My name is Mark Linton-Mire. Little did I know that when I started pretty much pop a culture podcast,

I would eventually talk about the late 60s Gothic romantic vampire TV soap opera Dark Shadows.

I show that I knew almost nothing about, but which has now stolen probably hundreds of hours of my time.

Though the show ran for only four years and most of its original viewers are now geriatric,

it is a franchise that will somehow not die with this enduring cult following

in periodic revivals that threaten to recur even to this day. Our special guest for this episode

will be one of the stars of the show Catherine Lee Scott. First, I'll chat with the day's cohosts

as we become filled with terror by her impending arrival. Lauren, introduce yourself.

My name is Lawrence Ware and I'm a recovering vampire. And brought on especially for this episode

because it's really hard to find somebody who's watched a thousand episodes of a show.

Hi, my name is Sean Cooney. Here in Cloudy Denver, Colorado, here in the dogs'

howl in the distance with a little sniffter of brandy.

It's always the same howl. They have one sound cue for the howl.

What in the world possessed you to watch thousands of episodes of this particular show?

Why do you love this show so much? When I was a kid, probably in the third or

fourth grade, my imagination started going crazy and I needed to see some horror stuff. I read all

of Goosebumps, read all those young adult horror stuff and I just needed some more. And my mom

was like, no, you're not reading Stephen King. We're not going to get into that yet. So instead,

she introduced me to this culty spooky horror, maybe horror adjacent. I don't know exactly

show dark shadows that she had watched when she was a kid. And it was perfect timing because

they were just doing the re-release on DVD. So we actually watched them as they came out with each

collection on DVD. We'd gotten get them. And then for the next couple of months, we'd watch that.

...