, is also absent from the tale. A vampire bearing that name makes his way through the course of the story but, unguided by Frid's peculiar wounded menace and a staff of writers that understood how to find humanity even in the most inhuman of characters, there's not much in the story will look familiar to fans of the television series.

And that's OK. It might even be a good thing, even if the results are often not that good.


Tie-in properties are so tightly managed today that they rarely ever surprise. There's no place for innovation in stories intentionally designed not to affect the events around it. No matter the level of crisis introduced, we'll find our plucky heroes right back at square one by the end of the story. A Hollywood studio spent $200 million on the next movie in their blockbuster series and they're certainly not going to have their narrative upended by some $5 book.

The rules were different for tie-in proprieties when Dark Shadows hit the airwaves in 1966. Back then, these things were just products to be dumped on shelves, and little thought was given to whether or not they were any good. There were efforts taken to maintain a basic level of continuity (if you did nothing else, you had to at least make sure Spock, Napoleon Solo and Will Robinson's names were all spelled correctly) but after that all bets were off. It's just too difficult to maintain continuity between a monthly comic series and a weekly television series. The people that should have been doing quality control on these products were otherwise occupied, leaving those details to lawyers only concerned with making sure the networks and production companies got paid.

Dark Shadows had the additional complication of being a daily series. Whole characters and storylines would be over before the the next Marilyn Ross novel would hit stands, no matter how quickly he cranked them out. Trying to make these narratives line up was impossible, so Ross didn't bother trying. Besides, Ross (actually Dan Ross, a one-man gothic romance factory who wrote more than 300 novels under a variety of pen names) couldn't watch the show at his home in Canada, anyway. The end result was a line of books that only occasionally resembled the television series, usually by accident.

The same was true (to various degrees) for the Dark Shadows comics published by Gold Key, the daily newspaper strip and the two feature films, House of Dark Shadows and Night of Dark Shadows. (Both movies killed off characters that were still appearing on the daily on the television series.) Just to make things even more difficult, the daytime serial even dabbled in parallel timelines, giving fans an almost endless buffet of interpretations.

While I've usually enjoyed seeing how the characters and situations from Dark Shadows might have developed in the hands of other creators, the differences can be quite jarring for even the most hardcore fan. And, if you don't already love the series, you might be less patience with Ross's seat-of-his-pants style of storytelling. He wrote more than 30 Dark Shadows novels in six years, as well as dozens of others during the same time frame. It's unsurprising that he was unable to maintain a continuity with the television series, but he was also unable to keep the facts straight in his own novels. The books frequently contradict each other. "Barnabas Collins" manages the stunning feat of contradicting itself.

This is the situation that Sara and Courtney wandered into with latest installment of the Bodice Tipplers podcast. To say they were confused is an understatement. If you're looking for an explanation for Dark Shadows' appeal, you ain't gonna find it in this book. It was kind of a lose-lose situation for everybody involved, not the least of which was Dan Ross. The novel was likely begun when Barnabas Collins was still intended to be a one-off villain on Dark Shadows in 1967. By the time the book hit the stands in November 1968, the character had become an unlikely pop idol and sex symbol. But the Barnabas Collins depicted in "Barnabas Collins" was a sexual predator with a penchant for grooming young girls into his service, a character that hardly earns the "America's grooviest ghoul" starburst plastered on the back cover. There's little fun to be had here, save for the archaeological kind.

To summarize: "Barnabas Collins" is a novel written by a man using a pseudonym about a television series he didn't watch, showcasing a character that had changed radically between the time the book was started and published, and features a supporting cast of characters that has almost nothing to do with anything seen on the daytime serial. Confused yet?

This episode marks the last one for Bodice Tipplers here at The Collinsport Historical Society. As of today they've got their own dedicated podcast feed, which means those of you listening here need to head over to wherever you get your podcasts and directly subscribe to them. (You can find them at iTunes HERE.)


You can listen to "Barnabas Collins" in the app near the top of this post, or download it directly HERE.

Jenn Vix has kindly let us use her song "In the House of Dark Shadows," a collaboration with Reeves Gabrels, in this podcast. Below is a full playlist of Jenn's music to accompany the "Barnabas Collins" episode. You can follow her on Twitter @JennVix or at her website http://jennvix.band/

The Collinsport Historical Society Podcast is back!

By WALLACE McBRIDE

Hey, nobody's more surprised than I am that you're reading this. The Collinsport Historical Society podcast began its slide into oblivion the day my son was born in 2014. My plans that day involved sitting on a convention panel with Sharon Lentz and (I think?) Butch Patrick for a discussion about classic television. Instead, I spent the day at a hospital trying to deal with the possibility that that my wife and child were going to die. (While also messaging one of the original cast members of Dark Shadows to let her know I was going to miss the convention, because my life is fucking weird.)



If you're a follower of this website, you already know things worked out just fine for all involved. As of today, about 67% of the members of my household have their own podcast, and it's probably just a matter of time before that number climbs to 100% (my son has opinions about Mister Rogers he'd like to share with you). It's been a struggle getting from there to here. But I'm back, and I have a mission.

I've been running this website for seven years, often haunted by a singular regret: Dark Shadows has an incredibly diverse audience, but that audience hasn't always been represented here. The Collinsport Historical Society has usually been, if you'll excuse the expression, a sausage fest. Ball soup. Cock salad. Lots of straight white men doing what straight white men do best, which is hijack a dialogue to suit our own needs. We mean well, don't get me wrong. This website is woke as hell, but being woke is generally a luxury few can afford. For everybody else, being "woke" is just "life." With this first episode I'm taking a step toward trying to widen our narrow perspective.

And this is one of the reasons why the first episode of The Collinsport Historical Society is such a beast. It runs almost two and a half hours ... longer than any of the Dark Shadows feature films ... which seems excessive, right? But there's a method to my madness! Here's the pitch:

Newspaper and magazine design works to expose you to news ideas. Turn to any given page and you'll likely find stories with varied subjects, a device that exposes you to ideas you might not otherwise have sought out. Facebook has pruned those ideas to the bone, not only giving you fewer stories in a day than you once might have seen, but also allowing you to amputate entire perspectives from your personal experience. It would be more practical (and result in more traffic) for me to release all seven segments in this podcast individually ... but I want you to listen to them all, not just the contributors you're most comfortable with. Sure, you can still skip ahead in the podcast if you want. But you're going to have to make an effort to do so.

And holy hell, the line-up I've got for you in this episode. Dana Gould has generously lent his time and talent to the CHS, a selfless gesture that will almost certainly do irreparable harm to his career. I've been a fan of Dana's since seeing him on Paul Provenza's Comics Only on Ha! (Google it) so it's exciting to have him involved in this. Thank you, Dana.

The reason this podcast exists at all, though, is because of Ella Minnope. Back in February she sent me a pitch for a podcast. Before I could tell her that I was mostly out of the podcast game, she began sending improvised recordings to illustrate what her idea might sound like. It was great, and I thought everybody should hear it ... but it was a little short to be published as an independent feature. Invites were sent, content was discussed and POOF! the podcast returned from the grave. If you like this podcast, make sure to thank Ella on Twitter.

The theme of the first episode is "Runs in the Family," an idea that sprang from a song by Amanda Palmer that has always reminded me of the multi-generational dysfunction of Dark Shadows. You'll find the theme of "family" running throughout all of the segments in this episode, from the comfort that Alice Collins' found in the familiar dysfunction of the series, to a reunion of Jonathan Frid's professional family at Clunes Associates on the anniversary of his death.

What's new? If you're already subscribing to the podcast, you don't have to do anything. Your still signed up to get it. For the time being, episodes of the Bodice Tipplers podcast are still in our archives (we're working on getting them their own dedicated podcast server) but everthing else has been tossed into the vaults for the time being.

You can download the new episode directly HERE, subscribe to it on iTunes, and listen to it on Spotify, Overcast and pretty much anyplace that hosts podcasts.

Here's what you can expect in this episode:



00:00 Introduction

2:12 Evolving in the Shadows with Ella Minnope
Ella Minnope talks about how the romantic aesthetic of the deep South compares to the dysfunctional Collins family.

6:30 Night Rally with Dana Gould
Dana Gould discusses the Kennedys, the real-life family that could give the Collinses runs for their money in The Suffering Olympics.

14:02 The Dark Shadows Daybook with Patrick McCray
Patrick McCray and Justin Partridge have a drink at The Blue Whale and talk about Master of Dark Shadows, how the show speaks to the lonely and why the 1897 storyline is like an episode of "Fantasy Island" for Barnabas Collins.

49:23 The House by the Sea with Jessica Dwyer
Jessica Dwyer explains why the sins of Collinsport's royal family aren't always that sinful.

101:04 The Clunes Reunion
On the seventh anniversary of Jonathan Frid's death, his production staff and creative collaborators reunite in New York City.

131:44 My Drawing Room with Alice Collins
Alice Collins talks about discovering "Dark Shadows" on The Sci-Fi Channel while home sick from school at age 11, and seeing something familiar in the show's themes and characters.

138:18 Big Finish's Welcome to Collinsport 
The producers of Big Finish's line of "Dark Shadows" audio dramas talk about why extending the show's storyline has always been about extending the Collins family.

The Dark Shadows theme is performed by Valentine Wolfe.

THIS EPISODE'S CONTRIBUTORS:

The Collinsport Historical Society @CousinBarnabas
Just a small-town television vampire trying to make it in the big city. 

Alice Collins @VampAly
I'm weird, I write about horror, sex and movies. I make music. Staff Writer: @ifonlineuk Columnist: @BDisgusting Contributor: @filmandfishnets (She/Her)

David Darlington @deejsaint
The best of men is only a man at best, and a hare, as everyone knows, is only a hare.

Robert Dick @RobertDick
Interviewer for hire. Can be paid/enticed to do other things too. Myth Makers. Reeltime. 10th Planet. Audible at times. Curries. Beer. Gin. Telly.

Jessica Dwyer @JessicaDwyer
Writer and all around geek. I love video games, movies, comics, TV, and reading. Laughter is also good.

Dana Gould @danagould
Comedian, writer, The Dana Gould Hour podcast, album Mr. Funny Man avail on KillRockStars, Stan Against Evil now on HULU.

Dark Shadows at Big Finish @darkshadowsbfp
Twitter account for the official Dark Shadows audio dramas.

Nancy Kersey @nckersey
Playwright, geek and techie living the good life.

Joe Lidster @joelidster
I write stuff. http://www.imdb.com/name/nm2779744/

Patrick McCray @TheRealMcCray
2018 Rondo winner for Best Writer! 1225 episodes of Dark Shadows/45 days. 90000 words of Collins History/2 months. 300+ Dark Shadows Daybooks since 2016.

Will McKinley @willmckinley
Freelance copywriter/social media for Sony Pictures TV. Video/live events producer. Classic film/TV lover. "The original #OldMovieWeirdo" — Rupert Pupkin Speaks

Ella Minnope @PluckyChicken
The base of the pillar. Gives moisture to the dead. Also maybe I'm laying in cat pee?

Justin Partridge @j_partridgeIII
writer of words @Newsarama, @dismemberonline, @roguesportal (again), the COLLINSPORT HISTORICAL SOCIETY. 1/2 of Victoria Winters’ Windows. will run your TTRPG.

Valentine Wolfe @Valentine_Wolfe
Female composed gothic chamber metal featuring ethereal soprano and solo double bass-no guitars in our music.

The podcast is dead ... long live the podcast!

All things must end: The Collinsport Historical Society podcast is officially dead.

After more than a year of trying to breathe life back into slowly cooling form, letting go seemed like the right thing to do. After a point my attempts at mercy had become a form of torture, not just for the podcast but for its listeners. "It's coming back!" I've promised more than once. "Soon!"

Then the bird said “Nevermore.”

We launched the podcast on Dec. 13, 2012 with an episode devoted to House of Dark Shadows and an interview with the always gracious Kathryn Leigh Scott. She's been a great friend to the website over the years and has never declined a request from us. That the podcast exists at all can be credited to the support of two people, Kathryn and Will McKinley, who got me into this whole podcast thing in the first place.



In the years following, The Collinsport Historical Society shared 93 additional episodes, adding contributions from the producers at Big Finish in the UK and, most recently, the Bodice Tipplers podcast. All told, these 94 episodes have racked up almost 50,000 downloads.

Now, a few of you are probably in a panic over this ... especially the folks who have kindly loaned me their time and talent in the last few weeks to help revive the podcast. And here's where things come into focus: The Collinsport Historical Society podcast is returning ... in one week!

So, why all the talk about death? When the podcast returns it's going to knock your socks off ... and I want to maximize that impact. In order to do that I'm going to have to take down the previous 94 episodes of the series. When things began, I didn't entirely know what I was doing and violated a few copyright laws by including pop songs. It seemed clever at the time to include "Abraham Lincoln" by Clutch in my interview with David Selby, but I'd like to be able to share the podcast with a wider audience ... and that means having to re-edit five years of work to extract those songs. Many of these episodes will come back at a later date sans copyright infringements, but for the time being they're going into the vault.

Which means: If you want our previous episodes, you'd better download them soon. (Note: Bodice Tipplers may or may not be moving to its own dedicated feed. It hasn't been decided yet.)

I'm going to spend the next week sharing daily highlights of the CHS podcast. It will be a time to reflect on where we've been, and to remind people to get these episodes before they're gone. After the vault doors close it's going to up to you good people to share these episodes with each other.

I'll have more to say about the new podcast on Monday ... if you're one of the people contributing to the new series, though, feel free to start telling people about it now.

Stay tuned!

Let these podcasts get you through the holidays

The editorial pace of The Collinsport Historical Society has always been a little confounding for all involved. There are few human beings on earth who can match our enthusiasm for DARK SHADOWS, a television show that went off the air before most of the contributors to this website were even born. Not all that long ago we were sometimes updating the website multiple times a day, which is kind of staggering in retrospect. Where did we get all of that energy? And what's up with those stupid haircuts we used to have? (Spoiler: I have an all-new stupid haircut.)

I look upon the CHS's current editorial schedule with equal parts regret and relief. It's certainly a more rational structure than the previous model, which was to run a niche website as if it was The AV Club. But I also miss the days of rattling off at the keyboard every time DARK SHADOWS did something to excite me. But time is a rarer commodity that it once was, which brings me (finally!) to the point ... I have fallen behind on some of my favorite podcasts.

I've been kicking around the idea for several months of occasionally using this space to discuss some interesting podcasts. Unfortunately, I've fallen behind on everything that I'm currently listening to ... which makes "discussion" a challenge. So, instead of kicking that can even further down the road, here are a few shows that I intend to catch up on this weekend.



Cheap Chills is a new podcast by Amanda and Ben Walker Storey, and they really like horror movies. The first episode is in two parts and focuses on ... plant monsters! They argue that the concept is scarier than it sounds. You can find them online at www.cheapchillsfanclub.com and listen to the first part of their podcast streaming below.


I don't even know how to introduce Dana Gould. The guy's got a list of professional credits that are more far fetched than Julia Hoffman's divergent medical degrees. Seriously ... LOOK AT THIS. I've been a fan of his since there was only one BATMAN movie (my preferred units of historical measurement are BATMAN movies) and should probably stop now because this is getting weird. The latest episode of The Dana Gould Show is titled "Aging Disgracefully" and features John Hodgman and Rich Koz, aka Svengoolie. I couldn't figure out how to embed the podcast here, but you can find the show pretty much every place that delivers podcasts, and online at www.danagould.com/aging-disgracefully.

For most of us, Halloween only comes once a year. Howie Pyro has torn the "October" page from his calendar, nailed it to the wall and then blacked out the other 30 days of the month. It might be Christmas right now ... but when the egg nog, consumer hysteria and Whamageddon references become a little too much, Howie always has a kick-ass mix of spooky music waiting for you at Intoxica Radio. You can listen to the latest episode below.


Holy shit ... it's been how long since I've listened to Welcome to Night Vale? Um ... I've really got no excuse. This is embarrassing. Here's the latest episode below.

Podcast Alert: KOLCHAK: THE NIGHT STALKER

Confession: I don't listen to many podcasts. It's not that I don't enjoy the format, but it's difficult to find to time to reserve for 30-60 minutes for an isolated listening session. (I'm still trying to catch up on Big Finish's DARK SHADOWS audio dramas this year.)

There are a few that I like, though. At the top of my short list are The Dana Gould Hour, WTF with Marc Maron and Desmond Reddick's Dread Media podcast.

The latest addition to my playlist is the Plaid Stallions podcast. While I've been a fan of the website for years, it was only recently that I discovered their podcast. As it happens, my timing couldn't have been better: the latest episode centers on KOLCHAK: THE NIGHT STALKER. It's a long discussion (hitting about 69 minutes, haha) that covers the original television movies, the short-lived series, the scarcity of KOLCHAK merchandise, and an attempt to get a comic book about the character off the ground in the '70s. You should absolutely listen to it.

You can listen to the episode streaming above, or download it as an MP3 by clicking HERE.

If you haven't visited the Plaid Stallions website, you can find it HERE.