From what I remember, I loved it. And I had a big brother like that myself!

When the Dark Shadows board game came out, my brother and I were given one as a present. (I have no recollection, now, anything about how that game worked.) It came with plastic fangs, and it was fun going around wearing them around the house, or when with neighbourhood friends. By the way, I also had a Dark Shadows lunchbox.

The board game also had a Barnabas ring somebody was supposed to wear. Somebody I knew from school had it, and I only saw it once.

I think I vaguely remember the ring, fletcher. And I'm pretty sure I recall the plastic fangs as having glowed a little bit if you wore them in the dark.

I was in third grade at the time and never saw the show. But I had it described to me at the time and it sounded fascinating. 1841PT must've been showing at that point, so the show was nearing the end anyway. Finally seven years later a local station aired a years' worth of reruns (beginning with Barnabas' release and ending inexplicably early in the Dr. Lang storyline), so I caught up with that much of it.

I caught a lot of the original run of the series when I was a kid. I believe it daily aired at something like 4p.m, so was convenient during after-school hours. It was very popular with not only adults, but also kids, as it was the "safe" type of spooky, that was entirely harmless, and no shocks, violence, or gore. So it was entirely kid-friendly, and parents didn't object to their kids watching it.

During my mid-teens years, the series went into syndication and reran lots of the episodes, though I don't think ever reran the full series back then - seems like maybe just a year or so worth of it, and probably from the point where Barnabas was introduced to the series, then up into maybe the 1968 sort of era (seems like the same episodes as I have on the DVDs sets I got last summer, as much of what I watched last summer actually was episodes, or parts thereof, that, surprisingly, I still recognized and remembered somewhat). I think that when the series ran in syndication, during the mid '70s, that it aired at like 3 or 4p.m., so was again convenient to be able to watch right after getting home from school. I remember watching the reruns round sometime 1976-1978.

By the way, here's the Wikipedia article about the series.

I was a Junior in High School when it reran weekdays at 4:30, but I missed some of the episodes, particularly towards the end of the 1795 storyline (probably because it was summer then).

The show aired in my area during the '77-'78 television season. There was only that one year of episodes available for syndication at the time.

I was surprised to see in the Wiki article that syndication airing began in 1975, as it feels like it was not till a year or two later. But perhaps different stations started airing the reruns in '76 or '77, rather than in '75. Ah, the good old days of antenna t.v. and adjusting the reception via a rotor control.

And for free.

I have a couple of very vague memories of the show during its initial run, through an older brother who watched. I remember a werewolf running around in present day, obviously Chris Jennings, and never forget the opening title sequence. I stumbled across the Sci-Fi reruns in the '90's (?) and was completely clueless, they were in the Judah Zachary head-in-a-box phase.

Good old Quentin Collins, the werewolf. He was a definite viewers-fave. Also extremely popular (and quite hilarious - though she didn't at all mean to be, but the actress was so hammy) was the Dr. Julia Hoffman character. The same actress also portrayed the gypsy 'Magda' in the story line about a different era in time.

The series was fun as it was, for the most part, a one-take deal, where whatever happened when the camera rolled was pretty much always what aired, as it wouldn't be re-shot - even if a cast member was drawing a total blank with their line (sometimes you'd hear another actor whispering to them what to say, or someone else would cover for them, speaking a variation of the actor's line), or someone might need to repeatedly try to wave a fly away from their face, or if someone opened a door the entire wall of the set might conspicuously wobble.

I remember that during the heyday of the series, it was so popular that the iconic opening theme tune became a Top 40 radio hit, that would play in heavy rotation. I remember being at the beach, and you'd hear various radios, on the sand, blaring the title tune simultaneously via whichever area radio station.

I bet many younger people who've never experienced having an antenna don't know what "horizontal control" is.

Back in the day, depending on the weather, and how clear the sky happened to be, would determine how good (or not) the t.v. reception was going to be. My area had usually just 3-4 (eventually I think 5) stations (all from far away) that it would pick up, and nothing else. So depending on the sky and weather conditions determined whether anything would be easy, or even possible, to watch on a particular day or night.

We lived near Greater Boston and received twelve stations (three out of state, and three were PBS). We never had a problem with the weather, although I recall that the UHF stations were sometimes temperamental in high winds.

Here's a video of some unintentionally hilarious mess-ups - that of course all aired as is in whichever episodes they were shot for.