Dead of Night

Dead of Night

Broadcast Date	27 January 1996
Season	3
Broadcast Order	14th
Episode Number	63
Production Number	314
Writer	Michael Sadowski
Director	Jon Cassar
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“	Life is a fire, Nicholas. It can be rekindled from the tiniest ember, so long as it is not allowed to become too cold. This fire is dead.	”
	— LaCroix, Dead of Night

Summary[]

During the investigation of an apparent suicide, each member of the team realizes that Kessel House is haunted by the ghosts of people they have wronged in the past.

Guest Cast[]

Davis Ogden	Shirelle	Andrea King	Spencer
Alyssa von Linz	the bishop	Nana Tash
Jordan Reese	young Tracy Vetter	Susan Feldman
Gefford Weintroff	Officer Kate Nash	Gerry Scalley

Detailed Story Recap[]

The episode begins in a spooky old house. A real estate agent is showing the place to a prospective buyer. A caretaker is with them. The caretaker is sent to turn on the lights, and the real estate agent goes out to her car phone. Left alone, the buyer explores the house. Someone pushes him off the balcony of an upper-story window, and he falls to his death, impaled on an iron post.

On the scene, Nick and Tracy question the real estate agent and caretaker about the death of the buyer, Mr. Weintroff. Both say they don't know how Weintroff fell. The caretaker tells them the house is haunted. On his way upstairs, Nick hears an eerie voice call his name, and Natalie observes that he seems frightened. While standing on the balcony from which Weintroff fell, Nick sees a ghostly young woman near his car. Then Tracy sees the ghost of a child sitting in the car.

Nick and Tracy visit the owner of the house, Mr. Ogden. He has a pretty young secretary called Shirelle, who serves them all tea. Ogden tells Nick and Tracy that the house is a "reverse-medium" by which ghosts appear to people who have unfinished business with their departed enemies and loved ones. Shirelle has seen ghosts there many a time, in the dead of night!

As the story unfolds Nick, Natalie and Tracy are haunted by ghosts. Natalie is visited by the ghost of her dead grandmother, who wants to know why Natalie didn't come to see her in the hospital. Tracy sees the ghost of a childhood friend who was killed by a train. She wants Tracy to come out and play - in traffic! Nick's ghost's name is Alyssa and she was his wife long ago. Apparently, she died on their wedding night, after he drained her of her blood in a botched attempt to make her a vampire like himself.

Reese is impatient with Nick and Tracy because they are not solving the case. The only clue is a military service star Nick found outside the haunted house. Weintroff's partner, Jerry Scalley, is also found dead. Natalie says he had a massive heart attack, and may have been frightened to death. Nick and Tracy learn that Weintroff and Scalley knew each other as fraternity brothers while they were in college.

The hauntings continue as Nick, Natalie and Tracy are troubled by painful memories from their pasts. "Nanna" visits Natalie at the morgue again, and they forgive each other's past transgressions. Nick returns to the old house to make his peace with Alyssa. While he's there, he encounters other ghosts of his meals long past, and they proceed to chase him around the house! As he flees from them, Nick finds Mr. Ogden in one of the rooms downstairs, sitting in a chair, dead. While Nick examines Ogden, Shirelle comes out of the shadows. She admits killing Weintroff and Scalley, because they murdered her mother years ago. She also killed Mr. Ogden. But she's not about to let Nick take her into custody! Shirelle pulls out a gun, shoots him, and then leaves the house.

Tracy discovers an unsolved murder which occurred at the time Scalley and Weintroff were at college together. She returns to the old house to catch up with the ghost of her childhood friend. Reese also shows up at the house, just in time to save Nick and Tracy from Shirelle. Then Reese sees the ghost of his dead brother on the porch of the old house.

At the epilogue, Nick and Natalie are in his apartment. Natalie asks Nick who his ghost was, but he tells her only that it was someone he loved and lost long ago. Nick asks her what they should make of their experiences with ghosts. Natalie says she's going to consider the visits from her dead grandmother a religious experience. She's not about to start telling people she sees ghosts! Nick ponders what she says. Reese contemplates the picture of his dead brother, and Tracy lays a red rose on the railroad tracks where her friend was killed.

According to the costumes, the flashbacks were to Elizabethan times (or thereabouts). They tell the story of Nick's very brief marriage to Alyssa. A priest wearing a bishop's miter presided over the ceremony, but he must have left his cross at home, because Nick seemed perfectly at ease. Lacroix observed the ceremony from small distance, holding a single red rose.

Fan Fiction[]

Quotes[]

Nightcrawler Monologue[]

A ghost is a hallucination of some famous regret, no more. Ghosts are mistakes that we've made. They come not from beyond the pale, but rise up from our gravest doubts about ourselves. Each ill-considered thing that we have done is a ghost that haunts us...if we let it. Regret is for the foolish, the weak, the tormented. Kill it before it bleeds you.

Notes[]

Behind the Scenes[]

The German title for this episode is "Das Geisterhaus" ("The Haunted House").
The character Jordan Reese was originally named "Jimmy". The role is frequently referred to under that name in on-line sources, probably because that is the name that appears in the end credits for this episode.

Continuity[]

Canadian Content[]

Goofs[]

When Nick is being pursued by the ghosts in Kessel House, he runs downstairs (and trips as he flees), when he could simply have flown away. Note, though, that one suggested rationalization is that Nick is in a mad panic. He has not only been harassed and pursued by the ghosts, whose faces coming through the wall are unnerving; but he has also nearly been incinerated by intermittent flares of fire. In this context, one should bear in mind that vampires can be easily killed by fire. Panic might, therefore, explain why Nick fails to follow his vampire instinct to fly and instead flees on foot like a mortal.