Crossover TV Episode: Passions

 

Are you a Dark Shadows fan?

Then you'll love the January 15, 2004 episode of the soap opera Passions, which has a line confirming the two series take place in the same universe!

For more information, be sure to pick up a copy of my book Crossovers Expanded: A Secret Chronology of the World Volume 3 when Meteor House publishes it! Like its predecessors, this volume is an AUTHORIZED companion to Win Scott Eckert's Crossovers: A Secret Chronology of the World Volumes 1 and 2!

Crossover TV Episode: Dark Shadows

 

In episode 944 of Dark Shadows, Jeb Hawkes, leader of the Leviathans, hears a werewolf howling, and recites a poem: “Even a man that’s pure of heart and says his prayers by night, may become a wolf when the wolfbane blooms, and the moon is full and bright.” The poem is a variation on the one first heard in the movie The Wolf Man. This version first appeared in Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man. Megan Todd quotes the poem once again in Episode 961.

This crossover is one of hundreds covered in my book Crossovers Expanded: A Secret Chronology of the World Volume 3, to be published by Meteor House! Like the first two, this volume is an AUTHORIZED companion to Win Scott Eckert's Crossovers: A Secret Chronology of the World Volumes 1 and 2!

Crossover Covers: The Halflife Chronicles

Chris Cséjthe finds his life turned upside down when he discovers vampires, werewolves, and other supernatural creatures exist, and he himself is now halfway through the transition between human and vampire. Dracula appears prominently in the first novel, One Foot in the Grave, as do tanis leaves, legends of which inspired the tana leaves in Universal Studios’ Mummy movies. A vampire named Barnabas who carries a wolf’s head cane appears; this is Barnabas Collins of Dark Shadows fame. A New Orleans vampire enclave with literary pretensions is mentioned, a reference to Anne Rice’s The Vampire Chronicles. In the fourth book, Dead Easy, Chris encounters the Great Old Ones and Captain Nemo. Nemo tells Chris Professor Aronnax was fictional and Verne made The Mysterious Island up out of whole cloth. Nemo died in the 19th century, and was later resurrected as a rakshasa, a spirit being from Hindu mythology. Several individuals experienced in dealing with the supernatural are mentioned: a wizard in Chicago (Harry Dresden from Jim Butcher’s The Dresden Files novel series); a necromancer in St. Louis (Anita Blake from novels by Laurell K. Hamilton); a waitress in Bon Temps (Sookie Stackhouse from Charlaine Harris’ Southern Vampire Mysteries); a weather warden (Joanne Baldwin, the protagonist of a series by Rachel Caine); and a guardian in London (Aisling Grey from novels by Katie MacAlister). Simmons’ take on Captain Nemo is very different from his established history in the CU. Combined with the fact both Sookie Stackhouse and Anita Blake’s exploits take place in worlds where the public is aware vampires and other supernatural entities are real, this places The Halflife Chronicles in an alternate universe.

Crossover Audio Drama: London's Burning

In 1906, Quentin Collins investigates a series of deaths in London. At one point, he briefly disappears to consult “a friend in Baker Street.” Quentin’s friend is, of course, Sherlock Holmes. Although Holmes owned his farm on the Sussex Downs by this time, he had not yet given up his rooms in Baker Street completely.

Crossover Cover: More Than Mortal

The third novel in Mick Farren's Renquist Quartet series. Nosferatu Victor Renquist visits England at the request of a female troika of his fellow undead, and becomes a witness to the Urshu known as Taliesin the Merlin’s emergence from his centuries-long hibernation. Merlin’s cocoon was unearthed in a mound excavated by students from Wessex University. The Duke de Richleau led a task force of specialists against occult forces utilized by the Nazis during World War II. Renquist thinks of the few English nosferatu, such as Sir Francis Varney, Barnabas Collins, and Lord Ruthven. A member of the female vampire troika, Marieko Matsunaga, used her powers of persuasion to seduce one of the Wessex students at a pub in Casterbridge in order to investigate the findings at the mound. Marieko is aware of Renquist’s encounter with Cthulhu, one of the monstrous Old Ones. Renquist thinks that the Scottish vampire lord Fenrior may preside over the largest community of their kind since a group of nosferatu and humans caused the dissolution of the Theatre Raoul Privache in Paris. Wessex is a fictional region of England appearing in several novels by Thomas Hardy, including The Mayor of Casterbridge. The Duke de Richleau is featured in a series of novels by Dennis Wheatley. According to Farren, the Duke died in 1997 at the age of 93, whereas Wheatley’s Dangerous Inheritance had the Duke dying in the 1950s, when he was in his eighties. Renquist must have been mistaken as to the Duke’s age and time of death. Sir Francis Varney is from James Malcolm Rymer’s Varney the Vampire. Farren claims that Varney was impaled by a vampire hunter called Dr. Feisal in Persia, whereas Rymer’s novel had Varney committing suicide by throwing himself into a volcano. However, Frank Schildiner’s story “Fear from Above,” set in the 1930s, reveals that Varney survived plunging into Mt. Vesuvius, while Simon R. Green’s novella “The Big Game,” set in the 21^st century, elaborates on the circumstances of how he survived. Travis Hiltz’s story “The Mark of the Red Leech” depicts Varney’s destruction in World War I, while Donald F. Glut and Jesse Santos’s comic book story “Dracula’s Vampire Legion” features Dracula resurrecting Varney and other infamous vampires in the 1970s. Varney must have been destroyed and resurrected several times. Barnabus Collins from the television series Dark Shadows is American, but the tie-in novels by “Marilyn Ross” (pseudonym for Dan Ross) have Barnabas visiting England after first becoming a vampire, and only later returning to his native Collinsport, Maine. Lord Ruthven is from John Polidori’s “The Vampyre.” Farren claims that Ruthven was captured by the Greek Orthodox Church and exposed to sunlight, killing him. However, Polidori’s story had Ruthven walking around in the daytime. Perhaps the Church conducted a ritual that removed Ruthven’s immunity to sunlight. If so, then Ruthven’s destruction was not permanent either, given his resurrection in “Dracula’s Vampire Legion,” as well as his appearance in the movie Countess Dracula’s Orgy of Blood. Cthulhu and the Great Old Ones are from the stories of H.P. Lovecraft; Renquist and his coven encountered Cthulhu in the second novel in the series, Darklost. Raoul Privache is the vampire from John Metcalfe’s short novel The Feasting Dead. Although there is no theatre in Metcalfe’s novel, a Theatre Raoul Privache in Paris appears in Kim Newman’s The Bloody Red Baron. The Theatre mentioned in More Than Mortal must be the CU version of the Theatre in the Anno Dracula Universe. Taliesin the Merlin’s portrayal does not fit with other versions of Merlin in the CU, and therefore he is likely one of many individuals to use that name.

Crossover Cover: Collinwood Possessed

During his previous conflict with Barnabas Collins, Viking wizard Morath battled the embodiment of his good side, resulting in his being thrown into a bizarre limbo, where he encounters a caterpillar-like creature playing chess with a man with white hair. The caterpillar recommends he use the Eye of Agamotto, a doorway to the dimensions which is floating overhead, to escape. Morath says that somewhere on Earth is the Orb of Agamotto, the key to those dimensions. Traveling through the eye, he emerges at the Greenwich Village dwelling of a practitioner of mystic arts, where a woman cries out, “Stephen!” “Stephen” is Doctor Stephen Strange, the Sorcerer Supreme. Strange’s Sanctum Sanctorum is in Greenwich Village. The Eye and Orb of Agamotto are both from the Doctor Strange comics. The caterpillar is Agamotto himself, who took the form of a caterpillar in the opening storyline of Strange’s second ongoing series. Though drawn differently than in Marvel Comics’ accounts, the white-haired man is meant to be the villainous Silver Dagger from the same storyline, while the woman is Strange’s paramour Clea.