A Likely Story

Hello. Let’s talk about sweeps.

Don’t leave.

So, if you watch TV in any capacity, you’re probably at least passing familiar with “ratings”. We talk about ratings a lot here at Kooks of Collinwood, usually in the context of how bad they were for Dark Shadows at the time we’re covering. What ratings are, in the simplest terms, are the collective totals of a show’s viewing audience.

You may also be familiar with Nielson ratings: a system of data collection founded by a radio adman in the ‘50s that uses the viewing habits of volunteer households to draw nebulous conclusions. Contrary to popular belief, the Nielsons aren’t magic. They don’t do anything with their data, and the majority of it can be seen by you, yes you, by the power of the Internet.

The power of ratings comes from the networks that air the relevant television programs. These networks use the ratings as barometers for a show’s viewership and so determine whether or not the show is worth the money poured into making it.

Obviously, this method of data collection is very flawed. If the distribution of Nielson families is overtly concentrated in one area of the country over another, or with one social demographic over another, the results are quite obviously skewed. Surely, with the rise of the Internet, streaming, and online fan communities, somebody somewhere must have devised a better alternative for tracking who’s watching what?

You’d think, but no.

Going off this, ‘sweeps’ are (or is, it’s not really clear) a concentration of periods, four a year, in which Nielson gathers their data. These periods are generally a month long, and occur in November, February, May and July. July is the least important generally, given it’s outside the traditional television season and usually where networks consign their garbage anyway. The other three months: November, February, and May, are the most important periods for any television show.

Incidentally, it’s currently November on Dark Shadows, which means for the past two weeks, it’s been sweeps. Which means the show is supposed to be pulling out all its stops.

So let’s review: the primary thread this November 1966 has been Victoria Winters realizing the eerie significance of the sterling silver filigreed fountain pen she found on the beach at Lookout Point some time ago. For the last few weeks, her perceptions of the pen’s connection to the mysterious death of Bill Malloy has changed. At first, knowing only that the pen originally belonged to Burke Devlin, she suspected Burke of the murder, leading her to confiding in Roger, who “rescued” her from her trip to Bangor.

Little did Vicky know, however, that the pen was in Roger’s possession the night Malloy died. Or, that is, she didn’t know until the end of that week, when Carolyn errantly told her the circumstances of Roger getting the pen that night, before in the very next episode, telling Roger she’d told Vicky, so now Roger knows about Vicky knowing about Roger and they’re alone together in the great house on the crest of Widow’s Hill and it really feels like we’re getting close to what Hercule Poirot calls “the summation”.

Way to take the sting out in the first minute.

So we’ve reached a moment of great tension, especially considering this is a Tuesday episode. The game of cat and mouse we’ve been playing around the pen seems finally to have ended. Roger and Vicky are alone together, and it seems we may finally get to the punchline of this so-called sweeps month.

I mean, it makes sense right? If you have a mystery story on your show, the best time to resolve the mystery would be in the month when Nielson collects its data. You generally expect audiences, even those who tuned out earlier in the narrative, to at least check out who the killer is, right? Human nature seeks out closure like that.

I know it’s hard for him, but this is the cutest possible “I am about to murder you for your silence” act I’ve ever seen. He sounds half-embarrassed to even be in this situation.

Roger skirts around Vicky’s remaining feeble attempts at evasion, telling her he knows she suspects him in Malloy’s murder.

The usual Dark Shadows sting chord plays and you think that’s when they’re going to cut to the titles, but no, somebody thought it was a great idea to do a split second cut to Vicky having an existential crisis.

So it’s about to be a treat. Strap yourself in. Francis Swann’s prepared a helluva farewell present.

Following the titles, Roger is quick to moderate his tone, reminding Vicky that if he wanted to hurt her, he already would have, in the same tone he might use when complaining to Customer Service.

This is more of Roger’s classist hate-on for the social set that includes Maggie and Joe. Still, when I first watched, there was a moment when I thought he’d called Maggie something else.

Roger prefaces his little speech by telling Vicky it’s what he hopes she wants to hear, which I’m sure is meant to reassure her, but does nothing more than make it sound like he’s about to tell an elaborate lie that she ‘wants’ to hear. Or, rather, that he is more comfortable with her hearing.

Wow, that was bad. But, yeah, um, summations, right?

The ‘summation’ is a plot device, or rather a story beat, in most mystery fiction in which the detective character explains ‘whodunit’ and why and how, etc., usually to an assemblage of relevant parties. The modern summation was innovated by Dame Agatha Christie, the most prolific crime writer (and one of the most prolific writers, period) of all time. Struggling in early drafts of her first novel, The Mysterious Affair at Styles, which introduced the iconic Belgian super sleuth Hercule Poirot, Christie debated how best to handle the weighty business of having the detective explain, both to the characters and to her readership, how the murder of Miss Emily Inglethorp had been carried out.

The original plan was to have Poirot explain the whole thing while he was giving evidence at an inquest in the climatic chapter of the book. A fully drafted version of the scene survived in one of Christie’s notebooks and can be read in the collection of excerpts her grandson had released around a decade or so ago.

The reason this didn’t work out, however, was Christie felt it lacked authenticity. Poirot ought to be in command of the story, given his egoism and genius. So she moved the setting to after the inquest, having Poirot gather the suspects in the drawing room at Styles Court, where he described to them the facts of the case, clearing some names, and gradually inching closer to who was really the murderer in their midst.

It’s a great device. It has showmanship, it’s organized, and it places all the relevant characters (including the murderer) in one place for the sake of convenience. The summation made the transition to television fairly seamlessly for all the same reasons, occasionally interspersed with helpful flashbacks (or even heretofore unseen visual accounts of the crime progress, maybe narrated by the detective character). Murder she Wrote, Columbo, even Matlock all have summations of varying degrees of efficacy scattered through their impressive runs.

However, it’s unusual for a summation to take on the character we see here in Dark Shadows Episode 102. For one thing, Roger is the prime suspect. Technically speaking, given the other two suspects have been fairly cleared by this point, he is the only suspect left. And it is he, not the heroine who has found herself the unwilling investigator (to the extent anything she’s done counts as investigating), who exposits to her.

So, yes, what follows is a very demanding monologue for Louis Edmonds. I mean, it isn’t strictly a monologue, given Vicky is allowed to interrupt, but they’re the usual monologue interjectors you may be familiar with from Saturday morning cartoons and by scrolling the TV Tropes “You’re Insane!” article.

Here we go.

Yeah, that’s what happened.

Besides that language not doing much to convince me this man wasn’t desperately plotting a murder in those moments, let’s analyze that pivotal scene in Episode 46 when the fateful phone call took place. Because, while lots of time has been spent on the time in which Roger left, we’ve kinda neglected the juicier bit of the mysterious phone call Vicky errantly walked in on.

In that episode, Roger made many phone calls, the first to Malloy’s house, where he spoke to Mrs. Johnson, in what was the first time we ever even heard of the woman. He demanded to be able to speak to Malloy, but Mrs. Johnson told him he wasn’t around.

Then, Vicky came in looking for that picture David drew of Collinwood and they talked for a while about what a little psychopath David was because it had only been one day since the suppository thing and they were still allowed to remember that it had happened.

Vicky left and then Malloy showed up and started yelling and being dramatic and all that shit he was doing because Frank Schofield knew he was about to lose his job and was desperately hoping if he really turned it out maybe they’d get off the crazy train before it left the station.

At about 10:00, Malloy gave Roger his ultimatum: either Roger go to the meeting at his office at 11:00, or Malloy would go to the police. It’s unclear which police were meant, because this was the Zero Zone between Consteriff and Sheriff Cakes, but in any case, the threat was clear.

Later, at about 10:15, Vicky walked in on Roger concluding a phone conversation in which he told someone:

So, he was arranging another meeting. The tone was curt and cold, yet not the usual pants-wetting terror Roger had assumed when trying to get Malloy off his ass earlier in the episode and through most of their previous interactions in general.

That is to say…if Roger was talking to Malloy, and he still wasn’t sure “what to do” about him, as he just told Vicky he was, he certainly didn’t sound it at the time.

And yet now, 56 episodes later, Roger claims he was speaking to Malloy and that’s who the meeting was with.

Here’s another bit: the last minute meeting Roger was arranging, with less than 45 minutes to go until the big meeting, was at the place Malloy died. Why pick a windswept cliff overlooking the ocean? Why would Malloy trust such a place, when he clearly believed Roger was growing increasingly desperate to protect the fact that he avoided a prison sentence ten years ago? Up until now, the consensus has been that Malloy died at Lookout Point, most likely because it was halfway between his house and the cannery, implying that if he was killed, the person who did it snuck up or accosted him on the way and hurled him into the sea.

That it would’ve.

Roger than assumes a position of the penitent saint, five seconds from receiving the stigmata.

The body language basically screams he’s going over the top to make himself look innocent. Which, knowing Roger, he could be doing whether he’s telling the truth or lying because he’s just that bad at this.

That, at least, isn’t greatly fudged. While in the original presentation, it wasn’t explicitly stated what time Roger left, Vicky’s has been consistent throughout the storyline that she believed Roger left at 10:30. She could never be exactly sure, to Burke’s frustration, but she still had a good figuring.

So this doesn’t fuck around too much with our preestablished idea of what happened.

Roger tells Vicky that he went from Collinwood to Lookout Point with the express purpose of having his clandestine meeting with Malloy.

Yeah, he did. That was a whole big deal. I make a lot of fuss about the fish tube half of their date back in Episode 71, but we neglect that that date was all a ruse just to get her in front of the cops so she could be weaseled into providing a more concrete alibi than the one Roger already had.

Which isn’t exactly something an innocent man would do. But this is also understandable, of course, because Roger knew he would be suspected regardless thanks to the underpinnings of that meeting, and the specter of the decade-old manslaughter case hanging over it. It makes sense he would’ve gone out of his way to ensure he had as good an alibi as possible, even so far as manipulating a young woman to committing perjury for him.

For all we know, he did the same thing to his wife during Burke’s trial.

Okay, so on that I’m gonna call bullshit.

Roger is terrified of Elizabeth. He’s only staying at Collinwood as long as she’ll tolerate him. Whatever else he’s saying here, this is patently a lie and is almost certainly intended to be read that way. Roger is a selfish coward and any attempts to convince anybody, especially Vicky, that he has some sweet moral center, are bound to fall flat.

Anything he did to cover his ass in the manner of Malloy’s death was to protect himself. From his sister, as well as everybody else.

Now, as to this secret meeting with Malloy, coincidentally held at the place he died?

Yeah, okay, I know we all love the pen, but what about the guy who died?

I’m sure it can wait. Hey, remember the Old House?

So, David returns to his favorite haunt (heh), the Old House, which was mentioned for the first time in a long time last episode, and last appeared back in Episode 70. It’s a spooky old ruin on the other end of the Collinwood property, deep in the woods, and is today made even spookier by poorly preserved film.

David has gone to consult his favorite ghost friend: the specter of his great-great grandmother.

This is the first time we’ve actually seen David talking to one of the ghosts, and it’s much less thrilling and scary than we’d been led to believe since the first week. Apparently, he just stands in front of the painting and talks to it. That’s not impressive. People on contemporary soaps do it to the paintings of Katherine Chancellor, Stefano DiMera, and Stephanie Forrester all the damn time.

David seems frustrated Josette isn’t talking back, so I guess he expects the painting to answer, not a cool ghostly figure of the kind we saw the last time we were in this set. Does her voice just come out of the painting whenever this happens? Has he ever actually seen her as a ghost? Does he visit this painting every night with the news of the world?

All signs point to yes.

Also, this colors all of David’s attitudes regarding Malloy’s death in a completely new light. He’s acted like he was “told” by the ghosts that Malloy was killed, even before anyone knew he was dead. Indeed, the first indication of this came from him gazing into a goddamn crystal ball. Yet here, he acts as though this would be news to Josette. Did some other ghost tell him Malloy was killed and his father did it? Has he really just been imagining talking to ghosts all this time? Is everything a lie?

We’re learning lots of things today, and I’m not very happy about any of them.

Burke and Carolyn are on that big date she’s been ballyhooing about. Apparently, this is part of Burke’s plan, or at least that’s what he told Mrs. Johnson who somehow hasn’t quit this gig yet.

Oh, and yes, the episode with Roger’s big explanatory monologue is split three ways narrative-wise. Also, yes, this third of the episode will occupy more time than either of the others. It’s called storytelling, maybe you’ve heard of it?

It’s a testament to how pissed off I am with this episode that I’m actually glad for another chance to appreciate the inappropriate chemistry these two have.

I mean, it is cute, even as it appears to feed some weird kink Burke has at the idea of his new squeeze deceiving his ex.

Jesus.

If you’ve been paying attention you every scene with Carolyn in it for the past four episodes, you probably know where this is all gonna end up, but it’s somehow still the first act, even as we close on 9 minutes, and Francis Swann is in no hurry to get any of the three threads he’s introduced in this episode to their conclusion.

Burke extolls to Carolyn that he intends them to “make a night of it” tonight. He lays out a grandiose itinerary including following their dinner here at the Blue Whale with a trip to a “nice quiet place” where they’ll drink and dance.

What is he talking about? If there were nicer places for drinking and dancing in this town, wouldn’t he have gone to one yet? Why does he keep going to this mudpile?

The film would appear to think differently.

Also, it appears that Burke is drinking his usual scotch and water (one of the few things that maintain internal continuity in this series, along with him drinking his coffee black) while Carolyn has a Coke or something. Because we need to be reminded of what this is.

IT’S STILL ACT ONE as he return to David, the Old House, and more reused location footage.

That tracks.

Like David entering the Old House, this footage of Matthew creepily climbing the steps was likewise introduced with the Old House in Episode 70. At least there, it added to the unease and ambience of the strange new place, even as it became patently clear that only one guy in the case looks like Thayer David, thereby killing the illusion.

Indeed, Matthew’s reasons for coming to the Old House are the same as they were in that episode. He saw the light from David’s candle and went to investigate.

Act I finally ends at the 10 minute mark, thereby ensuring the entire equilibrium of the episode is thrown off more than it already is, and when we come back from break we see Matthew brandishing a blunt instrument.

David comes out of his hiding place and he and Matthew have yet another conversation about ghosts. This happened in Episode 70, and something vaguely like it happened in Episode 90 as well, so Swann really is just grabbing stuff out of the air to puff these scripts up. And, again, I probably wouldn’t be spitting about this if they weren’t wasting all this time to distract from Roger telling Vicky what happened the night of the murder. It reads off as the most cynical type of stalling.

But at least we get a cool ghost lexicon from David.

That’s the first time Josette is formally referred to as the “Lady in White”, which is a really cool, if somewhat unimaginative, ghostly moniker. David also indicates other individual ghosts for the first time. Usually, it’s just been Josette and the nebulous “Widows”. The “girl like Miss Winters” is probably meant to be the governess who became the second woman, after Josette, to fall from Widow’s Hill. But what about the “another girl”? Who could she be?

Makes you think…

And, of course, Swann knew he was about to be out of a job, so he didn’t have any obligation of picking up any thread he introduced at this point ever again. It’s like torching the store on your way out.

Sure, man, except for when you did believe in such things, including Josette specifically, in the first two appearances you made after turning into an ape man.

David tells Matthew this visit was on Vicky’s account, as he believes she needs ghostly protection from the man who murdered Bill Malloy.

And so, just like in Episode 90, we’re treated to David speechifying to Matthew, who hangs off every word like a religious adherent. David even gets up onto a soapbox. Or at least a likely looking crate.

Sadly, this doesn’t include David telling Matthew all about the pen, despite him seeming to overhear that part between Vicky and Maggie last episode. Maybe Swann forgot that he did that.

David tells Matthew all about how Vicky knows Roger is the murderer, and Matthew asks the sensible question of why Vicky hasn’t taken this information to the police which means we get to hear for the umpteenth time that she can’t Because She Has No Concrete Evidence, only this time it’s from a 9-year-old so it feels extra condescending.

He has, in fact. It’s happening in this very episode but the writer hasn’t shown us any of that in seven minutes, presumably because he’s afraid of commitment.

Matthew vows to help David “watch over” Vicky, which is quite sweet, in fact. I’m sure Vicky will be glad to know that Pinky and the Brain have decided to defend her honor.

David and Matthew book it, and then Josette decides to troll, I guess, by emerging from the painting using the exact same footage they used in Episode 70, to the point where it’s the least remarkable spectral appearance yet and seems to have been done only to waste more time.

I guess you could assume Josette is ready to do what David asked and protect Vicky from Roger. That would be a good faith assumption to make. Regrettably, no, we won’t see Josette, or the Old House, for the rest of the week. Thank you for your patience.

Except getting to the point, of course.

As if reinforcing that this is all fetish stuff for him, Burke keeps probing for information about how steamed Unca Roger’s gonna be when he learns where Kitten’s been tonight.

Maybe this is part of his plan? Squeeze Carolyn (sorry) for information on Roger’s emotional state? But wouldn’t that have all been redundant after what Vicky told him before? Was he just too much of a gentleman to cancel his plans?

So now Carolyn gets to gossip about how Burke’s Other Lady is being courted by her uncle, a tidbit that, we have learned, gives her great joy, probably only because it means she can have Burke to herself and maybe her incest fantasies are finally starting to recede.

And, yeah, so Carolyn now begins edging closer to the sole purpose her character has had recently: accidentally revealing significant information to other characters while having no idea what she’s talking about. She tells Burke about Roger’s nigh-obsessive search for Vicky earlier in the evening, apparently completely convinced he did all this because he’s hot for her, despite Roger literally acting in all those interactions like a criminal terrified the cops were about to show up.

Well, she notices some things.

 Burke begins formulating an idea of just what’s going on, but he’s got a better poker face than both Roger and Vicky, and is able to disguise his questions as being out of genuine curiosity and nothing more.

Why Little Miss Muffet? Is this a futile attempt to convince Carolyn he doesn’t have a boner for the governess after all? Is Roger the spider in this scenario, or the porridge? Or the tuffet Miss Muffet sits on? Where is the pen in all this?

Okay, great, good, that’s why these scenes are in the episode. Carolyn has now told Burke without telling him that Roger knows Vicky knows about the sterling silver filigreed fountain pen, can we please get back to the other thing now?

I don’t think it’s stretching it to say that this episode could easily have had only four characters, rather than six. While it was cool seeing the Old House again, we probably could’ve done without David and Matthew for now. Or if we really wanted to keep them, we could’ve cut Burke and Carolyn’s date out till next episode, and interspersed David’s interactions with “Josette” and then Matthew with Roger’s neatly staggered dispensation of crucial information.

Instead, however, Francis Swann used the scenes at the Old House and the Blue Whale to fill in the middle of the narrative, leaving Vicky and Roger in the drawing room at the very beginning and very end of the episode. Why? To manufacture suspense between Roger’s telling of how he arrived to meet Malloy at Lookout Point and…

Well, him actually saying what happened. The dread secret he’s been desperate to protect for more than 50 episodes.

Oh my God. Oh my God, it’s time, he’s gonna say it…

Wait, why is he going back in time? Obviously, he left the house and followed the road to Lookout Point, that was already made clear by him telling her he left the house and went to Lookout Point.

Oh for Christ’s sake…

what

Wha…who…I…eh…

Huh?

ALREADY DEAD????

This can’t be. This is insane. What? They have invested so much time into this. More than 75% of this show’s content since the beginning of September has been dedicated to this murder mystery story. They first raised the possibility that Malloy’s death was an accident as early as Episode 56. Are they really gonna look the audience in the eye all this time later and say that’s actually what was going on the entire time?

It’s insane. It reads like something Francis Swann pulled out of his ass at the last minute, as if they had no idea what they were going to do, but they knew they had to come up with some kind of surprise for November sweeps, so why not solve the mystery by…by saying it was never a mystery at all, and all the subterfuge and intrigue surrounding the death and the meeting and the double-damned silver filigreed fountain pen was much ado about nothing!

But maybe I’m overreacting. Roger is the epitome of unreliable narrators. He prefaced this monologue, after all, by saying he would tell Vicky what she “wanted to hear”, as if he were admitting he was about to lie to her in a last ditch attempt to cover his ass. There’s still the nature of his voice on the phone call he claimed was to Malloy.

Okay, so let’s talk about this. This mystery wasn’t very good to begin with. In a cast of around 10 regular characters (12, factoring later additions like Patterson and Mrs. Johnson), there have only ever been three men explicitly considered suspects in Malloy’s death: the three men who were to be with Malloy at the meeting in Roger’s office. Those three men: Burke, Sam and Roger were all treated regularly equally as suspects for about two weeks between the meeting in Episode 47 and the confirmation of his death in Episode 55.

After that, things began to even out. Burke was quickly ruled out due to such circumstances as having the weakest circumstances, the weakest motive, and being the one with least to gain by Malloy’s death, given the meeting was supposed to help clear Burke of the manslaughter charge.

Sam was later ruled out around the time of Burke’s crashing Vicky’s dinner at the Evanses. While Sam had motive and a shaky alibi, he swore vehemently that he had nothing to do with the murder and, indeed, has attempted to distance himself as much as possible from the case…

In contrast to Roger, who has been actively lying and scheming for weeks, going so far as to steal the pen he knew would implicate him, knowingly manipulating his son into trying to kill Victoria, all so he could swoop in, rescue her, and convince her to leave.

Roger has also been nervous on a consistent basis ever since Vicky and Carolyn first saw the body at the foot of Widow’s Hill in Episode 50. He has the most to gain by killing Malloy, knows it, and has before our eyes taken action to prevent the full story from coming out.

At a certain point, it feels we are watching a Columbo episode, where we know who the killer is from the beginning and the actual experience comes from watching other people get up to speed with us. Does Roger have so little faith in the justice system that he would actually commit the crime of destroying evidence just to prevent questions from being raised? Those aren’t the actions of an innocent man and, indeed, Louis Edmonds is playing all this like half of him doesn’t expect Vicky to believe it, and the rest of him is making it up as he goes.

So maybe we aren’t meant to accept this is true. It may be sweeps, but it’s also a Tuesday. They wouldn’t be so daft as to drop a bombshell like this before the week is even half over!

According to Roger’s story, Malloy just fell off the cliff moments before Roger showed up to meet with him. It’s almost funny how he says it. It can’t be the resolution to this arc, the storyline the show has spent the most time on since beginning!

See? Even the protagonist doesn’t know what to do with this.

Before Vicky can make anything more of this, she gets a call from Burke, who has excused himself from Carolyn to make a “business call”. Burke realizes it would be tantamount stupidity to openly carry on a conversation with her while Roger is around, so he commands she pretend she’s talking to Maggie. Maybe he was inspired by how Mrs. Johnson pretended he was her doctor when she called him this morning. Or Swann just decided to pilfer his replacement’s scripts.

This means we get more farcical spy dialogue wherein Burke asks questions and Vicky answers them as best she can without breaking character. This goes on for about a minute, all while Roger stands in the foreground and drinks.

Burke tells Vicky that Carolyn told him that she told Roger that she told Vicky about the pen stuff.

In what is an almost sweet way of admitting without saying that he’s worried about her, Burke tells Vicky to find a way out of Collinwood while he breaks his date with Carolyn, the two-timing son of a bitch that he is.

Vicky, however, attempts to tell him that this may not be the best idea, but she can’t exactly impart the word vomit Roger just gave her to Burke with Roger so close at hand, so this attempt falls flat.

See, he won’t let me compliment him for a whole minute. There’s always something.

The call being concluded, Vicky claims Maggie wanted to talk to her about the painting of Betty Hanscom, a painting Sam gave Vicky as a gift in a very sweet scene last episode. Presumably the painting will just sit in Vicky’s room forever since we’ll never see it again. It’s only utility from here on out is as an excuse people make up in order to obfuscate true intentions, because this is a show that loves to follow through on its promises.

Well, it is, at least they’re honest.

Roger wants to know if Vicky believes his ludicrous story. Vicky isn’t sure what to say and says she has to think about it, which I’m not sure is the best way to approach a murder suspect telling you he’s innocent, but it’s been a long night and I guess they’re all very tired so Roger doesn’t pursue it.

So is the writer.

We return to the Blue Whale, where Burke claims Blair was calling him for business stuff and, oh alas, he has to cancel their date. You’d expect Carolyn to throw that coke in his face, or accuse him of stepping out or leading her on and acting the way she does whenever Joe breathes next to her, but she’s surprisingly cool with this because she’s just totally beyond help at this point.

But the guy writing her is out of time and energy, so goodbye, see you next time.

Oh, yeah, and don’t expect to ever find out what Burke’s “plan” behind this whole date was. I’m pretty sure there never was one.

Vicky is able to successfully slip out of Collinwood under Roger’s nose. We get some cool location footage…

And we’re done. That’s it. I mean, no, the next episode is basically a sequel to this one, complete with a tangent Swann created to waste time.

But…uh…at least it feels we’re getting somewhere? Even if I don’t much like where “somewhere” is.

This Day in History- Tuesday, November 15, 1966

This day had about as many confused plotlines as the episode of Dark Shadows that aired on it.

NASA’s Gemini program ends with the safe landing of Gemini 12, bringing astronauts James A. Lovell and Buzz Aldrin back to Earth. It would be followed by the Apollo program, which sought to land a man on the Moon.

Harry Maurice Roberts, the last member of the trio that murdered three London policemen on August 12 (also covered in this section) was finally caught on a farm in Hertfordshire, England.

The second “Mothman” sighting occurs in West Pleasant, West Virginia. Two married couples reported seeing a flying man pursuing cars at 100 miles per hour. Sadly, Dan Curtis never optioned this urban legend for Dark Shadows. Could you imagine?

Notoriously bad horror film Manos: The Hands of Fate is released. It has become a cult classic.