Dark Shadows spanking

One of my prized possessions is a complete collection of dark Shadows The Original series on DVD. I'm just starting to watch it, and watched Episode 7 today. In a conversation with Victoria Winters, Burke Devlin tells her of being spanked when he was 10 years old for sneaking into the Collinswood mansion. He believed the house was haunted. There is at least one other mention of spanking in the series, when Roger Collins threatened to spank his son, David. As I watch the series, I'll report back on other times spanking is mentioned in the series. As far as I know, no actual spanking was ever shown on Dark Shadows. However, it has been several years since I watched this series, and some episodes I've never seen.

The child Michael, during the Lovecraft-inspired Leviathan's storyline, get threatened with a spanking as well. As I recall, his assigned father, as the child was the anti-Christ figure being created by the Leviathan cult, was growing tired of his arrogant attitude and actually pulled him over his lap before being stopped by his wife.

There's clearly several episodes I've seen so far watching it on Hulu where spankings could have or should have happened. My earliest memories of it come from when I was 14 back in 1967 when Barnabas first reached his hand out of that coffin. In retrospect I've discovered that Maggie Hamilton's mental regression into childhood after being a prisoner of Barnabas which put her under psychiatric care first introducing us to Dr. Julia Hoffman was about the time the real life Dr. Jaquie Lee Schiff started spanking her mentally regressed schizophrenic patients in her controversial but largely successful psychotherapy program called Re-parenting. I wouldn't be surprised if spankings were one of Dr. Hoffman's methods for breaking through Maggie's fear of Barnabas and curing her mental regression. Julia certainly projected a scary disciplinarian image on my young mind watching her dealing with vampires, werewolves, and all the creepy Gothic nightmare fuel being brought out of the anxiety closet by the 60's sexual revolution.

I've now watched Dark Shadows through episode 278. Still no actual spanking, though Barnabas did beat Willie Loomis with his cane. Poor Willie! He has also lost fist fights with Burke Devlin and Jason McGuire. Plus Carolyn Stoddard once pulled a gun on him.
This reminds me of an early spanking reference I had failed to mention earlier. Burke threatened to spank Carolyn when he first met her because she was creating a disturbance in a bar. When she later told Victoria Winters about the incident, Carolyn did not appear to be a bit upset by the idea.

Carolyn definitely went through some teenage bad girl episodes like getting arrested for drinking and driving which made me almost wish her sleazy unscrupulous would be step-father Jason McGuire had taken away that hairbrush she was using when he confronted her about it and administered it where she needed it. The fact that he didn't is one of the reasons I didn't feel very broken up when he got himself strangled trying to rob a coffin poor unlucky Willie tried to warn him was not smart one to open. I always liked Willie. He was always trying to keep people from being murdered by Barnabas and until Julia Hoffman showed up did what he could to act as the primary voice of conscience for Barnabas despite his deep understandable fear of him. I thought the scene where he tried to warn the ghost of little Sarah Collins it was dangerous to be playing around the Old House was cute since unknown to Willie actually nobody was in less danger from Barnabas than she was. I don't think she would have minded if Willie put her over his knee since she was a bit of a mischief maker who liked to play games with people and understandably felt very lonely haunting a house for over a century unable to find her parents. I like to think of him taking care of her after his own demise.

I watched episode 330 today. In it, Roger Collins told his son David to go to his room or he would get a spanking. A little while later, David sneaked out of the house, and was found in the old house by Julia. When Julia brought David home, Roger told him he was going to get a spanking. David's Aunt Elizabeth told David to go to his room, then convinced Roger to talk to him instead. When Roger went to David's room. David asked, "Are you going to spank me, now?" Roger replied, "No I'm not going to spank you." There was no actual spanking in that episode (or probably in any other episode.) But the word was used four times.

In episode 332, David broke into the old house and found Barnabas' coffin. He was confronted by Barnabas who told him he must be punished. David heard Julia upstairs and ran to her, saying Barnabas was going to kill him. Barnabas followed and told Julia he only intended to give the boy a sound spanking. later at Collinwood, David told Dr. Woodard and Burke Devlin that Barnabas was going to kill him if Julia had not been there. Julia said that Barnabas only planned to spank David, but didn't even carry out his threat to do that.